Disgraced Vice-Admiral Wang Shouye, who was sentenced to death on corruption charges last April has had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment for spilling the beans on a number of his co-corrupters - including former Party chief Jiang Zemin.

Having accepted about 160 million yuan in bribes, the biggest upset in Wang's confessions has given current Party chief, Hu Jintao, some welcomed ammo against his predecessor.

Michael Manning, who writes The Opposite End of China blog, conducts his own investigation on strange marks that he saw on a Google Earth map of the Xinjiang desert.