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| June 2006 »
 With great fanfare and slapping of mutual backs, The Observer and Amnesty International today launched a new campaign against censorship of the Internet - 'Irrepressible.info'.
I'm not totally sure, however, that they understand the situation completely.
Without wishing to pour cold water on this laudable effort, it's important to make a distinction. There are three parties involved - states, companies and individuals - each of which has a different perspective.
Above all, it must be recognised that it is states that censor, torture and imprison, not companies.
I lived in China for a couple of years and was involved in building an English-language bloggers network (livinginchina.com now defunct) so I came into contact with the censorship every day.
It works like this. Aside from sweeping censorship of blogs and personal websites (typepad- and geocities-hosted sites etc. were inaccessible while I was there) the state identifies certain sites or clusters of keywords it doesn't like (BBC's news site is one), and blocks you from accessing them.
So, if you enter 'tibet', for example, into google.com, you'll see results for the Dalai Lama's government in exile and the Free Tibet movement. It's just that if you click on the link, they won't open. You get the good old 'page not found' screen.
I have no particular love for Google, but what the Chinese version (google.cn) does is simply lead you to those sites that you CAN access. It's not doing the censorship itself. It's Cisco Systems, I believe, that actually provided the hardware for the Great Firewall of China.
The result is that many individuals practise self-censorship, in order to avoid their sites being blocked or getting into worse trouble. This saves the state a lot of time effort and money.
Compare this with Yahoo!'s tip offs to the Chinese government about subversive e-mails etc.. Shi Tao and others are not in prison due to censorship - they are incarcerated because they were betrayed by Western companies they didn't think would collude with the Party in this way.
That is the real tragedy of the situation. All I am saying is that you must make the distinction between censorship and active oppression of individuals. Some of this you can influence by lobbying the Western companies involved and actively colluding and I commend it.
Some companies, however, are simply submitting to the restrictions that the state imposes. If anything, google.cn actually helps users find the content that isn't censored by the state.
Finally, there has never been freedom of speech in China and many other places. They are not going to change their whole policy just because The Observer and Amnesty tell them to. Prepare to be blocked.
Leader from The Observer reprinted below.
Continue reading "Altogether Repressible" »
Whether complicit or helpless, the one-party state is overseeing one of the biggest thefts in world history: the seizure of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land...
A major article by The Guardian's brilliant Jonathan Watts discusses in detail the causes of rural unrest in China.
It's one of those pieces that changes minds. Before I was sceptical about the chances of a peasant revolt destabilising the CCP. Now I'm not so sure.
Reproduced below.
Continue reading "Will the Boat Sink the Water?" »
The BBC has been running a series this week comparing India with China. In the article reproduced below, Humphrey Hawksley attempts to tackle the knotty question of whether India might be better off following a Chinese model.
The instinct is to say 'yes':
China has outpaced India in just about every level of development.
And in the crucial area of direct foreign investment, China receives almost $60bn a year compared to just $5bn for the whole of India.
But this is to deny India its Indianness. It's not possible to follow the China model without the grand laissez fare that goes with it. China's success lies partly in it irresponsibility - towards its own people, its own laws, its own environment and those of the rest of the world.
With its completely different set-up, it is hard to see India emulating this.
See story below.
Continue reading "Democracy Stops Development" »
 A nice photo story from the BBC - the Three Gorges dam is scheduled to complete this week, though it won't be fully operational until 2009.
 My knowledge of economics is rudimentary, but I know that the flotation of the Bank of China is pretty important.
No doubt investors are falling over themselves to snap up shares in China's second-biggest bank. The even bigger ICBC is going to float later this year too, completing what is certainly a significant move in the PRC's progress towards liberalisation.
But hold on. Anyone who's been in China for any length of time knows that the consumer banking system is primitive to say the list. That says a lot about the system as a whole. There's very little communication among the banks, forex is still treated like rocket science and corruption is rampant - these banks sacked significant percentages of senior managers a while ago for embezzling funds.
Most worrying of all, it's these banks that absorb the risk. You see the amount of building and construction in Shanghai - all those cranes and shiny plazas. The money must be coming from somewhere. Not all of it can be real money: it comes from the banks.
Who holds up the banks? The government, and the people, who are famously thrifty and savings obsessed. So those glossy office blocks are basically built on Granny Wang's life savings and a whole load of big bad debt.
The whole thing is a house of cards that is going to make a massive crash and burn sooner or later. Now it looks like a whole host of foreign banks are going to be brought down with them when the bubble bursts.
Caveat Emptor.
BBC story reprinted below: see also this Economist story (bit complicated)
Continue reading "Boring But Important" »
 Hurrah! Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. "Well, who cares?" I hear you ask. No-one, it seems.
The BBC does, a little, and there's a short series on the anniversary. One of the articles looks at the view of the Cultural Revolution today, and unsurprisingly it's met mostly with indifference, especially by the young. Strange how so many are so keen to laud the '5,000 years of history' yet care so little about the last 50.
Kids these days don't care about Mao, communism or even China. They don't care about all the horror and the pain and sacrifice that has panned out since 1949, though they are quick to condemn Japanese actions from a decade earlier than this.
Some care about only three things: me, me and me:
There is a whole generation here in China who were born after the Cultural Revolution.
Beijing University was a hotbed of activity during the early days of the Cultural Revolution but now students like Vivian and Shirley have other things on their minds.
"Today people aren't very interested in politics" Vivian told me. "They are thinking about other things like their futures and travelling overseas."
Even more ironic when you consider that one of the triggers of the Cultural Revolution was Mao's call to the youth of China to overthrow the Party leadership, saying that it had been infiltrated by bourgeois elements. Much as it is today. Yet in 1989, when the students really did rise up to put the people back into 'The People's Republic', they were mown down with machine guns.
History rewritten as usual. It's one of those contradictions that never fails to baffle me.
Cultural revolution memories fade - also reprinted below.
Continue reading "Cultural Revolution Special" »
 While looking on the New York Times website for their take on their own correspondent Zhao Yan getting indicted (again) by the Chinese government, I couldn't help noticing another story.
It's not the first time I've heard of students being spied upon via the online BBS and message boards; nor was I unaware of the 'class monitor' system which continues the tradition of a young pioneer being asked to keep an eye on his or her classmates and teachers. Often this is entirely benign, and often quite helpful to have a representative of the class to help out, but it's hard to forget the flipside too.
So I suppose it's only natural to put two and two together and combine the roles.
This quote says it all:
"Our job consists of guidance, not control," said Ji Chenchen, 22, who is majoring in travel industry studies. "Our bulletin board's character is that of an official Web site, which means that it represents the school. This means that no topics related to politics may appear."
The university in question is Shanghai Normal University, but I have little doubt that similar 'Civilized Internet' programmes were underway at my university too. I know that on occasions, at the end and the beginning of terms, a firewall would be tested which blocked access to all sites with servers based outside the PRC. I could read China Daily with no problems, but not The Guardian.
And the numbers are also surprising. There's 500 monitors at Shanghai Normal. I suppose there's a lot of Internet traffic.
When I was at college, the road to a good CV lay in being the president of the debating society, the editor of the university newspaper or the secretary of the student union. What a contrast.
If a controlled and stable society is what the CCP desires, the universities are certainly the best places to start. It doesn't want to see any more Tiananmens, and so post 1989 debate and free-thinking have been stifled more than ever in academia - where debate and free-thinking should burst forth from every corner.
I don't think this generation will spawn any more '6-4's.
Registration is required to view the New York Times website, or you can read it below.
Continue reading "Babysitters" »
A New Alliance or Another Sino-Russian Split?
Every period of history has its ‘stories of the day’. For us, in the post-Cold War era, these are now obvious: the threat of Islamic extremism and the consequent ‘War on Terror’; the rapid economic growth of what is already dubbed the ‘Asian Century’; and the increasing strain on the environment by the over-exploitation of resources and the under-management of the consequences.
The continued ‘rise of China’ in particular depends upon a number of external factors – most notably, energy supply. In order to keep its restless millions in check, the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has to fuel the breakneck economic growth of the last decade, or at the very least prevent collapse.
Yet China’s oil and gas reserves are inadequate for its future needs, whereas neighbouring Russia and Central Asia are major providers of energy. So upon them and their pipelines it must rely – although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a nation that disdains reliance on others and prefers to go it alone.
The answer is to build its political and economic influence over Central Asia. Russia, however, also has hegemonic ambitions in the region. The scene is thus set for a confrontation within what some authors describe as the ‘New Great Game’. At present, relations remain benign, but how long can this continue? Could we soon be facing another Sino-Russian Split reminiscent of the 1960s row between Mao and Khrushchev? Or will Russia be pulled into China’s orbit in an uneasy partnership of mutual interdependence?
Download Word file here or read main text below. (Word file contains additional bibliography, tables and maps).
Continue reading "Pipeline Politics in Central Asia" »
 Well we have already. There was no spectacular live coverage of the events of 13 May 2005. No man with a shopping bag confronting a tank; no Kate Adie and the BBC. For many, the Andijan massacre was a non-event.
In fact there's few of us who even know where Uzbekistan actually is, let alone what happens there. This is not to say that Uzbekistan is irrelevant. It lies bang in the centre of Central Asia, right next door to some of the world's biggest newly-discovered oil and gas fields and not far either from Afghanistan.
This is perhaps why so little is heard about it. It's the way the US and Russia would like to keep it. The US military left Uzbekistan last year, but the Russians are still there. So too are the Chinese. The reasons? Commerce, of course. Gas fields, and pipeline routing.
Very easy to forget.
Continue reading "Lest We Forget" »
 The spectre of communism never really went away. It stalks on alive and well in India, and today communist parties won election victories in four states.
If the idea of Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries gaining power through the polls isn't weird enough for you, consider the actual brand of socialism they espouse. It's not so much Marxism-lite as straight capitalism:
Taking a cue from China, Mr Bhattacharya has pushed through an ambitious economic reforms programme with an approach more capitalist than communist.
He has invited foreign investment, privatised state-owned companies and properties and is pushing to make West Bengal a major IT hub - moves that have often earned him the ire of his party's politburo members.
All well and good. However, elsewhere the communists continue to block FDI and other concessions to reality that might just help lift people out of poverty.
 This is the irony of communism in India. It exists, and is popular, because of the enormous disparities in wealth created by the economic boom. However, in a sense, little has really changed for India's poor. The people who benefit from the BPO revolution are the very same educated Brahmins that land on their feet whatever the political environment.
Thus communism, even Maoism (there is an active Maoist guerilla movement in some states) thrives on. Desperate people turn to desperate measures, even though 'real' communism has been proven again and again to be utterly ineffective. BBC report below.
Continue reading "Communist India?" »
More on the 'Rise of China' from The Guardian's Comment is Free.
The operative paragraph is as follows:
For the record, Beijing assures the world that all it wants to see is the "peaceful rise of China". But that peace is to be achieved, above all, by other powers not getting in its way. Given the global impact of the mainland, as well as the areas for conflict, the formula may turn out to be an oxymoron for our times.
Exactly right. Witness, for example, the reluctance of the US to say anything about human rights during Hu Jintao's recent visit. Observe the international community's complete disregard for the situation in Tibet and Xinjiang, and the lack of firmness over Taiwan, despite the ostensible committment of the UN to the self-determination of peoples. Look at the way Western companies are falling over themselves to invest in China's factories where the workers have less rights and it's not a problem if you want to pollute.
No-one wants to get in China's way - even America is scared. Back in the 19th century, the envoys of the imperialist powers refused to kow-tow to the mandarins. They're making up for that now.
And here's the other side of the coin (sorry for the cliche):
China has made its way on its own terms over the last two decades. Foreign investment has been important, but it operates under terms set by Beijing. Exports remain worryingly important as a driver of the country's growth because of the soggy state of domestic demand and the high savings rate. The world, however, needs those exports as much as China does, to keep down inflation and fund the US federal deficit and US consumption.
It's a situation the West, fuelled by greed, has basically created for itself. And to be fair, having dominated the world for the past couple of centuries and caused untold misery and suffering through war and colonialism, it is not really fair of us to deny China its rise.
Faced with a mountain of domestic challenges, Beijing is simply looking after itself and asserting its status. It sees no reason to adapt... the west urgently needs to decide how it wants to deal with a country that is pursuing old-fashioned great-power politics and believes it is moving into the driving seat.
The question remains, however, how long can the peace really last?
Continue reading "The Peaceful Rise Paradox" »
 Maybe it's not the right analogy, but in the recent cabinet reshuffle Tony Blair has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. He has given Britain's international role a backseat and decided to concentrate instead on his own political survival.
Sacking the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was not a good move. Straw was Home Secretary from 1997-2001 and headed the Foreign and Commonwealth office after that for five years. For all his faults, he was well known in international circles and had proved himself to be an effective diplomat in the trying circumstances of the post 9/11 world.
Britain is probably the only country that can restrain the US. None of the other UN Security Council members enjoy this 'special relationship'; indeed, France, Russia and China actively oppose the US on many issues.
They are not able to stop America hitting Iran. They will just veto it in the UN, stand back and watch the fireworks.
So why, of all times, sack Straw now, on the eve of crisis talks on Iran? His replacement Margaret Beckett is also an experienced politician but no-one is going to be able to just turn up for dinner at New York and make themselves heard. What the hell will she know about tackling Iran?
Blair has not done anyone any favours with this short-term barracking of political allies. He showed such promise in 1997, but like all politicians he has grown weak and arrogant. By reshuffling the cabinet to surround himself only with friends at this crucial moment, he shows that he no longer has Britain or the world's best interests at heart.
 Despite its dry and austere reputation, The Economist sticks to the mandate of true journalism: of late, for example, it has been instrumental in keeping Darfur in the international spotlight.
Tonight is the deadline for a deal to be struck between the government and rebels, and likely as not it won't happen.
However, on a positive note, the US is getting involved. This week has thus been a good one for the US, in my eyes: the correct judgement on Zacarias Moussaui and now at least the right moves towards Sudan. Iran, of course, is another matter, but at least the US is trying to push it through the UN Security Council.
Does this herald a new era for US diplomacy? I don't think so at all. There's always interests involved somewhere along the line:
George Bush is now said to be “passionate” about getting both NATO and United Nations forces on the ground in Darfur, an idea that the Islamist Sudanese government detests. The reality, however, is more nuanced. Sudan’s military intelligence has been supportive of both the CIA (spilling a few beans on al-Qaeda) and the janjaweed militias who have done most of the killing in Darfur. So the question for the Bush administration is not just how to stop the slaughter, which it has called a “genocide”, but how to stop it at the same time as keeping Sudan more or less on side in the war on terrorism.
Nevertheless, it's the right move, especially in the face of UN inadequacy over the food programme. However, it's very doubtful whether a NATO or UN force could be effective, and inevitably it'll end up as another quagmire.
Continue reading "An Eye on Darfur" »
It's the right decision, both legally, politically and morally.
Evil as the man is, he did not actually kill anyone himself: he only plotted to do so. The other 19 hijackers gained for themselves martyrdom, if not in the eyes of God, certainly in the eyes of legions of angry young Muslims looking for heroes.
Were Moussaoui to be executed, he would become another such beacon for Islamic extremism. Osama Bin Laden would have a field day: imagine the speech he would make on al-Jazeeera.
The US needs to regain the international legitimacy for its human rights policy that was lost at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. This is a step towards achieving that aim, and placing the US back on the legal and moral pedestal that it needs to assert its primacy.
Most people wish it could be Christmas every day. Zacarias Moussaoui wishes it could be 9/11 every day. I'm sure he'll do well in a US jail, just like Jeffrey Dahmer.
BBC report here and reprinted below.
Continue reading "Moussaoui to Live" »
A few select cuttings from this year's Internet report by media freedom organisation Reporters sans Frontiers.
I've actually exercised some self-censorship in cutting the name of a dissident currently under arrest in China from the copy. This is not because I am trying to conceal his identity - it's easy to find out, if you have access to the RSF website - but because search engines, spiders, robots and censorship technology within the Chinese mainland may well find his name and add me to the blocked list. Yes, a little overcautious perhaps, but remember that RSF itself is very very blocked in the PRC.
Read on below - don't say I'm not even-handed.
Continue reading "Annual Internet Report" »
 So, if we already know that a UN resolution is going to be vetoed, why bother even drafting it?
The basic point of today's news is that a resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter is being prepared to try to manage the Iran nuclear crisis. This follows the IAEA's report to the UN Security Council that Iran is breaking its obligations on the enrichment of uranium - confirmed by Iran itself.
The relevant part of the chapter is Article 41:
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
However, as we read in The Guardian (also below), China and Russia will both veto any decision on actual sanctions. So what's the point?
There basically is none, other than as a face-saving measure for the US (and most likely its special friend, the UK). As long as the appearance of going the UN is kept up, then the US can later say "well, the UN was ineffective, so we had to go it alone".
There is zero chance that military action will be authorised under Article 42, but we all know it's going to happen eventually. This is the beginning of the diplomatic process of preparing the ground for the recriminations that will come later.
Continue reading "So the Point Is, Exactly?" »
 It's 1 May, and that means rioting! Well, maybe not today. Oh, and it's this blog's six-month anniversary too.
The hijack of Labour Day by globalisation (whether pro- or anti-) is continuing, however, in the shape of a strike by immigrant workers in the US, as pointed out in The Economist's Global Agenda.
Immigration is the subject of this week's study, and I concede that it's something I haven't thought an awful lot about before. But I myself am the product of immigration in many ways:
My father is an immigrant, who came to the UK in the 1960s and stayed on, though now he lives between both New Delhi and London.
I emigrated from Canada to the UK, and still hold a Canadian passport. I am now naturalised as a British citizen, and thus as an EU citizen.
I spent two years in Shanghai, as a 'foreign expert' transferring my skills to Asia.
I now live in the Netherlands: I'm waiting on my resident's permit.
In the west, it is something that affects us all - it's a further breakdown of the boundaries of the nation state.
Full article below.
Continue reading "The True Labour Day" »
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