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 Though corruption is at the top of the agenda in Beijing (as always), Jonathan Watts is not distracted. Instead he draws our attention to the opening of the Tibet railway tomorrow (1 July).
My feelings on this are ambivalent. On the one hand, it is tempting to rail against the railway as the next big assault upon the culture of Tibet. Such is the view of various pro-Tibet groups who have pounced upon this for their PR.
And well it might be a way of flooding the region with Han people, culture and goods. There can be no doubt that all the money spent on the railway is for the benefit of the Han, not the Tibetans. And it is another slightly distasteful manifestation of the Chinese desire to suppress, subdue and supplant the forces of nature.
But on the other hand, is it really fair to continue to isolate Tibet from development? Isn't that just another form of orientalism, wishing upon them centuries more of poverty? The sad fact is that the foreign tourist dollar is probably the only thing that keeps Tibetan culture alive. Close Tibet off from the outside again and the Chinese will do there what they see fit. At least tourism brings awareness.
The real question is - what do the Tibetan people really want, and what do they really need? I know whose voice I take the most seriously:
Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, has given a cautious welcome to the developmental benefits of the railway but warned that it could accelerate the "cultural genocide" taking place as his homeland is increasingly dominated by migrants from the majority Han Chinese ethnic group.
Story below.
Continue reading "It's Not the Tools, It's the Workmen" »
Xinjiang, the Uyghurs and an Oversight in International Law
When the Charter of the United Nations was drafted in 1945, the aim was to eliminate both war and the causes of war. In a world devastated by conflict, the Allies dreamed of a new order governed by the rule of law, where human rights and the self-determination of peoples overrode the spent era of empire.
So when we think of colonialism today, we tend to imagine white European settlers sweeping aside the indigenous populations of the Americas or Australia in their lust for land; the creaking imperial administrations of Dutch Indonesia, French Indochina and the British Raj; or the unruly scramble for Africa. It is a period we shamefully consign to the history books.
But inherent contradictions of the UN Charter’s first two articles, which also enshrine the sacred right of nations to sovereignty and territorial integrity, leave chinks in the armour of international law. Colonialism is alive and well, and with us now in the 21st century.
A case in point is China, which following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the close of the last century constitutes what may well be the world’s last real empire. In its wild western province of Xinjiang, the politics of colonisation continue, intertwined with the modern obsessions with political Islam and the hunt for oil. Is there anything international law has to say about the predicament of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs, a people who are rapidly becoming strangers in their own land?
Download Word file here or read main text below. (Word file contains additional bibliography, maps and appendices)
Continue reading "Colonialism in the 21st Century" »
 First the BBC, and now The Economist are increasingly turning their attention to this hitherto little-known conflict. A sign perhaps that, like Darfur, it's beginning to flicker up on international radar?
Further to my initial remarks that it's all about gas, while I don't doubt that resources have something to do with the situation there appear to be many more complex things going on:
While Bugti tribesmen harry the army, a mysterious outfit, the Baluchistan Liberation Army, which the government says is also run by the sardars, is attacking policemen and soldiers across the province. Both groups are believed to have received assistance from India, across the nearby porous border with Afghanistan.
Read behind the lines here: India is using this as a proxy war against Pakistan, in addition to Kashmir. And who are Pakistan's main backers? Along the border with Afghanistan the US fights its futile war on terror; upon the coast, at Gwadar, China builds a massive new naval base for the export and protection of energy supplies. The insurgency is disrupting construction, so sooner or later the Chinese may begin putting pressure on Musharraf.
Furthermore, Baluchistan straddles the border between Pakistan and Iran. An explosive combination if ever I heard one.
In addition to being members of UNPO, with which I became familiar with during my correspondence with Uyghur leader-in-exile Erkin Alptekin, the Baluch movement also has a significant web presence. This comment, which I received this morning, is worth reproducing:
Balochistan is currently occupied by Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, and the Baloch people are struggling for self-determination. Pakistan forcibly occupied Balochistan in 1948, and treated the territory as a colony by oppressing the ethnic Baloch. The Baloch people launched four unsuccessful insurgencies in the past, and now they have embarked on the fifth one, which is officially declared as the “Baloch War of Independence”.
However, the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf has resorted to committing serious human rights violation in Balochistan by sending fighter jets, gunship helicopters, heavy artillery, and over 60,000 troops to eliminate non-combatant, innocent men, women and children of Baloch ethnicity. In other words, the Pakistani military regime is systematically conducting ethnic cleansing.
The Baloch want a democratic, liberal and secular Balochistan in midst of military dictatorship and Islamic fundamentalism. The international community must support the Baloch if they want to subdue Talibanization of the region. To read more on Balochistan, please visit our blog.
So the Baloch are not, as I previously believed, an Islamist group driven by resource nationalism but indeed a secular organization that promotes itself as anti-Taliban. Interesting. The site itself is at http://governmentofbalochistan.blogspot.com and contains a number of useful links. Take a look at this story in which a prominent figure also casts a shot at the idea of Balochistan as being a centre of world politics.
Original report reprinted below, and note also this blog with very similar scope to Other Means, discovered via Govt of Balochistan site.
Continue reading "Baluchistan Begins to Hit the Headlines" »
 Not much to go on, and the original link to the Hindustan Times doesn't work, but more evidence of how China's water policy may affect India. Obtained via Phayul Tibetan issues website and BJP archive.
This time, it's not damming the Tsangpo but a smaller, more insidious, project:
Whatever be the stage of construction, the idea of a barrage over the Sutlej — which enters India near Shipki La in Himachal Pradesh — is bad news for the country. Given the wide body of evidence showing the drying up of lakes, streams and rivers on the northern side of the Himalayas, the barrage raises concern that China may finally be controlling and regulating flow of water into India.
Article quoted below.
Continue reading "Sutlej Barrage" »
A recent UNDP report, reported here in The Guardian, says that trade and globalization are creating unemployment. How did they work that one out?
OK, so it's never a good thing to dismiss a report that tells you something you don't want to hear. But I find it hard to understand how development is creating unemployment.
Technology, on the other hand, does reduce the manpower required - robots, for example, mean that one worker can do the job of 10 on a motor vehicle production line - but the spread of technology is inevitable unless you actually want to go backwards. And I'm pretty sure that a reversion to labour-intensive production is not going to improve poverty, human rights or the economy - it'll probably make it less competitive.
I think that somewhere in the writing of the report some politics have come into play. It's not just the information you find, it's how you present it. The report will probably provide much-needed ammunition for the nostalgic rearguards of the 'Licence Raj' and the 'Planned Economy' in India and China, neither of which did anything for the people but bind them into a poverty trap for decades.
Of course capitalism creates inequality. But eventually, as some grow rich, their capital will create more jobs in service industries and new ventures financed by success. Marx has already been proven to be deeply and utterly wrong - why this enduring affection for his ideas? Development is freedom - it just takes time.
In conclusion though, the article does pick out the good advice buried in the research:
The UNDP human development report calls for greater investment in rural development. It also says that the region's huge foreign exchange reserves - which are seen as protection against another Asian financial crisis - could be better invested in health, education and physical infrastructure, and to help ease the oil price shock in poorer countries.
Exactly. It's not development and trade that are creating unemployment - it's government reluctance to invest in sustaining the boom. China is well ahead of India when it comes to creating masses of jobs in infrastructure: Manmohan Singh needs to utilize the current warmth from the US to attract foreign cash and expertise to build badly needed electricity, communications and transport networks. And education is the real equalizer - give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish...
Reproduced below: hopefully the report itself will soon become available here.
Continue reading "How Did They Work That One Out?" »
 However emotive and symbolic, sometimes events can get out of control and surpass their actual significance. The capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinians this week is one of them - and in the past hours appears to have triggered another and far scarier international incident:
Air defences fired on Israeli warplanes that entered Syrian airspace early today and forced them to flee, according to state-run Syrian TV, as tensions escalated over the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants.
Israel said its planes buzzed the summer residence of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Mediterranean coastal city of Latakia, flying low enough to cause a noise on the ground.
Israeli officials said on condition of anonymity that Assad was targeted because of the "direct link" between Syria and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group holding Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, 19, in the Gaza Strip. Syria hosts Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' exiled supreme leader.
Syria hasn't fired in anger at Israel since the 1980s Lebanon conflict, and with tensions in the Middle East as high as they can get, this could be more than just sabre-rattling.
The solution is simple: the disarmingly dorky Cpl Shalit needs to be released ASAP, and top-ranking ministers in Syria and Israel ought to have a hotline chat, preferably with mutual apologies. That'll be the only way to calm down a situation that could rapidly spiral out of control.
Continue reading "One Man Army" »
Chen Shui Bian has survived what looks like a vote of no confidence, but emerges considerably weakened.
This is probably good news for maintaining the staus quo across the Taiwan Straits. A so-called president with a firm mandate would stand a far greater chance of pulling off a move towards so-called 'independence' (Xinhua editors, I'm still available) than a leader on the back foot.
Then again, Chen might need something big and bold to revive his fortunes in his last months in office. It may even cause the KMT to lose face after their unsuccessful gambit. After all, the vote wasn't really about Chen himself but about his nephew: it all seems to be about little more than political skulduggery.
Still, safe to say that an election during the 2008 Olympics isn't going to rattle any cages hard enough.
Continue reading "Chen Again" »
 A recent post by Ralph Jennings got me thinking about some of the differences between a society that works and one that doesn't. What is it that prevents corruption and dishonesty, as we conceive them in the West?
It all comes down to the concept of social capital - the idea that in a developed society there are expectations and social norms that make things work better. For example, if you buy something, you don't expect it to be broken - the financial transaction in the act of buying entails an unwritten social transaction - ie. an expectation that you're going to receive the thing you paid for.
It's an idea that also comes up in a book I've been reading, India Unbound by Gurcharan Das. I've lost the reference, but in it he asserts that in an environment when businessmen are able to assume from the start that their transactions will be free and fair, the economy can flourish. But if there are suspicions of any kind, it stagnates.
In China this idea has developed altogether differently to the Western conception - instead there's guanxi.
Here's a few relevant snippets from what Wikipedia has to say about it:
"Social capital "refers to the collective value of all 'social networks' and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other," according to Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the concept's leading exponent (though not its originator). According to Putnam and his followers, social capital is a key component to building and maintaining democracy...
Nan Lin's concept of social capital has a more individualistic approach: "Investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace". This may subsume the concepts of some others such as Bourdieu, Coleman, Flap, Putnam and Eriksson as noted in Lin's book Social Capital (2001; Cambridge University Press).
Francis Fukuyama described social capital as the existence of a certain (i.e. specific) set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permit cooperation among them..."
Catch my drift?
 The BBC tries valiantly to shed some light on the situation, and is not entirely successful, but it comes down to this:
Just down the road in Sui lie what many believe is the real cause of the fighting - Pakistan's largest gas fields...
The government is pumping millions of dollars into the province. The idea is to turn Balochistan into a regional economic and energy hub, a land corridor between South-East and Central Asia.
Aside from the geopolitical angle - one which strings together China, India, Iran and the whole damn War on Terror - it's a classic case of resources nationalism. Now that energy has been discovered in the Balochistan, the independence movement has gathered steam. They know what's good for them; if they control the land, then they can gain more access to the wealth:
"The government has a colonial approach," says Kachkol Ali, leader of the opposition in the provincial assembly. "It doesn't need the people of Balochistan, it just wants the resources.
"But the Baloch people want to control their natural wealth. This is a national struggle. The tribal leaders are nationalists, and the Baloch people support them."
Reporoduced below, and a photo story too.
Continue reading "Back to Balochistan" »
 Jill McGivering's second report on the unsung and nasty little war against the Naxalite Maosist insurgency in India profiles the local militia.
It's a somewhat pathetic portrait, yet a little disturbing. Are the Indian army and police really so overstretched and underequipped that it can't handle this itself? Isn't arming a bunch of villagers just going to create more problems than there were in the first place? On the other hand, during the Vietnam War the Montagnard militias were among the bravest and most effective local anti-communist forces, given the right leadership and support.
But the tactics here in Chhattisgarh seem to be little more than "shoot on sight". That may sound bold, but in reality it's ineffective and even counterproductive. It's an unheard of war that may grow in importance as events unfold.
Full report below.
Continue reading "Salwa Judum: Citizen's Army?" »
 Auntie Beeb is a little bit behind the times in her embrace of streaming video - the quality on Newsnight's site is still quite a few steps behind that you'll see on YouTube.
Nevertheless, the special series on China is well worth a look, especially for Boris Johnson's bumbling-yet-acerbic report on higher education (check out his tai chi moves) and a well-sourced piece detailing the FBI's fears of Chinese espionage.
 Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the jungle. The BBC's intrepid Jill McGivering spent three days with Maoist rebels in India, and here is the first of her reports.
It's easy to dismiss the naivity of these mostly young and often female fighters. But the reasons why they fight are both geopolitically complex and disconcertingly down-to earth:
Analysts talk now about the emergence of the Red Corridor, a great swathe of Maoist militancy which stretches all the way from the border with Nepal, south through India to the sea.
Later I was introduced to a senior Maoist commander, Gopanna Markam, a veteran of 25 years with the guerrilla force. I asked him how he would describe what he was fighting for.
"We're fighting for a new democratic revolution in this country," he said.
"People are hungry, there's nothing to eat. They have no clothes. They have no jobs. We want development for the people. That's why people are coming to this fight."
 The increasing importance of Maoism on the subcontinent - a fascinating contrast to its increasing irrelevance in China - can only be ascribed to the widening gap that is the result of India's breakneck development since the 1991 reforms. As ever, the wealth is going to the upper castes and the educated. The poor are not getting a look-in.
Whether the Naxlite movement will become a threat or not, only time will tell. Story below.
Continue reading "South Asia's Red Corridor" »
 If you want evidence that not everything you read in the press is correct, look no further than this. The ignorance diplayed by CBS and AP here is quite phenomenal. Courtesy of Dave, who sent this screenshot in case the error is corrected...
To us it's just funny, but to a Chinese nationalist this would be enough to kick off a riot.
 Another exchange in the argument at Comment is Free between various factions attempting to explain India's current success. The current essay is by Gurcharan Das, whose book India Unbound I began yesterday.
Das pulls no punches when it comes to lamenting the failures of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty in hampering India's development. However, he is not lacking in patriotically-inspired conclusions too:
India's path is unique, and this is a bit scary because it is not following any of the proven success models. Rather than adopting the classic Asian strategy - exporting labour-intensive, low-priced manufactured goods to the west - India has relied on its domestic market more than exports, consumption more than investment, services more than industry, and high-tech more than low-skilled manufacturing.
Surely every country's path is unique? You can't really compare Japan and the tigers of Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore though people often do: India should not be any different.
Das is also pretty clear about his reasoning:
Unlike China, the entrepreneur is clearly at the centre of India's success story, not the state. As a result, India is spawning highly competitive private companies, such as Reliance Industries, Jet Airways, Infosys, Wipro, Ranbaxy, Bharat Forge, Tata Motors, Bharti, and Tata Steel. Some of these are likely to become global brands soon...
This is in marked contrast to China, whose success is largely based on exports either by state enterprises or by foreign companies.
I'm not so sure about this. China does have a strong state, but competition is king there just like anywhere else. If anything, the state does its job building infrastructure and the like while steering clear of regulating industry. tUnfortunately, in India The opposite is still true; the 'Licence Raj' still exists - see this horror story on driving from Calcutta to Bombay.
I'm also not convinced that Indians have the resiliant characters that Das lauds here:
India's real success lies with its self reliant and resilient people. They are able to pull themselves up and survive, nay, even flourish, when the state fails to deliver. When teachers and doctors don't show up in government primary schools and health centres, they don't complain. They just open up cheap private schools and clinics in the slums, and get on with it. This makes for a tough and independent people.
Many do, of course, I don't dispute that. But on the other hand, when things go wrong many Indians are all to ready to resort to the picket line rather than working together to solve the problem. That's another thing that holds them back, not to mention corruption and incompetence at every level.
In conclusion, I'd like to believe Gurcharan Das. I just don't.
Continue reading "A Hindu Rate of Growth II" »
Believe it or not, 2006 is the year of Sino-Indian friendship, and far from the tail of the programme is this seemingly insignificant bit of news:
China and India have signed an agreement to re-open an ancient trade route which was closed 44 years ago.
Border trade will now resume from 6 July through the Himalayan pass of Nathu La, 4,000 metres (14,000 feet) above sea level.
So? Here's the line that joins the dots:
The Nathu-La pass will be opened just a few days after the first train service starts between eastern China and Tibet.
As always, trade comes first. China and India have settled their basically rather trivial dispute over the Sikkim border and settled down to dine. Tibet? It's probably beginning to know its place.
Continue reading "The Gate Creaks Open" »
 Of all companies, Google is now campaigning to preserve net neutrality.
Wasn't this the same Google that acquiesed in creating a search engine to work through Chinese censorship? But then backed away? Its corporate values are a little ambivalent, but perhaps this is a move in the right direction.
Let's not forget, however, that Google is a web company. This is a problem with the Internet - the actual infrastructure which carries the World Wide Web:
Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can't pay.
Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.
 More prescient is a remark by Tim Berners-Lee:
The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy. It is the basis of democracy, by which a community should decide what to do. It is the basis of science, by which humankind should decide what is true. Let us protect the neutrality of the net.
If the American public can't block this bill - and let's face it, none of the rest of us have a look in - then we could all end up in a blocked-off net, just like China.
 Between these two stories:
Top Indian Maoist rebel "killed"
Nepal power sharing deal hailed
The interesting thing here is that while Communists are a major force in Indian state politics, the Maoist rebels are still just that - rebels. Meanwhile, in Nepal, the rebellion is one of the factors that is forcing reform at the highest level.
In both countries, the Maoists are already de facto rulers of various chunks of the countryside. So is the invitation to the rebels to join the political mainstream at the central governmental level soon in store for India too?
See also this article analysing the Nepal situation.
 On Thusday I attended a lecture by IR's leading light, Robert Keohane, in which he discussed aspects of anti-Americanism. (Some extracts from the new book are available here.)
Not having the wit to take notes, I can't remember all of the four types of anti-Americanism he described, but the gist of the talk was that despite the prevalence of anti-American discourse it has little real effect. "Yankee go home - but take me with you!" was one memorable remark.
The Economist is also thinking about this, but its explanations are a lot less vague:
Inside the clever head of Donald (“stuff happens”) Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary, for example, wags a tongue that may on its own be responsible for having needlessly alienated more former friends of the United States than any other instrument since the invention of the B-52 bomber.
The authors go on to furnish us with numerous examples. And here's the crux of the article:
The point, though, is that if much of the war against terrorism is a contest between values—in short, a PR war—America should be winning hands down. A brand that stands for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is an easier sell than a brand that stands for beheading unbelievers and reviving the Middle Ages.
Absolutely. But then again, America is not the only government that is losing the PR battle. Apparently China is too. Well, not so sure about that one, but still. Much of the article relates to the crucial story of 'Super Voice Girl, but a former journalism professor has a wry comment to make at the end:
Jiao Guobiao, who last year was dismissed from his post as a journalism lecturer at Peking University after issuing a lengthy diatribe against the Propaganda Department (comparing it to the Roman Catholic church in medieval Europe), sees a glimmer of hope that things might be changing. He has not (yet) been arrested. The department has become like a “blunt knife”, says Mr Jiao. “In the past it could slice meat apart in a stroke, but now it's not so fast.”
By the way, if you're reading Prof. Keohane - I still reckon that China is quite capable of behaving utterly irrationally in a pure realist sense, even if in itself it believes in the rationality of its actions.
First Economist article below.
Continue reading "Tin Ears and Sharp Tongues" »
 The SCO meeting continues, and Washington takes note:
The growing power of China has prompted a rethink in Washington, where rightwing analysts now speak of the SCO as an embryonic rival to Nato. Their fears have been strengthened in the past two years by the inclusion in the SCO of Iran, Pakistan, India, Mongolia and Afghanistan as either observer or guest nations.
Jonathan Watts also correctly identifies the true nature of the meeting:
But it is in the field of energy that the SCO appears to be most powerful. The countries gathered in Shanghai control almost a quarter of the world's oil supplies and are building a series of pipelines across the region. A pipeline is being planned from Iran to China that would cross Pakistan, whose president, Pervez Musharraf, yesterday requested to be admitted as a full member of the SCO.
I feel a thesis topic coming on.
See also this analysis in Comment is Free - and note the abject lack of comments. Unsexy the SCO may be, but it's becoming increasingly important to the fates of the People's Republic, the Former USSR and the whole Subcontinent - not to mention all that oil which the US and Europe wouldn't mind for themselves.
(pic - From left, foreground: the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)
Continue reading "'An Embryonic Rival to NATO'?" »
Too tired to blog it properly right now, but over at Comment is Free a royal battle is developing.
In the red corner is Pankaj Mishra with his praise of the old days of Marxist planned economies and fears for the new capitalist dawn in India and China.
In the blue corner is Salil Tripathi, reacting against Mishra's nostalgia-fuelled views.
Another round ensued today, with Mishra politely punching back.
I know who my money's on but the fact that people are still thinking Mishra's way is worth noting.
Was thinking over my Flashpoint 2012 theory this morning, and lo and behold this pops up on the BBC.
The actual Amnesty report is here, and it merely confirms what we already know. In Sudan, Burma and Nepal, China has been a significant supplier of arms to unsavoury regimes.
Amnesty's naivety is almost touching:
"We're calling for China to enact into law and uphold commitments... banning all arms transfers where they are likely to be used for human rights violations," Ms Hughes said.
Yeah, as if. China itself is one of the world's biggest human rights violators, and reneges on a number of international treaties from the WTO to the UN Charter.
Now, this is not to say that China is not doing anything the US isn't doing. In fact the US is doing the very same thing a hundred times over, if not a thousand.
But the point is that China is selling arms to protect its interests. Oil in Sudan and Iran; oil supply routes and logging with Myanmar; and strategic positioning over India and Tibet in Nepal. That's the nub of things.
There's also various conflicts in Pakistan and India, in which China, energy resources and Maoism are all somehow mixed up. Pipelines were recently blown in up in both Baluchistan and in Assam.
Coming soon: a full explanation of Flashpoint 2012 theory. Watch this space. BBC report below.
Update - 17 June 2006 BBC Analysis here.
Continue reading "China and Proxy Wars" »
 The G8 finance ministers got together today for a preliminary meeting ahead of July's summit. At the top of the agenda, naturally, is energy security.
But that's boring. And something far more important got going on Friday. It's even bringing colour to the usually grey cheeks of The Economist.
...the comparison with the Olympics is striking. Think of all those robotic East German sprinters, Romanian gymnasts and Chinese swimmers churned out by state-backed programmes. By contrast, a winning football team needs not just at |
