Change, the New Order and Capitalism with a Chinese Face
December 31, 2008
The Year Ahead: 2009
OK, so this blog is closed... but I couldn't resist the temptation to scribble down some predictions about international relations in the year ahead.
First, a debrief on 2008. Last year's predictions were - predictably - mixed. I was right that the Beijing Olympics would be surrounded by controversy - Tibet and Uyghur violence did occur - but they weren't the failure I envisaged. And I was dead wrong about Russia, what with the attack on Georgia and all.
However, predicting a failed ratification for the Lisbon treaty was dead on, and Musharraf bowed out too.
Turning to 2009, the underlying theme has to be the recession. This colours everything, as does the new POTUS, Barack Obama.
Unfortunately for Obama, who will certainly enjoy a protracted honeymoon period, expectations are so high that failure is inevitable. A third intifada is on its way after the December shoot-out in Gaza, and since its the Palestine-Israel conflict that lies at the heart of all the Middle East's woes instability will be high.
This will affect Western policy in Afghanistan too - as political capital dwindles, troubles in that part of the world will increase. I have repeatedly said that Pakistan will eventually implode and have been wrong every time. Civil society is too strong. But eventually the government will collapse, which will lead to renewed tensions with India and Afghanistan and a resurgence of Islamism on the borders.
India is relatively protected from the effects of the global recession, but chances are that the people will still give Congress a bloody nose in the forthcoming elections. That means a return for the Hindu nationalist BJP perhaps, or a looser and inherently ineffective coalition including communists and right-wing elements at best. Again, this will contribute to further tensions with Pakistan and China too.
China is not going to enjoy the depression: closures are already occurring, and renewed protectionism in the West will not help exports. The more jobless and disenfranchised people there are, the less authority the CCP will have. The Party is not going to break yet, but its slide into the abyss may well begin. With a series of government collapses post-Koizumi and a nasty recession, Japan, meanwhile, could also take a turn to nationalism. Not a good combination.
And as Kosovo comes under EU control, it will be a turning point for both 'old' and 'new' Europe. Could Britain be forced to join the Euro? Unlikely, but not unthinkable - just as there's always a chance someone could get kicked out (Greece?). Russia, meanwhile, will take advantage of this year's weakish presidencies (Czech Republic and Sweden) to tighten the screws on the pipelines.
Under these conditions, the role of the UN is going to come under scrutiny. The ICC's ability to try Omar Bashir of Sudan will be the focus of attention, while all eyes will be on the viability of UN peacekeeping in Africa.
Overall, 2009 will be uneventful, something of a holding period setting the scene for the next decade.
I won't publish the entire 2009 deathlist (predicted deaths of famous people), but at least one symbolic leader will kick the bucket in 2009. Maggie Thatcher? Mikhail 'Vuitton' Gorbachev? Or even Mr. Obama? We shall see.
Sorry Brazil, in this analysis the 'big four' are the contender states, Eurasian military-economic powers Russia, India and China plus the rival-cum-ally, the US.
Interesting that coinciding with a Condi trip to Beijing comes a possible US military deal with New Delhi that might undermine Russia's virtual monopoly over its defence equipment. Russia continues to supply China, of course, no big.
If India were to become dependent on the US both for nuclear power, Gulf-related energy security and military hardware, that truly would seal it into Washington's orbit as anti-American social forces in Pakistan begin to spin away and thus towards China instead.
Also interesting to note that China's defence budget took another leap last year, as revealed in the annual Pentagon estimate. Part of the 18% hike is probably down to rising oil and food prices, but there can be no doubt that China is building up its capability while hardly making a major contribution to UN peacekeeping (as does India).
All things being considered, it looks like simple geopolitics to me.
Gates' talking points in Delhi related primarily to defense trade. India's procurement of 126 multi-role combat aircraft in a deal estimated at $10 billion - and possibly, as high as $ 16 billion - was number one priority for him and for the American defense contractors accompanying him. The principal bidders include Lockheed Martin's F-16 and Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet.
The importance of the deal is not only commercial, but that the new generation aircraft will be in use with the Indian Air Force for the next 40-year period and, therefore, clinching the deal becomes absolutely vital for the US if it is to aim at "inter-operability" with India. Gates knows it is the sort of deal that will ensure US-India military-to-military cooperation becomes irreversible and pin India down as the US's strategic ally in the region...
Gates expressed satisfaction over the entry that the US has made in the Indian market, which is traditionally dominated by Russia. He said, "We have tried for some years now to get a seat at the table, and we're finally there." Washington is determined to throw Russia out of the Indian defense market in the coming years. The assertiveness of the US sales pitch is evident from the remark by a US official in Gates's entourage, "When you go into joint production [and] cooperative development [with the US], you're getting not only the best product in the world, but you have the best support system, the best maintenance package over the life of the product. You also have companies that operate with integrity, which is different than what India has seen with other partners in the world. We're very transparent."
Here's the thing, right? There are two clear underlying causes to all the major problems on earth. The first is overpopulation. Overpopulation means that there are too many people chasing after too many resources - energy, water, land etc. which inevitably leads to conflict. Enough has been written about that to sink a battleship.
Second, there's subjectivity. What's that? It's a lack of objectivity in our approaches to these problems. It's a natural trait of humanity to form into groups, but every group defines itself by a subjective outlook on the world around it. It's thus these groups that enter into conflicts.
Some examples. No objective discussion of the Middle East is possible due to Israel's emotional outlook: thanks to the Holocaust, any criticism or compromise is decried as 'anti-Semitic'. Likewise, Arab nations and Islamic terrorist groups cannot see past the Palestinian question.
The same is true wherever you look. Such is China's emotional attachment to Taiwan and Tibet that any questioning of the situation is condemned as "interference in our internal affairs". Same goes for Serbia, Russia and Kosovo. The dysfunctional tendencies of the UN and EU are all down to questions of national interest. Even the US defines itself these days with reference to 9/11 and any attempt to rationally tackle the greater issues are met with the same response.
So states and other actors are not rational - they are indeed irrational. International relations theory has it exactly wrong.
The only answer is to find a unifying threat or goal, a way to bring all the conflicting groups together into one. And, ironically, overpopulation provides us with that. We are faced with a significant common problem, that of climate change, for which overpopulation is a major cause. Too many people needing too many products, burning too much fuel and cutting down too many trees... you get the picture.
So work together to solve the population crisis and you have an answer to the irrationality that causes conflict and environmental degradation. It's so simple.
Shock and awe! Call out the National Guard and move to DefCon 3!
Come on, what did they expect? Everyone knows that the biggest show on earth is also its biggest political platform. Think of the Mexico 1968 Black Power salute, the 1972 Munich atrocity, the 1976 apartheid boycotts at Montreal, the Cold War tit-for-tat spat in the 1980s and the 1996 Atlanta bombings - not to mention Hitler's notorious Berlin 1936. Am I saying anything new?
It should be of no surprise to the Chinese, therefore, that there is going to be a political element. Indeed, they are the ones who are politicizing Beijing 2008 the most.
By presenting it as the showcase event of the 'peaceful rise' of China and the return of the Chinese civilisation to the centre of world affairs, they themselves are couching it in the language of politics. By building several hugely expensive architectural masterpieces, they are deliberately sending a message about their renewed capabilities. And if China wins the biggest haul of gold medals, it will see it not merely as a sporting triumph but as a reification of national superiority.
So of course the games are political: the very last to see it as a mere athletic event are the Chinese themselves. Why pretend the two are separated?
Qiao Mu, the director of international communication studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the government could no longer ignore foreign opinion.
"China needs big events like the Olympics to prove itself as a powerful nation," he said. "In Mao's days, the government did not need to care about the foreign media because they were easily able to ban information easily and live in the fantasy they created for themselves. But now that we live in an age of globalised information, the government must pay more attention to outside opinion."
Steven Spielberg's decision to withdraw from involvement in Beijing 2008 is laudable (I suspect premeditated from the moment he first signed up), yet misguided. Of all the things he could have chosen to remark upon, choosing Darfur merely gives Beijing ammunition against him as quoted below.
If anything, it is counterproductive. Those who called for Spielberg's 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha to be banned in China are probably rubbing their hands with glee.
By now the Chinese media corps will busily be drafting editorials brimming with righteous indignation. How dare he meddle in our internal affairs! Had Spielberg commented on human rights, democracy, censorship, political prisoners, corruption, pollution, trade practices, Xinjiang or Tibet, on the other hand, the presses would be silent.
Hollywood stars have been at the forefront of an international campaign linking China to violence in the Darfur region of Sudan, saying that money and weapons from Beijing have helped fuel a conflict which has claimed 200,000 lives and forced 2.5 million people from their homes.
But the Chinese embassy in Washington said attempts to connect Darfur with the Beijing games goes against the Olympic spirit. "As the Darfur issue is neither an internal issue of China, nor is it caused by China, it is completely unreasonable, irresponsible and unfair for certain organisations and individuals to link the two as one," it said in a statement.
Suppose that would make it the IPC. Need to source this article, but it's potentially significant. All of course rests on the outcome of Pakistan's election on 18 February.
ISLAMABAD: China is ready to join Pakistan and Iran to build a pipeline to transport Iranian gas if India does not participate in the project, the media reported on Monday.
Pakistan plans to import 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas a day from Iran through the pipeline and has said it is willing to consume an additional 1.05 billion cubic feet of gas if India does not join the project.
China has told Pakistan that it is interested in importing the additional gas if India does not join the project, sources. The sources also said Iran has no objection to exporting gas to China.
Pakistan and Iran have finalised a gas purchase agreement. However, Pakistan and India have been unable to narrow their differences over the transit fee to be charged by Islamabad for the Iranian gas.
Reports from India have suggested that it will hold discussions with Pakistan on the pipeline once a new government is formed in the country after the February 18 general election.
In case China joins the project, the pipeline might pass through Gilgit in Pakistan's Northern Area, the sources said. Pakistan has already approved a project in the same area to widen the Karakoram Highway that links it to China.
Pakistan also plans to extend a railway track to China to connect the neighbouring country to the Gwadar port on the Balochistan coast. Chinese experts will visit Pakistan to finalise the route of the pipeline if Beijing joins the project, the sources said.
Iran and Pakistan might sign the gas purchase agreement on February 24, the sources said.
It's looking increasingly like we have just one week to go before the big events of 2008 really begin. Many of the papers are giving 17 February as the date for Kosovo to declare independence, and it already appears that there's a behind-the-scenes plan.
Under the current Cold War climate, that's really not a good idea. Deliberately orchestrating recognition of Kosovo before the UNSC can meet - and Russia veto - is going to be seen as a big provocation in Moscow. That's not good. We've already got guys getting poisoned with polonium, energy cut-offs and Tupolevs making incursions into sovereign airspace... all getting a bit Tom Clancy for my liking.
What's worse, possibly Beijing will object too. Kosovo's recognition by the US and EU nations may set a precedent for Taiwan, which is set to hold its own referendum on a UN bid in March. If Kosovo can secede and be recognised, Taipei will say, then why can't we? Thus the schism in the UNSC will widen further, undoing much of the good work that's been done in recent years.
Though the prospects of Serbian and Russian tanks rolling in are remote, what may occur could be a re-run of Israel's declaration of independence back in 1948. Just as the Palestinians took up arms and ended up a displaced people, so too could the 200,000-odd Kosovar Serbians. Just as the Arab countries failed to recognise Israel, so too may a number of black sheep within the 'international system'.
An insidious problem that could last for decades may be in the offing. And who's going to manage it? The EU - which can't even come up with a unanimous position on Kosovan independence, let alone deploy a peacekeeping force that can cope when things go bad. Yes, they've been handling Bosnia, but this may heat up.
The biggest contradiction in the UN charter is its respect for both self-determination and sovereignty. If things kick off this month, then there's going to be some grave implications. Better that the situation was managed differently - it's still not too late for compromise.
Critics of the plan to declare independence, which follows the failure of Serbia and the Kosovo-Albania leaders to negotiate terms for separation, have already warned of the risk that Kosovo's Serbian population, concentrated in northern Mitrovica, would respond by declaring their own independence, setting the stage for violent confrontation.
The renewed Serbian warning comes as Kosovo's leaders struggled to calm rising 'independence fever', fearful that wild celebrations from the ethnic Albanian majority could spark violent clashes with scared and furious Serbs.
Kosovo is expected to proclaim itself the world's newest state next Sunday or Monday, allowing European Union foreign ministers meeting on Monday to give the green light to a 2,000-strong mission to oversee the running of the ethnically divided region.
While Washington and most EU members will quickly welcome independent Kosovo into the world, Tadic's grim predictions of spiralling instability in the Balkans, still scarred by a bloody decade that ended with Nato bombing Serb troops out of Kosovo in 1999, will gain credence if the region's long-awaited independence celebrations give way to ethnic violence.
Kosovo's parliament is expected to meet next weekend and Hashim Thaci, the former separatist rebel who is now Kosovo's Prime Minister, or President Fatmir Sejdiu is likely to announce independence on Sunday or Monday morning, preventing Russia from immediately responding through the Security Council, six hours behind in New York.
By the time Russia can muster an emergency meeting of the council, the US and major EU nations will have drawn its diplomatic sting by recognising the sovereignty of Kosovo's two million citizens. 'We have the confirmation from some 100 states which say they are ready to recognise Kosovo's independence immediately after we declare it,' Thaci insisted last week after Serbia said that it expected a declaration on 17 February.
The Internet: Changing China More Than China Changes It
With the Beijing Olympics very much round the corner, there's been a real slew of articles recently, reflecting a renewed and critical interest into what's really going on in China.
While the article quoted below really adds little new to the debate (see, for example, my own take on this from some years back) it does provide an insight into the situation: useful for the majority of people who don't yet understand what the conditions are in China.
Also pleasing to see a couple of intelligent opinion-makers such as Jeremy Goldkorn and Isaac Mao (both of whom I knew vaguely during my Living in China days) given a voice.
Hong Bo, who blogs under the name Keso, says the opportunity to speak out online is cherished by a growing band of bloggers and BBS users.
"The Chinese internet has a distinctive character. Its one of the most strictly controlled in the world, but netizens' behaviour still confounds the government's expectations. They ban websites and delete posts, but they haven't got everything under control."
Isaac Mao, a pioneer blogger and researcher, says the number of users is less important than the quality of their online experience, where he says there is a big gap with the United States.
His organisation encourages netizens to connect their real and their virtual lives through blogs and discussions of social issues, including censorship.
"Rulers believe they can build a better system and get others to follow. But even though they want to change the internet, it is part of a globalised world and nobody can afford to build an isolated system.
"I believe the internet will change China more than China changes the internet."
Next Thursday, 7 February, sees the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Rat, the first in the Chinese Zodiac cycle. No, this isn't some cod astrological analysis: but it does put a little bit of mystical context in. Just look at all the international factors that are just about to converge and you'll see what I mean.
Basically, the next weeks and months could see some rather serious developments in the global political picture.
Already locking horns with the UK, Russia is probably going to stand by Serbia - which means increasing antagonism with the rest of Europe. I can certainly foresee the gas spigot getting turned off for a couple of days, which given the present frigid economic (let alone meteorological) climate could have a severe impact.
Speaking of elections, it's Super Tuesday this week, another moment that's going to define the course of things to come. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or John McCain: the field of four will probably narrow down to two candidates for the top job in the world.
Moreover, NATO is lumbering towards a crisis with Germany refusing to pull its weight and Canada getting very cold feet in the face of what looks like sheer petulance from its allies. Thus, the NATO conference set for next week could well define the future of the mission, and general stability in Afghanistan. Condi is already jetting in do do her firewoman act.
Anyone who's queued for rail tickets at Spring Festival - even in a good year - will tell you what a nightmare it is. This year has seen the worst weather in half a century and chances are that the world's largest internal migration is not going to go ahead as planned. That means some unhappy chappies down Chinatown.
Add to that the very real danger of a food crisis - a failed crop could tip China over the edge - compounded by the general economic malaise and you have a recipe for civil unrest in Olympic year.
And finally, add to that a touch of spice in the form of an upcoming referendum in Taiwan (set for 22 March) and you have a fiery plate of noodles indeed.
In summary, there are various crises impending in Eastern Europe, South Asia and East Asia. The year 2008 could well be going for a bag of rats.
"Yankee go home, but take me with you!" How long is that going to last? This writer seems to believe tha the European and Chinese ways are catching on more now than the American way. I'm slightly sceptical as to the former, but there's certainly an element of truth in it.
On the other hand, the strength of America's style of democracy - I say 'style' since it's not an absolute democracy as one gets from proportional representation methods - does mean that we will have regime change in a year. It's the Bush administration that has sown alienation against the US, not America per se. It can still be turned around, though of course the trend is a general one.
Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.
But Europe lacks a coherent foreign policy, even now, and the Treaty of Lisbon probably won't alleviate that fundamental weakness by 2016. Then again, as pointed out, the Euro is now the real tool of Brussels foreign policy.
As for Beijing: "Every country in the world currently considered a rogue state by the U.S. now enjoys a diplomatic, economic or strategic lifeline from China, Iran being the most prominent example." That's a Warsaw Pact in-the-making if ever I saw one.
It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.
The author Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation (sounds disturbingly like PNAC to me, but will let that one go. The essay is adapted from his book, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, to be published by Random House in March. Gonna add it to my Amazon wish list, I think.
The Gwadar port being built by Pakistan with Chinese assistance in its Baluchistan coast has "serious strategic implications for India", Naval Chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta has said.
"Being only 180 nautical miles from the exit of the Straits of Hormuz, Gwadar, being bulit in Baluchistan coast, would enable Pakistan take control over the world energy jugular and interdiction of Indian tankers," he said delivering T S Narayanaswamy Memorial lecture in Chennai on Monday night.
A short but insightful look at China's rural economy. It's easy to be blinded by the figures on China's booming export economy, but this correspondent notes that with the changing demography of China the mix of different crops is changing. Pork consumption is on the rise, requiring more grain for fodder: likewise, vegetables are replacing wheat and other staples.
There's a best case and a worst case scenario to this.
In the best case, China's demand for food will fuel agricultural growth around the world as it increasingly turns to imports: this in turn could balance the overall trade deficit and help other countries develop. A rising tide lifts all boats.
On the other hand, accelerating prices in China and the consequent dangers of economically-induced famine comme Amartya Sen could be the final triggers for mass social unrest among the disenfranchised poor. All it would take would be an ecological disaster (perhaps influenced by unchecked environmental degradation) and China would implode just as it has done from time to time over the centuries.
Well, it's that time again - as the year 2007 draws to a close, we look to the future. And one thing is for sure: the primary foci of this weblog, Pakistan and China, were hardly out of the news this year and won't be in 2008 either.
For China especially, 2008 is the crunch year. The Olympics have acquired a kind of existential significance, and their success or failure have become intertwined with China's contemporary sense of its national identity.
Unfortunately, I can't see the games being the resounding success that the CCP hopes for. Chinese athletes will probably haul in the most medals, but with the enormous pressures upon them there will inevitably be doping scandals. Other athletes will scorn the terrible pollution; tourists will be messed about, pushed, shoved and spat around (most Beijingers will behave admirably, but it'll still be the negatives that get remembered); and journalists will lament the restrictions on free reporting. Few Chinese yet realise how things will be perceived, and it will come as a shock.
Most of all, this most political of sporting events will inevitably be deeply politicised. There will be incidents: medal-winners standing up for Tibet, Taiwanese declarations, perhaps even Uyghur violence. Expect 888 to be a very interesting moment in the definition of the new China.
Turning to Russia, there Putin will remain in control, despite the appointment of a new president in Medvedev - little more than a deputy, really, But I have confidence in Putin: he is not stupid, and will not wish relations with the EU and NATO to deteriorate further. Things were getting silly, what with all this missile defence rubbish, not to mention Litvinenko and Lugovoi, and in 2008 Russia will attempt to repair some of the damage - though not with Britain, who will be the main losers.
Meanwhile, it will be a period of reflection for the EU itself, as the member states attempt to digest the implications of the Lisbon Treaty. Expect at least one ratification to fail.
There is at least reason to positive about the Middle East. Iraq has calmed in 2007, though of course it's not the end by any stretch of the imagination. We are also thankfully unlikely to see action against Iran either. Bush desperately needs a positive legacy to speak of, so with elections in full swing at home he and his cronies may attempt at least to broker a compromise solution. Does he have what it takes? We shall see.
But there are clearly going to be fireworks in Pakistan. Far too early to tell how things will pan out, but it probably won't be good. This writer is already predicting a Balkanisation of the country: that may be going too far, but with the conflicts in NWFP and Balochistan likely to gain pace as society fractures after the elections then the prospects for stability are low. Great map too - worth examining to see what it suggests about Iran and Iraq and all
It is almost certainly the end of the road for Musharraf, and with Bhutto gone there will be a power vacuum. Power vacuums mean conflict, as we have seen in Iraq. But the West and India have meddled enough in Pakistan - it is up to them.
Just to prove I'm not the only doommonger around here (though my prediction is 2012, Beijing isn't going to scupper the Olympics on any account), Canada's Globe and Mail looks forward to some tense moments in 2008.
It's unlikely, however, that the Taiwanese people are going to vote for independence in a referendum.That's been tried before, and it was a close run thing, but the electorate are not crazy. They know that such a decision is likely to visit a world of hurt upon them.
On the other hand, the scenario explored in the article does carry some weight. The elections and referenda will, if nothing else, add to existing animosity, and a small incident like an air-to-air collision or an accidental firing of missiles could escalate horribly.
Tensions have been high for years, but 2008 could be the most dangerous year of all. It is filled with potential trigger points, including two Taiwanese elections, a controversial referendum, the final days of Mr. Chen's presidency and the Summer Olympics.
This explosive combination of political events will begin on Jan. 12 with a legislative election in Taiwan, followed by a presidential election on March 22. The elections will be accompanied by Mr. Chen's latest gambit: a referendum on whether Taiwan should apply for membership in the United Nations under the name Taiwan rather than its official name, the Republic of China.
Tucked away in the news-in-briefs, but possible a very significant deal if it can go ahead. Anything that can get a) Japan and China to cooperate and b) help solve the pollution issue has to be very positive indeed.
Japan plans to propose a joint fund worth a total of 200 billion yen with China to help Beijing step up environmental protection efforts, a newspaper said Monday.
The government and ruling parties were working out the details, with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda intending to propose the plan during his visit to China starting Thursday, the Nikkei business daily said.
With Pakistan so desperate for the Chinese Yuan, could it be that Musharraf's recent consolidation of his power is in answer to Chinese demands for security and stability? Or would that be "interference in its internal affairs"?
The countries are seeking to triple bilateral trade to US$15 billion in the next five years from $4.2 billion in 2006 under a free-trade agreement signed just over 12 months ago. They recently signed agreements worth around $300 million under which Pakistani products would be exported to China, involving 15 Pakistani companies and covering goods such as cotton, chrome ore, leather and rapeseed meal.
The PCIC, established in July with paid-up capital of 4.25 billion rupees ($69 million) with the government in Islamabad a direct shareholder, will help Pakistan to secure Chinese investment in various sectors and help Pakistani exporters target openings in China, according to officials. The company will perform investment banking business on a commercial basis.
Asia Times reports on the $2bn China-Iran Yadaravan oil deal in the wake of the NIE estimate, and analyses the broader implications.
With China's opinion being that the US is now waking up to Iran as a regional power, it seems that India has been put in an awkward position - having already lost out on its dealings with Tehran in order to appease Washington.
Meanwhile, China has seized a massive mining deal in Afghanistan despite all India's efforts in the country (to the chagrin of pakistan). It would appear that New Delhi has made some geopolitical miscalculations.
...by the beginning of June, Chinese regional experts had already assessed, "Iran, with no geopolitical competitors, has become the 'boss' within the Persian Gulf region. Since the US has fallen into the Iraqi quagmire, Iran concludes that the United States dare not use force against Iran. Therefore, it maintains strong strategic determination and refuses to make concessions on the nuclear issue.
"This favorable environment, coupled with a strategic resolve, has earned Iran a certain status of equilibrium with the United States in the contest within the Persian Gulf region. It is this balance of power that has forced the United States to sit down and talk with Iran. Iran, hence, has won the battle for survival and the status of a regional power."
Frederick Kagan: Fear-Mongering or Preparing for the Worst?
The Guardian picks up and spins a recent pronouncement by Frederick Kagan of AEI. The operative paragraph and conclusion are below, and deserve a bit of picking apart.
A complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum? Highly unlikely. Kagan may say he is not "fear-mongering", but this statement is over the top. Whatever its problems, the moderate mainstream in Pakistan's civil society and the military is more than powerful enough to prevent that eventuality.
There again, it did happen in Iran, but circumstances now are not the same. It is correct, therefore, to make contingency plans, but not to push forward what is not yet an inevitable self-fulfilling prophecy.
A struggle within the Pakistani military? Also not likely. Undoubtedly there remain radicals in the ISI, but if nothing else Musharraf has probably purged the army of the extremist tendencies seen under General Zia, who was himself somewhat discredited by the end of his rule.
However, there is a distinct possibility of Islamabad losing control of the outer regions - some might say it has already done so. This does have implications for both Afghanistan and Pakistan and thus must be taken seriously.
The basic point is that Pakistan needs well-planned aid and support if its WMD are not to fall into the wrong hands. It's the kind of thinking that should have been deployed prior to the Iraq invasion, which after all was about the same thing - preventing access of the wrong people to WMD.
Finally, two things Kagan fails to mention are the China and India factors. He treats the subject as if it's entirely a US issue, which it is not. The two Asian powers have deep-set interests too, and must be part of the solution rather than allowed to become part of the problem.
The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism...
The great paradox of the post-cold war world is that we are both safer, day to day, and in greater peril than before. There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly a humanitarian worry; today it is as much a threat to our basic security as Soviet tanks once were. We must be militarily and diplomatically prepared to keep ourselves safe in such a world. Pakistan may be the next big test.
Some analysis of largely-unreported recent PLAN exercises and the connection with the Kitty Hawk incident, in which a USN CVBG was turned away from a scheduled visit to Hong Kong.
The author notes the influence of certain Taiwan-orientated officers within the governing set-up, and also some possible lack of co-ordination between the PLA and the civilian executive, for example the ministry of foreign affairs.
Also in context was the Dalai Lama's masterstroke pronouncement on his succession. In a sense, he has to ensure that the next Dalai Lama doesn't suffer the fate of the hapless young Panchen Lama, who through no fault of his own remains missing and probably isn't enjoying the best of times.
But also what better way to highlight Beijing's lack of democratic credentials to the international community than by demonstrating your own willingness to shed the feudalism you've been accused of in favour of a modern referendum? Incredibly, Beijing had the cheek to criticise him for rejecting religious traditions. As if razing hundreds of monasteries to the ground during the Cultural Revolution was an act of respect.
Finally, China's meeting with the EU illustrated the other side of China's power projection through economic means. All in all, this week has been quite significant in China's positioning of itself on the world stage.
The two most powerful bodies in the polity—the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) and the CMC—are filled with cadres and generals with long-standing expertise on Taiwan. Three PSC members have served as either governor or party secretary of Fujian, the “frontline province” just opposite Taiwan. They are Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Jia Qinglin, Secretary of the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection He Guoqiang, and Fifth-Generation rising star Xi Jinping, the front-ranked secretary of the Central Committee Secretariat. The CMC is replete with Taiwan Strait specialists. This include Defense Minister designate General Liang Guanglie, a veteran commander of war games off the Taiwan coast; the newly promoted Chief of the General Staff, General Chen Bingde, a former commander of the Nanjing Military Region; Air Force Commander General Xu Qiliang, who was once based in Fujian; and Naval Commander Admiral Wu Shengli, a former vice-chief of the East Sea Fleet. Since becoming CMC chief in late 2004, Hu has promoted a large number of alumni of the Nanjing Military Region, which has “jurisdiction” over the Strait.
On a larger-scale, last week’s provocative exercises tally with the overall pattern of power projection that began early this year with the destruction of an old weather satellite by state-of-the-art PLA missiles. The feat, which apparently signaled Beijing’s readiness to join the militarization of space, was followed by the country’s successful effort late last month to put a Chinese-made satellite into the moon’s orbit. Moreover, the PLA has for the past year deviated from its past practice of keeping newly developed weapons under wraps. Semi-official military websites regularly run stories and pictures that showcase the prototypes or just-completed versions of soon-to-be-deployed hardware ranging from the Jin-class submarine—which is capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles—to the nation’s first aircraft carrier.
Apart from telling Taiwan independence forces—and their sympathizers in the United States and Japan—that Beijing has the wherewithal to maintain national unity, Beijing is flexing its military muscle in a fashion befitting an emerging quasi-superpower. Referring to the 17th Congress, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) strategist Hong Yuan pointed out that “the [defense] concerns of the new leadership and the force projection of China’s military have gone way beyond the Taiwan Strait.” Hong sees the coming five years as “a period of rapid development in areas ranging from the PLA’s establishment, institutions and hardware to the extent and means of force projection” (Wen Wei Po, October 19).
Neat summary of Iran's political and commercial relationships with other nascent Asian powers. Includes some details on the IPI and Chinese economic influence.
On the Asian continent, the Iranian strategic realignment seems to rely on organizational and bilateral cooperation, extending beyond existing relations with other "rogue states" such as North Korea. On the contrary, Iran aims at reaching out to U.S. allies or "friendly" countries, such as India and Pakistan, as well as to emerging global powers, especially to China.
There had to be one, and note how this author neatly ties up all the conflicting elements in the current drama: internal opposition to Musharraf; the Balochistan rebellion; Afghanistan, America and the GWOT; China and Gwadar; India and Kashmir.
The essence of the article is that the current situation is all the result of an American plan to instigate regime change in Pakistan to advance its own interests. Of course much of the report is to be roundly dismissed. I particularly enjoyed this paragraph (I used to work at Jane's):
This was the perfect timing for the launch of Military, Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, a book authored by Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language paper and a correspondent for ‘Jane’s Defence Weekly’, a private intelligence service founded by experts close to the British intelligence.
But the point is that the Pakistan situation is not clear-cut in that all Pakistanis favour democracy and Benazir Bhutto, as the Western powers would have us believe. There are still deep veins of paranoia at work, and it's these that enable the continuing dominance of the military and security forces.
“We have indications of Indian involvement with anti-state elements in Pakistan,” declared the spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Office in a regular briefing in October. The statement was terse and direct and the spokesman, Ms. Tasnim Aslam, quickly moved on to other issues.
This is how a Pakistani official explained Ms. Aslam’s statement: “What she was really saying is this: We know what the Indians are doing. They’ve sold the Americans on the idea that [the Indians] are an authority on Pakistan and can be helpful in Afghanistan. The Americans have bought the idea and are in on the plan, giving the Indians a free hand in Afghanistan. What the Americans don’t know is that we, too, know the Indians very well. Better still, we know Afghanistan very well. You can’t beat us at our own game.”
Mr. Bugti’s armed rebellion coincided with the Gwadar project entering its final stages. No coincidence here. Mr. Bugti’s real job was to scare the Chinese away and scuttle Chinese President Hu Jintao’s planned visit to Gwadar a few months later to formally launch the port city.
Gwadar is the pinnacle of Sino-Pakistani strategic cooperation. It’s a modern port city that is supposed to link Central Asia, western China, and Pakistan with markets in Mideast and Africa. It’s supposed to have roads stretching all the way to China. It’s no coincidence either that China has also earmarked millions of dollars to renovate the Karakoram Highway linking northern Pakistan to western China.
One to save and read for later, and not a lot of new int. But this (conservative) report does highlight the increasing threat of Chinese economic intelligence gathering, cyber warfare ("weapons of mass annoyance") and its general commitment to asymmetric capability-building:
China’s search for asymmetric capabilities to leverage against U.S. vulnerabilities represents a serious form of irregular warfare preparation. China is convinced that, financially and technologically, it cannot defeat the United States in a traditional force-on-force match up. However, as Chairman of the Defense Science Board Dr. William Schneider highlighted, if it can acquire niche weapons systems that are relatively inexpensive and that can exploit U.S. vulnerabilities, it stands a chance of deterring or defeating the United States in a limited engagement. This strategy explains China’s emphasis on acquiring sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines, mines, and information and electronic warfare capabilities.
Quite an unusual remark on p10 regarding China's growing submarine capability: with lots of Kilo-class coming on line, plus several indigenous Shang-class SSNs due for launch in 2008 and rumours of some AIP subs on the build too, the USN should even look at the PLAN as a partner in regional naval security.
On the other hand, an upgraded DF-21 ballistic missile with re-entry capability could make the littoral too dangerous for US CVBGs to inhabit.
The lecture opened with a bold set of statements: "No government is willing to solve the energy problem by seeking alternative energies... and I have zero confidence that any will try to increase production." Having tantalised us with this and promises of an apocalyptic vision of the future, Klare then utterly failed to expand.
Fortunately, the organisers allowed one student in the audience to ask a question (the other debating time was reserved for the usual blathering incoherence of rival academics failing to make their points or even ask questions) and he did ask what I would have done. The question was "why?"; Klare's answer was that "dysfunctional governments" were at fault, "governments that piss away billions on Iraq yet invest little on finding solutions".
That seems far too easy a way to excuse the actions of the Bush regime, though he did have a good point on China's failure to deal with the crisis. Though the CCP itself is aware of the trouble we're in, grass roots-level corruption means that any efficiency measures are swept under the carpet in favour of improving growth figures.
Yet Klare's overall take on the US-China contest over energy was as simplistic as the rest. It was, he said, a situation analogous to the Cold War, in which both powers supply arms to their energy-supplying clients in a competition for influence.
He did later remark that Beijing's Africa policy also involves economic and infrastructural aid - something that Africans were rightly suspicious of - but did not elaborate further. But his aim was to reinforce his point that the recent creation of America's Africa Command (Africom) was the latest stage in a continuing Kennedy doctrine, building on previous policy in the Persian Gulf. The SCO, moreover, was a front for China to extend its military supply network to Central Asia.
All of that may be true, but overlooks the nuances of an evolving bipolar US-China situation that is far more than a simple military confrontation.
To be fair, Klare did have some good ideas about 'the resource curse' whereby the wealth in countries like Nigeria falls into the hands of those who control the state, thus negating democratic urges in the governing classes. (One could say the same for Burma). And his analogy with the Balkans of 1914 was apt - violent internal social forces could intersect with external geopolitical motives to produce an explosive mixture.
Also, an interesting theory from an otherwise egomaniacal second speaker came to light, in that $100 oil punished the PRC as much as anyone else, and could be a ploy in order to bring down the RMB or lessen China's export deficit. She also highlighted that fact that Klare didn't even mention Europe, though that merely proved his point that Europe's influence is next to negligible.
But overall, Klare was a little disappointing. He was right to note that control of chokepoints such as Hormuz give militarily powerful states great leverage, but his frame of reference was still bound by conventional military thinking.
The reality is that inducing energy scarcity, just like terrorism and WMD, is an asymmetric method of power projection that doesn't necessarily involve military firepower. Having a big technologically-advanced navy isn't the be-all and end-all any more. That's what makes the problems so complicated and so intertwined.
This bears out exactly what I said in my thesis. Guess I'm not that stupid after all. Perhaps under pressure from the US, India has already lost out to China with regard to Burmese energy: a pattern is emerging.
Last week, Iran's deputy minister in charge of the pipeline, Hojatollah Ganimifard, was quoted by the Iranian Oil Ministry's news service Shana as saying, "The content of the peace pipeline contract has been finalized and all the points prepared by the two sides' legal experts have been re-read and agreed by the two sides [Iran and Pakistan]." He said the two sides would ink the contract in December "without a third partner".
And this week, Mokhtar Ahmad, advisor to Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, was quoted as saying, "As we expected, the text of the peace pipeline has been made ready for the signing by the two states' heads." Pakistan said that any excess gas that would have been destined for India could be transferred to China.
Exactly as I suggested in my thesis, Indian intransigence over the IPI may well be opening the door to China. Moreover, it's more than likely that the current state of emergency in Pakistan will wipe out the IPI deal once and for all. What the article doesn't make explicit, however, is exactly how Iranian gas would transit from Gwadar to China other than by rail, which is not the most efficient method. Note also that an Abu Dhabi company is investing $5bn in Gwadar.
In a major development, Pakistan and Iran have crossed the last stumbling block in the way of a piped gas deal by agreeing on a pricing formula.
Both sides would review the gas pricing mechanism when there is a change in the co-relation between Japan's LNG and crude oil mix.
A high level delegation, headed by Secretary Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources Furrukh Qayyum dashed to Tehran to seal the gas sales purchase agreement (GSPA) with the Iranian authorities.
The technical and legal experts are to hammer out the landmark gas deal and both sides will technically finalize the deal after decisive talks by November 9 (today) in Tehran.
According to the officials, under the new scenario in the wake of India's evasive attitude as Indian experts did not participate in the recently held meeting in Tehran and the ongoing meeting in Islamabad, both Iran and Pakistan have decided to materialize the project.
"We have also asked Iranian authorities that the gas to be imported from Iran can also be exported to China as LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) as the western part of that country has a shortage of energy", said the Pakistani official.
If it happens, then the project's economic viability would be enhanced.
The LNG terminal would be constructed in Gwadar and the piped gas would be converted into LNG for export to China through a proposed rail link from Gwadar to Xianjiang Province, China.
The Pakistan Ministry of Railways is studying the feasibility of laying the railways line from Gwadar to China.
The official concluded that Pakistan had also extended an offer to Iran to establish its own terminal in Pakistan.
The Ego Has Landed: Pervez Musharraf and the Suicide of Pakistan
Kindly understand the criticality of the situation in Pakistan and around Pakistan. Pakistan is on the verge of destabilisation. Inaction at this moment is suicide for Pakistan and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.
It's kind of sad. In many ways, General Musharraf has been one of the best leaders Pakistan has had for generations. He has more or less turned around the economic incompetence of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, as well as ensuring that General Zia's Islamist agenda was superseded by a more secular outlook.
That's why Musharraf's actions are so deeply disappointing. Probably it's a case of second-term delusion. It's commonly the fact that once leaders have been around for seven or eight years, surrounded by cronies and sycophants they begin to believe in their own infallibility and omnipotence. It even happened to Thatcher and Blair. That's why the US two-term limit on presidents is such a good idea.
Whatever the case, Musharraf has revealed himself for what he always really was: a tinpot military dictator of a teetering banana republic.
There is a segment of Pakistan - which includes the judges, lawyers, and journalists - which wants to take to the streets. They have dominated the news over the past year and they want to make a democratic push, with some people casting the lawyers in the same role as the Burmese monks. However, Musharraf's shrewd move of setting forth a limited PCO - targeting only the judiciary and leaving the assemblies intact - has neutralised this segment of the population. The illusion of popular participation is retained, while Musharraf's most vexing political opponents - the judges - get sidelined. If he had gone further and cancelled elections, it would have ignited a firestorm, but in his talk to Pakistani public (discussed below), he assured that he would do no such thing.
Disengaged western audiences, pumped full of the current pro-democracy intoxicants, will almost universally decry Musharraf's behaviour. I decry it too, precisely because I am a disengaged westerner and I have that luxury. However, the story in Pakistan is not so straightforward.
What I am being told by bazari merchants, some young professionals, and some industrialists in Karachi and Lahore is that they merely care for stability, whether it comes in the form of the military, or in the form of democracy. Incidentally, many of them believe that it is Musharraf who is more likely to assure that stability. A couple of people, with middle class businesses, suggested to me that Musharraf should behave more like a dictator; a secular version of the previous Islamist dictator, Zia ul Haq, in order to assure stability for business and economic growth. However, that is a minority view.
Yet that being said, history will probably see the state of emergency as Musharraf's biggest mistake. He has almost certainly grossly underestimated the ill-will against him within Pakistan itself. He has in fact strengthened the case against him, which can only help Bhutto, the lawyers and the militants.
In the greater geopolitical scale of things, Musharraf has also effectively chosen sides in the New Great Game too. America is incensed that their puppet president is turning away from even the veneer of legitimacy. Musharraf also mentioned in his address today his embarrassment at the kidnapping of Chinese workers prior to the Lal Masjid siege. Today's effective re-coup shows that Pakistan is now more likely than ever to align with China, which will not interfere in its internal affairs.
The worst case scenario is accelerated destabilisation as the US withdraws support, Bhutto's supporters rise up and in the ensuing unrest the militants seize their chance. Musharraf is committing rather than preventing the suicide of the state.
Heartthrob cricketer-cum-politician, Imran Khan, had a good point today during an interview with the BBC. Dictators always say they're acting for the good of the country; but really the outcome of suppressing the democratic process is to invite change by violent means instead.
"When you stop all legal and constitutional ways of people challenging [the president], then the only ones who challenge him are people with a gun.That's what happened to the Shah of Iran," said Khan, ominously.
It had to happen. Even China is feeling the pinch of the impending global downturn. It's just put up fuel prices by 10%, and the price of pork rocketed this year too. Inflation is at record highs, 6.5% or so.
It's bizarre to think of what is still very much an authoritarian state dabbling in monetary policy, but globalisation may well be revealing the sting in its tail for Beijing. Part of the reason for the high oil prices is the weak dollar, itself due to an extent to the basically false valuation of the RMB. And it's not China's fault that the price of oil is so high these days, blame that on the US too. But a combination of all these factors is going to hurt Joe Zhao in the pocket, and that's a recipe for unrest.
Let's not forget that the protests in Burma were sparked by a fuel price rise, and inflation was a factor in the Tiananmen uprising too. When the inevitable global economic meltdown occurs any time soon, things are going to get even tougher as Chinese businesses lose orders and customers, forcing wage cuts and unemployment. Expect some very worried faces in the Great Hall of the People - the People may just begin to stir.
The country's booming economy is sucking up crude at record rates and China is now the world's second largest consumer of oil after the US.
Net imports in the first eight months of this year soared by nearly 20%.
Beijing exerts a tight control over the yuan
But rising fuel prices may have created another economic headache.
They are likely to add to soaring inflation which in August hit a 10-year high of 6.5%.
The central bank has already raised interest rates several times this year and another hike is likely before the end of the year.
Many analysts think that the increases are still not enough to curb inflation.
The government worries that inflation could lead to social unrest - rising prices were one of the factors in the run-up to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
When I started this blog two years ago, crude was priced at $60 per barrel. Now it's $96. The dollar was $1.21 to the Euro then: now it's $1.44.
So go the figures. Something is up. There is a big picture to this, and - shock and awe - after spending the best part of the last two years studying International Relations, I have a theory.
The basic idea is this: there are too many people chasing too few resources. Breaking down this simple statement brings us to two key players - the US and China. And the hidden factor is the instability of a multipolar world that is evolving into a bipolar structure: the 'West', led by Washington, and the 'Rest', very loosely led by China, competing for dominance over those resources, particularly energy.
The thing is that, unlike the Cold War where two political ideologies were in competition, current US hegemony is still based on military and political power projection, whereas China's ace of spades is economic soft power.
The misuse of firepower is adding to rather than reducing the global instability that came to our notice on 9/11 (but had existed well before then). The World Trade Center attacks were as much a protest against US foreign policy than a statement about political Islam, and since then Islamist terrorism has increased exponentially.
The instability caused by terrorism is adding to the energy crisis by contributing to high prices if not yet directly threatening supply. Meanwhile, China's economic leverage means that the only way that US industry can compete is with a weak dollar. However, both things mean that oil producers such as Russia and manufacturers such as China are building enormous reserves of dollars, shifting the centre of the world economy away from the West. Thanks to events such as the subprime crisis, an economic meltdown is probably imminent.
China and Russia themselves are involved in abetting instability. While they do not directly support terrorism, they sponsor states such as Iran, the key outside player in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. Pakistan is also a pivotal state in all this, since if Pakistan goes down Afghanistan goes with it.
If Iran is bombed too, as looks increasingly likely, there will be a black hole of chaos slap bang in the middle of Eurasia - from Iraq through to Pakistan - creating a massive geographical chokepoint that most of the world's energy needs to get past.
The more terrorists that are bred in the black hole, the more the West has to spend on security, thus diminishing economies and general confidence. The US is already spewing vast quantities of blood and treasure on Iraq, a situation that can only be helping China's peaceful rise and Iran and Russia's leverage over the energy market.
Add to this the threat of WMD. After the Cold War ended in 1989, only the US had the capability to launch a decisive military blow. Now anyone, terrorist groups included, with a bomb (probably with uranium sourced from Russia and technology from Pakistan, itself donated by China) and a suitcase can hold any other entity to ransom - just as energy suppliers like OPEC and Russia can cut off dependent economies overnight.
Iran and Pakistan are both the key proxy players and the key potential battlegrounds. China and the US are vying for control of both, since whoever calls the shots in Tehran and Islamabad calls the shots over Gulf oil and the terrorist training grounds in Iraq, Afghanistan and the lawless badlands of Pakistan.
Russia sits in the middle, ostensibly neutral but leaning towards China and away from the US. It got burnt in Afghanistan in the '80s, but isn't shy of lending a helping hand to Iran. Conversely, India is also on the fence, but looks to Washington rather than Beijing. It needs stability in Pakistan above all else, since the threat of a nuclear standoff could suddenly become very real.
Thus it's all connected. That's what this blog is about - making the connections. It's not a dissimilar situation to the Cold War with its proxy conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it is a more complex one. Instead of two or three, there are now four horsemen of the apocalypse - the West, meaning America and its rather powerless allies (notably Europe and probably India), versus the Rest's nexus of counter-hegemony - China and its partners-in-crime Russia and Iran.
The prospects for war? Unlikely at the time being, since Beijing and Washington are still playing different games. Should they ever go head-to-head, however, over Taiwan for example, then all hell will break loose.
Rapid economic growth has allowed Beijing to dramatically increase defense spending since the late 1990s without compelling Chinese leaders to choose between military modernization and China’s other policy priorities. In the not too distant future, however, the Chinese government is likely to face growing pressure to devote a larger share of government spending to coping with serious domestic problems such as income inequality, the collapse of the healthcare system and environmental degradation, all of which contribute to rising social unrest. As these domestic problems become more pressing, Beijing may have to begin to face some of the budgetary tradeoffs it has previously managed to avoid, even if economic growth continues at a fairly impressive rate. Moreover, in the event of an economic downturn, the challenges of balancing these competing budgetary priorities would become much more acute for China’s leaders. At the same time, however, it is important to keep in mind that Beijing clearly attaches a great deal of importance to military modernization and that even if the need to deal with mounting domestic problems prevents defense spending from continuing to grow at a double digit pace indefinitely, China will remain dedicated to increasing the PLA’s professionalism and enhancing its operational capabilities.
Wide ranging article covering the history of India's relations with its East Asian neighbours along with current concerns such as energy and security threats such as the Taiwan straits.
China has been increasing its engagement with South Asia to the quiet consternation of India. China's free trade agreement with Pakistan went into effect in July this year and China has also emerged as Bangladesh's leading trade partner and arms supplier. Beijing's support for the regime of Nepal's King Gyanendra following his suspension of democracy from February 2005 until April 2006 has been a source of irritation to India.
China's efforts to develop alternative overland routes to transport oil and gas imports by extending the existing Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan and China and developing port facilities at Gwadar in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, as well as through Bangladesh and Myanmar, have been viewed by India as part of a "string of pearls" strategy of economic and military encroachment into South and Central Asia.
India's rapprochement with East Asia is also tied to a number of India's broader strategic interests, including rapprochement with the United States, ensuring stability along India's periphery, meeting its energy security needs, and fueling economic integration in South Asia.
During the forthcoming visit of Chinese president in early 2008, Pakistan and China are set to sign agreements on Chinese investments in Gwadar Oil City, incentives for setting-up of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Gwadar seaport development programme for expansion of bilateral trade and strengthening of investment relations.
All these initiatives are considered to be essential for the success of Trade Energy, Transport and Industrial Corridor between Pakistan and China, a senior government official told Daily Times on Tuesday.
'Myanmar's "Saffron Revolution", like the Ukraine "Orange Revolution" or the Georgia "Rose Revolution" and the various color revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of "hit-and-run" protests with "swarming" mobs of monks in saffron, Internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and re-form. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in Myanmar.'
Get out of here! I find this a little hard to believe, though the author makes a good case for Burma's geopolitical relevance - especially to China. It's well-known that the bulk of China's energy passes through the vulnerable Malacca Straits, and that pipelines through Burma would allow both Middle-Eastern and African oil to bypass the chokepoint. It's also well-known that Burma is offering gas of its own, and that it features heavily in China's 'string-of-pearls' plan for naval dominace of the Indian Ocean theatre. Gwadar is another aspect of the strategy.
However, if the US is really meddling in Burma's collapsing revolution, you would have thought that they would have done better. It's not CIA style to sponsor peaceful but ultimately ineffectual protest movements. Where are the guns?
In fact the US State Department admits to supporting the activities of the NED in Myanmar. The NED is a US government-funded "private" entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War. As well, the NED funds Soros' Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. In an October 30, 2003 press release the State Department admitted, "The United States also supports organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities." It all sounds very self-effacing and noble of the State Department. Is it though?
In reality the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations in Myanmar. It has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million annually into NED activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change effort, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run, according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the US, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The US's NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.
The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp's institute has been active in Myanmar since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3,000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US military attache in Rangoon, Col Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Myanmar in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.
Will Hutton looks ahead to next week's CCP congress, at which a likely successor to Hu Jintao may be named. Note the date of the potential accession - 2012.
Hutton is sceptical as ever about the legitimacy of the process, remarking that alongside the environment and corruption (those tasked with stemming graft are themselves corrupt), China's massive foreign currency deficit and over reliance on exports will surely have economic repercussions too. The key remark is this:
The story of this week's party congress is how far Hu will be able to manoeuvre between the conservatives, who want to call a halt to even the smallest of reforms for fear it will lead to loss of political control, and the Dengist reformers, who know the Chinese economic and political establishment has got to subject itself to more scrutiny and the rule of law or the game is up.
But one wonders how realistic this analysis is. Surely the majority of current CCP members are thinking in terms of immediate personal gain rather than imaginatively considering the medium-term future of China. The comments are also well worth reading, with the comparisons with the USSR under Gorbachev roundly dismissed.
...as every member of this week's congress knows, their choice has an additional and particular resonance.
They are choosing the fifth generation of Communist party leaders after the 1949 revolution. These are no longer leaders legitimised by revolution or who have the same sense of communist mission. They are managers and administrators who want to make the system work. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev's readiness to question communism was intertwined with his membership of the Soviet Union's fifth generation of leaders. He did not champion perestroika and glasnost alone; much of the nomenklatura had decided that the Soviet economic and social model was dysfunctional, corrupt and endemically inefficient and had to change.
Will one of Hu Jintao's two 'Lis', as the frontrunners to succeed him, Li Keqiang and Li Yuanchao, are popularly known, feel the same way as they walk out in front of the cameras in the Great Hall of the People on Friday? Will one prove to be China's Gorbachev?
More on Sino-Indian strategic rivalry. Despite an apparent cooling of tension in the last few years, the author notes that Hu Jintao's rise to power comes partly on the back of a hardline attitude towards Tibet, always a bone of contention between the two Asian giants.
I disagree slightly with some of the points: for example, the territorial dispute does seem to be under control, mainly due to economic linkages. But the point that India forms part of a nexus of powers on China's borders - Australia, Japan and the US Pacific presence is interesting. Also worth noting that the newly-completed Qinghai-Tibet railway and refurbishments to the Indian road infrastructure near the border would allow both China and India to swiftly step up their military presences. And finally, Chinese plans for Tibetan water resources could also have a devastating effect on the subcontinent.
Apparently, the strategic consequences of India's economic resurgence coupled with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's offer in March 2005 to "help make India a major world power in the 21st century" have greatly bothered the Chinese. This offer, and the long-term India-U.S. defense cooperation framework and the July 2005 U.S.-India nuclear energy deal that followed soon after, have been compared by Chinese strategic analysts to "the strategic tilt" toward China executed by former U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971 to contain the common Soviet threat. Claiming that these developments have "destabilizing" and "negative implications" for their country's future, China's India-watchers have started warning their government that Beijing "should not take India lightly any longer."
Chinese leaders were led to believe that China's growing economic and military might would eventually enable Beijing to re-establish the Sino-centric hierarchy of Asia's past as the U.S. saps its energies in fighting small wars in the Islamic world, Japan shrinks economically and demographically while India remains subdued by virtue of Beijing's "special relationships" with its South Asian neighbors. However, a number of "negative developments," from Beijing's perspective, since early 2005 -- the Indian and Japanese bids for permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, the formation of the East Asia Summit that includes India, Australia and New Zealand, the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, India's ability to sustain a high economic growth rate of eight to nine percent and the strategic implications of India's "Look East" policy -- have apparently upset Chinese calculations.
Therefore, after a hiatus of a few years, Chinese media commentaries have resumed their criticism of Washington's "hegemonic ideas" and for drawing "India in as a tool for its global strategic pattern." Some Chinese analysts express serious reservations about U.S. efforts to draw "India in as a tool for its global strategic pattern," arguing that "India's DNA doesn't allow itself to become an ally subordinate to the U.S., like Japan or Britain." Nonetheless, most see India as a "future strategic competitor" that would be an active member of an anti-China grouping due to the structural power shifts in the international system and advocate putting together a comprehensive "contain India" strategy based on both economic tools (aid, trade, infrastructural development) and enhanced military cooperation with "pro-China" countries.
As both China and India "rise and shine" economically, so geopolitical questions begin to assume greater importance. Whatever the rhetoric from Beijing, China's neighbours are clearly less comfortable about it than ever. That's good for India, which (aside from Pakistan, of course) is generally viewed as fairly benign.
However, India's growing strategic relationship with the US is opening this to debate. Apparently, talks are in progress regarding a closer partnership with NATO, and the US ambassador to NATO is interestingly quoted as lumping China in with concerns such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. But surely a NATO (read US) - India partnership can only aggravate tensions with China, rather than 'balance' the SCO as noted in the article. Lasting peace in the region needs NATO to engage with the PRC rather than India, in order to pull it into a security structure. Attempting to counteract the SCO via NATO might only lead to an arms race that brings in Russia too.
Any pronounced gravitation toward an "Asian NATO" form of collective security will inevitably affect India's relations with China. (India shares Australia's predicament on this score.) Therefore, India has to perform some very tricky rope acts in the period ahead. In a major speech during a visit to Thailand on September 14, Mukherjee stressed, "The India-China partnership is an important determinant for regional and global peace and development, and for Asia's emergence as the political and economic center of the new international order."
Three days later, addressing the strategic community in Seoul, the minister underlined the importance of a "truly integrated Asian economy that will draw on the economic potential of India and China". Expressing confidence that India's "strategic and cooperative partnership [with China] will mature and steadily develop", he added, "Sensitivity to mutual aspirations is the underpinning for building confidence and trust. There is enough space and opportunity for both of us to grow and develop."
The challenge for Indian diplomacy will be to convincingly interpret the implications of its "strategic partnership" with the US. The perception is growing, and is incrementally gaining credibility, that India is aligning with a US-led security system in Asia. Clearly, the request by the NATO secretary general to call on the Indian foreign minister wouldn't have been made without Washington's nod.
Sanctions. The answer to everything. Impose sanctions on Burma, the international community says, and everything will be fine.
Wrong. One only has to look at the plight of Iraq in the 1990s to confirm that, under some circumstances, economic sanctions actually hurt the people you are trying to help.
Yes, one could say that sanctions had an effect on South Africa, but the regime at the time had links to the global economy that it couldn't afford to lose. That's not the case in Burma, and in fact sanctions would only increase the desire to rebel. After all, the current crisis was triggered by a doubling of fuel prices, which would surely occur again under sanctions.
It's well known that, with their energy interests, China and India are the key players here. But neither would really benefit from the sustained rule of the junta. No successor government, presumably led by Aung San Suu Kyi, is going to back out of the energy deals already made with China and India - indeed, they'll be vital in rebuilding Burma as a nation again. So why support the dictatorship?
Just for a moment, let's think the unthinkable. If China fails to act, then the revolution has little hope. But there is one thing that the West can do - supply arms. The jungles of Burma are filled with guerilla groups itching for a fight, and were the ordinary people be able to contribute too then the military would topple rapidly. Yes, a lot of people will die, but no more than will die anyway under sanctions and repression.
There is a danger of Burma becoming a proxy war between China and India - because India would have to be the major supplier, as it was back in the 1950s when it support the Tibetan independence movement - but with the Beijing Olympics approaching China probably wouldn't want to get too involved.
There would also be potential for Burma to descend into inter-ethnic confrontation too, and thus the supply of weapons may exacerbate tensions. But with a leader of the symbolic strength and legitimacy of Aung San Suu Kyi in place, that prospect would be unlikely and a disciplined UN mission from the very start would hold things together during the reconstruction period.
Most of the revolutions of 1989 were, thankfully, bloodless. Not so in Romania, but the students fought back and Ceausescu fell. In Tiananmen Square, however, there was little the students could do. Moreover, the Bosnian conflict dragged on for ages due to Western reluctance to help the Muslims fight back.
So much for my arch geopolitics. War is a terrible thing, but if it can be over swiftly then it may be the lesser of two evils.
Beijing wants the killing to stop, not in the name of human rights but for the sake of stability. But China and Russia do not want to see any regime change - either the eventual toppling of the Burmese generals or an implosion of the junta. A triumph of Buddhist-inspired people power might encourage Buddhists in Tibet and Falungong militants in China to defy the communist party control and Beijing's repression.
Still, China is in a bind as Burma conjures up memories of the Tiananmen Square killings just Beijing is preparing to host the Olympics. A repeat of the 1988 massacre in Rangoon when at least 3,000 pro-democracy activists were gunned down in the street, would cast a dark shadow over China's desire to be treated as a responsible global power.
While China will not back any sanctions, it is open to increasing diplomatic pressure to stop the killings, and the junta can ill afford to ignore the anxieties of its number one benefactor.
The US and the EU have many avenues to pressure both China and Asean, even up to the point of threatening a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. A simple threat by Beijing to suspend all arms supplies to Rangoon would deliver the only kind of message that the generals might finally understand.
The time of western countries and Asean paying polite lip-service to human rights and release of national heroine Aung san Suu kyi, still languishing under house arrest, is over. The coming weeks will soon demonstrate how many governments will put human rights and the plight of the Burmese before commercial advantage, trading priorities and comfort zone diplomacy.
It's not just the moment of truth for Burma. It's a moment of truth for China, and that by implication affects all of us.
The question is: is China now a responsible stakeholder in the international community, or simply a nation concerned only with self-interest at the expense of human rights - both within its own territory and elsewhere?
It is no longer acceptable to trot out that tired old phrase: "We do not interfere in other countries' internal affairs". With the Olympics approaching, if Beijing really wants to be seen as an equal partner then it cannot let its coming-out party be overshadowed by its negligence of well-established international norms.
A former Burmese student leader just appeared on the BBC, insisting that the UN has "failed" his people and that it is no longer time for sanctions. He is right. Sanctions are slow and ultimately will only hurt the Burmese people, not the military elite. So, in a sense, it's a moment of truth for the UN and its ineffectual new chief, Ban Ki-Moon too.
But only China, with its massive investment in Burma's economy via the logging trade and various energy deals can make a real difference. India, I'm afraid to say, is impotent on the matter and is disappointingly reflecting the Chinese sovereignty line.
The CCP is in a difficult position. If it condemns the impending crackdown and acts on Burma, whether in the UNSC or bilaterally, then it opens itself up to a round of internal re-examination of the events of Tiananmen square - which themselves occurred just after a brutally repressed democracy movement in Burma in 1988. Though news of events of Burma is restricted in China, via the Internet, unlike in 1989 people will get to know about them.
In the next 48 hours, there are only two things that can happen. Either the junta relaxes control, frees Aung San Suu Kyi and enters negotiations with the UN. Or the guns begin to fire while the UN, as always, stands by. The world is watching. It's up to China.
Only China, India, and, to a lesser degree, ASEAN have any influence on the military regime. China has very close economic and political links with Myanmar, while India has developed strong military ties. Both would suffer from worsening instability there, as they did after the violent August 1988 military crackdown. In the past, the military junta has fired on peaceful protestors or used vigilante groups to attack them. Demonstrations in recent days have reached a country-wide scale where such action could cause massive loss of life.
China, India and ASEAN should communicate to the military that a repeat of the 1998 violence would be unacceptable and would lead to serious consequences, including action by the UN Security Council. China and Russia should warn Myanmar that they would support full consideration of the situation there by the Security Council, as well as a possible adoption of a Security Council Resolution, if the military use force against protestors.
Even the US is stepping up support for the current protests in Burma (Myanmar), with a call for added sanctions in the hope of buckling the already-pressured Junta. But like in Sudan, notes Isabel Hilton in The Guardian's Comment is Free, the country that really matters is China:
China has sustained the Burmese military with generous support; Chinese aid has built transport infrastructure and dams; Chinese investment gives Beijing a stake in key sectors of Burma's economy; Chinese immigration has produced large Chinese populations in Burma's cities; and Chinese support has rendered US sanctions against the regime ineffectual. Why, then, is China now being cited as a restraining influence?
China's default diplomatic position is that it does not "interfere" in the domestic politics of other countries - one might add, especially where supplies of energy and natural resources or strategic issues are involved. Beijing is averse to lectures on human rights and democracy at home, so naturally disinclined to deliver them abroad.
But China is now faced with the fact that the high diplomatic profile that goes with greater global power exposes it to new pressures to uphold international standards, and that if the country is to continue to sell her ascent to global superpower status as unthreatening, close partnerships with unsavoury regimes can produce undesirable blowback. China's previous intransigence on Darfur melted when campaigners married the Beijing Olympic games to China's support for the Sudanese regime to produce the slogan "Genocide Olympics". China suddenly found it convenient to send an envoy to Sudan and to play a more constructive role in multilateral efforts to resolve the crisis. A similar pressure is building over Burma.
And inevitably, fears of another Tiananmen square crop uo too. But this author is correct to note that 18 years on from 6/4, the PRC's position is very different. It is now supposed to be a responsible stakeholder in the international community, and cannot be seen to be supporting the Myanmar regime at this moment.
On the other hand, should Beijing encourage a transition to democracy and the return of Aung San Suu Kyi, what kind of message would they be sending to their own people? There's no doubt that, state censorship aside, the Chinese have more access to outside media than ever and many of them must be watching this closely:
For Beijing, the sight of tens of thousands of citizens in peaceful street protests led by Buddhist monks is little short of a nightmare, since China has its own potentially explosive combinations of religious and civil dissent: Buddhist monks in Tibet, Muslims in Xinjiang, even Falun Gong practitioners at home - all lay claim to the moral authority to challenge a corrupt and self-seeking autocracy. The sight of mass civic demonstrations in pursuit of political reform recalls both 1989's Tiananmen Square and 1979's Democracy Wall.
A bloodbath in Burma, given China's close identification with the dictatorship, would resonate like a Tiananmen Square massacre by proxy, just as Beijing is polishing the silver for next year's Olympics. For China negotiation is infinitely preferable to bloodshed and the instability that could result.
Finally, it's worth considering the implications for India too. Like Pakistan, Burma is a state pivotal to both regional powers' political and economic interests. India must be concerned about potential movements of refugees should things get violent, and along with China it has energy interests vested in the current Myanmar regime.
India's interests in Myanmar are rooted in energy, security, keeping insurgents in check and countering China's overpowering influence on India's doorstep.
Myanmar is also important to an India seeking to extend its power into southeast Asia, politically and militarily, standing as it does at the mouth of the Malacca Straits. These interests have kept India and China engaged with the unpopular military regime in Yangon. As recently as 10 days ago, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was subjected to public questioning by British and American diplomats in Bangkok on India's Myanmar policy. Mukherjee stuck to India's line that it did not interfere in internal developments in any country.
Days later at the APEC summit in Australia, member countries decided Myanmar could only be tackled through India and China. Neither country responded.
So much for democracy's domino effect. But what happens over the next few days will indirectly prove where China and India really do stand in the modern world.
Some bland comments from the Indian external affairs minister. But in the long run, can India really balance the tensions in its relationships with the US and the PRC? The problem for New Delhi is that (aside from Russia, perhaps) it's the only major power that has to live under both US global hegemony and Chinese regional hegemony. And India doesn't wield the economic and political power that Moscow can now boast due to its energy resources. Non aligned movement aside, one day it may just have to make the call.
Asked about the possible impact of the emerging U.S.-India equation on China’s ties with New Delhi, Mr. Mukherjee said: “There is no question of cooperation between India and the U.S. to act as some sort of containment of any country, including China.”
Trade and investment “are the great drivers of the new relationship” between India and China.
“The leaders of both countries recognise that co-existence and cooperation is the wise course of action; and sensitivity to mutual aspirations is the underpinning for building confidence and trust. There is enough space and opportunity for both of us to grow and develop and to bring benefit not only to us but also for other partners in Asia.”
Differences, including those over the border question, “did not stand in the way of investment and trade.”
A lengthy but sobering and informative analysis of the crackdown on the Internet in China, specifically at bloggers in the days leading up to the party conference. It sounds much like the situation has deteriorated dramatically since I was blogging in China myself: at that time the authorities were only just wising up to the dangers of people speaking freely on a forum such as the web, and attempt to control them were limited though sometimes effective. One has to ask what the situation will be this time next year after the Olympics have closed down.
Having claimed records of Department of Propaganda officials making statements in public like 'we'd be better off without the internet' spread across the internet, blogs and, at one point, even on a CCTV message board hasn't left much room for benefit of the doubt when one considers just how seriously authorities might actually agree with an utterance like that against the backdrop of other recent events.
In other words, if war were to be declared on bloggers, is the state of today's China's blogsphere what it would look like? Starting this month we've seen blog posts being deleted in places where they almost never used to, comment sections being closed out of fear, and the occasional blogger getting a jab in while they're at it - and outspoken bloggers like Wang Xiaoshan who had comments turned off to begin with now also deleting their own posts with no explanation.
Interesting to see China advertising its humanitarian interest in Darfur, with a military show accompanied by a pledge to send peacekeepers to join the UN mission (though not combat troops, and an uncertain number). The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the world's largest standing army and the PRC has sat on the UNSC since 1971, so it is about time.
The Washington Post is quick to note, however, that the promise to help Darfur comes under the cloud of possible boycotts of the Olympics, and the obvious fact that Sudanese oil is an important facet of China's energy security policy.
Of course, all countries have some kind of interest in UN peacekeeping missions, often financial, but with few obvious threats other than so-called Taiwanese 'secession' (as evidenced by this weekend's demonstrations calling for UN membership, unusually by both the DPP party and the Kuomintang), what does the PLA really exist for otherwise? Now that Tibet and Xinjiang are 'free', is there anyone else left to liberate?
QINYANG BASE, China, Sept. 15 -- The Chinese military put on a display of its first Darfur-bound peacekeepers Saturday, having troops throw up Bailey bridges and feign combat to dramatize Beijing's desire to be seen as a partner in bringing peace to the violence-torn corner of Sudan.
The training demonstration, by an engineering unit of the People's Liberation Army, was observed by foreign journalists as part of a new campaign by the Chinese government to show that it is cooperating with the United States and other nations to end the Darfur fighting, which since 2003 has displaced about 2.5 million people and contributed to the deaths of as many as 450,000 from violence and disease.
Every now and again, Asia Times Online turns up an absolute tour de force of an analysis: this is one of them. It pulls together every thread in the Afghanistan war, from the significance of events on Pakistan to the options available to the local powers China, India and Russia.
The one major beef I have with it is, as before, whether it is truly possible to negotiate with the Taliban. Sure, you can talk to the heads of major Taliban groups, but what are the guarantees that one agreement is going to quell the whole bunch of them? Isn't it likely that large splinter groups that oppose any settlement will break off and carry on doing their own thing? Still, the author seems to think that talks are on the cards.
Below, I attempt a rough summary of all the points, in an actor-by-actor format.
The Taliban: As NATO and the US tire, the chances of a settlement grow, especially in the light of potential instability in Pakistan too.
The UN: Growing acceptance of the idea of talking with the Taliban.
The US: Should seek intra-Afghan and intra-Pakistan dialogue with the aid of China, Russia and India.
Iran: The US quagmire in Afghanistan is succour to their ambitions for regional dominance.
Russia: Fears of 'Talibanization' will draw the Central Asian states closer into seurity frameworks such as the SCO.
China: Stay out of it, and leave the Taliban to the US.
India: Stick with the US, and hope that Pakistan doesn't regain influence in Afghanistan.
And here's the key:
Clearly, the continued disintegration of the Pakistani state widens al-Qaeda's support base among the Taliban. If US-Iran tensions escalate, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan become intertwined. That means the Afghan war may take a new form rather than lead to peace.
The whole article is reprinted below: check out also Ahmed Rashid's sobering analysis in The Telegraph in which he describes his own land as "a failing state hovering over the abyss".
This one's going straight on my blogroll. PostGlobal is a collaboration between The Washington Post and Newsweek that analyses global trends - the fall of America, the rise of China, energy, Islam etc..
In short, it's basically just like my blog, but with flash graphics, real cash backing, plus gurus like Fareed Zakaria on board. The only thing they lack is a decent subeditor, which does let it down a little.
A dramatic global realignment appears to be in progress (and quickening) as the result of several factors:
The loss of US influence as a result of the Iraq war
A view across the globe resulting from Abu Ghraib and range of missteps that the US has lost the moral high ground it had enjoyed for decades
A feeling among global leaders that the US is without a coherent foreign policy strategy...a belief that has started feeding on itself and has emboldened US adversaries
China's rise, its smooth diplomatic technique, its re-alignment with Russia and its aggressive, clever drive to form new alliances with nations extending from Asia and Africa to South America
Russia's recent rise combined with Russian President Putin's domestic popularity and his reputation for effectively standing up to the West
The rise of non-aligned nations emboldened by the inability of the US to effectively use the extraordinary power it possesses
A view among key global leaders that the US will be bogged down in Iraq for many years (a view heightened by significantly by President Bush's September 13 Iraq speech), thus distracted and unable to respond effectively to key political moves by the range of international players
A recognition by the international community that the Bush Administration not only hasn't been able to deal effectively with non-state actors (e.g. terror groups like Al Qaeda) but they are holding their own or starting to win
More excellent points culled from the article below.
India has clearly lost an important diplomatic initiative in the attempt to counter Chinese influence in Myanmar. Even after the deal was sweetened with US$20 million in "soft credit" and the proposed construction of a power plant in Myanmar, it would appear that Indian influence was quietly denied by the inevitability of China's international support for Myanmar. Beijing's use of its veto to keep Myanmar's human rights record off of the U.N. Security Council agenda turned out to be more important to the Myanmar junta than the economic incentives.
In securing approval to build a natural gas pipeline from northern Turkmenistan to China, PetroChina, the country’s largest oil company, has pulled off a move with striking geopolitical implications, providing an extra bloodline for the world’s fastest growing economy.
For its part, Turkmenistan regards the China deal, signed in July, as an opportunity to free itself from Russia’s stranglehold over its gas export markets. The country’s entire gas pipeline infrastructure to date was built during the Soviet era by Gazprom, the world’s largest gas exporter.
Amid reports that former Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, is criticising the Bush regime for its neglect of Asia comes this report. It is difficult to see India and China forming anything more than a perfunctory strategic relationship - their rivalries over the Indian Ocean region remain strong, especially where Tibet, Pakistan and Myanmar are concerned, but the point is that China is the nascent power these days.
India has to recognise this, and perform a careful balancing act with the US. Its longer term interests, however, may be better served by accepting a role as a partner to China's rise. At present India's fear is that it will be little more than a junior partner, but I suspect that Chinese officials would wish to downplay this and concentrate on economics and trade rather than security. The statement is also a clear rebuff to the American nuclear plan, so some planners in Washington must be reeling.
Beijing, Sept. 4 (PTI): China will "vigorously" implement a bilateral agreement to upgrade Sino-Indian relations to strategic levels, Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, said while hinting that Beijing is open to civilian nuclear energy cooperation with all countries under the IAEA safeguards, sources said here on Monday.
Yang who met a joint delegation of members of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) here on Friday told them that he had been instructed by the Chinese leadership that Beijing would vigorously implement the strategic and cooperative partnership for peace and cooperation agreed upon by the two countries.
A lengthy but useful summary of everything that's important in the world right now pertaining to the linkages between geopolitics and energy. Must look out for this Dilip Hiro guy's book.
We can now probably add to this list of Bush's errors America's disruption of the world financial system via subprime loans, not to mention high oil prices and a feeble dollar but hey.
...with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of US supremacy - Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode US hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.
How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon? The George W Bush administration's debacle in Iraq is certainly a major factor in this transformation, a classic example of an imperialist power, brimming with hubris, overextending itself...
Yet there are other explanations - unrelated to Washington's glaring misadventures - for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe's leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.
I'm not sure how much I trust Pakistan's APP news agency, so this is to be taken with a pinch of salt. I can also find no reference to a US "International Oil Company" - unless indeed it is an anonymous one for now. I can, however, find the "Indian Oil Corporation Limited" (IOCL) and the "International Oil Company Limited", based in Hong Kong and thus perhaps a Chinese front. I did discover "Interoil", which is stockmarket listed as IOC, but its main drive is Papua New Guinea.
So the plot thickens. Who, if anyone, is pulling the strings here?
The US International Oil Company (IOC) would construct 2,200 km long Turkmenistan-Pakistan oil and gas pipeline project in a period of three years. Geo News quoting the details released from IOC liaison office reported that the government has awarded the estimated $10 billion project to the IOC.
Two oil refineries and four thermal powerhouses of 1,000 megawatt each would also be set up under the project.
The pipeline with a capacity of supplying 2 million barrel of oil and 4 billion cubic feet of gas would be constructed up to Gawadar, where one refinery would also be constructed at a cost of $3.5 billion, IOC said.
The project also envisages construction of hydro-cracker for the production of JP 1 and JP 4, for the first time in Pakistan.
IOC said that the matters relating to the security in Afghanistan and insurance guarantee have been finalized and the ceremony of the mega-project agreement inking would soon be held.
In July 2007, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation agreed on the foundation of an 'energy club'. In August it will hold its annual summit, and this author considers whether that means another step towards an Asian NATO.
...the last couple of years the S.C.O. has taken steps in intensified cooperation in a wide scope of security dimensions. This has occurred to such an extent that development toward a genuine security organization can no longer be excluded, although this still might take a considerable number of years. Although the West at present does not have anything to fear from the S.C.O., current developments might encourage the West to closely observe further activities of the grouping. In any case, the time has gone that Western security experts could depict the S.C.O. as simply one of many insignificant organizations in the Asia-Pacific region.
ISLAMABAD: Secretary Interior Syed Kamal Shah and Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Luo Zhaohi signed an MoU to form a joint task force for the safety and security of Chinese nationals in Pakistan at a ceremony held here on Monday.
The MoU is the first of its kind signed against the backdrop of the rising number of kidnapping incidents and attacks on the Chinese people who are engaged on various development projects in the country. A number of Chinese nationals have also lost their lives in these attacks.
I think it's a little tenuous to suggest that the sole reason for Musharraf's crackdown on the Lal Masjid was the abduction of seven Chinese brothel workers. However, this author takes a close look at China's strategic relationship with Pakistan and considers how much Beijing's influence contributes to the conflict with Islamist extremism.
U.S. pressure on Pakistan to clear the region of the Taliban and al-Qaeda has forced Pakistan into an ever-tighter embrace of China. Musharraf's crackdown on the Lal Masjid, a potent symbol of this strategic Sino-Pakistani alignment, also sent a blood-soaked message to religious militants that Chinese interests will remain off-limits. Musharraf is not apologetic about defending Chinese interests in Pakistan and punishing those who dared to harm them.
One of the most frustrating things about writing a thesis on contemporary international issues is that, once you have handed in the text, new developments occur and new information becomes available. This Economist Intelligence Unit brief on China and energy could almost have been cut and pasted from my opus magnus, but it does offer extra information. The 'energy intensity' (ie. inefficiency) element didn't occur to me; nor did the economic effects of subsidies.
One sentence is particularly prescient: "For one thing, the need to maintain political stability limits the government's ability to improve efficiency." The point is that an energy crisis will trigger political unrest, but a cut in subsidies to improve efficiency will do too.
China's energy crunch is exacerbated by the country's high energy intensity (the ratio of energy use to economic output). This is partly due to the large share of industry in the economy, but it is also because many sectors—such as steel and cement—are plagued by over-production, waste and inefficiency. China's overwhelming reliance on coal for the bulk of its energy—around 70%—also poses problems. Coal is relatively dirty, inefficient and difficult to transport, but it is by far the most abundant energy resource in China.
China's energy needs are also having geopolitical repercussions, as the country's relative paucity of domestic oil reserves prompts efforts to expand imports and secure supplies abroad. For example, energy competition is a factor in China's territorial disputes with its neighbours, particularly in the East China Sea (with Japan) and the South China Sea (with eight South-east Asian countries). Large potential reserves of oil and natural gas are at stake in these disputes. China's energy security concerns also bolster its determination to develop its naval power, and to impose its rule on Taiwan, a de facto US ally that is adjacent to the shipping lanes to northern China.
A report speculating that the possible delivery of Pakistan's long-owed F-16s is part of a geopolitical strategy on the US's part to undermine the SCO's (and therefore China and Russia's) influence. America also worries about a popular uprising against Musharraf's government - a government that it is increasingly losing the power to manipulate.
From the proceedings of the meeting of the SCO's Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) held in Bishkek on Monday in preparation of the summit on August 16, trends are available that must definitely be annoying Washington. There is no mistaking that the SCO is slouching toward Afghanistan and Pakistan with an irresistible offer of mutual engagement in terms of shared interests of regional security and stability...
For the first time, the SCO is likely to pose a challenge to the United States' monopoly of conflict resolution in Afghanistan. The CFM has taken the view that the existing pattern of involvement by the international community is restricted to specific sectoral problems in Afghanistan. It concluded that such a narrow issue-based approach on the part of the international community will not serve the purpose of stabilizing the country.
The article continues:
Plainly speaking, the SCO is unambiguously proclaiming its intention to work closely with Kabul and Islamabad - a turf that has hitherto been tacitly accepted by the regional powers as more or less the exclusive playpen of the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This runs counter to the consistent US approach based on keeping Russia out of Afghanistan, and disrupting any Russian-Chinese coordinated policies in Afghanistan.
An extremely useful summary of China's energy relations with the Middle East - if only I'd had this while I was writing my thesis. Main point to note, highlighted in italics below, is that the big three - Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq - see the main benefit of trading with China as "China is not America". Read into that what you will.
As the world’s third largest oil importer after the United States and Japan, China is projected to import 70 percent of its oil from the Middle East by 2015, according to the International Energy Agency’s forecast. For this reason, China intends to open a dialogue with OPEC countries. Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhai Jun stated, “China wants to participate in making big decisions in the world. We want to set up a mechanism to negotiate and discuss oil market issues with the OPEC countries” (Gulf News, December, 6, 2006).
There appears to be an equal amount of enthusiasm from the Middle Eastern countries to take advantage of the world’s fastest growing market. China’s presence is largely perceived as non-ideological, economically oriented and pragmatic. Furthermore, there is little concern that China’s increasing status as a world power will constitute an international threat. “Hegemony, domination, imperialism are associated with the United States and Europe. China is not seen that way,” commented Sami Baroudi, a Lebanese political scientist, “Arabs appreciate its economic might, but don’t see it as a political threat” (Reuters, November, 27, 2006).
The siege of the Lal Masjid is over, but in what looks like an increasingly critical juncture for General Musharraf, the repercussions will now begin.
In the next few days, weeks and months, the following questions may be answered. How will the 'martyrdom' of the hardliners and madrassa students who chose to remain at the mosque be perceived in Pakistan and the wider region? Will they inspire a larger movement, or only fuel the growing crisis of Talibanisation in the border regions? How will the aftermath of the siege react with existing political issues such as the sacking of the Chief Justice and the forthcoming elections?
It is also interesting to note that part of the Islamist's agenda relates to Chinese influence in Pakistan. The incidents are comparitively minor, but it appears that one of the extremists' grievances in Islamabad was a Chinese-run brothel: meanwhile, three Chinese workers were shot near Peshawar during the weekend. If this continues, Beijing may have to say a few private but stern words.
Security forces began a full-scale siege of the mosque last week, not long after mosque students abducted seven Chinese workers they accused of running a brothel.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says the military operation is a gamble for President Pervez Musharraf who risks a backlash from supporters of those inside the mosque.
In recent days the army has redeployed thousands of troops in north-western Pakistan where pro-Taleban militants opposed to President Musharraf have been carrying out a string of attacks said to be linked to the mosque siege.
Beyond its place in the GWOT, could Pakistan become a staging post for the anti-Iran campaign? The author calls it a new Cold War, alluding to Iraq and Afghanistan's growing proxy war status - but don't forget who sponsors both Iran and Pakistan... China. So if there is a Cold War, it's the ultimate big daddy in the whole deal.
The fact is Pakistan is uniquely placed - geographically and politically - to affect the outcome of Anglo-American strategy toward Iran and Central Asia. Zia was extremely prescient about such a geopolitical setting.
In recent months, the US media have reported on the role of Pakistani security agencies in enabling covert US operations aimed at destabilizing Iran. If US Vice President Dick Cheney has his way and a US-Iran military confrontation indeed takes place, Pakistan's role becomes of vital importance to Washington.
Rising China, Shining India; the quagmire in the Persian Gulf and America’s Global War on Terror. These are some of the focal points of international politics in 2007, and none of them exist in isolation.
For the giant populations of Asia to continue their slow grind out of poverty requires economic growth; industrialisation and development must be fuelled. Both China and India are increasingly dependent on oil and gas imports, and in order to safeguard their futures energy security is vital. So each needs to command new sources and new ways of bringing in fossil fuels.
There are some vital strategic areas that can serve as transit routes in both China and India’s energy security policies. Thus geopolitics return to the historical heartland of Kipling’s Kim – the territory now known as Pakistan. It is as if the original Great Game has gone back to square one, only with some fresh rules and new players.
This thesis aims to examine the geopolitical implications of developing Pakistan as an ‘energy hub’, and to analyse the impediments to its fruition and the interested parties’ strategies for seeing it through. And, whereas other studies tend to focus on individual factors at work, it aims instead to critically observe them in the context of the situation as a whole.
This work is made available on the understanding that it will not be copied, plagiarised or otherwise reproduced without the explicit consent of the author.
Very distressing to read - and I suspect that The Guardian chose not to publish many of Jonathan Watts's pictures. More evidence that many Chinese have scant regard for the world we live in and the things we share it. It's not just about 'spectacular' animals such as tigers, it's a wider malaise that affects the air we all breathe and the water we all drink.
Not only this, but a shocking BBC documentary on the failure of Project Tiger to boot. Thousands of tiger skins sold to Tibet (though the ignorant buyers swiftly u-turned when the Dalai Lama issued an edict) and the bones all off to China for TCM.
The sheer irresponsibility is amazing. The effect that 1.3 billion people with a similar mindset could have, especially if they get they way and wriggle out of international conventions, is simply terrifying.
I can hear the excuses now. One China: one rule for us and another for the rest of you. Not as unlike America as they'd like to think.
The park is part farm, part zoo and part circus. Its nursery is the start of a production line that churns out hundreds of tigers each year and ends in the freezer packed with carcasses. In between, most animals spend their lives in hundreds of tiny cages that are lined up in rows around the perimeter wall, each jammed with as many as four animals, which lie around listlessly or pace back and forth between wire and concrete.
More fortunate beasts share a few football pitch-sized enclosures in the main visitor area. Others are trained to perform in the Dream Theatre - a circus where they jump through flaming hoops - or in an outdoor show that also has monkeys riding camels and a bear cycling across a highwire without a safety net.
"I think most security experts are looking at this very closely because this is the closest access point China has to the Persian Gulf," says Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Washington. "I don't know that this is something the US particularly likes."
The article concentrates mainly on the US perspective:
Given the energy game's high stakes, some wonder if Gwadar will set off alarm bells in Washington. Last April, while hosting the China-Pakistan Energy Forum in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf was asked as much by a visiting delegate. But to a roar of applause, he quickly deflected the question: "I do not care about pressure from major powers. If Pakistan suffers pressure from certain major powers, I believe China will come forward to help us apply pressure on the other side."
Still, the opening of Gwadar is indicative of how China's largesse in Pakistan is coming into open competition with the US – and how that could alter the region's political landscape.
Apparently, it's all about the money - China has promised $12bn to Pakistan, while the US offers only a paltry $6bn. Who's your daddy, especially in the energy game?
Islamabad and Beijing are set to sign at least three agreements during Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s visit to China, scheduled from April 16 to April 22, said Foreign Minster Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri here on Sunday while talking to reporters after a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing at the foreign office.
Kasuri said that there was a complete unanimity of views between the two countries on bilateral, regional and international issues. He said the two countries would sign agreements to establish the Joint Investment Company, University of Engineering and Science and Technology, and the Media University in Pakistan when Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would visit China in the second week of April.
“We welcome China’s entry in SAARC as an observer,” said Kasuri, and it has heightened the importance of the organisation. “We are confident that China will play an important role in the association,” he added.
Gwadar would provide a more secure corridor for China's fuel and energy supplies in the face of instability in the Persian Gulf and also down in the pirate-infested Strait of Malacca, by Indonesia, through which 80% of China's oil imports now pass. From Gwadar, imports could travel overland up through Pakistan and into China.
Trade out of China's own restive western region of Xinjiang would also be easier and faster. The distance from Kashgar, on the edge of Xinjiang, to Gwadar is 1,250 miles, versus twice that distance to reach Shanghai.
Some analysts see a more strategic interest in Gwadar. They say it could play host to Chinese vessels, listening stations or an outpost from which Beijing could monitor the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, including the U.S. Navy base on the remote island of Diego Garcia, a key launching pad for operations in the Persian Gulf.
But a beefed-up Chinese military presence in Gwadar probably is years away, if it happens at all.
Just when I thought I had the most terribly original thesis topic, The Economist goes and hijacks it - even the title. At least it shows I'm onto something.
It's impossible to disconnect the whole India-Pakistan-Afghanistan nexus, partly because Pakistan is a very artificially-constructed nation and Afghanistan has never really been a natural state at all. It's all very complex, with India close to Afghanistan and meddling in Pakistan's internal conflicts, yet needing Pakistan on side for the pipeline projects. And with China and the US thrown into the mix, the geopolitical implications could be immense.
India has an obvious interest in a stable Afghanistan. It hopes the country will one day accommodate transmission lines bringing electricity from Central Asia, as well as a pipeline for oil and gas from the region. There are two competing gas-pipeline projects: “TAPI”, running from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan and on to India; and another from Iran through Pakistan to India. Instability in Afghanistan is a big impediment to the first, but America opposes the second. For now, Pakistan refuses to allow Indian goods to cross its territory. But India also hankers after direct trade routes with Central Asia.
A Chinese-Pakistani joint-venture port at Gwadar in Baluchistan, which had its ceremonial opening this week, is matched by an Iranian-Indian venture to develop the “free port” at Chabahar in the Gulf of Oman. Both would require road links across Afghan territory. Indian engineers are currently connecting Afghanistan's ring road to the Iranian border. The Indian press blamed the abduction and killing in 2006 of an Indian engineer working on the project on Pakistani intelligence, after the Taliban denied involvement.
Pakistan would also benefit from Afghanistan's becoming the land bridge between India and Central Asia. But until a final resolution of its dispute with India, its calculations will be more cynical. Afghanistan is no longer, as it was under Taliban rule, a client of Pakistan. But “an unstable Afghanistan is the second-best option to a stable one ruled by your friends,” says Mr Rubin. “Both are certainly preferable to an Afghanistan ruled by your enemies.”
Bob Hope and no hope, and I believe that Bob Hope is no longer available for USO performances in any case. But seriously, the idea of a 'military hotline' from Washington to Beijing is reminiscent of Cold War thinking. Could the US be implicitly acknowledging a bipolar structure and China's counter-hegemonic status?
"You don't have to agree or disagree with any particular country's objective," he continued, "but it's very helpful to understand what those objectives are and why they're going in that direction."
He said he urged Beijing to be more open about its military budget.
Some analysts see an operational Gwadar port as China's first foothold in the oil-rich Middle East, as well as providing road and rail links to the economic powerhouse. Beijing wants Gwadar to be the gateway port for its western region, as its eastern seaboard is 3,500km from Kashgar, the main city in the far west of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, whereas the distance from Kashgar to Gwadar is only 1,500km. This makes it feasible and cost-effective for China's interior regions to carry out trade through this port. That is why China expressed interest in helping Pakistan to develop Gwadar into a full-fledged deepwater commercial port, capable of handling cargo ships of up to 50,000 tons or more.
Energy-hungry China is eyeing Central Asia's oil and gas reserves and is increasingly looking to Pakistan for oil and gas supplies. Beijing plans to run at least five oil and gas pipelines to Gwadar from the Central Asian republics and wants to turn the facility into a transit terminal for Iranian and African crude-oil imports.
Gwadar is expected to play a key role in China's energy security, as its strategic location gives it greater scope as a free oil port in the region, and it will be the endpoint of all gas pipelines from Central Asian states, Iran and Qatar. Pakistan and China have also held talks on the construction of the strategic pipeline from Gwadar to China's borders, enabling it to import oil from Saudi Arabia.
General Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday said the dream of the Gwadar Port was realized with China’s assistance and said its continued involvement will help in further improvement of the facilities and infrastructure at the country’s first deep-sea port.Talking to Chinese Minister for Communication Li Shen, the President said the two countries enjoy an all weather and strategic partnership that will continue to grow for the mutual benefit of the two people.
He said there was a need for greater long term involvement between the two countries to make the Port an important Container and Energy hub for the region.
The Chinese Minister said that with the completion of the second phase, the Gwadar Port will be able to handle the world’s biggest ships and more infrastructure can be added to enable it to serve as an energy hub for the region.
GWADAR, Pakistan, March 19 (Reuters) - Pakistan tightened security around a coastal town in Baluchistan province on Monday, a day before the opening of a port authorities hope will bring prosperity to the remote and troubled region.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is due to open the Gwadar deep-sea port on the Arabian Sea on Tuesday along with Chinese Minister of Communications Li Shenglin.
China financed 80 percent of the initial development costs of the $248 million project in Baluchistan province, 70 km (45 miles) east of the Iranian border and on the doorstep of Gulf shipping lanes.
Thousands of soldiers and policemen guarded the coast and roads to the port on Monday while fishermen were told to stay well clear.
It could well be a slip of the pen, but note the writer's words here. Pakistan's FM is pushing for the Karakoram pipeline as a "contingency plan". Contingency for what, exactly? And it shows the pipeline is still very much on the table.
BEIJING: Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, on Monday offered to build oil reservoirs and lay gas pipelines in his country's territory across the Chinese border to help Beijing prepare a contingency plan.
Kasuri, who is here on a four-day trip, is pushing Beijing to set up an energy corridor linking the Chinese-built Gwadar port in Pakistan to western China.
The Gwadar port in Baluchistan, located at the entrance of the Gulf and about 460 km west of Karachi, is due to be opened on Tuesday.
It will be operated by the Port of Singapore Authority, which has obtained a 40-year contract to run it.
"The most important thing is the trust that exists between China and Pakistan. The energy corridor will pass through a friendly country, which will be a big advantage for China,"Kasuri said in an interview to the official media in Beijing.
China is all set to drop anchor at India's southern doorstep. An agreement has been finalized between Sri Lanka and China under which the latter will participate in the development of a port project at Hambantota on the island's south coast.
An agreement on the Hambantota project was among eight that were signed during Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse's recent visit to China. Even as the Sri Lankans were finalizing the deal with the Chinese, they clinched an agreement with the Americans. In Colombo, officials reached agreement on an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the US.
The agreements come at a time when India is already watching with concern the growing Pakistani influence in Sri Lanka.
The Hambantota Development Zone, which the Chinese will help build, will include a container port, a bunkering system, an oil refinery, an airport and other facilities. It is expected to cost about US$1 billion and the Chinese are said to be financing more than 85% of the project.
The Economist is jolly excited about a new law being passed on private property rights. In fact, the law is merely a rubber stamp on what is already going on (in China these days, they tend to make the laws to suit conditions rather than try to shape conditions to suit the laws - a much better system if you ask me.)
It's yet another sign that the Party really ought drop the word 'Communist' once and far all.
Many of the law's provisions are contained in other regulations issued in recent years. But supporters of the bill say that combining these elements into one law enacted by the country's top legislature would give them additional weight. Yin Tian of Peking University says the law will be a mark of the government's respect for private property and could help to reinforce social stability by reducing disputes. The draft tries to streamline the registration of property sales and make it easier for interested parties to check details. The difficulty buyers have in getting such information results in frequent ownership wrangles after deals are completed.
Farmers, whose main concern relates to land-ownership rights, would also have something to gain. The good news is that the latest draft, unlike the 2005 version, gives farmers the right to renew their land-use leases after they expire. Unlike urban land, which is state-owned with usage rights granted for periods of between 40 and 70 years, rural land is “collectively” owned. Farmers are given 30-year leases (though often no supporting documents) to use plots of land. But the law will put no new limits on the government's powers to appropriate land. It also says that village committees represent the collective. These are supposedly democratically elected but party regulations still give unelected party chiefs the final say over village affairs. Most important, the ban on mortgaging farmland will remain.
"In recent years, China has steadily increased defence spending based on its economic development," Mr Jiang said. "China has neither the wherewithal nor the intention to enter into an arms race with any country, and China won't constitute a threat to any country."
Yes, thanks for that, Mr Jiang. But China's economy is going up by 10% a year, not 17.8%, the amount of the spending increase. And we all know that in reality it's much more.
Such assurances are unlikely to convince its near neighbours Japan and India. Both countries have increased their defence budgets in what is increasingly looking like an Asian arms race.
In the short term, however, it is Taiwan that has the most to fear from a Chinese military build-up. The island is viewed in Beijing as a renegade province. Hundreds of missiles are aimed across the strait and communist leaders have repeatedly warned that they are prepared to reunite the two sides by force if necessary.
What has worried Chinese oil-security strategists in recent years is that most of the imported oil comes from the Middle East. Despite China's efforts to diversify sources of imports, it still relies heavily on Middle Eastern oil. In 2005, China's imports of crude oil from the Middle East accounted for 61.1% of its total crude-oil imports, making it the most import link in the country's oil-supply chain.
This amounts to putting most, if not all, the eggs in one basket, which is too fraught with risks for such a big country like China, analysts in Beijing say. If the supply of oil from the Middle East were interrupted, for any reason, the outcome for China would be disastrous beyond imagination.
China's ever expanding pipeline network has the potential to bring about a significant strategic realignment of Xinjiang and the adjacent region. Central Asia, with its huge reserves of oil, gas and minerals, has already seen some sharp rivalry among the United States, Europe and Japan. All of the major powers, in conjunction with multinational corporations, are seeking to secure alliances, concessions and possible pipeline routes in the area.
Oil and gas pipelines to China from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan could easily be extended to link into the pipeline networks of both Russia and Iran. This model has been dubbed the "Pan Asian Global Energy Bridge" - a Eurasian network of pipelines linking energy resources in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia through to China's Pacific coast. A major part of the old Silk Route is inexorably turning into the "Black Gold Route" of the new millennium.
Beijing's involvement in several rail projects in Pakistan is motivated primarily by commercial considerations, but it also sees distinct advantages for its improved transportation and access to Central Asia and the Persian Gulf states. A reliable network of road and rail links can only ensure China's access to energy-rich central Asia, serving it both commercially and strategically.
The following details of this project have since become available from an article titled Militarisation of Balochistan" written by columnist Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur in the Post of February 1, 2007:
* The Chinese will be building the airport 26 km away to the north-east of the existing airport towards Pasni.
* Disregarding the normal procedure, a sum of Rs.1.05 billion for the acquisition of 6,500 acres of land has been released to the Military Estate Officer in Quetta instead of to the Civil Aviation Authority. The land for the airport has already been acquired by the Military Land and Cantonments Department. The JFK airport in New York, one of the largest in the world, covers an area of only 4,930 acres. The land on which the proposed new Gwadar airport will be located is much more than the land on which the JFK airport is located and twice the size of the land on which London's Heathrow airport is located (2,965 acres). In Heathrow, one plane lands or takes off every 46 seconds. Such heavy commercial traffic is never visualied in any airport of Pakistan even in the medium and long terms. Such a huge airport near Gwadar would, therefore, have other objectives. It will serve as a mammoth airbase.
It's all about supply, demand and transit. At best the IPI is a potential solution to the Kashmir issue. But at worst it's yet another point of friction.
Putin paid special attention to cooperation "in building facilities for gas production and transportation in India and the adjacent region" (emphasis added). This is a reference to the highly politicized US$7 billion project for a 2,100-kilometer Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
Putin's visit to Delhi came closely on the heels of the latest round of negotiations over the price of gas for the Iran pipeline project. According to a new formula proposed by Iran, the cost of gas will translate at the Pakistan-India border as $4.93 per million British thermal units (mBtu), plus $1.5 per mBtu that India would have to pay to Pakistan as a transit fee. Indian officials have since expressed optimism that the signing of India's $145 billion gas mega-deal with Iran might take place by June.
In geopolitical terms, it could be the focal point of a new power-sharing axis, perhaps under the auspices of the SCO:
In other words, we're talking seriously for the first time about the prospect of a gas market uniting Turkmenistan, Iran, Pakistan, India and China. This is where a breakthrough in the protracted negotiations over the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project could become a defining moment for energy politics in Eurasia.
Russia is not in competition with Iran in tapping the South Asian market for gas. It is expedient for Russia if Iran gets deeply engaged in the Asian market (which includes two energy guzzlers - China and India) and, that, too, with Russian equity participation in the actual construction of Iran's pipeline to South Asia. That could lead to Gazprom's participation in the highly lucrative distribution and retailing of Iranian gas in Pakistan, India and China.
The grand opening swiftly aproaches, and writers are beginning to consider the deeper geostrategic significance of Gwadar. yet we still don't really know that much about it.
It is expected that with Gwadar port operational, Pakistan will become a key player in the Persian Gulf region and serve as an energy corridor for Central Asia, South Asia and western China. With the exception of Chahbahar port in Iran, Gwadar will be the only free port between Dubai and Colombo providing container storage and warehousing facilities...
Pakistan plans to spend $7 billion in the next eight years to improve the country's road infrastructure, completing a network linking China and South Asia through Gwadar by 2014.
Because of its geo-strategic location, Gwadar has the potential to become a regional maritime hub. The 14.5-meter draft of the port will be able to accommodate up to "fifth-generation" ships, including Panamax and mother vessels.
Islamabad firmly believes that the Gwadar port is a key entry point for energy supplies for Central and South Asia, as well as western China. It will allow the expansion of oil trade in the region, as it provides the shortest possible route to landlocked, oil-rich Central Asian states.
The report argues that China's national image is its greatest strategic threat. The misalignment between China's image of itself and how it is viewed by the rest of the world is China’s major challenge. The report argues that alongside its other reforms, China needs a 'fifth transition' if the trust and understanding necessary for the next stage of its development are to be achieved.
JOSHUA COOPER RAMO, author of Brand China says in the report:
“China’s greatest strategic threat today is its national image. The country is not, in the short term, likely to be invaded.
“China’s image of herself and other nations’ views of her are out of alignment. The world’s view of China is too often an unstable cocktail of out-of-date ideas, wild hopes and unshakeable prejudices and fears. China’s view of herself often teeters between self-confidence and insecurity, between caution and arrogance.
This is a very astute observation. I sometimes found teaching 'Western Culture' to students with a very fixed perception of China and the outside world a very perplexing task while I lived in Shanghai, and I'm sure those undergraduates were not unique.
States are not all alike, and China is more unequal than others. The way in which the state and its people perceive itself is fundamental to its behaviour in the international arena, yet this is an area that is often rarely discussed. Yet it is crucial to the way that we on the outside see China too, and is a critical tool in arriving at a better mutual understanding.
Speaking ahead of the launch of Brand China, FENG ZHANG, China Programme Manager at the Foreign Policy Centre said
“The phrase Peaceful Rise, which has been used by China’s image makers for several years, has often backfired. Rather than feeling reassured, China’s critics instead use the slogan to demonstrate China’s untrustworthiness. In the current climate, with China’s military buildup, and satellites being destroyed, the idea of a Peaceful Rise is not going to convince the rest of the world.”
More below, or download the report from the link above.
One thing that continually irritates me about academics is their blind acceptance of the 'China-will-become-a-democracy-eventually' hypothesis, a beloved fantasy that here is dubbed the 'Soothing Scenario'. And, I must admit, that my own opinion that China could buckle under the pressures of nationalism and disenfranchisment has also been done to death.
What if China manages to continue on its current economic path and yet its political system does not change in any fundamental way? What if, twenty-five or thirty years from now, a wealthier, more powerful China continues to be run by a one-party regime that continues to repress organized political dissent much as it does today; and yet at the same time China is also open to the outside world and, indeed, is deeply intertwined with the rest of the world through trade, investment and other economic ties? Everyone assumes that the Chinese political system is going to open up – but what if it doesn't?...
In sum, I think the paradigm of inevitable change impairs America's thinking and its public discussion of China today. The paradigm prevents us from coming up with policies towards a China whose political may not change, in any fundamental way, for a long time. But I think the paradigm of inevitable change will endure -- that whenever American leaders talk in public about China, we will continue to hear some version or another of the Soothing Scenario.
A very good point indeed. And basically, the scenario is based on the CCP successfully doing what they are doing now - maintaining their own power and social stability at the same time. But you can't account for events - which have a habit of messing up ever single prediction ever made.
Recognising China’s prowess in attracting and implementing infrastructure projects, finance minister P. Chidambaram today said India needs to “emulate” China in infrastructure development.
Despite having a different political environment, he said India can learn from China about execution of projects on time. This according to the FM includes enforcing a disciplined on those leading project execution, along with a reward-punishment incentive structure.
"Compared with social and economic modernisation, China's ecological modernisation lags far behind," said the research group's director, He Chuanqi.
Damn right. The single most terrifying thing about China is its rampant and relentless self-destruction - a policy which one day could implode with apocalyptic consequences. But what can any of us do about it?
The European Union is China's biggest trading partner: in 2004, trade levels stood at €160 billion. And with financial flows this high, inevitably relations between the two economic giants transcend business alone.
According to liberal and constructivist theorists, the increasing interdependence brought by globalisation brings about a slow but steady ‘diffusion’ of norms and standards across national borders and even continents. The EU itself is a good example of the spread of ideas from country to country, both as a stimulus to and a result of the integration process.
With this in mind, it stands to reason that the EU should be able to ‘diffuse’ its ideas to countries like China. Actually doing so, however, is easier said than done. This paper below looks at how, rather than trying to directly introduce human rights and democracy, Europe can penetrate both China’s economy and its political sphere with ‘green’ values instead.
Download Word file or read main text below. (See Word file for bibliography and footnotes).
A likely successor to President Niyazov of Turkmenistan has emerged in the shape of a former dentist and health minister, the deliciously unpronouncable Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. By the sounds of it, he is going to be very much a puppet of the security services: we shall see.
However, what is more certain is that the parlous state of Turkmenistan is still a likely spark for tension and instability. Agriculture and the energy industry are in meltdown, and various vultures - not just Russia, but China and India too, are hovering. 'Elections' will be held on 11 February, but whether or not Turkmenistan can be turned around without disintegration and intervention is open to debate.
One possible scenario would be for the new president to take Turkmenistan some way along the path followed by Kazakhstan, and make the country more welcoming to foreign investment. Turkmenistan has what are believed to be among the largest reserves of natural gas in the world. BP’s conservative official estimate is 2.9trn cubic metres, but the Turkmen authorities claim gas the true figure is up to 20bn cu metres. Even if reserves are only half this level, Turkmenistan would rank above major gas producers such as Algeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria.
In recent years, Turkmenistan’s gas output has been around 63bn cu metres per year, the majority of which is exported to Russia and Ukraine. The sanctity of long-term deals was always open to question, as Mr Niyazov tended to renege on agreements once a more lucrative offer was on the table. If the gas sector is to be opened up, Russian capital could face serious competition from Western and Chinese companies, as well as Indian. This in turn would open the question of export routes—whether to the West via the Caspian Sea (from where Turkmen gas could conceivably utilise existing pipelines) or to the East to China (perhaps via Kazakhstan, which is due to complete a pipeline to China around 2009). Any redirection of Turkmenistan’s gas exports could have potentially severe repercussions; for it would deprive Russian monopoly Gazprom of sizeable volumes of gas that it is counting on to meet its domestic supply and export commitments.
I never thought I'd end up the same political street as Will Hutton, celebrated socialist British economist and former editor of The Observer. I'm also a little suspicious of his sudden all-seeing-eye on China, since he spent most of his career writing on purely British or European issues.
However, if figures as respected as Hutton are coming up with assessments like this, then it's time to get very concerned indeed:
China protests that it wants to continue to rise peacefully and does not want to disturb the current world order. It has renounced Maoism, proclaim Western intellectuals, and its aims are surely are capitalist economic growth not mounting invasions. Thus both its neighbours and the West comfort themselves.
The problem is that China has only partially renounced Maoism; the apparatus of dictatorship and one-party rule remain firmly in place but with no viable ideology to justify it. It is a highly unstable, wasteful and inefficient system which is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The party's first claim to legitimacy is that so far it has worked. And its second claim to legitimacy is its appeal to Chinese nationalism. It is the custodian of a strong China that keeps foreigners at bay. Jobs and nationalism would be the only two pillars on which Chinese communism could sustain power, Deng Xiaoping told the party after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Deliver those and it might hold off political challenge. It has. Even Chinese history taught in schools plays up the threat from foreigners, eliminates any Chinese atrocities and emphasises the role of the party as China's saviour. Whenever it has suited the party's interest is has turned to nationalism; it raised 46 million e-signatures last year to oppose Japan winning a seat on the UN Security Council.
I'm afraid to say that while his comments on Maoism are a little skewiff, when it comes to nationalism Hutton is dead-on. If there were two things that terrified me about China during my stay there, it was the wholesale and unapologetic destruction of the environment and the unquestioning rise of nationalism, even among the educated elites.
As always, it comes down to the Taiwan question. For Hutton, the satellite shoot-down made it a question of "not if but when". Despite other entries on this blog, I'm not convinced that war is the only option - if anything, the missile test was a show of force designed to demonstrate capability and thus head off actual combat. But as every poker player knows, it just takes one player to call your bluff.
Since 2000 the Democratic Progressive party, pledged to a fully-fledged independent Taiwanese state, has won two presidential elections. Beijing is increasingly concerned that the possibility of recovering of Taiwan is slipping away.
An invasion would be high-risk. There is only operational airspace over Taiwan for 300 fourth-generation fighters; Taiwan has 300. It would take 1,000 landing craft up to a fortnight to move 30 infantry divisions across the Taiwan Strait - all the time exposed to American and Japanese retaliation. But if the US's command and control satellite network could be knocked out, suddenly the risks would be dramatically reduced. On top, the US is increasingly focusing its military effort in the Middle East. All China needs is a fortnight.
Very few in Europe understand the Bismarkian, pre-1914 Europe feel to Asian great power politics. In February 2005, China issued an ultimatum to Japan over its occupation of the oil-rich Senkaku Islands; withdraw or face the consequences, sending a five-strong fleet to the islands. Japan responded by putting 55,000 men on alert. Both sides backed off. But China distrusts renascent Japanese nationalism, especially with Japan's now stated wish to change its pacifist constitution. Asia is a powder keg of competing nationalisms, battles for scarce energy resources and unresolved mutual enmities.
The West is indeed blinded by China's economic rise. Yes, one day democracy may come, but to complacently assume that it will gradually develop without a major crisis is naive to the extreme.
It's increasingly beginning to look like China has the initiative in the Middle East, not the US. The lynchpin is Iran. Can Washington and Beijing cooperate to head off the incipient crisis? China is one of the only actors that might persuade Iran to stop its "flinty tongue" and save it from itself, but wll the US trust it do so?
China's Middle East strategy is brilliant. It is a multi-splendored thing. There is great adventure in it insofar as it almost overlooks the so-called non-state actors that one hears so much about in the Middle East - let us say with a dash of Marxian idiom, the "forces of history". China's strategy is cautious, yet pragmatic. It is, arguably, near optimal.
Thus, despite the United States' defeat in the Middle East, China will not take on a condescending attitude toward Washington. On the contrary, this is the time for China to cooperate. If the Bush administration were to work out a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by manipulating the introduction of a pro-Western Arab military force under United Nations mandate, China would have no problem. China might even counsel Iran to take the bitter pill. China is working hard to expand its influence at the same time with the various Middle East protagonists - Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
I think we can forget about this 'China's Peaceful Rise' myth. This month's missile test puts things into perspective - any weapon designed to knock out enemy satellites is not a passive defence but an aggressive capability.
Of course, it may not all be bad: Reagan's 'Star Wars' programme arguably sealed the deal for Gorbachev, forcing him to draw down the arms race leading to the ultimate end of the Eastern bloc. And it would also be hypocritical to suggest that Washington is in any way whiter-than-white, since it is not.
But it's also important to consider why China is doing this. It is not, whatever it may say, under any kind of existential threat from its neighbours. Neither the US, Japan or Taiwan have the will or means to do anything nasty to the PRC.
No, as any defence expert will tell you, the system is intended to knock out enemy communications, surveillance and media satellites - which is what you would do in the first hour of an attack on somewhere like, say...
The test was especially troubling because it exposed the vulnerability of America's dependence on low-orbiting satellites, which are used for military communications, smart bombs and surveillance. In theory, last week's exercise could give Beijing the capability to knock out such satellites - a realisation that underlay the protests from Washington.
Australia and Canada also voiced concerns; Britain, South Korea and Japan were expected to follow. "The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said. "We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese."
Although more of a "policy weapon" at this time, the test shows that the Chinese military can threaten the imaging reconnaissance satellites operated by the U. S., Japan, Russia, Israel and Europe.
The Republic of China also operates a small imaging spacecraft that can photograph objects as small as about 10 ft. in size, a capability good enough to count cruise missiles pointed at Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. The Taiwanese in the past have also leased capability on an Israeli reconnaissance satellite.
Update: Now that the armchair generals have had some time to digest this, the received wisdom is that the test is less about the capability than the signal of intent. It's a brash invitation to the US to re-open the space race, and a not-so-subtle warning to Japan and Taiwan that China is now the boss and they had better not do anything silly like revive a military element to foreign policy or declare independence.
On the other hand, is it also evidence that the PLA is and will act in disregard of CCP wishes, and is thus a sign of a growing schism within the elite?
In other circumstances, I would cry 'nationalism' but in this case I'm with the Chinese. To have a Starbucks in the middle of the Forbidden City is indeed sacriligious (though in other senses it was an apt symbol of globalization, and was a warm place to take refuge in Beijing's sub-zero temperatures when I visited in January 2004).
Between the lines, there is a subtext here, that of the growing power of civil society via the Internet. Petitioning is in fact an age-old method used by the Chinese masses to address those in authority. It doesn't always work, of course: the Tiananmen protestors tried petitioning before turning to civil disobedience with the bloody consequences that followed. But they did that because the petition was ignored.
And the web offers opportunities for low-key mass protest petitioning like never before. Taking Starbucks out of the Forbidden City is trivial in itself, as were various recent campaigns against dog licensing etc.. But on the other hand, campaigns against dams and pollution etc. which directly impinge upon local and central government jusrisdiction - have been rather successful. My recent paper on EU-China relations (which will be published here in due course) deals with the grass-roots democracy that the 'non-political' protest movement is engendering.
As the web grows in popularity, the authorities may need to come up with ways to deal with this subtle but effective manifestation of people power. It is only a matter of time before web petitions turn to more serious issues, and if the people see they are being ignored then they can more easily join forces via their Internet networks to try something else.
The trigger was a blog entry posted on Monday by Rui Chenggang, a TV anchorman, who called for a web campaign against the outlet that, he wrote in his blog, "tramples over over Chinese culture".
According to local media, half a million people have signed his online petition and dozens of newspapers have carried prominent stories about the controversy. "The Starbucks was put here six years ago, but back then, we didn't have blogs. This campaign is living proof of the power of the web", said Rui. "The Forbidden City is a symbol of China's cultural heritage. Starbucks in a symbol of lower middle class culture in the west. We need to embrace the world, but we also need to preserve our cultural identity. There is a fine line between globalisation and contamination.
Gwadar is another area where China's stake in real estate will prove strategic. After the completion of the deepsea port project, Gwadar is likely to emerge as a South Asian business hub and modern investment center. Property in Gwadar is considered a good investment and the speculative trade in real estate is booming there.
Islamabad has plans to establish hotels, motels, playgrounds, boating clubs, theme parks, marinas and other recreation projects in Gwadar. The future port city will be connected to the rest of the country by land, sea and air links. The government has decided to set up a tax-free industrial zone of international standard in Gwadar and it has acquired about 4,050 hectares of land for this purpose. Housing schemes and highrise construction on commercial plots are planned and will be up to international standards.
Officials in Islamabad claim that leading international investors have shown keen interest in Gwadar because of its strategic location and potential for becoming a major transshipment trade center in the region. Chinese companies are likely to invest in real-estate projects in the second phase of the Gwadar seaport project.
China needs Gwadar port facilities for future oil and gas imports. While there is a suggestion in Pakistan that Gwadar should be declared a free oil port, Beijing is reportedly negotiating with Islamabad for around five oil and gas pipelines from Central Asian Republics (CARs).
China has shown interest in a trans-Himalayan pipeline to carry the Middle Eastern crude to western China. It would allow Beijing to reduce the portion of its oil shipped through the narrow and unsafe strait of Malacca carrying up to 80pc of its oil imports. The proposed pipeline would link Gwadar port with China's remote western regions, and it would be partly financed by Beijing.
Energy and emissions are bursting onto the mainstream political agenda in a big way already in 2007. First there was the announcement of an EU common energy policy initiative, and now 16 Asian and Pacific states, including Japan, China and India, are bundling on board.
Of course, both are too little too late, but still, it's better than nothing. It is only through the realisation that energy and the enviornment are common problems that need common solutions that conflict can be avoided, and that has to be a good thing.
Not as facetious as it may appear. Though bringing its population under control was a burning necessity, the long-term effects of the one-child policy are only just coming into view. No country has ever attempted anything like this on such a scale before, and in the not-too-distant future the first generation of the policy will be saddled with their elderly parents.
Meanwhile, as any visitor to Shanghai will tell you, the sex industry is booming. It's not just a symptom of wifeless young men, of course, but also of the economic boom on the east coast. With the menfolk heading to the big cities in search of construction work, as often as not women end up migrating to urban areas as sex workers. It's a sad story that will only get sadder as the true implications emerge.
It is becoming more and more obvious by the day that the post-Cold War world is not, after all, multipolar but bipolar. The great powers are the US and China. This is especially obvious when it comes to Middle East affairs, though interests coincide as much as they conflict. Of course, the biggest leveller is energy security - and that's the central objective for Chinese foreign policy.
Never mind that China, in the more than four years since it appointed a special envoy to the Middle East, has offered no original ideas. To all sides, it still has much to offer. To oil-exporting countries, China has rapidly emerged since the 1990s as a big customer and investor. Some 45% of China's oil imports from January to November last year were from the Middle East. To countries such as Iran and Syria, eager to check American power in the region, China's veto power at the UN and its shared misgivings about America make it a welcome friend. Refreshingly, China asks no questions about democracy...
China worries about its dependence on American military might for the security of its oil shipments from the Middle East. It is still a long way from being able to project military power over such a distance itself, though a Chinese official was quoted in the state-owned press this week as saying China had the ability to build an aircraft carrier, but had not decided when to do so. China is trying to diversify its sources of energy, buying more from Russia, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America.
But experts predict that China will long remain heavily dependent on energy from the Middle East. So it has little choice but to support efforts to stabilise the region. It may not agree with America's tactics, but will share the same broad objective. Jeffrey Bader, a former senior American diplomat now at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says that China's resistance to American initiatives in Sudan and Iran depends on Russian support for its position. If Russia were to switch sides, so too would China, he argues. It is in no mood to take on America alone.
A dismal assessment of 'rising China' by Britian's leading economist, Will Hutton. Being merely an excerpt from a book, the article lacks detail, but Hutton's basic concern is that the system cannot hold. We shall see.
The truth is that China is not the socialist market economy the party describes, nor moving towards capitalism as the western consensus believes. Rather it is frozen in a structure that I describe as Leninist corporatism - and which is unstable, monumentally inefficient, dependent upon the expropriation of peasant savings on a grand scale, colossally unequal and ultimately unsustainable. It is Leninist in that the party still follows Lenin's dictum of being the vanguard, monopoly political driver and controller of the economy and society. And it is corporatist because the framework for all economic activity in China is one of central management and coordination from which no economic actor, however humble, can opt out.
The PLA is not known for its frequent overseas sojourns and joint exercises, so it's significant that the partner this time around is Pakistan. Also worth noting is the rhetoric on the evils of 'terrorism' and 'separatism' - one man's terrorist etc. etc...
"For many years Pakistan and China have focused on economic development and regional stability. At the same time, we are confronting the three evil forces, terrorism, extremism and separatism. China is ready to conduct anti-terrorism with Pakistan to construct the area of lasting peace and mutual prosperity," said Lieutenant General Lu Dengming, Chief of Staff of the Chengdu military region of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA).
You don't need a degree in development economics to see who the winners and losers will be. Despite China's economy relying on manufactured exports to the West, it still invests nearly twice as much in R&D as India; I dread to think what levels it spends on infrastructure.
In fact, according to the OECD, China will soon be the world's second-biggest R&D spender in dollar terms - $136bn this year as opposed to Japan's $130bn and America's impressive $330bn. You have to hand it to the PRC though - they are full of good sense on a lot of things (shame about the environment).
Europe, on the other hand, would do well to up its spending and encourage the things that it is good at - technology and services - rather than buckling to domestic pressures from trade unions and farmers. I know who the smart money is on.
India’s expenditure on research and development is 0.7% of its gross domestic product (GDP) as compared with China’s 1.2%.
Minister of state for HRD D Purandeswari told the Upper House in a reply that North America spends 2.7%, Japan 3.1% and the European Union 1.8% of their GDP in R&D.
China is investing ever more in Pakistan, particularly with regard to Gwadar in Balochistan. What the benefits for Pakistan are unclear, other than the general boost to the local economy, since most of the cash is going towards Chinese self-interest.
Under the FTA signed last week, Pakistan will gain access to the vast Chinese market, while China will sell Pakistan more and more goods, as well as get cheap raw materials and the use of Pakistani ports for the onward export of its goods to world destinations at reduced freight rates.
The biggest chunk of Chinese investment in Pakistan is being spent on development projects in the country's largest province, strategically located Balochistan. The most important projects being launched with Chinese assistance in Pakistan include construction of the Gwadar deepsea port in Mekran, the Saindak copper and gold project in Chaghm, and the lead-zinc-mining project in Balochistan's Lasbela district.
The Chinese have invested about $230 million in the Gwadar port and the Saindak copper project, which is more than 50% of their total investment in the country.
Well, it would suit Saudi fine. No unwelcome criticism of its human rights record; no irritating demands from Indian and Pakistani workers; just a customer willing to pay high prices for the product. Win-win, apart from the loss of the US security umbrella - but that in itself is a provocation to the Islamist element and arguably makes the Middle East more unsafe.
Chietigj Bajpaee, research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said China risks being seen as trying to "lock up" Saudi oil at the expense of Washington, or India, another Asian tiger economy with a billion-plus population and a voracious appetite for oil.
"(China and the United States) have an increasingly symbiotic relationship," Bajpaee said. "This has led to fears in the United States that China is encroaching into its 'sphere of influence' and undermining relations with its traditional allies."
Hu Jintao's visit to India and Pakistan raises interesting questions. The much-vaunted Pakistan-China nuclear deal has so far failed to materialise, presumably either due to pressure from manmohan Singh, or a realisation by Beijing that to encourage Pakistan too much would create an uneasy balance of power along nuclear superpower axes (US-India and China-Pakistan).
Even trickier for China is the fact that its growing economic and political strength means that it can no longer sit back and mumble its non-intervention mantra. It has to play a part in global affairs, like it or not, and it's in South Asia that it perhaps faces its sternest test. Undoubtedly, China is becoming ever more locked in to the world environment it for so long sought to avoid.
According to Dr Rizvi, China has realised that if it is to play a dominant role in the region, it must first establish its credentials as an "ambassador of peace" in the region.
This could be the toughest bit for Pakistan to swallow.
In essence, it means China may no longer be prepared to be a silent spectator to the many conflicts that Pakistan is involved in.
Nor can it be seen to be lending Pakistan any form of moral, political or material support for its policy of maintaining "low-intensity conflict" with its troubled neighbours.
China may also become more sensitive towards local insurgencies such as the one in Balochistan where it is helping Pakistan build an alternative port that is billed as the gateway to Central Asia.
If the world were a democracy, 'Chindia' would have the casting vote for sure. But it's not, and the relationship between the Asian giants is a complex one, without doubt.
The appealing notion here is that India and China have complementary economies. China, through its burgeoning factories, is the world’s workshop. India, with its fast-growing IT and outsourcing firms, is becoming the world's back office. With Chinese hardware providing the orchestra and Indian software writing the score, surely they can make beautiful music together?
But it does not gloss over the reality:
The current complementarity in Chindian economic ties, such as it is, looks rather old-fashioned, even colonial. India exports raw materials to China, especially iron ore, and imports cheap Chinese manufactures in exchange.
In future, fierce competition is more likely than closer co-operation. Efforts to join forces in a global search for energy security are unlikely to overcome deeply ingrained Indian suspicions of China. The mistrust dates back to India’s humiliating defeat in the India-China war of 1962, and is fed by China's ties to Pakistan. It still impedes trade and investment. Chinese firms find it hard to secure visas for their staff in India, and are excluded from some projects, such as running ports.
In IR terms, India is the periphery to China's semi-peripheral zone, and the core remains, as always, the West.
Liberalization or no liberalization, so many poor people ain't going to get rich that quick, especially in India where the insane economic policies of the 'license Raj' have never fully dissipated. And in realist thinking, the balance of power - both strategic and economic - remains at the forefront of minds in New Delhi and Beijing.
But in summary, despite the differences, their destinies may becoming ever more intertwined. So easy to lump them together; but so hard to pull them apart. Sooner or later, the chumminess will fade.
If this doesn't look like an omen of impending disaster in China, then what does? Despite the lip service to the environment, the fact that this kind of thing can, and often does, happen is an indication of laissez faire of the worst kind. Expect a plague of locusts, frogs and the death of first-born little emperors some day soon.
Almost everything you needed to know about Balochistan, but were afraid to ask, neatly summed up here. The only aspect which is not dealt with is the presence of the US in Afghanistan and its uneasy influence over Pakistan, and also India. One couldn't ask for a situation where so many rival powers were so interdependent and intermeshed.
Note also that India is building a rival port in Iran at Chabahar - that I did not know, and it only makes the situation more volatile.
Balochistan's strategic significance and natural endowment makes it a critical province for Pakistan. Strategically, Balochistan bridges Central, South, Southeast and East Asia on one end, and Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East on the other. Regional states, especially India, cannot reach the energy and trade markets of the Caspian Sea region without transit through Balochistan, which Pakistan denies to India despite repeated pleas on New Delhi's behalf by Washington. India absorbs punitive freight costs by routing its trade goods through the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, even for shipments to Afghanistan. Since 2001, New Delhi has made great strides in reaching out to Baloch leaders, whose National Jirga has now made it a party to the arbitration of their "Accession to Pakistan Pact" in the ICJ (The Nation, November 13).
India is also wary of the Sino-Pakistan naval port on the Arabian Sea, which has raised Beijing's profile in the Indian Ocean. India is even more concerned over Taliban-inspired "militant groups" who operate in Indian-administered Kashmir. As the Taliban are widely believed to have their operational bases in Balochistan, they equally worry India's allies in the region, especially Afghanistan and Iran. Afghanistan resents Pakistan's patronage of the Taliban, which have become the largest threat to its stability since their regrouping in 2003. Iran is also unhappy with Islamabad's policy toward the Taliban due to the group's anti-Shiite theology and the subversive operations of the Taliban's allies, such as Jandallah, in Iran's Sunni-dominated province of Sistan-Balochistan.
No, not Tiananmen, Tiawan, Tibet and torture (hope that doesn't get this website blocked). Now we're talking about the traingular relationships of China, India, Pakistan and the US. I might add Iran in there as well - see below.
Hu's visit will be the crowning event to mark a decade of steady improvement in bilateral relations and serve as an impetus for further strengthening ties between Asia's two emerging powers. However, the substance and consolidation of the improving bilateral relationship will have to overcome what I term the four Ts - threat perceptions; territorial disputes; and the two triangulars, ie, China-India-US and China-India-Pakistan.
Despite progress in bilateral relations over the past few years, mutual suspicions remain. Partly this is due to the dynamics of security dilemma and structural conflicts between the two Asian giants. India has watched China's phenomenal growth in economic and military areas with both envy and alarm. The very fact that China continues to lead India on many indicators of power poses a greater threat than its military defeat 40 years ago.
Likewise, China is paying close attention to India's growing military power and its nuclear and missile developments. Beijing is wary of New Delhi's eastward strategy of developing greater economic and military ties with Japan and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Just to really complicate matters, let's stick oil and and gas into the equation too. Then you have the Iran-US-China triangle over Iran's nuclear ambitions, and the Iran-Pakistan-India triangle relating to gas pipelines. No-one said this would be simple...
As always, it come down to economics in the end. But at the end of the day, 'One China' has to stop somewhere. Beijing cannot keep on claiming all areas on the edges of its current borders to be Chinese territory, for if it wins concessions on these, then it will only stake more claims elsewhere.
Although many in Tawang have heard of breathtaking advances taking place in Tibet, symbolised by the world's highest railway connecting the Himalayan plateau with the rest of China, there are few takers for that kind of pell-mell rush to modernity.
"I do not understand this race to be modern. We have to be careful to strike a balance between economic growth and cultural erosion. We have to limit outside influences and control to some extent," said Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, a high-ranking lama who is also an elected local politician. "Our society can easily fall apart otherwise. In Tibet these things are happening. Buddhism is dying there."
Despite these concerns India is pressing ahead with its own plans to build dams in Arunachal Pradesh to generate hydropower for energy-starved India and blast tunnels through the Himalayas for a motorway network. This would be a step change for Arunachal Pradesh, which does not even have an airport.
Experts say that China covets the Tawang region not just for the picturesque monastery but for economic and strategic reasons. Many point out that China has plans to divert the Brahmaputra river, which begins in Tibet but passes through Arunachal Pradesh, to feed its arid northern and western regions and generate power.
It's been ten years since the last visit of a Chinese leader to India, and border disputes and trade will be high on the agenda. It'll be interesting to see the outcome of the discussions, if indeed such becomes public knowledge. China has some major issues over India's trade protectionism, not to mention the disputed territories. In fact, the most interesting question will be: "What has India got to gain?"
My guess would be that in retrun for a concession on Aksai Chin or the North Eastern border, India will make some concessions for Chinese companies. That'd be a win-win situation for both - but with China winning considerably more.
Delhi is also suspicious of China's relationship with its long-time rival Pakistan.
And China is concerned about Delhi's growing ties with Washington, especially the landmark nuclear agreement between the two allowing India access to civilian nuclear technology.
The Tibetan government-in-exile, led by the Dalai Lama, is hosted by India and is based in Dharamsala in the country's north-western state of Himachal Pradesh.
The Asia Times neatly throws structural realist theory straight out of the window. Also known as neo-realism, this Cold War theory rests on the idea of a balance of power between two giants (then the US and USSR); with equal military capabilities, the peace held for 50 years.
However, with information warfare and nuclear proliferation on the rise, and several examples in recent history of how a small, clever enemy can defeat the conventional military forces of a superpower (think Vietnam, Aghanistan I, 9/11, Afghanistan II, Iraq), it seems that asymmetric warfare is well and truly in. Sheer strength is irrelevant, as long as there is a David who knows how to topple the Goliath.
a conventional confrontation between the US and the comparatively smaller, less powerful Russia-China axis would quickly result in a catastrophe for the East. In fact, the rising East has intentionally kept its relations with the West as friendly as possible in order to avoid the terrible costs of a direct, conventional confrontation. This policy has facilitated, without needless interruption, the ongoing and massive transfer of wealth from the West to the emerging (rising) economies of the East. It is a very smart and pragmatic policy for the East.
Nevertheless, simultaneous with that policy another one is being actively pursued. The rising East is not content to merely assume that the US colossus will treat, or will learn to treat the globe's lesser powers in a fair and equitable manner, taking proper account of their legitimate views and interests.
Unilateralist, overly muscular and mostly self-serving US policies and actions since the 1991 collapse of the roughly balanced bipolar order of the two superpowers demonstrate that nothing can be taken for granted in that regard. Prudently, the rising multifarious East has been learning ever deeper and wider multilateral cooperation within itself in the energy, economic, diplomatic, political and military spheres aimed at developing and putting in place potent asymmetric leverages in all those same spheres.
The last two decades of China's growth were based on quantity. Now this needs to switch to growth based on quality. Western expertise and solidarity has a big role to play. One government official I spoke to expressed it rather well. He said: "The Chinese government is shining a torch on its development needs but there are areas of darkness. Organisations like ActionAid can help us light up some of these dark places."
The last few weeks - which have seen China tighten its grip over Africa and Asia, and the Republicans lose their grip in the Capitol and rethink their whole strategy - has generated a slew of articles over at Asia Times Online.
It isn't yet fashionable to speak openly of a world subdividing itself again into two camps - those aligned with the US and those aligned with the Russia-China axis at the core of a new rising, multifarious yet coherent pole of the East - with the dividing line between the two camps consisting of the contest for control over global strategic resources.
Despite all the relevant signs pointing precisely in that direction:
# The deepening accord in all key spheres between Russia, China, India, the other rising powers of the East and the key resource-rich regimes of the world.
# Steadily rising East-West tensions, the ever-more divergent interests between East and West.
# The increasingly incompatible approaches to global issues and problems resulting in an ever-widening chasm between East and West.
Far too long to analyse in full, but worth looking at at a later date.
Professor Ma Jiali, a veteran South Asia expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), says India's recent economic performance combined with its growing importance in international affairs has led to a rethink in Beijing of India as zhong he guoli, a Mandarin term that translates roughly as a "comprehensive national power".
For Beijing, relations with India are now considered the highest priority, according to Professor Ma, given that India is what he calls a "four-in-one" country. "India falls into each of the four major categories of countries that China wants to focus its diplomatic energies on," he explained. The four categories are: Developing countries, neighboring countries, rising powers, and influential actors on the international stage.
There's really far too much to read here, but the implication is clear - the world is shaking into what looks like being its new order for quite a while. I personally will suggest that the US will remain one major pole, with China its key rival and Europe, Russia, India and Iran as second-tier powers that either ally with the gig pair or stand their distance. Both a multipolar and a bipolar environment at the same time - twice as nasty, twice as unpredictable.
The Chinese envoy, who flew to Gwadar for attending the conference, said that with the passage of time economic and business relations between Pakistan and China would assume new heights and his country would extend maximum help and cooperation to Balochistan for making it an important strategic business and trade hub in the region. He was optimistic about the high-profile economic potential of Gwadar.
Speaking about the future of the new port city, he said that ignoring all security apprehensions the Chinese companies were improving their commercial investment in Balochistan.
Chinese engineers and workers at the port have been attacked and some killed by Baloch separatists when work on the port was underway.
Analysts say Gwadar's location has great strategic value - both from the military and energy stand points. The gas pipeline from Central Asia would pass from Gwadar and there is competition from many countries including Iran that is also offering facilities to Central Asian states from Chah Bahar in Iran.
Separatist Baloch organisations have opposed the port's development and have targeted 'settlers' from Punjab who have purchased land cheap in Gwadar in anticipation of investment and fast-paced development, causing a spurt in land prices.
Looks like a new phrase has been coined to match the Washington consensus of market liberalism bandied about in the last decades. In the last couple of weeks, China has entertained a quarter of the world's leaders, The Economist points out - both Africa and ASEAN. Despite suspicions of China's honourable intentions, everyone looks like they're smiling too.
China is likely to care more about governance and human rights, for example, if and when its investments in Africa are threatened by political instability, and if the fall of a pro-China despot brings an anti-China government in its wake. And, by cosying up to nasty dictatorships such as those in Sudan and Zimbabwe, China may damage its relations with Western countries, whose markets will long remain of paramount importance for China's economic growth.
China, mindful of the West’s own history of coddling unsavoury regimes, shrugs at such concerns. But public opinion in America and Europe is unnerved already by China’s export prowess. Policymakers, particularly in America, fret about the growth of Chinese military power. China would hate to see these concerns lead to trade barriers against Chinese goods, or to a severe chill in relations with America. China wants African friends, but not ones that prove too much of liability.
Can't see it happening just yet - both China and India still have a long way to go before their economies are truly liberalised, though the PRC is perhaps a bit ahead. But at least the idea is out there, and aid'n'trade may be better than the niggly conflicts of the last 50 years.
"Following reopening of the trade post on the Indian-Chinese border, our government is considering FTA talks with India," Chinese assistant minister of commerce Fu Ziying said at a recent meeting of the 2007 China Industrial Development Forum in Beijing. The two countries recently reopened cross-border trade at the Himalayan Nathu La Pass last July, 44 years after the trade ended in the wake of a short border war between them.
India has filed the largest number of patent violation cases against Chinese companies at the World Trade Organisation. Chinese leaders feel that the main reason for this is that New Delhi refuses to recognise China as a free market economy. However, most western countries have taken the same stand saying that China highly subsidies its exportable products and cannot be regarded as free market economy.
It's not about trade. It's not about aid. It's not even about oil. It's about world domination:
...this super-summit is about more than a single continent. It marks a new stage in China's re-emergence as a superpower.
The Guardian's Jonathan Watts correctly identifies the deeper significance behind this week's Africa summit. Political commentators continue to gibber on about today's 'multipolar' global structure, but when the chips are down we're back to the Cold War. Power is not just about military strength, it's also about economic and moral advantage. And when it comes to dealing with the unsavoury characters that still dominate much of the planet, China's pre-eminence is clear:
China is not just buying resources, it is selling a model of development. While the west focuses on political freedoms and universal rights, Beijing says the priority should be on improving living standards and national independence. The superiority of this approach, it argues, has been proved by success in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
Where people once flocked to the shores of America in pursuit of wealth and happiness, China is selling its own dream to those who simply aspire to raise themselves out of poverty. In fact the West and the US are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the majority of the world's population, who understandably fear the motives of the former colonial powers. The appeal to dictators is even more obvious:
Robert Mugabe is now one of Africa's most enthusiastic sinophiles. "We have nothing to lose but our imperialist chains," he said before boarding a plane to Beijing.
African leaders are queueing up to sign new deals. Their eagerness to shake hands with President Hu Jintao has drawn comparison to the states that once came to pay tribute to the emperor.
Back in Africa there are a few dissenting voices, complaining that China is a pursuing a neo-colonialist policy, buying up cheap resources and selling higher-priced manufactured goods. But no such critical voices were to be heard among the VIP guests in Beijing.
Of course, only a fool would believe that China has Africa's interests at heart. Dictators love China because China leaves them alone to... dictate. Human rights and democracy couldn't be further from its mind. With the West's credibility walllowing in the quagmire of the Middle East, it looks like a new superpower has arisen.
We're back to a new frame of the Cold War - winner stays on. Soon it'll be the West versus the rest. But there's a lot more of them than us.
Well, nothing whatsoever to do with this blog's anniversary, but it seems that China can and does respond to international criticism. It isn't just one-way traffic.
In the wake of some very negative reporting on organ harvesting, note also the decision to deny authority for the death penalty to all but the higher courts. Yes, it may be just a paperwork formality, but it may be China's way of saying to the West: "We hear you - there are some reforms we need to make."
Times can change, and they will, if only a little slowly. The question has to be, however, when will it be too late for progress to mean anything?
EU and China: Changing Names, Unchanging Attitudes?
The lack of genuine discussion on the EU's new policy paper on China does expose its effective irrelevance. The PRC, for one, is not going to be unduly concerned by it. The Asia Times does have a crack at analysing the issue, but like the Commission itself it has no real conclusions. It's all very well to say that the EU must encourage China to accept international norms, and that its policy must be based on values, not just trade, but how it is meant to go about this is not stated.
Brussels still feels the need to draw together the strands of its policy on China into a coherent whole that responds to the rapidly changing Chinese reality and its impact on the world. The need for a clear formulation of policy is also stimulated by the fact that the EU and China are embarking on the negotiation of a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which will provide the legal framework for their relationship and will replace their original Trade and Cooperation Agreement signed in 1985.
The change in title of the proposed new agreement, like the strategic partnership, indicates that both sides now see their relationship as being much broader than simply trading. This certainly reflects the reality that aside from trade and investment, official contacts and policy dialogues, educational exchanges and tourism are all growing rapidly.
Evidently, something of a conservative thinktank, but the USCC does raise the uncomfortable question of what China's role in the world should be. The report is not yet online, but should be found here when it is.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission accused China of failing "to meet the threshold test of international responsibility in the area of non-proliferation" by aiding
Iran's nuclear, missile and chemical programs and refusing to effectively use its leverage to bring North Korea back into nuclear weapons negotiations.
It said China in recent years has allowed the transfer of weapons and technology across its territory from North Korea to Iran and even if Beijing wanted to control such transfers, this would be very difficult.
Beijing's adherence to World Trade Organization obligations remains "spotty and halting" five years after attaining membership while its hunt for oil and gas holdings overseas could "substantially effect U.S. energy security," the report added.
It's easy to forget sometimes just how good the BBC is, but tonight's Newsnight was a timely reminder for me. Three feature stories headed the bill: the first on the dangers of blogging; next on the right of the BBC and others to interview Taliban spokesmen; the last on the church in China. Each of them was linked by a common thread - the right to free expression.
I was critical of Amnesty's initial attempt to tackle the online issue: it didn't seem to understand the issues at stake. However, now it seems they have got it right. The problem is not so much censorship - which we frankly can do nothing about - but the collusion of companies such as Yahoo in providing evidence which leads to the arrest of bloggers and other critical voices.
Steve Ballinger, part of Amnesty International’s delegation to the IGF, said:
“Freedom of expression online is a right, not a privilege – but it’s a right that needs defending. We’re asking bloggers worldwide to show their solidarity with web users in countries where they can face jail just for criticising the government.
“The Internet Governance Forum needs to know that the online community is bothered about free expression online and willing to stand up for it.”
Amnesty International is calling on governments and companies to ensure that human rights – particularly the rights to freedom of expression, association and the right to privacy – are respected and protected.
Help is, however, at hand via what seems to be an ingenious peer-to-peer solution to disguising your net ID: Freenet. Of course eventually the Great Firewall will cut it off, but the growth of sophistication since the good old days when I and others were desperately trying to use the currently-ruined Anonymouse to get past the CCP is amazing.
Next week will see another summit meeting in Beijing for African leaders. The Economist asks whether China is a suitable model for Africa - the answer, 'no', relates to China's cornering of every economic niche that Africa might once have exploited. China is offering only cash, not know-how or assistance - and in Africa, the cash just ends up in a few select pockets.
China gains both economically and in terms of political capital. It's colonialism by another name, and just as exploitative.
What is in it for China? It no longer wants Africa's hearts, minds or giraffes. Mostly, it just wants its oil, ores and timber—plus its backing at the United Nations. Thus, even as the Chinese win mining rights, repair railways and lay pipelines on the continent, Africa's governments are shuttering their embassies in Taiwan in deference to Beijing's one-China policy.
This suits Africa's governments. The scramble for resources invariably passes the ministerial doorstep, where concessions are sold and royalties collected. China helps African governments ignore Western nagging about human rights: its support has allowed Sudan to avoid UN sanctions over Darfur. And some Africans look on China as a development model, replacing the tough Washington Consensus with a “Beijing Consensus”: China's economic progress is cited by statists, protectionists and thugs alike to “prove” that keeping the state's grip on companies, trade and political freedoms need not stop a country growing by 8%-plus a year.
The paper hasn't yet appeared online, but I'll certainly keep an eye out for it. I expect that it'll be notable for what it desn't say as much as for what it does. Xinhua is certainly keeping mum about anything the EU has to say on human rights and so on, but that may well be because Europe would rather keep its trade levels up than "interfere in China's internal affairs"
The EU's executive Commission will release the new policy paper today.
In it China-EU relations are described as positive but there are also calls for a closer partnership, to deal with global challenges such as energy supply and sustainable development as well as smoother economic and trade cooperation.
"We both have a huge stake in effective multilateralism, and in international peace and stability across the globe," said EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Walder in a joint article for the International Herald Tribune newspaper.
IT TOOK quite literally a bomb to shift the big powers into concerted action at the United Nations Security Council against a long-defiant, boastfully nuclear-capable North Korea. What will it take for Europe, America, Russia and China to agree on the sort of sanctions that might oblige a nose-thumbing but not yet nuclear-armed Iran to obey the council's demand to stop enriching uranium and messing with plutonium, from which its own future bombs could be made?
Great question. The whole Iran-North Korea issue - in many ways it is the same issue, just with different constituent elements - is certainly going to show us the reality of how China will really behave in the context of international institutions like the UN. Is it truly a responsible stakeholder, or will it turn as usual to balance-of-power politics instead?
The Economist thinks the latter:
Having long insisted that the North Korean nuclear issue was better handled outside the UN, China is livid that Mr Kim brushed aside repeated warnings not to test. But if the Chinese are now ready to work through the Security Council, that is chiefly in the hope of forestalling unilateral American action. That still leaves room for dispute that Mr Kim will do his best to widen.
It is becoming increasingly certain, however, that the US's strategy has been appallingly counterproductive. The world has become a more dangerous place since the War on terror; the 'Axis of Evil' has only grown stronger; and America is rapidly losing its diplomatic power to rising China and the the resurgent Russia. Time for reform at the UN.
It's not often that you hear the murmur of an apology in Confucian cultures, much less at the highest of political levels. If Kim Jong-Il really has said he is sorry to Beijing, then that indiscates not only a loss of face but some serious leverage on China's part.
Once again, this whole episode appears to be working out in China's favour while the US and others (Japan and Europe too) stand on the sidelines. Yes, of course it's a regional affair, but one suspects that in the CCP there is some considerable glee at the imroved standing of China in the 'international community'. Solving the DPRK problem truly would make China seem a 'responsible partner' to an increasingly overstretched and irrelevant US.
As well as tighter cargo checks at the main border crossing of Dandong, China has ordered at least four banks to freeze money transfers to North Korea. According to the New York Times, it is also threatening to cut low-cost oil supplies in a cross-border pipeline that is thought to provide more than 80% of North Korea's needs.
This leverage appeared to have paid off today when China's special envoy to Pyongyang, Tang Jiaxuan, put a "strong message" to Mr Kim. According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, the North Korean leader expressed remorse for putting China in a difficult situation and demonstrated a willingness to compromise.
It's good that the PRC is taking the nuclear tests seriously. But it is doing so in a typically opaque manner. Of course, this strategy is probably more acceptable to North Korea itself (note that the envoy is not even a current government official, but a retired minister - thus taking off the pressure of 'officaldom' in the PRC-DPRK talks.)
Most noticeably, China's attitude on sanctions remains ambivalent. It is correct to note that sanctions shouldn't just be a means to an end, because anything serious would trigger immediate collapse. However, the world knows that China is the only country with any influence over the situation, and it is beginning to become apparent that it is going to do nothing - even in the face of a UNSC resolution it itself supported.
Well, we all woke up to a slightly different world. With even Pakistan condemning the tests (there's an element of hypocrisy there, but still, it's the thought that counts) we are perhaps seeing a sudden wave of unity against Kim Jong-Il. All eyes are now on Northeast Asia.
The question is, of course, what happens next? There's three main possibilities I can see.
Firstly, should North Korea pull another similar stunt in the near future, things are going to escalate further. The military solution is of course the nightmare scenario, but there is the chance that the US Army and the PLA would actually join forces and attack North Korea from both north and south. Under such a rapid attack, it's likely that the regime will fold within hours, but this will of course leave the PRC and ROK with an immense headache that they won't have immediate solutions for.
More likely is the turning of the economic screws. But this would also be calling Kim's bluff, since he has previously stated that sanctions will be seen as an act of war. Beijing will also be reluctant to implement this option, since once the DPRK begins to buckle then hordes of refugees will swarm across the Chinese border and create huge social problems in its northern provinces.
The last option is to do nothing - perhaps keep the intelligence work going but little more - and hope that the regime collapses by itself. This could take a long time. And Japan and South Korea will be tempted to develop their own nuclear defences in response, which will ratchet up regional tensions even further. China especially will find it hard to accept a nuclear-armed Tokyo, and Japan itself will convulse with disputes about its pacificist constitution, its role in world affairs and the legacy of Hiroshima.
Ban Ki-Moon, though ostensibly an international figure, is going to be inextricably bound up with the fate of what is after all his home country. Shinzo Abe too is faced with a huge crisis in his first weeks in office. Now is not a good time to be changing the staff; Kim probably knew that all along.
But can it bring its 'soft power' to bear without triggering total collapse in the Korean peninsula, which will have serious knock-on effects in the regional and global economies? More importantly - will it act?
The big challenge though is to China. While the United Nations can pass resolutions, China can take action. It is the major supplier of food and oil to North Korea.
The Kim regime has shown itself to be ruthlessly uninterested in the economic wellbeing of North Korea's people. But the only way to deal with this provocation is by economic, rather than military, force. China has the economic weapons.
A China responsibly taking the lead on behalf of the international community is one good thing that could come out of this unnerving situation.
The White House said South Korean and US intelligence had detected a seismic event at a suspected test site.
The White House said the reported test was a "provocative act", while China denounced it as "brazen".
In an unusually strong statement against its ally, China expressed its "resolute opposition" to the claimed test and said it "defied the universal opposition of international society"
Iran has refused to suspend its uranium enrichment programme after six key countries agreed to discuss possible sanctions against Tehran.
A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry said suspension was "unacceptable" and the threat of sanctions "inefficient".
Who's got the back seat in both these stories? That's right - America. Traditionally, the new Japanese premier makes his first trip to Washington; by choosing Beijing instead, Shinzo Abe not only makes much-needed conciliatory overtures but a statement of realpolitik that the US is losing influence in the region. Same goes for Iran: the situation is governed by what China and Russia do, not America.
Liberalisation is great, until it bites back. Such is probably the underlying message of the latest trade dispute between the EU and China. The latter, of course, can hardly be said to be a squeaky-clean example to the rest of us either; but when it begins calling on the WTO to fix Europe you know that things aren't working out.
Hopefully, the EU will figure out a clear and coherent China policy by the end of the year - it needs to.
Both the North Korean announcement of a potential test and Iran's statement of refusal to suspend uranium enrichment are further blows to the authority of the UN and US interests. To resolve both situations, we have to look to China.
North Korea's activities may have a more long-term strategic effect, especially if South Korea and Japan feel obliged to go nuclear in order to enhance their self defence. This is the first big foreign policy test for new Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, who was quick to condemn North Korea's missile tests earlier in the year, and Beijing will no doubt be looking closely at what he has to say, or not say. But it certainly won't please China if an arms race emerges in East Asia, particularly one involving Japan. That would certainly complicate matters.
If China takes the lead over quelling Kim Jong-Il's unpredictable ambitions, it is more likely to sit back and watch the Iran situation, or even veto snactions in the UNSC.
In many ways, as a major trading partner of Iran, it is in China's interests to allow it to develop its capability and reinforce it as a friendly power in the Middle East in opposition to the US and Israel. Lack of censure from Beijing is sure to ease the flow of oil to China too.
In a sense, it's also fair to say that the Iran crisis is one of America's own making. Through its aggressive Middle East policy and pursuit of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, an Islamic nuclear conundrum was in a sense an inevitable consequence. On the other hand, China's support for North Korea in the 1950s have let it with an uncomfortable responsibility on its own doorstep.
While the US and Europe stand relegated the sidelines of both issues, China's role becomes ever the greater. But with nuclear weapons, the wait-and-see tactic is a risky one indeed. If things go wrong, can we expect China to be a responsible stakeholder in preventing a drama from becoming a crisis?
BBC story below. See also Asia Times Online, which examines in more detail US and Chinese relations with the extended 'Axis of Evil'. In short, while American political opinion is against the four, China's economic ties with them are on the increase:
The Bush administration's efforts to isolate Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela economically are implicitly designed to promote "regime change" from unfriendly to friendly government in each of these countries. Beijing has explicitly worked against Washington's isolation and regime-change endeavors by deepening its relations with Tehran, Pyongyang, Damascus and Caracas...
Economics isn't my strong point, but I think that the upshot of the article is: "The US trade deficit is going to decrease its long-term politico-economic strength".
The US has struck a Faustian bargain with its trading partners, particularly China, responsible for about one third of the $700bn-plus trade total last year. As the American economist Tom Palley puts it: "US consumers get lots of cheap goods in return for which they give over paper IOUs that cost less to print. Meanwhile, China creates millions of jobs and builds modern factories that are transforming it into an industrial superpower, and it also accumulates billions of dollars in financial claims against the US. From this perspective, trade deficits don't matter because there are no limits to either government or private borrowing, and because manufacturing doesn't matter either." The logic of this, Palley notes drily, is that the US would benefit even further if China devalued its exchange rate and ran a larger trade surplus...
What would happen if, as a result of global developments over the coming decades, the dollar ceased to be the reserve currency of choice. This was a point raised by Avinash Persaud, one of the financial sector's more original thinkers, in a recent lecture in New York. Persaud's argument is as follows.
Throughout history, there has always tended to be one dominant reserve currency along with a host of lesser rivals. In the 19th century Britain was the pre-eminent economy and sterling was the main reserve currency. Yet currencies don't retain their dominance forever... The US is living beyond its means, hoping that nobody cashes the cheques it has been merrily writing as the current account has gone deeper into the red. That's the advantage of being a reserve currency, even though, as Persaud notes, there is no rule which says that you have to run current account deficits simply because you are a reserve currency.
Britain didn't a century ago. In the decade or so up to the first world war it had a trade surplus of 5% of GDP. "That is a mirror image of the US today. The UK was in surplus by as much as the US is in deficit." That deficit has enabled the Chinese to build up their industrial strength at a rapid rate, so much so that it is probable that China - and perhaps India - will have overtaken the US as the world's largest economy (on a purchasing power parity basis, at least) by 2050. Persaud thinks that the upshot of this will be that in the next few decades the dollar will start to lose its reserve status just as sterling did in the last century.
It's not just about corruption in Shanghai's top echelons: it's about party politics and patronage. "Killing the chicken to scare the monkeys", as The Economist puts it in the main article (reproduced below).
President Hu Jintao is fighting to impose his authority on wayward localities which are defying efforts to rein in economic growth and prevent a frenzy of ill-considered investment that could further cripple the banking system with bad loans. Before a five yearly party congress late next year, Mr Hu also wants to install loyalists in key posts in the provinces. Mr Chen owed his job in Shanghai to Mr Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, making him an obvious target. He is also widely rumoured to have attacked Mr Hu's economic-control measures at a meeting of the ruling Politburo two years ago.
By taking on Mr Chen—the first Politburo member to be dismissed in more than decade—Mr Hu is flexing his muscles. But he is also showing how little the party has changed. When he first came to power in 2002, he seemed to signal that he would make the party more open and subject to the rule of law. Instead, its investigations are still driven by politics. Corruption is just as rife. The 200-member Central Committee is supposed to monitor the work of the 24-member Politburo headed by Mr Hu, but at its annual meeting next month it will rubber-stamp whatever is put before it.
A sharp slowdown or contraction of real personal consumption expenditure growth in the US in 2007 will lead to much slower economic growth in China. China's export growth could be flat or even negative while investment growth could be cut in half. In addition, rationalization in China's export sector could lead to much higher urban unemployment, especially among China's migrant workforce. This could heighten already increasing social instability, further undermining private consumption growth and economic growth in China.
A US economic downturn next year will undoubtedly have a strong negative impact on China's economy. However, this impact could be mitigated by the government's marshaling of China's considerable resources, including the country's nearly US$1 trillion of foreign exchange reserves. In addition to these reserves, China has enormous fiscal resources that it can employ to boost the economy either directly or indirectly through the country's massive state-owned banking system - not exactly music to the ears of foreign investors who have poured money into China's banks.
Though dependent on consumer demand in the United States, China's economy could easily withstand a US economic recession because of its vast resources and its ability to extend these resources through the still-dominant state-owned economic structures. As a result, slowing US economic growth does not imply a significant reversal in global commodity prices, especially oil prices. Even if economic growth in China slows to 5% in 2007, demand for energy and crude oil in China will remain quite strong.
While China has been accommodating to India in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, most agree that it is just some leeway to keep burgeoning Chinese trade exports to India well oiled. New Delhi knows that the battle for Central Asian energy resources will be bitter. Delhi has been developing independent links with Central Asian countries, with India's first military base to be operational in Tajikistan soon.
Some observers have drawn a parallel between US-China policy and Beijing's engagement of India. Washington has looked at China as a potential rival whose growth momentum cannot be contained and hence must be engaged in a constructive way that is good for business.
"We are used to thinking in terms of conventional warfare between nations, but energy is becoming a weapon of choice for those who possess it." Such is the assesment of Senator Richard Lugar, and it is not a bad one at all.
There's a long piece about energy security in Asia Times, coming from an unusual angle. Should the US ally with the big four Asian economies - China, Japan, South Korea and India - rather than Europe?
Here's the most interesting paragraphs, paraphrased from an expert from China's Institute of Contemporary International Relations, Su Jingxiang:
...if only Washington were savvy enough to "revalue the tremendous market potential" in China and "abate unnecessary doubts toward China", closer cooperation between Beijing and Washington on international energy issues could be realized...
He pointed out that gunboat diplomacy was no longer workable either in the Middle East or Latin America as it produced only terrorism and resistance. At the same time, Su acknowledged that growing dependence of energy imports "weakened the competitiveness and injured the economic security of the US"...
Su advised that the US should "steer away to more cooperation" with other major oil consumers (such as China and India). "The new type of strategic partnership will consolidate the negotiating capacity of oil consumers in their talks with the oil producers, thus helping boost the economic boom and national security of the US," he wrote.
It's not a bad idea, but it does overlook that essential strategic reality - China and the US are competing for the same limited supply. That, after all, is why Russia and the the Middle East have them over a barrel.
But the author does note that the recent visit to China by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has resulted in some concessions by either side (another minor Yuan devaluation, and increased voting power for the PRC in the IMF) that must improve the relationship.
In a sense, then, China has jumped at the chance to manoeuvre the US, weakened as it is by Iraq, into a bargaining position.
Meanwhile, Putin is taking the opportunity to buy back some control over the former Eastern Bloc via gas pipelines. You need to read the article to get the full details, but basically Russia is playing a clever political hand in its negotiations over routes for Kazakh oil. Unencumbered with concerns about democracy and human rights, it's also sorted out its difficulties with Turkmenistan too.
The wheeler-dealings have implications for both Asia and Europe:
Curiously, Gazprom struck the deal with Turkmenistan soon after the US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, Steven Mann, visited Ashgabat to lobby for progress on the moribund Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAP) gas-pipeline project, which was supposed to be an integral part of the new grand US strategy of creating a "Greater Central Asia" with a unified energy structure for the countries of Central and South Asia. It was hoped to draw Central Asia into the US sphere of influence and pit Indian interests against Russian influence in the region.
But the TAP and the United States' "Greater Central Asia" strategy are not the only casualties of Gazprom's Turkmen deal. The ramifications of the deal run in far-flung directions deep into the European continent. The deal arguably frustrates the US attempt to reduce the European Union's dependence on Russian energy supplies.
Since Russia looks like it has clinched the stranglehold over Europe's gas supply, a remaining factor is Iran. Europe has to get access to Iranian gas somehow, in order to give itself an alternative to Russian gas:
And this is undoubtedly a critical factor of divergence in the respective approaches of Russia, the EU and the US toward the Iran nuclear issue. Though Russia is certainly interested in a solution to the Iran crisis, Moscow will have reason to worry about an EU-Iran agreement that may lead to an improved energy dialogue between the two protagonists, as that would make Iran a rival to Russia on the European gas market. As for Tehran, it, too, perfectly well understands that its preference should be to settle with Western Europe rather than with Russia. That is why Tehran has opted for independence in its gas policy and has scrupulously kept Gazprom out of its Southern Pars gas fields.
Yet there is another chance - China. China is a key competitor for Central Asian gas and has bought up large holdings of it.
In summary:
Russia is in control of Central Asian gas routes to the EU
The EU's only alternative is Iran
The US is constraining Iran over the nuclear issue, so that's off the agenda for the time being, which suits Russia fine
Only China can compete with Russia for control of Central Asian energy
Can the US really broker a deal with China and India, or will national interests win through?
...over the last decade, Japan has been slowly becoming more nationalist in its sentiments. And the election of Abe as LDP leader and the new prime minister will be by far the most important stage in this process so far. Far from seeking a new kind of relationship with China, it would seem that Japan is being driven by old enmities and new fears. Not surprisingly, there is growing concern in Japan about how China will behave given its new-found power and in the light of how Japan has treated it in the past. A combination of old-style superiority and new-born fear lie behind the revival of a new Japanese nationalism of which Abe is the expression.
The consequences are likely to look something like this. Japan will deepen its military alliance with the United States out of its fear of China, a process that the US will be happy to encourage, as indeed it already has. With similar American encouragement, Japan will continue to play a wider geographical role as its global ally. Meanwhile, Japan will reject the possibility of seeking a different kind of relationship with China and its other neighbours, while at the same time reasserting its own past and seeking to slowly rehabilitate its role and actions during the last war. The result will be growing tensions with its neighbours, above all China. That is bad news for east Asia and indeed the world.
Even if the Chinese central bank does, as some expect, let the yuan strengthen more than previously anticipated, this will not be the panacea that many hope for. As Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, points out, China imports many of the components it assembles into finished products; a strengthening yuan will make these components cheaper, eroding some of the effect on export prices. Nor is China’s competitive advantage limited to a cheap currency. And although China is one of the big funders of America’s current-account deficit, it is certainly not alone. Unless Americans curb their appetite for imports bought with borrowed money—and start making more things other countries want to buy—the deficit will continue to be a problem. This is roughly what the Chinese government has been saying.
A rising yuan will have some negative effects on the West, not limited to a shortage of cheap electronics. Cheap Chinese imports have kept a lid on inflation in many countries, letting central banks keep interest rates low without worrying about their economies overheating. As Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, has warned, once the yuan begins to strengthen, central banks will face higher inflationary pressures. With oil prices already pushing inflation to worrying levels, Mr Paulson may not be as eager as he seems for a rising yuan.
Dongtan is to be built on Chongming island in the Yangtze river delta, over an area three-quarters of the size of Manhattan island - 86 square kilometres. It has been commissioned by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) and is designed by the global consultancy Arup which boasts of its green credentials. It will be largely powered by renewable energy, and will consist of village neighbourhoods linked by public transport: polluting vehicles will not be allowed in the city. It will incorporate local agriculture and generate new clean industry to provide jobs for a target population of 80,000. It will also act as a buffer zone between the rest of the island and the Dongtan wetlands which are a migration route for rare birds including the hooded and red-crowned cranes.
BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - The National Foreign Exchange Center said the central bank has set the yuan central parity rate at a record of 7.9342 to the dollar.
The rate, published on the official Chinamoney website, compares with a midpoint of 7.9431 set the previous trading day.
The yuan yesterday strengthened to its highest levels yet against the dollar in intraday trade, peaking at 7.9200 on the exchange-traded market before ending at 7.9450.
Both are tokens of China's increasing influence in world economic affairs - and the influence of those affairs on it.
Once in place, the infrastructure network will speed up the exploitation of the Tibetan plateau's rich deposits of gold, copper, zinc, coal and other resources. Copper is regarded as particularly valuable as it is an essential component in the generation and transmission of electricity.
China has also invited transnational oil giants such as BP and Shell to explore for oil and gas equivalents after realizing that its own companies lacked the expertise to drill in a region known for its complex geology...
Perhaps one of the most controversial Chinese plans to tap Tibetan resources to date is Beijing's new water scheme, called the "the big Western Line".
Encouraged by the success of its civil engineering triumph with the Golmud-Lhasa railway, Chinese planners have come up with an even more audacious scheme to build a series of aqueducts, tunnels and reservoirs that would carry water from Tibet to the parched plains of northern China.
The EU presents a complex challenge for China. On the one hand, the EU itself, which conducts the European relationship with China in many areas, is undoubtedly an important body. But the individual member states play a crucial role in determining its policy, and also pursue their own interests, including on many issues concerning China. China therefore needs to cultivate its relations at both the supranational and national levels in Europe.
Mr Prodi said it showed China was taking on a greater diplomatic role.
"This shows that China is assuming more and more international responsibility," he said.
In the past, China has been reluctant to play leading roles in UN peacekeeping missions.
But as its economy has grown more powerful, it has faced calls from the US and EU to play a greater role. It own foreign policy has shifted so that ensuring access to natural resources like oil is now a priority.
Clampdown on Free Speech in the Name of Free Speech
For all the talk of liberalization and the gradual opening of Chinese society, at the moment it appears that censorship is growing worse. The latest clampdown has been on foreign press distributing news and pictures within China without Xinhua's permission (ie. censorship).
There seems a case for the idea that China is spring cleaning in anticipation of the 2008 Olympics:
The Chinese government has crammed together a series of controversial trials, arrests and policies, presumably in the hope of getting critical overseas coverage out of the way in time for the Olympics in 2008 and an important Communist party congress next year.
Last month, the three court cases with the highest international profile of the past two years were settled in little more than a week. A blind activist, Chen Guangcheng, was sentenced to four years in prison, a New York Times assistant, Zhao Yan, to three years, and a Straits Times correspondent, Ching Cheong, five years.
The official statements are notable for their disingenuous tone:
Arriving in London for an official visit, Premier Wen Jiabao said he believed foreign news agencies in China would abide by Chinese laws, though he also added that the country would ensure the free flow of financial information.
In Beijing, Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said: "The regulation is to standardize the release of news ... and to protect the intellectual-property rights of the foreign news agencies ... The release of the regulation is a demonstration of the spirit of the rule of law ... China is a country ruled by law. There is no absolute freedom in any country."
Lucky that financial information is unrestricted, since anything that curbs economic growth is a definite no-no; even luckier that intellectual property will be respected - I'm sure Xinhua won't be tempted to plagiarise anything at all.
All this being said, with Wen meeting a lame-duck Blair weakened by recent political wranglings, these issues will certainly not be addressed during the current visit - if ever.
The Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao Zedong, an individual responsible for creating a nation and for the deaths of millions, passed away 30 years ago. The BBC has a short retrospective, in which little new is said, but it is interesting for the divergence of views presented:
"I think that now we can safely say that Mao made many mistakes," said Mr Chen, who was visiting the small museum next to Mao's house....
"I think Mr Chairman Mao was a great guy. To us he is not a person, he is a god," according to Mr Cai, now in his thirties, and was just a child when Mao died....
In my view this is unusual. Despite the horrors they lived through, it was my belief that the older generation were the ones that revered Mao as the founder of the PRC, while the younger generation viewed him as an irrelevance from history. The true architect of modern China is Deng Xiaoping, Mao's rival.
And despite the facts that Mao's face still adorns the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) at the entrance to the Forbidden City, not to mention every banknote in circulation and billions of tacky tourist trinkets, it is pretty obvious to all contemporary visitors that he leaves scant few real legacies.
So isn't now a good time for China to take a look at the mistakes of the man who was at least "30% wrong", in order to learn from the past and reconcile for the future?
Perhaps. But under the current climate, with the CCP's fragile legitimacy still anchored to its father figure, it doesn't look like that moment will come for quite a while yet.
An article on a Cultural Revolution survivor, now a successful academic, via The Peking Duck:
Wu is aware of the Faustian bargain he's made to live - and live well - in the People's Republic of China. It's a bargain that millions of people like him in China's growing middle class have made. They inhabit a system that many despise, but it's also a system they believe they can't live without. The cost of moving forward is forgetting the past, Old Wu would say, including the dream of bringing to justice the people who killed your parents.
China wants the 21st century to become the Chinese century, yet history has a way of sneaking up on countries, just as it does on people. The late Chinese writer Ba Jin lobbied hard in the last years of his life for a museum to commemorate the victims of the Cultural Revolution; it was never built. I asked Wu what he thought about such a museum. Forty years after the Cultural Revolution, he said, "China isn't ready for it." in China.
After meeting Mr Lamy, the WTO's director general, Chinese commerce minister Bo Xilai said Beijing hoped to play a "constructive" role in getting the talks back on track.
But he said the onus was on the US and the EU to revive the talks.
"At present, we need the developed members to take the lead in making substantial concessions in order to create conditions for the quick resumption of the negotiations," he said.
"Only by changing the unbalanced situation between the developed and developing members can we advance the sustained and healthy development of global trade."
Meanwhile, David Cameron has ideas of his own:
"We must try to restart the Doha round," he told business leaders in Mumbai.
"But if we cannot get a breakthrough, we should consider the possibility of an EU/India free trade agreement."
Tory leader David Cameron, as always endearingly fluffy, has drafted an editorial on his policy towards India. He's even blogging his current trip (oh how modern of you, David, well done) complete with YouTube-style videos. Of course it's a barefaced swipe for the ''ethnic vote'', but note the flipside of the coin that Cameron is handing us here:
Our special relationship with America has been forged through a shared past and a shared understanding of the world. And now, in the 21st century, as the world's centre of gravity moves from Europe and the Atlantic to the south and the east, I believe it is time for Britain and India to forge a new special relationship, to meet our shared challenges in this new era of international affairs.
All well and good, but India isn't going to protect our security or economies in the way that the US has for the last 60 years - it's a badly underdeveloped country with vast problems of its own. Yes, we must recognise the shift in power from the West to the East - India and China - but we must also acknowledge the practicalities.
Otherwise, Cameron is nicely on message:
For most of the past half century we in the west have assumed that we set the pace and we set the global agenda. Well now we must wake up to a new reality. We have to share global leadership with India, and with China. And we must recognise that India has established beyond argument, through its economic and political success, its right to a seat at the top table. India, one of the great civilisations of the world, is truly great again.
India must be greatly enjoying the wave of sycophancy that's headed its way this year, but the fact remains that in terms of international leadership it's China we have to look to. India has far less influence over the region than the PRC; if anything, it has effectively been encircled by it.
In his rhetoric on the environment and globalisation, the man does have a lot of platitudes up his sleeve, but his conclusion is dead-on:
In an ever more connected world, we cannot afford to ignore the forces that are shaping it.
"In 2009, we'll reach half a million barrels a day, and in the decade after that we'll see a million barrels," Chavez said.
The left-leaning Chavez, a strident critic of Washington, wants to reduce Venezuela's dependence on oil exports to the United States and sees China as an important alternative. Venezuela is the fifth-biggest oil exporter over all and currently ships 1.5 million barrels of a day to the United States. This is about two-thirds of its oil exports.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is reported to be keen to see party-controlled unions established in Wal-Mart stores across the country, as part of increased efforts to unionise employees at foreign-owned companies operating in China.
Staff at at least 17 Wal-Mart stores in the country have formed unions since July, according to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.
China used to be seen as a country with a lean population, but not any more.
Today a fifth of the world's overweight and obese people live in China - and the numbers are rising dramatically.
Professor Wu Yangfeng said this posed a considerable health problem, calling on the Chinese authorities to act now to prevent further increase.
There seems to be a range of underlying causes - from changes in diet to reduced levels of exercise and a rapid increase in the use of cars.
China has become a land of enormous and striking inequalities. The facts - none of which are suppositions from Western journalists (one story is from Xinhua, the other from a Chinese contributor to the BMJ) - speak for themselves.
The Bush administration came to power convinced that China was America's strategic competitor. But then came 9/11. To Beijing's enormous relief, Washington's focus shifted to terrorism, and there was less attention on China's discreet military build-up.
Nevertheless, Pentagon planners are concerned about developments, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said much of China's arms spending is being concealed.
Ambassador Sha responded strongly to the allegations. "It's better for the US to shut up," he said. "Keep quiet. It's much, much better."
This is a crucial question for China's future. Will it be just an economic superpower content to sell the world shoes and washing machines? Or will it have the military muscle to protect its new interests around the world?
The United States hopes that the only bastion of communism in the Americas might be toppled by people power, as in the revolutions in central Europe in 1989. But the Cuban authorities may hope for a different transition model: China's. The People's Republic survived the death of its towering founder, Mao Zedong, and then eventually flourished by liberalising its economy while keeping strict one-party control over the state.
Cuba may attempt to do the same. Raúl Castro, Fidelâs brother, has 'temporarily' taken over the most important jobs of party leader, president and commander-in-chief of the army. Previously he was the world's longest-serving defence minister. As in China, the army is not only the 'defender' of the revolution, but an active player both in politics and business. The slightly younger Castro is said by some to be more intolerant of opposition than his brother, but he is also thought to have been responsible for the limited liberalisation of Cuba's economy in the 1990s.
It's one of those ironies of cross-cultural understanding between China and the West. Aside from fears of internal unrest, one reason for the all-encompassing media censorship is to promote a wholesome image of China to the outside world. Outside China, few really take its image-building seriously, and in my view it's entirely counterproductive.
But if China were to truly open up and allow free and accurate reporting, then this action would engender just that very respect it craves. Organisations such as Reporters Sans Frontiers are already campaigning for a boycott of Beijing 2008, and such a move would cock them a very large snook.
In a long opinion article in Comment is Free, Jonathan Watts is correct to state that 2008 is a make-or-break moment for China's international reputation - but the question is whether the authorities are sufficiently in tune with the perceptions and sensibilities of the outside world to capitalize upon the opportunity.
I'm not convinced, however, by Watt's assertion that the PRC really will be able fix Beijing's problems even for the short Olympics month. It may have the authority to demand everything of its citizens, but it still can't do magic:
A series of miracles will take place exactly two years from today in Beijing. The putrid yellow smog that usually cloaks the city will suddenly lift to reveal a glorious blue heaven. The thick traffic that almost permanently clogs the roads will dissolve for an entire fortnight. Quaint, dusty, brick-walled hutong alleyways will disappear behind awe-inspiring monuments to modern architecture. And, wonder of wonders, a proudly down-to-earth population of spitters and smokers will - at least temporarily - give up the habits of a lifetime.
It may sound outlandish, but this is not the prophesy of a deranged fortune-teller. It is the vision of Beijing's Olympic planners and I, for one, have no difficulty at all in believing it will come true.
One also wonders if there might be a little accident:
Far worse treatment is meted out to ethnic Chinese journalists and their sources. Ng Han Guan, an Associated Press photographer was clubbed and his camera smashed by plain-clothes security personnel when he took a picture of a colleague being manhandled by police after the Asian Cup final in 2004. BBC producer Bessie Du and cameraman Al Go were strip-searched by police after they visited a riot scene at Dingzhou village in Hebei province last summer. Fu Xiancai, a land rights activist, was left paralysed in June this year after a beating he received on the way home from a police station, where he had been warned for giving an interview to ARD, a German TV channel. Police say Fu broke his own neck.
What would happen, for example, if a Chinese-American reporter were to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? Would he be treated as a Chinese or as a foreigner? The average baton-wielding copper might not just twig the subtle difference until a couple of cracks around the head too late.
Furthermore, the Olympics has historically been a stage for political protests - for example the Black power salute at Mexico 1968. It wouldn't take much for an independent-minded medal-winner to take to the stage and reveal a 'Free Tibet' T-shirt, and any national body that were to ban or criticize such an action would draw considerable flak from the public and media.
At the end of the day, the ball is in Beijing's court:
Changes inside China today are so rapid that what seems outlandish today can sometimes be achieved tomorrow. Given the fact that the rules are already widely ignored, a permanent lifting of travel restrictions would cost the government very little, but the gains would be enormous. It would help to show that China is not just living up to global standards, it has ambitions to set them.
Change is not the kind of thing that can easily be reversed; if the party were to loosen its grip in 2008, it would be hard for it to go back to the way it was before.
Last week, the Associated Press news agency reported that researchers on the west coast of the US were monitoring the impact of pollution from China.
The report said that the US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that on certain days nearly 25% of pollution in the skies above Los Angeles could be traced to China.
Mr Li dismissed the claims and said further study was required.
"Those reports saying 25% of pollution in Los Angles comes from China are not objective and are irresponsible and the conclusion is also doubtful," he said.
Of course. Anything that doesn't come from China can't be objective, can it?
Franklin Lavin, undersecretary for international trade at the US Department of Commerce, highlighted the “good news” of rapidly expanding US exports to China but struck a cautionary note on Beijing's approach to investment and standards.
“There is also ... potential for policy drift, which we would not view as helpful, a policy drift towards the direction of economic nationalism and interventionism,” Mr Lavin told a briefing.
China Daily:
Referring to counterfeiting in China, Lavin told reporters in the motor shop on Saturday that the Chinese Government is taking many effective measures on intellectual property rights (IPR) this year and "we are working closely" to resolve the issue.
Lavin will be discussing limits to U.S. businesses and services in China, among the barriers he said that help create the damaging perception in America that China doesn't play fair...
"If the Chinese market is perceived as unfair, if it's perceived as closed and we have a substantial trade deficit, these two factors together can feed an anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States, which I feel is unhealthy for both countries," Lavin said.
I'm saying nothing new about media manipulation in China here, and it may well be that edgier Chinese-language publications such as Cai Jing have a more objective view that the government-issue toilet paper.
It's just that the nationalistic tone of the China Daily highlights the precise concerns of the Financial Times that China is indeed not playing fair. And with no WTO legitimacy to enforce true liberalisation, what can we expect?
Between 1770 and 1840 Britain underwent one of the most dramatic urban migrations in world history. Hundreds of thousands left their villages and farmsteads for the workshops of Birmingham, docks of Liverpool and mills of Manchester. Sheffield and Bradford doubled their populations in a matter of years.
Today that history is repeating itself in China as families from the rural hinterland decamp for the coastal cities. Every year 8.5 million Chinese peasants make their way into the urban centres. By next year China is set to become a majority-urban nation, with more than 3.2 billion living in cities and suburbs.
But is anyone actually doing anything about the horrendous pollution and squalor that accompanies this? Yes, money has been announced for a general cleanup. But there are some essential factors that are notable by their absence:
The initial Victorian response to the state of their cities was equally lackadaisical. Pollution and inequality was the price of progress, and the middle classes solved their problems by simply moving upwind. But in the end a combination of religion, officialdom and civil society forced the cities to change.
In a country where activists apparently break their own necks in order to get attention (if you believe this, get off my blog), how can real progress begin?
There is no evangelism in China; religion is suppressed. Nor, with a hobbled media and non-existent political opposition, is there any civil society. Officialdom can be trusted only to line its own pockets, as it has done for centuries.
And, of course, the writer cannot resist a final warning from history:
Ultimately the urban masses had to be enfranchised. For at the forefront of politicians' minds was another story of rapid urbanisation. Across the Channel, France too was trying to cope with startling rates of immigration and industrialisation. But the consequence of its political fumbling was a Paris in flames in 1830, 1848 and 1871. That is a history the Chinese are all too keen to avoid.
Unfortunately, the Chinese government has few tools at its disposal to manage the pace of growth. Its attempts to tighten monetary policy have been feeble, hampered by its policy of keeping the yuan artificially cheap. Though the government has tried to “sterilise” its foreign currency operations by issuing more government securities to mop up the resulting excess yuan, its efforts are constrained by the shaky banking system.
China has tried to bolster its weak macroeconomic controls with microeconomic interventions, placing administrative restrictions on investment in specific industries it considers to be growing too fast. China’s economy may now be too big for such policies to do much good but the government is fearful of choking off export-led growth when so many Chinese are desperate for jobs. And the relatively primitive state of China’s financial system makes it hard to fine-tune either micro or macroeconomic policies—particularly since so much investment is driven by political considerations at all levels of government.
As well as the yaks, Tibet has found a most unlikely ally in the struggle against the Han influx:
The line depends on coolants to stop the ice upon which it rests from melting. But global warming has raised temperatures in the mountain region faster than expected. As well as damaging concrete pillars and bridges, it has added to the problem of sand dunes that encroach upon the track.
The accidental (?) deaths of four UN observers after an Israeli bomb went astray may actually have some positive side-effects. Much as I sympathise with the families of the dead, there's two things worth mentioning.
Firstly, it lays to rest the myth that Israel is conducting a campaign of surgical strikes against Hizbollah. Hardly. It proves once and for all that Israel is firing indiscriminately into Lebanon, unmindful of the effects it may have on the civilian population.
While I agree that Israel has the right to conduct a military campaign against Hizbollah, it must be conducted under the rules of war.
More significantly, aside from prompting righteous indignation from Kofi Annan and the UN, it has forced China well and truly into the picture. It's not as severe as the bombing of the PRC embassy in Belgrade, but now that a Chinese is dead then there has to be a response.
With its rising economy and political and military power, it is about time that China drifted away from its position of abstention and began taking sides. It may be too late for Darfur, but if it goes to a Security Council vote, it looks like China will have an influence.
What effect this will have when China begins to engage in the region remains to be seen, but it's not looking like it will side with Israel. Let's also not forget that the PRC has close links with Iran.
Commodore Uday Bhaskar of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis in Delhi suggested the timing of the report could be intended to influence the US Congress's debate on the Indian deal:
"My initial reaction is that one of the report's authors [David Albright] is a critic of the India-US nuclear deal and therefore this report has to be seen in the light of its passage through Congress. It may be true but there's a reason why the report appears now."
Mr Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who now runs Isis, denied there was any link between the timing of the report and the congressional debate. "It is a strange twist to the debate to see a potential Pakistani threat to India as an attempt to derail the India agreement in Congress," he said, adding that the publication was dictated more by the need to get the report out before the summer holidays began.
There is speculation in Delhi that the new plant may be a fresh sign of China's commitment to a "strategic partnership" with Pakistan. The pair already have extensive military and diplomatic ties.
"China has supported Pakistan since the 80s and it remains the wild card here," Commodore Bhaskar said. "At the time of the Indo-US deal, there were clear indications that Beijing thought if Washington can assist India, China can aid Pakistan."
Mr Albright said Chinese assistance was a possibility.
"You always worry that some of this is coming from China. Can Pakistan really do all this on its own? You wonder," he said. "That would be very serious."
South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at a minimum vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material. A negotiated agreement that results in a halt to the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons should be a priority for the international community. Not only are such arsenals a waste of precious resources, they increase instability in the region and could needlessly provoke China to respond by increasing the size and lethality of its own nuclear capabilities.
We have to recognize that no established Islamic power has the ability to strike outside of its immediate border. The armed forces of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran have no capacity to inflict meaningful harm on the West. The sole exception is Pakistan, which is why the global terrorist brotherhood will probably focus more of its attention on this country than any other in the next few months.
Whether or not the Pakistani state can or will "inflict meaningful harm on the West" is not exactly the point, but in terms of vulnerability to collapse or coup, Pakistan is way up there in the list of potential flashpoints.
There isn't a hell of a lot of evidence for the next point either, but it's an interesting theory:
Just as Syria failed to show much control over Hezbollah, Pakistan has lost control of its militants, who now appear to work directly with al-Qaeda command structures. The turning point could well have been the Pakistani army attacks in the Pashtun areas that were undertaken to keep the US happy in its "war on terror".
Disenchanted that the Pakistani army could kill its own creations, Kashmiri militants appear to have bypassed the army, going straight to the Taliban and perhaps even to bin Laden. This explains the attacks on both Srinagar (grenade explosions that killed nine) and Mumbai on the same day, a move that seems to have caught even the Pakistani army by surprise, if its state of readiness in the days preceding the attacks is any indication.
It is certainly true that the Pakistani military is not making friends among Islamic militants, and is caught in a complex web of alliances and counter alliances across the various conflicts on Balochistan, Waziristan and the Northwest Frontier - including with anti-Taliban US Forces. It's a volatile combination that eventually has to break down.
Whether or not Pakistani Islamists are in league with al-Qaeda, as the author suggests, is not really relevant. I'm also not convinced of the argument that the Militants will ventually get their hands on nuclear technology, though there is mounting evidence of increasing production capacity in Pakistan.
Think 'Pakistan' and 'nuclear' and the next word that comes to mind is 'China'. China is key to the build of Pakistan's military, and props the failed state up in other ways in order to gain from its geopolitical position at a key strategic point for oil supply routes.
While there's little danger of China casting aside its ally in Musharraf, the government that would follow him would be another matter. And eventually, Musharraf is going to fall, whether due to pressure from the outside regarding his nuclear ambitions or pressure from the inside from the Islamists and nationalists.
I'm not impressed with Akya's argument that China will side with the West in order to stave the threat of Taiwanese independence in the background: if anything, China might take the opportunity to seize the strategic zones it needs for energy security and then move on Taiwan while the US flounders in Iran and elsewhere.
Nice collection of statistics on relative economic indicators. Here's an interesting one:
On the human development front, China’s human development index (HDI) ranking slipped from 82 in 1991, to 85 in 2006. India’s condition was similar as it slipped from 123 in 1991, to 127 in 2005.
Despite all the growth, are things really getting better?
The Spanish Civil War was really just a prelude to World War II. Could a similar pattern of events alreay be unfolding?
Perhaps somewhat fanciful, premature and over-the-top, but at least someone is thinking about it. Asia Times' Chan Akya considers, in a two part series, how China and India might get involved should the tide of conflict in the Middle East expand further.
After a somewhat overenthusiastic reference to Huntingdon's Clash of Civilizations and a long historical passage, the author then hits a nail more-or-less on the head:
There are today not enough Christians or Muslims in China to push the country in the direction of supporting either the West or Islam in any global conflagration. However, a resurgent West poses more of a threat to China's patriarchal culture, which is not very different from the centralized authority-driven culture of Islam. Given that, it is more likely that China would tilt toward supporting Islam, as its weapons-proliferation efforts over the past few years have shown.
Yep. The Uyghurs are hardly a threat to China, while if India were to side with the West then its Muslim population might just explode. And China has been sponsoring Iran (not to mention Iraq, too) for decades. If the price is right, they'll sell to anyone - and they get the oil rights in return.
As to whether I agree with the concluding paragraphs, I'm not sure:
This leads me to conclude that an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East would eventually necessitate the West to demand adequate support from China, failing which the country itself could become a target. The waxworks of Beijing are likely to grant enough concessions to the West to avoid being attacked, and then lie in wait for their revenge.
The Indian situation is more precarious. While much of the country's right-wing intelligentsia would push it to war against Islam, there is enough of a fifth column in place to thwart the country's historic quest for vengeance. India's Muslims number more than any other country's in the world with the exception of Indonesia. Add to these the populations of both Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Indian military might is in essence boxed in.
The West demand support from China? Like it is already trying to do over sanctions for Sudan, North Korea and Iran? Give me a break. The West knows it won't get a smidgin of help from Beijing, and will thus be more likely to expect direct (or indirect) conflict. China will probably see its opportunity to firm up its energy security, not to mention nationalist ambitions such as Taiwan when the West's back is turned.
India, on the other hand, I do expect to be somehow squeezed in the middle, unable to act in its own interests, effectively encircled by China via Sino-friendly states such as Pakistan and Burma, a weak and politically fractured Nepal and the conquered territory of Tibet.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The Economist's choice of title (from a poem by Dylan Thomas) for its analysis of the collapse of the WTO talks is apposite indeed. Think of what you might, for better or for worse the WTO is now the light that failed.
The historic chance to truly liberalize the world economy looks like it has eluded us, and at the end of the day those who will suffer most will be the poor and the deprived. Europe's ludicrous and insane Common Agricultural Policy will continue to screw people in Africa and elsewhere:
This is a tragedy, especially for the developing world. Last year, the World Bank estimated that global gains from trade liberalisation would equal roughly $287 billion, of which $86 billion would accrue to developing nations, lifting at least 66m people out of poverty. Activist groups including Greenpeace and Oxfam were quick to condemn both Washington and Brussels for intransigence over agricultural subsidies, saying that rich-world self interest is leaving the poor to suffer.
For the benefit of a few French farmers, cheap subsidised grain will continue to flood the world market putting local producers out of business and ultimately creating the conditions for famine. As Amartya Sen correctly says, it's not just drought that triggers starvation - it's economics.
It's not often that I spring to Bush's defence, and this is not one of those times, but The Economist has a point:
The collapse will probably be blamed on America, which has been pushing for bold action on agricultural tariffs, and resisting a modest compromise deal that includes caps on its own agricultural subsidies. This is ironic, because America has been one of the grave men pushing hard to revive Doha after the round’s first collapse at Cancún in 2003. Despite high-profile deviations, such as slapping tariffs on imported steel, Mr Bush has largely been a committed free trader.
The truth is that while there have been grave men and wise men, the good men have had no real voice. And I too think that the blame lies squarely with our very own beloved EU.
What has not been said, so far, is who else will gain from this. I think there's going to be one big beneficiary... it's coming... China. Without demands to relax trade tariffs on manufactured imports etc. China may well continue to resist becoming the 'world's largest market', as so many expect it to be.
On the other hand, if the West begin slapping tariffs and quotas on imports from China, the whole edifice of the PRC could swiftly begin to crumble. I don't think it'll come to that, but it could be one of a cocktail of factors that lead us further down that dark road, burning and raving at the close of day.
Every time you turn on the television or pick up a magazine, it is no longer the rise of China, it is now the rise of China and India.
The desire to make comparisons is understandable. Both have more than a billion people. Both are growing at 10% a year.
There are, I suspect, many who are hoping that India, with its freedom and democracy, will win this new race to become the next economic super power. I am not so sure.
I'm on the same wavelength as you, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes. The people who talk this up need to get out there and see, smell and experience it for themselves. Only then can we really progress.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: see also these posts at Peking Duck and Talk Talk China. I do think that in order to slag India off you need to have actually been there too. Some of the comments on TTC are extremely unbalanced.
Oxford Professor and all-round commentator Timothy Garton-Ash takes a timely look at the state of the world in mid-2006.
His analysis is bleak. Of course, no writer on current affairs has the benefit of hindsight and it'll be a long time before we know how history will view this little episode. But Garton-Ash takes the essentially neo-realist view that a multipolar order is a recipe for disaster.
The neo-liberalist argument that the US will create stability through institutions and 'enlightened self-interest' no longer washes, and the hegemon is clearly on the decline as other powers rise. The kernel of the argument is quite succinct:
This new multipolarity is the result of at least three trends. The first, and most familiar, is the rise or revival of other states - China, India, Brazil, Russia as comeback kid - whose power resources compete with those of the established powers of the west. The second is the growing power of non-state actors. These are of widely differing kinds. They range from movements like Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, to non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace, from big energy corporations and drug companies to regions and religions.
A third trend involves changes in the very currency of power. Developments in technologies with violent potential mean that very small groups of people can challenge powerful established states, whether by piloting an aeroplane into the World Trade Centre in New York, targeting a missile at Haifa, taking on the US military in Iraq, bombing the London underground, or squirting sarin gas into the Tokyo subway.
Not to mention the US's loss of EH Carr's third kind of power, 'power over opinion' (the others being military and economic power). Since the war America has been much better at provoking than winning hearts and minds. It just can't let go of those balls, and unfortunately Israel tends to follow suit.
Most of all, Garton-Ash displays his disillusionment with the tenets of liberalism (which encompasses a convenient jibe at the commander-in-chief of misplaced liberal values, the French President):
When Jacques Chirac spoke fondly of multipolarity, back in 2003, he conflated two claims: the world is multipolar, and that's a good thing. Claim 1 is being proved right. Claim 2 has yet to be confirmed. For a start, it matters a lot whether this is multipolar order or multipolar disorder. Order is a high value in international relations. It stops a lot of people being killed. At the moment, we have multipolar disorder, and it's not clear what the shape of a new multipolar order might be. Historically, the emergence of new powers, elbowing for position, has increased the chances of violence. So has contested authority within the frontiers of states.
I disagree with the author's fears that nuclear conflict is impending; no state (apart from North Korea, perhaps) would be willing to act in such self-disinterest, and I can't see any terrorist organisations gaining the capability or the will to use the bomb.
But the essence of his fears is spot-on:
We liberal internationalists dream of a world of democratic, peace-loving, human-rights-respecting states... Some of the growing powers fit that vision... to a large extent, India and Brazil. China and Russia definitely do not, nor do many of the non-state actors that are currently making the running in world politics. Henry Kissinger has suggested that the geopolitics of Asia in the 21st century could resemble those of Europe in the 19th century, with great powers jockeying for position, using war as the continuation of politics by other means. But it could be worse. It could be that kind of great-power rivalry on a world scale, plus terrorists. And corporations. And transnational religious communities. And international NGOs. No moral equivalence is suggested between these very different kinds of actor, but what they all have in common is that they don't fit neatly into a world order of states.
The environmental degradation in China is phenomenal. I'll never forget the taste of chemicals on my tongue after I gave up smoking; the grey smogs that enveloped Shanghai for 25 days every month; or the constant stream of factories and industrial wasteland along the Shanghai to Beijing railway.
Will the place truly be ready before the 2008 Olympics? Still, $175bn is no small sum, as long as it isn't siphoned off into a billion pockets.
A complex and highly-involved essay on an alternative model to the OPEC system features in Asia Times Online. Far too detailed to get into the nuts and bolts of it - reprinted below - but just imagine for a moment what the planet would look like if we were able to rid ourselves of the political weight of the OPEC cartel.
For a start, the energy security issue could be removed from the Middle East conflict, radical Islam and terrorism. I'm not saying that Russia is a safe and stable country, far from it, but the balance of economic power would shift significantly once the Kremlin became the overlord of our energy supplies rather than the failing states and dictatorships that are lackeys to the US military-industrial complex.
It is quite tough to understand exactly how this would all work:
The OPEC model has been limited to crude oil; the Russian model aims at covering supply of both crude oil and natural gas. The OPEC model has been limited to regulating supply and price, according to the swing-producer mechanism. Until now, this role has been played by Saudi Arabia, with its global lead in crude-oil reserves, and in its flexible capacity to lift, pump to port, and ship.
The Russian model aims to supplant the Saudis, emphasizing Russia's global lead in gas reserves and in barrel of oil equivalent (boe). Already, Russia exceeds Saudi Arabia as the largest producer in boe terms (13.3 million boe per day, compared with 10 million boe/d for Saudi Arabia); the largest exporter in boe terms (18.7% of global hydrocarbon exports); and the largest reserve base (16.3% of world hydrocarbon reserves boe).
From the Russian perspective, the Saudi role and OPEC model have benefited the United States, which can pressure Saudi Arabia into opening the spigot to deal with supply emergencies; the US also pressures other oil producers, such as Libya, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and Indonesia, by military methods, diplomacy, and economic sanctions. In the Russian alternative, the US will be far less influential, and have fewer levers, commercial or military, to effect pressure on the energy suppliers. Russian arms and defense-industry partnerships are on offer to relatively weak, intervention-prone energy producers in Africa and Latin America to offset US pressure.
In short, it's a direct affront to US hegemony, and so it ain't gonna happen - at least at this summit. It is also a threat to the lynchpins of globalization - transnational private companies - since the Russian model is based on mega-firms like Gazprom, Rosneft and Transneft, all of which are at least partly state-controlled.
But there may be benefits:
The security of Russian energy supply is thus to be contrasted with the unreliability of US behavior. In the short term, this Russian strategy also enables Russian companies to secure the capital and technology they need for high-cost, high-risk projects in difficult terrain. Reciprocally, the strategy offers access to stable supply and pricing of oil and gas to consumer countries, including diversion of energy transportation away from military pressure at chokepoints - for example, the Strait of Hormuz, through which most oil tankers sail en route to Asia and South Africa. In America's wars with Iraq, and its threatened attack on Iran, oil consumers are dependent on the US Navy to keep the Hormuz waterway open. They are obliged to pay for this protection through the premium US oil companies charge for delivery risk.
And guess who leapt onto the bandwagon straight away:
India was the first to buy into the new Russian model, purchasing a minority shareholding in the first of the Sakhalin Island offshore oilfields to come onstream. This does not supply crude oil directly from Russia - a short-term Indian priority that the government in New Delhi is also pursuing. China followed India with different tactics, first by funding the proposed East Siberian Oil Pipeline, which will assure direct oil deliveries to Daqing; and most recently, by buying into Rosneft's public share flotation.
Immediate success for this model is unlikely. But with energy security such a fundamental issue these days - more important at a globalized economic level than simple political ideology or cultural identity - then we are perhaps seeing the seeds being sown for a new non-aligned movement.
It's no coincidence that these three guys had a meeting today. No coincidence at all.
The author's point is best made in the opening lines:
The moment you arrive in China, the country shouts progress...
...India, too, is on a dash for growth and riches, but it doesn't always look that way.
The essay correctly identifies the fact that China's progress is not despite its autocratic leadership but because of it; it also notes that India's advantage lies in the ability to innovate and adapt.
It's very much a 'human interest' story for the tabloid generation, and the two entrepreneurs picked out are my no means typical - or atypical. However, I'm not entirely sure that the conclusion that China is heading for 'political upset' adequately addresses the reality of the situation:
So where are Billy and Tarun heading?
Both their cities are rising at a dizzying rate. But I am clear that India lags far behind for now, at least. Democracy, the need for public consent, just isn't delivering change so quickly.
But then in China, with no need for consent, the risks of major political upset seem much greater.
The only certainty is that both countries will go on racing each other and overtake most of the outside world.
In other news, the Nathula Pass opens... more trade for China and access to infrastructural skills for India? Or the next stage in the gradual encroachment upon Tibet?
While teaching in China, I swiftly became aware that however bright some of the students were, the Chinese education system was not doing them - or China - many favours. This view is backed by a report in Asia Times Online, which (read between the lines) draws parallels with the situation in India.
There's a lot of number crunching in the article but it boils down to this:
Only a few of China's vast number of university graduates are capable of working for a multinational company, and the fast-growing domestic economy absorbs most of those who could. Indeed, China is facing a looming shortage of home-grown talent, with serious implications not only for multinationals now in China, but also for the growing number of Chinese companies with global ambitions....
Lack of quality talent and rising pay have not, as yet, slowed China's economic growth; basing production in mainland China remains cost-effective for most foreign firms. But the growing shortage of executive talent may make the growth assumptions written into many business plans overly optimistic.
In a nutshell, Frei reckons that the launch is little more than a PR stunt from a Kim Jong-Il disappointed at the recent lack of media attention:
...you can imagine the Dear Leader's dismay as he flicks from one channel to the next and finds the world stage obsessed with football, Rooney's red card, Brangelina or the nascent nuclear programme of Iran.
But not him. Not a squeak. Nada.
I can just picture him hurling his kimchi at the plasma screen, shouting: "Why all the fuss about Tehran? Why are they getting all the attention when they have barely started enriching the uranium and the rhetoric. We're beyond enriching. We are fully enriched! We have already manufactured six nuclear warheads and we can't even make it onto late night TV? Hello! Whatever happened to the axis of evil?"
But Brangelina might well hold the key to the situation. Frei's theory is that movie buff Kim takes his cues from spectacular blockbusters like Independence Day - films that harness the paranoia at the heart of US culture.
But more worryingly, there's also a geopolitical element of empathy with - you've guessed it - China:
There he was. Japan's foppish prime minister crooning away incomprehensibly in the Holy of Holies, permitted to don the King's shades, allowed to discuss global affairs with Priscilla Presley.
W had arranged a personal tour of Graceland with bells and whistles and the Chinese president wasn't even allowed to call his recent meal at the White House a state visit.
Oh, the shame of it! So President Hu Jintao may have called up Kim Jong-il and said: "Go girl! The skies are yours, just aim those missiles away from us."
Kim Jong-il relies on China for everything from food to power to rental videos. He is unlikely to have launched several missiles without its consent.
But Frei's got a brilliant solution to the affair:
So here's my idea. Invite him over for face-to-face talks about the stuff that matters and sweeten the diplomacy with a guided tour of Universal Studios, lunch with Stephen Spielberg and a life-long subscription to Netflix and Blockbusters.
The missile crisis will be over and North Korea will be become a fabulous location for Mission Impossible 4.
Jonathan Fenby. When you read that name there is no need to read further. You seem to have a patholigical dislike for China. I guess they dont know there place. Please Mr Fenby can we have an article about Israel or the United States for a change. I know hoe much you admire those countries.
To me it's essential to understand this kind of attitude, which I assume come from an educated Chinese person in Beijing, given the 'location tag'.
The thing with censorship is that when it is successful, as it generally is at the moment in China, it not only suppresses the truth but creates a sense of apathy about the truth.
The second point, which Mr Fenby puts above, is that in China this kind of suppression really is the norm. It really does go back a long time, and thus the apathy is magnified. Trying to compare China to other places is not the issue: the issue in the article above, I believe, is China.
Finally, what AntiCensorship shows us is the backswing into nationalism. When any criticism of China means that you are 'anti-Chinese' then the observer is put on the back foot, in the same fashion that anyone who criticizes Israel is labelled an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi.
The point of a free press and the other elements of civil society that go with it are that they serve as checks and balances on officialdom. And this is something that has yet to infiltrate China in a significant manner.
It's not as if the press in the UK, for example, doesn't criticize the government, the opposition, the civil service, the NHS, football managers, ASBOs, dodgy chocolate and anything else it can get its teeth into - not to mention the US and a whole gamut of other nations, cultures and societies.
To build a better world, first one has to identify the flaws: only then can we make the incisions that finally free us of them.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this little news item is that the border dispute is still ongoing.
The Times of India reports on a recent meeting between Chinese and Indian ministers. But with trade now the number one priority of each country, why is politics still such a niggly issue, especially over what are really rather narrow and insignificant slivers of land?
Of course it is impossible to predict what course the future will take with regard to potential conflict with China. What follows is thus quite speculative. But there are a few factors pertaining to the period around 2012, the next Year of the Dragon, that stand out:
Economic superpower status. Over the next five or six years, China's economic ascendancy will be complete. Publications such as Newsweek are already writing on what they call 'China's Century'. What happens in the Chinese economy sends shockwaves around the world. Not to mention the US budget deficit, much of which is already down to China. With this kind of authority, China is going to be far less shy to act, perhaps radically, in its own interests.
Games over. The Chinese are greatly looking forward to the 2008 Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo and are unlikely to do anything to scupper them before they are over. But by 2012 they will have neither of these to lose.
Impending implosion? Over the next decade China's resources will be stretched to a crippling limit while, despite the one-child policy, the population will have continued to rise. Rampant environmental pollution is not going to help put food in the mouths of 1.4 billion hungry citizens. Peasant protests and nationalism are both on the increase and by this time the CCP may no longer be able to keep them under control.
Resources on the wane. And oil: never forget oil. By 2012, unless it has taken serious measures to secure resources for itself, it's going to break down like an old banger - and the incredible economic growth that legitimates the Party's grip on power will break down down with it. Many theorists predict this year as a critical point - see for example the Olduvai Gorge theory, itself based on Hubbert's Peak.
Election year. The year 2012 will see elections in not only the US but possibly also in Taiwan. Elections are also due in Hong Kong; whether or not the authorities will allow them is another matter. It may even be time for the current leadership of the CCP to stand down after eight years in power. The year is thus extremely volatile politically with world leaders distracted and potential flashpoints waiting to happen within 'One China' itself.
Military superpower status. Finally, if speculations are correct, by 2012 China's military build-up will be complete. It will have its motive, it will have its carrier group, it will have its opportunity. If the PRC moves to retake the ROC, will the US act to defend it or not? If things continue as they have done since 9/11, by 2012 the US military itself will be embroiled in conflicts across the Middle East, from Syria, via Iraq and Iran, as far as Afghanistan. Weakened and overstretched it won't be in a position to fight upon a second front. In a Presidential election year as 2012 will be, the prospect of even more American body bags will not be a vote-winner. And if Taiwan falls undefended, what would happen next?
I hope that it does not come to this. The only outcome that is in all our interests is peace. But as if all the above are not enough, there are enough mystical predictions out there to indicate that something is up: we just don't yet know what.
Update - since this hypothesis was first written in Autumn 2005, I've found a couple more articles which seem to justify it. Of course they must be taken with a large pinch of salt, but this Epoch Times report confirms similar thinking on the 2012 date - see also the analysis by the Association for Asian Research.
Though events may well overtake me, at the moment it is looking like the most likely future flashpoint between China and the US - Taiwan excepted - is going to be here. All of the pieces are in place. China is building up Gwadar in order to protect its Gulf oil supplies, and perhaps export energy via potential pipelines through Pakistan (see map). The US also has a major presence in Pakistan due to the War on Terror, and is actively engaging the Taliban along the border.
Meanwhile, Baloch nationalists are conducting a campaign for independence - which inevitably will bring them into conflict with both powers. India appears to be supporting this, and finally Pakistan and Iran seem to be caught in the middle between their alliances and enmities with the US, China and India.
A more complex and volatile situation could not be asked for. According to the Government of Balochistan website:
The realization of economic and strategic objectives of the Gwadar port by Pakistan is largely dependent upon the reduction of separatist violence in Balochistan by the Baloch freedom fighters. Pakistani response to secessionism is aggressive military action in Balochistan. Pakistani fighter jets, gunship helicopters, heavy artillery, and over 60,000 troops have launched a military operation inside Balochistan to target the ethnic Baloch population, mainly the non-combatant, innocent men, women and children. To date the Pakistani forces have conducted extrajudicial arrests of more than 4,000 Baloch activists, killed over 700 Baloch nationals in direct military action, and planted landmines in Baloch areas to close all escape routes resulting in the deaths of over 10,000 Baloch civilians due of starvation and lack of medical assistance.
Jerusalem, Israel based Government of Balochistan in Exile is in contact with officials of countries that have a vested interest in containing Chinese ambitions in the region. Negotiations are being conducted to explore ways and means to close the Chinese naval outpost in Gwadar. Both the Indian and U.S. policy makers are keen to resolve the grievances of the Baloch people through peaceful means. But, neither Iran, Pakistan nor China agree to retract from their plans and settle the issue of sovereignty of Balochistan with the Baloch leadership. Hence, the Baloch nationalists were compelled to fight for their self-determination, and they have already waged the Baloch War of Independence on both the Iranian and Pakistani government forces.
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.
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)
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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 Baluchistanand in Assam.
Coming soon: a full explanation of Flashpoint 2012 theory. Watch this space. BBC report below.
...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 athleticism but also a spark of creativity and style that cannot be manufactured by sport's central planners. Even taking drugs does not appear to be much help for footballers.
The World Cup is apolitical. The USA will probably be crap again. China and Russia aren't even in it. The superpowers are Brazil and a clutch of developing and declining countries.
Cold War Standoff, Lukewarm Co-operation or Something Else Altogether?
In Iran is embodied all of the issues of our time: nuclear ‘rogue states’; Islamic fundamentalism; energy security. And both the US and its rising rival, China, have vital interests in its future.
America’s policy is heavily discussed, and the newspapers are filled with fact, hearsay and rumour about its next move. But what will China do? Given that it has more significant stakes in Iran than in the other ‘Axis’ members, can the Chinese ruling classes just look the other way as they did with Iraq? Will they push for a settlement as they are doing with North Korea? Or will they confront the US in the United Nations and even on the ground?
At this crucial junction for the world order, neither neo-realism and neo-liberalism – both written and practised by ‘Occidental’ thinkers, not ‘Oriental’ – may be fully adequate to explain what happens next. Indeed, are our understandings of Chinese interests correct at all?
Download Word file here or read the main text below. (File contains additional footnotes and bibliography).
Small wonder that full membership of the Shanghai Six is highly valued. Pakistan, which like Iran, India and Mongolia is only an observer at present, is especially keen to join. Its president, Pervez Musharraf, is offering China an energy corridor to Central Asia and the Middle East in exchange. Membership offers hydrocarbon trade, stronger defence links and, for those who want it, a way to counter the influence of the Americans. On the face of it, that makes for a successful club.
Latest on the Google.cn story - Google appears to be rethinking its involvement in China.
Though this is a shame for everyday Chinese Internet users who just want to surf, it could have significant socio-political repercussions.
Could there be any stronger message to the same Internet users that, yes, your government is acting in a way of which Western companies disapprove? And, no, they will not allow you the same freedoms that the rest of the world enjoys?
People don't miss something until it's taken away from them, and if Google were to withdraw then it would be a very bold move. Then again, the Chinese might just vent their frustration at Google, not the CCP, as has done the Western media. We'll see.
So what else is new? Happened all the time while I was there. Hopefully, this will put to rights some of the debate on Google - it's the Party that's censoring, not Google.
However, the fact that Google offers a censored version to replace the service that is blocked does raise some ethical questions. Did the US company know in advance that it would be be blocked - and how permanent will it be?
Created in the wake of last year's anti-Japanese protests, Dave's YouTube video to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's 'Mother' makes a profound and succinct point. It's about the true nature of the relationship between the Chinese people, Japan, and their own government.
It's exactly 17 years since Tiananmen: and 38 or so since My Lai. Nothing has changed.
The headlines today are all about the alleged massacre at Haditha. One would have thought that by now the US forces would have learned that this is not what wins hearts and minds, yet still it goes on. Like the CCP, it is caught in a political timewarp, where by divine right it may conduct itself as it wishes to achieve whatever it thinks necessary.
Are not the Chinese people - or at least the majority of them - much better off than before 1989? Is it not time to move on from Tiananmen Square?
There are simpler, more moral, arguments than these. It is wrong to kill civilians whether in the streets of Beijing or Baghdad. The mother of an Iraqi boy shot by US troops is as entitled to protest, as are the Tiananmen mothers. If regimes lie to their people, then those lies must be exposed. This is what brave Chinese protestors mean when they call on their government to "settle accounts with history". It should be a good rule for us all.
But the way I see it, 'incidents' like Haditha, not to mention Abu Ghraib, not only reduce the image of the US to its allies but gives succour to the CCP. If America can get away with it, why shouldn't we, you can almost hear them saying.
If the US truly does wish to be a responsible stakeholder in global affairs, it must be whiter than white. It can't afford to expose itself to criticism in this way. Because for every My Lai or Haditha there will follow an Andijan or a Tiananmen. It's all a question of relativity.
The problem today is more a profusion of township, county and prefectural leaderships whose efforts to propel growth in their regions produce impressive statistics, but often at a heavy social, environmental or macroeconomic cost. In the last two years the government has been worrying that the economy might overheat and has been trying to curb investment in industries whose capacity has been growing too quickly. But local officials have often simply ignored these measures.
Let this be a lesson to all those who assume that the Party has absolute authority over what goes on in China. Read between the lines in this article (reprinted below) and you'll see one word: corruption.
It's self-serving local officials that are holding back China just as much as the government itself. Even when Beijing tries to do something laudable, such as reduce pollution, there's small-minded money-diggers who are going to continue doing things just as they have done for years:
Local leaders rarely incur heavy political penalties for failing to carry out the central government's economic directives. Officials in Beijing frequently order clampdowns on the makers of pirated goods. Offending factories are sometimes closed. But local officials who condone such operations as a way of boosting their local economies are seldom punished.
It's the economy, stupid. The economy at all costs. As long as the economy is rising, no-one cares enough about the skeletons in the cupboard such as land-grabs and environmental destruction.
It's the little man that will drag China down just as much as the politbureau.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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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?
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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?
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.
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.
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.
The report is a useful round-up, but unusually short on analysis. Nevertheless, the stats are interesting:
The numbers of internet-connected computers have more than doubled since the end of 2002, to 45.6m, and internet-users have risen by 75%, to 111m. China now has more internet-users than any country but America, and over half of them have broadband (up from 6.6% at the end of 2002). Users of instant computer-to-computer messaging systems have more than doubled, to 87m. Blogsonline personal diaries, scarcely heard of three years agonow number more than 30m. And search engines receive over 360m requests a day.
The report is correct in remarking that 'the firewall is porous' - that if you have the know-how you can get through it. It also notes the minor successes of bloggers in bringing minor reform; and that Wen Jiabao says that it is worth taking on board the views expressed on the Web.
But the article skirts around what I think is the biggest issue of the Internet in China, something that goes beyond censorship. This is the active complicity of firms such as Yahoo! in informing upon individuals via e-mail and server activity monitoring. These people (there are four known cases) - I will not mention their names, since it will cause any search engine in the PRC to seize up - have a lot to take Yahoo! to issue for.
In my opinion, this is far more serious that Google allowing censorship on Google.cn - it's going to happen anyway. But knocks on the door at two in the morning don't just happen anyway. If we in the West truly do wish to promote change in the PRC, it's Yahoo! we should boycott.
It's becoming increasingly obvious that China's foreign policy is exclusively based around energy. Since leaving Washington, Hu Jintao made a beeline for Saudi Arabia (where he discussed a refining project and a weapons contract) and is now in Nigeria where he just signed another $4bn deal.
The longer you spend in the new China, watching the oxyacetylene lamps on the building sites at 3 a.m., the clearer it is that Francis Fukuyama was wrong when, in 1989, he pronounced that the fall of Soviet communism meant the end of history. Systematically, methodically, and with the connivance of their entire political establishment and their growing bourgeoisie, the Chinese are making a mockery of the claim that free-market capitalism and democracy must go hand-in-hand. Which is why, finally, I do not altogether go along with those who have suggested that the next century will belong to China, or that China will somehow rule the planet.
I completely concur. The paragraphs that precede it are also very interesting:
In Shanghai we went to an enormous and lavishly equipped college of journalism, and after we had all swapped business cards (which must be exchanged s
With late-night TV-movie plots unfolding in 
Caption competition - tell me what Mao is thinking here and win a year's supply of chicken feet.
Perhaps the most interesting part in 
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. 
Here's one to watch for the future - the 5th anniversary of the 
Latest on the Google.cn story - Google appears to be rethinking its involvement in China.
With great fanfare and slapping of mutual backs, 
So, if we already know that a UN resolution is going to be vetoed, why bother even drafting it?
