Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
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Indians across the country celebrated the fifth international yoga day on Friday.
Temperatures are soaring in many cities, including the capital Delhi, but that didn’t stop people from gathering outdoors and stretching and bending their way through at least an hour of yoga.
And everyone joined in – even the dog unit of the Indian army!
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The Indo-Tibetan border police – and their dogs and horses – were not about to be outdone. They practised what they called yoga, doga and hoga.
And they were luckier than many of their counterparts – they got to practise their yoga in cooler climes, along India’s scenic Himalayan border.
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Among those who did yoga in more hostile climates were the armed forces on board the naval aircraft carrier INS Viraat which is docked off the coastline of sweltering Mumbai city.
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In Gujarat, the soldiers got a little more creative with their yoga.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chinese president, holds talks with Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) and chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), in Pyongyang, DPRK, June 20, 2019. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)
PYONGYANG, June 20 (Xinhua) — Visiting Chinese top leader Xi Jinping on Thursday reaffirmed China’s support for efforts to push forward the political settlement process on the Korean Peninsula issue and build up conditions for its resolution.
Xi, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Chinese president, made the remarks in talks with Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea and chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Xi spoke highly of the DPRK’s efforts to safeguard peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and promote the denuclearization of the peninsula.
The situation of the Korean Peninsula concerns regional peace and stability, Xi pointed out, noting that a bright prospect of resolving the issue through dialogue has appeared over the past year, which has gained recognition and raised expectations of the international community.
The international community hopes that talks between the DPRK and the United States will move forward and bear fruit, Xi added.
Stressing that the Korean Peninsula issue is highly sensitive and complex, Xi said a strategic and long-term perspective is needed to accurately guide the evolution of the situation and effectively maintain peace and stability on the peninsula.
China, Xi said, is willing to provide assistance within its capacity for the DPRK to address its legitimate security and development concerns, strengthen coordination and cooperation with the DPRK as well as other relevant parties, and play a positive and constructive role in achieving denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and long-term stability in the region.
For his part, Kim said that over the past year, the DPRK has taken many active measures to avoid tensions and control the situation on the Korean Peninsula, but has not received positive responses from the party concerned, which the DPRK does not want to see.
The DPRK is willing to stay patient, and hopes that the relevant party will work with the DPRK to seek solutions that accommodate each other’s legitimate concerns and push for results from the dialogue process, Kim said.
The DPRK highly appreciates the important role played by China in solving the Korean Peninsula issue, he said, adding that his country is ready to continue to strengthen communication and coordination with China to strive for new progress in the political settlement of the issue and safeguard peace and stability on the peninsula.
Xi arrived in Pyongyang earlier Thursday for a state visit to the DPRK. The visit, Xi’s first as CPC chief and Chinese head of state and also the first of its kind in 14 years, came as the two neighboring countries are celebrating the 70th anniversary of their diplomatic ties.
Image copyright NRO/USGSImage caption The Hexagon images were declassified in 2011 and digitised for scientific study
Images from Cold War spy satellites have revealed the dramatic extent of ice loss in the Himalayan glaciers.
Scientists compared photographs taken by a US reconnaissance programme with recent spacecraft observations and found that melting in the region has doubled over the last 40 years.
The study shows that since 2000, glaciers heights have been shrinking by an average of 0.5m per year.
The researchers say that climate change is the main cause.
“From this study, we really see the clearest picture yet of how Himalayan glaciers have changed,” Joshua Maurer, from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, told BBC News.
Image copyright NROImage caption The Hexagon satellites were a top secret American reconnaissance programme
During the 1970s and 1980s, a US spy programme – codenamed Hexagon – launched 20 satellites into orbit to secretly photograph the Earth.
The covert images were taken on rolls of film that were then dropped by the satellites into the atmosphere to be collected mid-air by passing military planes.
The material was declassified in 2011, and has been digitised by the US Geological Survey for scientists to use.
Among the spy photos are the Himalayas – an area for which historical data is scarce.
By comparing these pictures with more recent satellite data from Nasa and the Japanese space agency (Jaxa), the researchers have been able to see how the region has changed.
The Columbia University team looked at 650 glaciers in the Himalayas spanning 2,000km.
The group found that between 1975 and 2000, an average of 4bn tonnes of ice was being lost each year.
But between 2000 and 2016, the glaciers melted approximately twice as fast – losing about 8bn tonnes of ice each year on average.
Image copyright NASAImage caption We now have a satellite record approaching nearly 50 years in length
Mr Maurer said: “For a sense of scale, 8bn tonnes of ice is enough to fill 3.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools per year.”
And the ice loss was not uniform, he added.
“Glaciers lose most of their ice in the lower elevation portions of the glacier, and it’s there where most of the thinning is concentrated.
“Some of those zones have been thinning by as much as 5m per year.”
Among the scientific community, there has been some debate over the cause. Changes in rainfall in the region and soot deposited from industrial pollutants are thought to have hastened the melt.
However the Columbia team said that while these factors were contributing, rising temperatures in the Himalayas were the main cause.
“The fact we see such a similar spatial pattern of ice loss across so many glaciers across such a large and climatically complex region suggests there needs to be some kind of overall forcing affecting all of the glaciers similarly.”
Image copyright NROImage caption The Hexagon photographs would come down in a capsule from the satellites
Scientists say continued losses will have a huge impact.
In the short-term, the huge increase in meltwater could cause flooding.
In the longer term, millions of people in the region who depend on glacier meltwater during drought years could experience very real difficulties.
Commenting on the research, Dr Hamish Pritchard from the British Antarctic Survey, said: “What’s new here is being able to see how the melting of glaciers across the whole Himalayan range has increased due to climate change.
“Over one generation, the melt has doubled and these glaciers are now shrinking fast.
“Why does this matter? Because when the ice runs out, some of Asia’s most important rivers will lose a water supply that keeps them flowing through drought summers, just when water is at its most valuable.
“Without mountain glaciers, droughts will be worse for millions of water-stressed people living downstream.”
Image copyright NASAImage caption The view of the Himalayas for the International Space station
BEIJING, June 19 (Xinhua) — Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with visiting Dutch counterpart Stef Blok in Beijing Wednesdays.
Noting that the Netherlands has long been at the forefront of European countries in developing relations with China, Wang said the Chinese side stands ready to facilitate high-level exchanges and push for joint efforts to pursue high-quality construction of the Belt and Road.
Wang called on the two sides to strengthen communication and coordination within such multilateral mechanisms as the Group of 20 (G20), and seek greater development of the comprehensive partnership of cooperation between the two countries.
Blok expressed his country’s willingness to safeguard the free trade regime with China in a bid to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
He also said the Netherlands will provide a level playing field to enterprises of all countries including China.
Blok is paying a visit to China from June 19 to 22 at the invitation of Wang.
Wang Yang (front C), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, meets with members of the China-Africa Friendship Group of the CPPCC in Beijing, capital of China, June 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Gao Jie)
BEIJING, June 19 (Xinhua) — China’s top political advisor Wang Yang on Wednesday called on the newly established China-Africa Friendship Group of the national political advisory body to contribute to building a closer China-Africa community with a shared future.
Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, made the remarks while meeting here with members of the friendship group.
The members are in Beijing to attend the inauguration ceremony of the group and its first plenary session.
Wang said the group was the first friendship group between China and other countries under the CPPCC approved by the CPC Central Committee, and that its establishment was a groundbreaking event in the history of CPPCC’s foreign exchanges.
He urged the friendship group to implement the CPC Central Committee’s policy on China’s relations with Africa and to help deliver the outcomes of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.
He also called on the group to make efforts to promote the CPPCC’s foreign exchanges.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China recently played host to a Taliban delegation as part of efforts to promote peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.
Representatives of the Taliban, who have been fighting for years to expel foreign forces and defeat the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, have been holding talks with U.S. diplomats for months.
The focus has been the Taliban demand for the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign forces, in exchange for guarantees that Afghanistan will not be used as a base for militant attacks.
Taliban negotiators have also met senior Afghan politicians and civil society representatives, including in Moscow recently, as part of so-called intra-Afghan dialogue to discuss their country’s future.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a daily news briefing that Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban representative in Qatar, and some of his colleagues had recently visited China, though he did not say exactly when.
Chinese officials met them to discuss the Afghan peace process and counter-terror issues, Lu told the briefing, without saying who met the delegation.
“China pays great attention to the evolving situation in Afghanistan in recent years. We have always played a positive role in the Afghan peace and reconciliation process,” Lu said.
China supports Afghans resolving their problems themselves through talks, and this visit was an important part of China promoting such peace talks, he said.
“Both sides believe that this exchange was beneficial and agreed to keep in touch about and cooperate on continuing to seek a political resolution for Afghanistan and fighting terrorism.”
China’s far western Chinese region of Xinjiang shares a short border with Afghanistan.
China has long worried about links between militant groups and what it says are Islamist extremists operating in Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur people, who speak a Turkic language.
China, a close ally of Pakistan, has been deepening its economic and political ties with Kabul and is also using its influence to try to bring the two uneasy neighbours closer.
The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, visited Kabul last December.
A Google search for basic information on India’s caste system lists many sites that, with varying degrees of emphasis, outline three popular tropes on the phenomenon.
First, the caste system is a four-fold categorical hierarchy of the Hindu religion – with Brahmins (priests/teachers) on top, followed, in order, by Kshatriyas (rulers/warriors), Vaishyas (farmers/traders/merchants), and Shudras (labourers). In addition, there is a fifth group of “Outcastes” (people who do unclean work and are outside the four-fold system).
Second, this system is ordained by Hinduism’s sacred texts (notably the supposed source of Hindu law, the Manusmriti), it is thousands of years old, and it governed all key aspects of life, including marriage, occupation and location.
Third, caste-based discrimination is illegal now and there are policies instead for caste-based affirmative action (or positive discrimination).
These ideas, even seen in a BBC explainer, represent the conventional wisdom. The problem is that the conventional wisdom has not been updated with critical scholarly findings.
The first two statements may as well have been written 200 years ago, at the beginning of the 19th Century, which is when these “facts” about Indian society were being made up by the British colonial authorities.
In a new book, The Truth About Us: The Politics of Information from Manu to Modi, I show how the social categories of religion and caste as they are perceived in modern-day India were developed during the British colonial rule, at a time when information was scarce and the coloniser’s power over information was absolute.
Image caption Conventional wisdom says the caste system is a four-fold categorical hierarchy of the Hindu religion
This was done initially in the early 19th Century by elevating selected and convenient Brahman-Sanskrit texts like the Manusmriti to canonical status; the supposed origin of caste in the Rig Veda (most ancient religious text) was most likely added retroactively, after it was translated to English decades later.
These categories were institutionalised in the mid to late 19th Century through the census. These were acts of convenience and simplification.
The colonisers established the acceptable list of indigenous religions in India – Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism – and their boundaries and laws through “reading” what they claimed were India’s definitive texts.
What is now widely accepted as Hinduism was, in fact, an ideology (or, more accurately, a theory or fantasy) that is better called “Brahmanism”, that existed largely in textual (but not real) form and enunciated the interests of a small, Sanskrit-educated social group.
There is little doubt that the religion categories in India could have been defined very differently by reinterpreting those same or other texts.
The so-called four-fold hierarchy was also derived from the same Brahman texts. This system of categorisation was also textual or theoretical; it existed only in scrolls and had no relationship with the reality on the ground.
This became embarrassingly obvious from the first censuses in the late 1860s. The plan then was to fit all of the “Hindu” population into these four categories. But the bewildering variety of responses on caste identity from the population became impossible to fit neatly into colonial or Brahman theory.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption A leader of those formerly considered untouchable with a government official in British India
WR Cornish, who supervised census operations in the Madras Presidency in 1871, wrote that “… regarding the origin of caste we can place no reliance upon the statements made in the Hindu sacred writings. Whether there was ever a period in which the Hindus were composed of four classes is exceedingly doubtful”.
Similarly, CF Magrath, leader and author of a monograph on the 1871 Bihar census, wrote, “that the now meaningless division into the four castes alleged to have been made by Manu should be put aside”.
Anthropologist Susan Bayly writes that “until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance, even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland… The institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early 18th Century”.
In fact, it is doubtful that caste had much significance or virulence in society before the British made it India’s defining social feature.
Astonishing diversity
The pre-colonial written record in royal court documents and traveller accounts studied by professional historians and philologists like Nicholas Dirks, GS Ghurye, Richard Eaton, David Shulman and Cynthia Talbot show little or no mention of caste.
Social identities were constantly malleable. “Slaves” and “menials” and “merchants” became kings; farmers became soldiers, and soldiers became farmers; one’s social identity could be changed as easily as moving from one village to another; there is little evidence of systematic and widespread caste oppression or mass conversion to Islam as a result of it.
All the available evidence calls for a fundamental re-imagination of social identity in pre-colonial India.
The picture that one should see is of astonishing diversity. What the colonisers did through their reading of the “sacred” texts and the institution of the census was to try to frame all of that diversity through alien categorical systems of religion, race, caste and tribe. The census was used to simplify – categorise and define – what was barely understood by the colonisers using a convenient ideology and absurd (and shifting) methodology.
Image copyright AFPImage caption India’s constitution was written by BR Ambedkar, a member of the Dalit community which is at the bottom of the caste system
The colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience during a period that covered roughly the 19th Century.
This was done to serve the British Indian government’s own interests – primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.
A very large, complex and regionally diverse system of faiths and social identities was simplified to a degree that probably has no parallel in world history, entirely new categories and hierarchies were created, incompatible or mismatched parts were stuffed together, new boundaries were created, and flexible boundaries hardened.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Dalits, or untouchables, were at the bottom of the caste system
The resulting categorical system became rigid during the next century and quarter, as the made-up categories came to be associated with real rights. Religion-based electorates in British India and caste-based reservations in independent India made amorphous categories concrete. There came to be real and material consequences of belonging to one category (like Jain or Scheduled Caste) instead of another. Categorisation, as it turned out in India, was destiny.
The vast scholarship of the last few decades allows us to make a strong case that the British colonisers wrote the first and defining draft of Indian history.
So deeply inscribed is this draft in the public imagination that it is now accepted as the truth. It is imperative that we begin to question these imagined truths.
BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) — China on Tuesday said its determination to maintain the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is unwavering and is willing to continue to make efforts for the full and effective implementation of the JCPOA.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the remarks when meeting the press after his meeting with Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Walid Mualem.
Calling on all parties to jointly promote the alleviation of Iranian nuclear issue and the situation in the Gulf region, instead of letting it get worse, even slipping into conflicts, Wang urged all parties to firmly maintain the deal.
Wang said ensuring the full and effective implementation of the JCPOA was not only a decision made by the UN Security Council but also the only effective way to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, which is related to the common interests of the international community.
He urged all parties to maintain rationality and restraint, rather than to “open Pandora’s box”, noting that the United States should change its “maximum pressure” policy.
“There is as no basis for unilateralism in international law,” said Wang, adding that unilateralism will create greater crises instead of solving problems.
Noting the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran has fulfilled its obligations under the JCPOA for 15 consecutive times, Wang said China hoped that Iran could make careful decisions and would not abandon the JCPOA easily.
He also urged other parties to respect the reasonable demands of the Iranian side and take active measures to maintain the balance of rights and obligations under the JCPOA.
Wang noted that China has recently conducted close coordination and cooperation with related parties, resulting in important progress in the reconstruction of the Arak heavy water reactor facility.
“The Chinese side is willing to continue making efforts for the full and effective implementation of the JCPOA. At the same time, we will firmly safeguard our own legitimate rights and interests,” Wang said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, shakes hands with delegates attending the 13th Party Congress of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in Beijing, capital of China, June 18, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Gang)
BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday met with delegates attending the 13th Party Congress of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in Beijing.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, extended congratulations on the convening of the congress and sincere greetings to all the delegates and service personnel of the Air Force.
Li Zhanshu (R), chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, holds talks with Egypt’s Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal in Beijing, capital of China, June 18, 2019. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)
BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) — Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), held talks with Egypt’s Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal here on Tuesday.
The two also attended the first phase of the fifth meeting of the exchange mechanism between Chinese and Egyptian parliaments.
Hailing the sound development of bilateral ties in the past, Li said China has always viewed and promoted the China-Egypt ties from a strategic height and a long-term perspective and worked together with Egypt to support each other on issues concerning core interests and major concerns.
China stands ready to enhance alignment of development strategies with Egypt, intensify Belt and Road cooperation so as to lift bilateral ties to a new level, he said.
Stressing that China stands for further consolidation of an open, inclusive, transparent, non-discriminatory and rules-based multilateral trading system, Li called China and Egypt to enhance unity and cooperation and contribute to the common development of developing countries and the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.
Li also called on the NPC and Egypt’s Parliament to strengthen exchanges at different levels, in various forms and via different channels, give full play to the role of the exchange mechanism between the two legislature bodies and share experiences on legislation, supervision and state governance so as to inject new impetus into bilateral ties.
Ali said Egypt speaks highly of the Belt and Road Initiative and believes that it will bring huge opportunities to bilateral cooperation.
Egypt will as always firmly support China on issues of China’s major concerns and is ready to enhance bilateral cooperation in fighting terrorism and coordination in international affairs, Ali said, adding that Egypt’s parliament looks forward to closer cooperation with the NPC.
Also on Tuesday, Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, met with Ali.
The CPPCC is willing to strengthen exchanges with Egyptians in all sectors of society and play an active role in deepening the friendship between the two peoples and promoting the development of bilateral relations, said Wang.
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 