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’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
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WUHAN, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) — Central China’s Hubei Province on Friday opened a new high-speed railway that connects many of the province’s scenic spots and poverty-stricken areas.
The railway linking Wuhan, capital of Hubei, with Shiyan, a city in the northwest of the province, has designed maximum speeds of 250 kph and 350 kph in its two sections, according to China Railway Wuhan Group.
The railway passes five cities, home to 46 percent of Hubei’s population. It also snakes into the Qinling Mountains and reaches large expanses of impoverished areas there.
Dubbed the “most beautiful railway” in Hubei, the rail line links four national tourist attractions with the highest 5A-level ratings, including Mount Wudang, known for its many Taoist temples.
Zheng Zongli, a Wuhan resident and passenger on the first train on the line, hailed the railway for slashing travel time between the two cities of Wuhan and Shiyan to about two hours.
“It is so convenient that you can set out in the morning and arrive at Mount Wudang in the afternoon. It used to take more than a day,” he said.
Shi Lilong, chief of the poverty reduction office of Shiyan, said the railway would become a powerful weapon in the local battle against poverty by bringing the mountains and its sceneries closer to tourists, unlocking the tourism potential of the mountainous region.
A child makes a snowman at the Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 30, 2019. Beijing saw a snowfall Friday night. (Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
BEIJING, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) — Beijing on Saturday was covered in white after experiencing the first snow this winter, which experts said was timely after a much-delayed snowfall in last year’s droughty winter.
The snow, which began Friday evening, reached the level of a blizzard in the outlying districts of Yanqing and Changping. In the city proper, the average precipitation was 3.1 millimeters, said the Beijing Meteorological Service.
“The first snowfall in Beijing this winter was most timely. Records show since 1961, Beijing’s average first winter snowfall happened exactly on Nov. 29,” said Guo Jinlan, a chief forecaster with the service.
The city’s first snow last winter did not fall until February this year.
Experts expect the snow to reduce the risks of wildfire and clean the air in Beijing, whose air pollution usually deteriorates in the winter season.
The city has issued an alert for icy roads and advised citizens to beware of health problems during the low temperature and windy weather after the snow.
Zhuhai police, at the end of the world’s longest sea bridge, use body armour and tear gas in preparation for Macau’s 20th anniversary celebration
Hong Kong is just an hour’s drive away from Macau using the bridge
More than 1,000 police officers took part in the anti-terror drill in Zhuhai. Photo: Toutiao
Armed police in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai held a massive anti-terror drill at its end of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge on Friday morning as part of its preparations for the 20th anniversary of the handover of Macau, when President Xi Jinping is expected to visit the city.
More than 1,000 police officers and 80 vehicles were involved in the exercise, amid
Photos circulated online showed officers in body armour, helmets and shields firing tear gas as they confronted a group of people carrying sticks and wearing black shirts and yellow helmets – attire associated with the protesters in Hong Kong, 60km (37 miles) away from Macau.
The drill was held three weeks before the 20th anniversary of Macau’s return to Chinese administration under the “one country, two systems” policy on December 20.
Police trucks and riot officers during Friday’s exercise at the Zhuhai end of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. Photo: Toutiao
Security is expected to be tightened when Xi visits the city, in response to the violent clashes in Hong Kong over the past six months, which Beijing has repeatedly blamed on radical protesters.
The former Portuguese colony is connected to Hong Kong and its neighbouring city of Zhuhai, Guangdong province, by the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. It takes about an hour to drive from Hong Kong to Macau via the bridge.
Guo Yonghang, Zhuhai party chief, urged the local police to stay loyal to the party. “[Police] should be loyal and fulfil duty and mission to create a peaceful and stable political and social environment for the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Macau’s reunification to the motherland,” he said.
Macau was returned to China two years after Hong Kong and celebrations of its success under one country, two systems could be overshadowed by its neighbour’s anti-government protests which stemmed from opposition to proposed extradition legislation and have escalated into violence on the streets and in university campuses.
In August, two months after more than 2 million people in Hong Kong took to the streets to protest the now-suspended extradition bill, police in Shenzhen held at least three drills featuring anti-riot exercises involving tear gas, armoured vehicles and water cannon.
Image copyright PEMILLE KLEMPImage caption A group of Indian troopers who fought for the English, Ghulam Ali Khan, 1815-16
The English East India Company, founded in 1600, was established for trading. But as the powerful multinational corporation expanded its control over India in the late 18th Century, it commissioned many remarkable artworks from Indian painters who had previously worked for the Mughals. Writer and historian William Dalrymple writes about these hybrid paintings which explore life and nature.
Calcutta in the late 1770s was Asia’s biggest boom town: known as the City of Palaces, the East India Company’s bridgehead in Bengal had doubled in size to 400,000 inhabitants in a decade.
It was now unquestionably the richest and largest colonial city in the East – though certainly not the most orderly.
“It would have been so easy to turn it into one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” wrote the Count de Modave, a friend of Voltaire who passed through at this time. “One cannot fathom why the English allowed everyone the freedom to build in the most bizarre taste, with the most outlandish planning.”
Nor were visitors much taken by its English inhabitants. Most had come East with just one idea: to amass a fortune in the quickest possible time.
Image caption An Indian trooper who fought for the English, Ghulam Ali Khan, 1819Calcutta (now Kolkata) was a city where great wealth could be accumulated in a matter of months, then lost in minutes in a wager or at the whist table. Death, from disease or excess, was a commonplace, and the constant presence of mortality made men hard and callous.
Rising with Olympian detachment above the mercantile bawdiness of his contemporaries was the rotund figure of the chief justice of the new Supreme Court, Sir Elijah Impey.
A portrait of him by Johan Zoffany still hangs, a little lopsidedly, in the Kolkata High Court. It shows him pale and plump, ermine gowned and dustily bewigged.
Impey was, however, a serious scholar and unusual in taking a serious interest in the land to which he had been posted.
Image copyright PEMILLE KLEMPImage caption Indian villagers by Ghulam Ali Khan, 1815-16
On the journey out to India, a munshi (administrator) had accompanied him to teach him Bengali and Urdu, and on arrival the new chief justice began to learn Persian and collect Indian paintings. His house became a meeting place where the more cultured elements of Calcutta society could discuss history and literature.
Impey and his wife Mary were also greatly interested in natural history and began to collect a menagerie of rare Indian animals.
At some stage in the mid-1770s, the Impeys decided to bring a group of leading Mughal artists – Sheikh Zain ud-Din, Bhawani Das and Ram Das – to paint their private zoo.
It was probably not the first commission of Indian artists by British patrons. “The Study of Botany is of late Years become a very general Amusement,” noted one enthusiast, and we know that the Scottish nurseryman James Kerr was sending Indian-painted botanical drawings back to Edinburgh as early as 1773.
But the Impeys’ albums of natural history painting remain among the most dazzlingly successful of all such commissions: today, a single page usually reaches prices of more than £330,000 ($387,000) at auctions, and the 197 images from the Impey Album are now widely recognised as among the very greatest glories of Indian painting.
Image copyright FRANCIS WAREImage caption English child seated on a pony and surrounded by three Indian servants by Shaikh Muhammad Amir
This month, for the first time since the Impey Album was split up in the 18th Century, around 30 of its pages will be reassembled for a major exhibition in the Wallace Collection in London.
Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company celebrates some of the extraordinary work which resulted from commissions made by East India Company patrons from master Indian artists between the 1770s and 1840s.
It will be a unique chance to see some of the finest Indian paintings which are now scattered in private collections around the world.
The three artists who Impey summoned to his fine classical house in Middleton Street were all from Patna, 200 miles (320km) up the Ganges.
The most prolific was a Muslim, Shaikh Zain-al-Din, while his two colleagues, Bhawani Das and Ram Das, were both Hindus.
Image caption A finely painted miniature depicting four British officers with their wives taking refreshments at a table, artist unknown
Trained in the late Mughal style and patronised by the Nawabs of Murshidabad and Patna, they quickly learned to use English watercolours on English Watman watercolour paper, and take English botanical still lives as their models. In this way an extraordinary fusion of English and Mughal artistic impulses took place.
Zain ud-Din’s best works reveal a superb synthesis between a coldly scientific European natural history specimen illustration, warmed with a profoundly Indian sensibility and vital feeling for nature.
At his best – whether by instinct or inherited knowledge and training – he channels the outstanding Mughal achievement in natural history painting of 150 years earlier, when the great Mughal artist Mansur painted animals and birds for the Emperor Jahangir.
Image caption Portrait of a Mughal artist, by Yellapah Of Vellore, 1832-1835
Nowhere are the merits of Company Painting better illustrated than in Zain ud-Din’s astonishing portrait of a Black Headed Oriole (No. 27).
At first glance, it could pass for a remarkably skilful English natural history painting. Only gradually does its hybrid origins become manifest.
The brilliance and simplicity of the colours, the meticulous attention to detail, the gem-like highlights, the way the picture seems to glow, all these point unmistakably towards Zain ud-Din’s Mughal training.
Image caption Portrait of a black headed oriole by Zain ud-Din
An idiosyncratic approach to perspective also hints at this background: the tree trunk is rounded, yet the grasshopper which sits on it is as flat as a pressed flower, with only a hint of outline shading to give it depth – the same technique used by Mansur.
Yet no artist working in a normal Mughal atelier would have placed his bird detached from a landscape against a white background, with the jackfruit tree on which its sits cut into a perfect, scientific cross-section.
Equally no English artist would have thought of painting the bark of that cross section the same brilliant yellow as the oriole; the tentative washes of a memsahib’s watercolour are a world away.
The two traditions have met head on, and from that blinding impact an inspirational new fusion has taken place.
Bhawani Das, who seems to have started off as an assistant to Zain ud-Din, is almost as fine an artist as Zain ud-Din.
Image caption Indian trooper holding a spear by Ghulam Ali Khan, 1815-186
He is acutely sensitive to shape, texture and expression, as for example in his celebrated study of a great fruit bat with the contrast between its soft, furry body with the angular precision of its blackly outstretched wings, as if it were some caped Commendatore ushering a woman into a Venetian opera rather than a creature in a colonial menagerie.
Now, for the first time, the work of these great Indian artists painting in this brilliantly hybrid Anglo-Indian style are beginning to get the attention they deserve.
The first-ever museum show of this work in the UK aims to highlight and showcase the work of a series of extraordinary Indian artists, each with their own style and tastes and agency. Indeed the greatest among them – such as Zain ud-Din- deserve to be remembered as among the most remarkable Indian artists of all time.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company and Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company (Bloomsbury)
BEIJING, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) — China has started the design of Fengyun-5 meteorological satellites and the third generationpolar orbit meteorological satellite observation system, according to the Science and Technology Daily Thursday.
The new satellites and observation system will conduct high-precision global 3D atmospheric detection, the report quoted Zhang Peng, deputy director of National Satellite Meteorological Center (NSMC) as saying.
China has launched a total of 17 Fengyun meteorological satellites, with seven currently in orbit. With an increasing demand for meteorological satellite data, China plans to launch another nine Fengyun satellites before 2025.
Fengyun-5 satellites will be low-orbit meteorological satellites with a network of comprehensive observation satellites, special-purpose observation satellites and constellations for extreme weather monitoring.
They will be the successor of the Fengyun-3 satellites currently in service and are expected to completely replace them by 2035.
The planned meteorological satellites, including Fengyun-5 satellites in polar orbit and Fengyun-6 satellites in geostationary orbit, will better support meteorological disaster prevention and enhance global meteorological services, the report quoted Yang Jun, director of NSMC as saying.
BEIJING, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) — A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense on Thursday slammed U.S. warships and military aircraft’s willful and repeated trespassing into the adjacent waters and airspace of China’s islands and reefs in the South China Sea.
The trespassing hurts regional peace and stability, harms China’s sovereignty and security, and endangers the lives of frontline officers and soldiers of both sides, spokesman Ren Guoqiang said at a press conference, calling it “a highly dangerous provocation.”
“We demand that the United States immediately stop such infringement upon China’s interests,” Ren said, adding that the Chinese military is always on high alert and will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, addresses the opening of a training session for heads of military academies and schools at the National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 27, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Gang)
BEIJING, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday called for efforts to cultivate a new type of military personnel who are competent, professional and possess both integrity and ability.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the requirement at the opening of a training session for heads of military academies and schools held in Beijing.
On behalf of the CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission, Xi extended greetings to the heads of military academies and schools as well as those working in the military education field.
In the morning, Xi met with all members of the training session and took photos with them at the National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army, where the opening was held.
The military education policy in the new era, Xi said, upholds the Party’s absolute leadership over the military, serves the goal of building a strong country with a strong military, and aims to train a new type of military personnel who are competent, professional and possess both integrity and ability.
To deepen reform and innovation of military academies and schools, Xi emphasized efforts to strengthen the top-level design and long-term plans, develop better academic disciplines, build a high-caliber teaching staff and improve support systems and institutions.
Xi required the heads of military academies and schools to have high political integrity, possess a good knowledge of education, warfare research and management while subjecting themselves to strict self-discipline.
Xi stressed more efforts to care for and support military academies and schools and prioritize their development.
The opening ceremony was presided over by Xu Qiliang and attended by other senior military officers including Zhang Youxia, Wei Fenghe, Li Zuocheng, Miao Hua and Zhang Shengmin.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Hoai Trung in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 27, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)
BEIJING, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) — State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Hoai Trung Wednesday in Beijing.
Wang extended his congratulations for the expected results of the meeting between the Chinese and Vietnamese heads of Governmental Delegation on Border Negotiation and consultation between the vice foreign ministers of both sides.
Noting that the next year marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Vietnam, Wang said both sides should carry forward the traditional friendship and keep the strategic position of the bilateral ties in mind.
He called on both sides to abide by the important consensus reached by the two heads of states, enhance mutual trust and cooperation, handle differences properly and take the 70th anniversary as an opportunity to push the China-Vietnam comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level.
Le Hoai Trung said the Vietnamese side was willing to maintain the momentum of high-level exchanges of the two countries, push forward to align the Belt and Road Initiative with the Two Corridors and One Belt and promote the bilateral relations.
Chinese President Xi Jinping holds a welcome ceremony for Suriname’s President Desire Bouterse before their talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 27, 2019. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)
BEIJING, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) — China and Suriname on Wednesday decided to upgrade their relationship to a strategic partnership of cooperation.
The announcement came as Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Surinamese President Desire Bouterse at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
During the talks, Xi said Suriname is one of the first Caribbean countries to establish diplomatic relations with China. The relations can be considered a model of friendly relations and equal treatment between countries of different sizes.
The development of bilateral ties is in an important historical period, and China is willing to work with Suriname to take the opportunity of the Belt and Road cooperation to uplift the ties to new heights, said Xi.
Xi stressed that the two countries should maintain support on issues involving each other’s core interests and major concerns.
Xi called on the two sides to deepen cooperation in areas such as infrastructure construction, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, communications and energy, and explore cooperation in new areas such as new energy, digital economy, tourism and ocean economy.
“China encourages more capable Chinese companies to invest in Suriname,” said Xi.
Noting that Suriname is one of the countries with the largest overseas Chinese population in the Caribbean area, Xi said it is necessary to promote cultural exchanges, facilitate personnel exchanges and strengthen cooperation in areas such as education and law enforcement. China will also send a medical expert panel to Suriname.
The two sides should maintain communication and coordination on global issues, practice multilateralism, build an open world economy and safeguard the common interests of both countries and all developing countries, said Xi.
China is willing to continue to speak out from a sense of justice for Suriname on multilateral occasions and work together with the international community including Suriname to constructively participate in the multilateral process on global climate issues, he said.
Xi added that China has always respected the right of Latin American people to choose their own development path and supported the process of Latin American integration and the handling of regional issues through dialogue and consultation.
China is willing to work with Latin America to promote the construction of the Belt and Road and deepen China-Latin America cooperation by the principles of equal treatment and mutual benefit, said Xi.
Bouterse extended congratulations on the 70th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, and said under Xi’s leadership, socialism with Chinese characteristics will be a success and will bring benefits to the Chinese people and people around the world.
Underscoring the historic and political significance of his visit, Bouterse said Suriname will firmly uphold the one-China principle and support China’s national reunification.
He said Suriname is grateful for China’s help in his country’s economic and social development, and ready to work with China to enhance exchanges at all levels, cement political mutual trust, expand economic and trade cooperation, deepen people-to-people exchanges and take the joint construction of the Belt and Road as an opportunity to upgrade bilateral strategic relations.
Suriname stands ready to work with China to safeguard multilateralism, international law and basic norms of international relations, Bouterse said.
After the meeting, Xi and Bouterse witnessed the signing of several cooperation documents.
According to the 2019 Global Diplomacy Index, released by the Lowy Institute in Australia on Wednesday, China has 276 embassies, consulates and other missions globally, surpassing the US with 273 missions. France was third on 267.
Bonnie Bley, the index report’s lead researcher, said that while a country’s total did not equate to diplomatic influence, “diplomatic infrastructure is still important”
“China’s newly held lead serves as a telling metric of national ambition and international priorities,” Bley said.
Beijing has 169 embassies or high commissions, while Washington has 168. However, China had 96 consulates while the US had 88, suggesting that Beijing’s diplomatic expansion was closely linked to its economic interests, she said.
Beijing bulks up diplomacy budget as China extends global reach
Renmin University international relations professor Shi Yinhong said China had close and growing trade and investment ties with many developing countries, especially those taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative, increasing the need for consulates.
“One of the consulates’ main goals is to serve the citizens and businesses located in those countries,” Shi said.
Beijing has also expanded its reach at Taipei’s expense. Since 2016, when the index was first published, Taiwan’s total number of embassies fell from 22 to 15, the biggest drop among the 61 places ranked.
China opened five new embassies – in El Salvador, Burkina Faso, Gambia, São Tomé and Príncipe and the Dominican Republic – countries that severed official diplomatic ties with Taiwan. This directly contributed to China’s lead over the US, the report said.
Beijing’s diplomatic expansion also comes as the US, under the administration of President Donald Trump, is taking an “America first” approach to foreign policy.
Sri Lanka rejects fears of China’s ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ in belt and road projects
Trump has sought to cut funding to the US State Department and the White House has not appointed US ambassadors for at least 17 countries, including Brazil and Egypt, according to the American Foreign Service Association.
“Even though the US has a strong diplomatic base but it is not so proactive any more. It has fewer consulates and fewer foreign service workers,” Shi said.
“For the long term, China is in a more advantageous position.”
But a country’s diplomatic ability and influence did not rest on the number of foreign service postings and the US still held more international diplomatic sway than China, he added.
Some of China’s biggest diplomatic missions include Islamabad in Pakistan, Washington and London.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 