Chindia Alert | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

02/07/2015

China National Security Law Aims to Create ‘Garrison State,’ Experts Say – China Real Time Report – WSJ

China has adopted a sweeping national-security law that the government says is needed to counter emerging threats but that critics say may be used to quash dissent and exclude foreign investment. As WSJ’s Chun Han Wong reports:

Its passage marked the latest signpost in Beijing’s intensifying crackdown on activism and dissent during the past two years, featuring repression of civil-society groups, heightened monitoring of social media, and sharpened warnings against the spread of Western ideas and influences.

The new legislation forms the centerpiece of a series of proposed security laws, including draft laws on counterterrorism and the management of foreign nonprofit groups. Together, experts said, the laws underpin a push by President Xi Jinping to consolidate his and Beijing’s power and promote a notion of rule of law that doesn’t undermine the Communist Party’s authority.

These laws “reflect the party’s determination to create a garrison state,” said Jerome Cohen, a veteran China legal scholar at New York University. The national security law, he said, is “an ideological platform that guides domestic and foreign policies.”

via China National Security Law Aims to Create ‘Garrison State,’ Experts Say – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, Politics | 1 Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, communist party of china, Computer security, foreign investment, Great Hall of the People, Jerome Cohen, National security, national security law, President Xi Jinping, Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, WSJ, Xi JinPing

01/07/2015

NDA constituents Shiv Sena, Shiromani Akali Dal, Swabhimani Paksha red-flag land bill provisions – The Hindu

Fault lines in the NDA over the land bill are visible with three of BJP’s allies – the Shiv Sena, the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Swabhimani Paksha — red-flagging a number of provisions of the proposed legislation.

The contentious land acquisition bill, which proposes amendments to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, is under examination of a Joint Committee of Parliament. File photo

The contentious bill, which proposes amendments to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, is under examination of a Joint Committee of Parliament which is about to conclude its consultation process and consider it clause-by-clause next week.

While the Shiv Sena has, for quite some time, been on record seeking incorporation of a clause providing for 70 per cent consent of farmers in the bill, the SAD and the Paksha have written to the panel headed by S.S. Ahluwalia that “not an inch” of land should be acquired without the consent of farmers.

In its written representation to the JPC, five MPs from the SAD — Naresh Gurjal, Balwinder Singh Bhunder, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Prem Singh Chandumajra and Sher Singh Ghubaiya — said that they firmly believe that land is a priceless asset of the farmers.

“Not even an inch of it should be acquired by the government without the consent of the farmers/land owners.” they said.

The MPs also insisted that land should only be acquired for public sector projects and the “government should not get into acquisition for private entities”.

via NDA constituents Shiv Sena, Shiromani Akali Dal, Swabhimani Paksha red-flag land bill provisions – The Hindu.

Posted in Economics, India alert, land reform, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Amritsar, Anandpur Sahib, Balwinder Singh Bhunder, Bharatiya Janata Party, Bhullar, Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, Joint Committee of Parliament, NDA, Parkash Singh Badal, Rajnath Singh, Shiromani Akali Dal, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), shiv sena, Sikh, Swabhimani Paksha

01/07/2015

India Lags Behind Pakistan, Nepal on Sanitation – India Real Time – WSJ

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made sanitation a priority for his country, saying he would rather build toilets than temples and setting a goal for every home in the country to have a place to go to the bathroom by 2019.

But new data show India is lagging behind its neighbors in providing access to adequate sanitation.

“Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water,” a report published by the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization this week, says that advancements in meeting Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, by 2015 in relation to sanitation have faltered worldwide. The report says 2.4 billion people still don’t have access to improved sanitation.

Mr. Modi launched his Clean India, or Swachh Bharat, campaign last year for good reason. Research shows that the practice of open defecation is linked to a higher risk of stunting in children and the spread of disease. A World Health Organization report said in 2014 that 597 million people in India still relieved themselves outdoors. And the new WHO/Unicef report says that the Southern Asia region has the highest number of people who defecate in the open.

The new data show that despite recent efforts, over the past 25 years, India has been losing the regional race to improve sanitation.

Its neighbors, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan led the way with the greatest percentage-point change in the proportion of the population with access to improved sanitation facilities between 1990 and 2015.

Pakistan’s percentage point change was 40–64% of people have use an improved sanitation facility. In Nepal, a country in which just 4% of people had access to improved sanitation facilities in 1990, access rose by 42 percentage points to 46%. Bangladesh improved its score by 27 percentage points — 61% now have access to improved sanitation facilities.

India meanwhile, had a lower 23 percentage point increase in the same period – bringing the number of people with access to improved sanitation facilities to 40%.

And Sri Lanka is way ahead, with 95% of people having access to improved sanitation.

via India Lags Behind Pakistan, Nepal on Sanitation – India Real Time – WSJ.

Posted in Economics, India alert, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: adequate sanitation, Drinking water, India, Millennium Development Goals, Narendra Modi, prime minister of india, Sanitation, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, UNICEF, World Health Organization

01/07/2015

China’s Communist Party: Still Big, and Getting Bigger – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Quality over quantity. Less is more.

Those have been the watchwords of the Chinese Communist Party ever since its top leaders declared in early 2013 that its membership would be controlled in a bid to improve the organization’s “vigor and vitality.”

Two years later, the upper echelons of Chinese leadership appear to have come face to face with a realization that’s true all the world over: slimming down is hard to do.

In a communique released Tuesday, the Organization Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee said that the party boasted 87.793 million members as of the end of 2014. The figure – which exceeds the entire population of Germany – represents a net increase of 1.1 million from a year earlier.

China is in the midst of a sweeping anti-graft campaign under President Xi Jinping, with announcements of corrupt officials’ investigation and ouster from the party a near-weekly occurrence. Along with that crackdown has come a steady stream of warnings for party members to rein in behavior ranging from their mahjong playing to the use of terms like “dude” or “boss” when addressing their superiors.

At its heart is the pursuit of the party’s survival. Xi and other top leaders have made a point of reminding cadres that the Chinese Communist Party must avoid the same pitfalls that brought about the demise of the former Soviet Union – particularly disloyalty to Communist ideals – with some Chinese scholars warning that the Soviet collapse came when the ranks of its Communist Party had swollen to an unwieldy 19 million, or nearly 10% of the Soviet Union’s adult population.

The membership of the Chinese Communist Party currently stands at about 7.8% of China’s adult population.

Yet despite a vow by China’s Politburo leaders to limit the party’s size and purge “unqualified members,” statistics released by the Organization Department show that membership has actually grown over each of the past four years, albeit at an increasingly slower rate.

via China’s Communist Party: Still Big, and Getting Bigger – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, Communist Party of China, Politics | 1 Comment »

Tags: Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, China, chinese communist party, Communist Party, communist party of china, Han Chinese, Hotan, President Xi Jinping, Qiemo County, Soviet Union, Uyghur people, Xi JinPing, Xinjiang

01/07/2015

Foreign Brands Losing Luster in China – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Move over Western brands, Chinese companies are taking over.

China’s 1.34 billion-plus consumers are filling their shopping baskets with Chinese-branded toothpaste, laundry detergent, juice, cookies and more, according to a new study from consultancy Bain & Co.

Local Chinese companies have become more competitive and are leveraging their strength in smaller cities, where growth rates are higher than in top cities like Beijing and Shanghai, according to the study, which looked at the shopping habits of 40,000 consumers.

The result is that foreign brands are losing market share in large consumer goods categories–such as personal care, home care and packaged foods– all across China, from its biggest to smallest cities, Bain said. And sales growth, which is dwindling as China’s economy slows, is going primarily to Chinese companies, such as fabric-softener maker Guangzhou Liby Enterprise and juicer Tian Di No. 1 Beverage, it said.

While that’s good news for Chinese brands, it’s nothing to cheer about for global companies, which have been banking on Chinese shoppers to boost their sales. China’s economy is also slowing, meaning that the days of easy money in China are over and tireless boardroom references to “China’s emerging middle class” as the saving grace may soon be put to rest.

Some companies, like Best Buy Co. and Home Depot Inc., have either exited or are rethinking their goals in China. Best Buy Co. sold all its remaining stores in China last year, citing online competition.

But there’s still growth for many foreign brands. Foreign makers of beer, chewing gum and hair conditioner are still gaining traction and market share from Chinese companies, according to Bain.

Below are charts from Bain & Co and Kantar Worldpanel showing how Chinese companies are standing up against foreign rivals at retail and in consumer products.

via Foreign Brands Losing Luster in China – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in brands, China alert, Economics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Aldi, Apple Inc., IOS, IPhone, Kantar Worldpanel, Market share, Sainsbury's, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy, United States

29/06/2015

India’s Victory Over Polio Has an Unexpected Consequence – India Real Time – WSJ

India’s aggressive eradication of polio established the template for moving a disease from endemic to eliminated and has been lauded by the World Health Organization.

But in the process, a rise in the prevalence of another polio-like condition, acute flaccid paralysis, has been recorded.

Known as AFP, the condition is the sudden onset of muscle weakness or the inability to move limbs, and can be a tell-tale sign of polio, but is also a symptom of other diseases, including transverse myelitis, which causes injury to the spinal cord, Guillain Barre Syndrome, a nerve disorder, and Japanese Encephalitis, a mosquito-borne virus.

Since 1997, children in India who present with AFP are immediately tested for polio to comply with polio-eradication protocol and doing so has been one of the foundation stones for eradication.

Just this month, more than 200 young patients in the country’s most-populous state Uttar Pradesh, suffering from AFP were tested for polio. They didn’t have the virus, the federal Health Ministry said in a statement.

Such surveillance has resulted in a huge rise in reported cases of AFP.

In 2003, when polio was endemic in India, 8,500 cases of AFP were recorded. So far in 2015, a year after India was declared polio free, there have been nearly 18,000 reported instances but none linked to polio.

Often the cause of AFP remains unknown.

via India’s Victory Over Polio Has an Unexpected Consequence – India Real Time – WSJ.

India is polio-free, insists govt, amid reports of resurfacing of virus

Posted in Economics, Health, India alert | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Agence France-Presse, Andhra Pradesh, Bareilly, Flaccid paralysis, Guillain–Barré syndrome, Harchandpur, India, Poliomyelitis, Uttar Pradesh, World Health Organization

29/06/2015

Wimbledon’s Famous Towels Made, and for Sale, in India – India Real Time – WSJ

It’s Wimbledon season, which means it’s Wimbledon towel season.

The colorful terry-cloth towels used by tennis players on court are the most-prized keepsake from the annual tournament at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in southwest London.

Even the sport’s biggest stars are not immune, pocketing around half of the 6,000 towels set aside for their use during the matches, and giving them away to friends and family. The towels are so popular that the tournament employed towel police to prevent thefts until 2012, when they stopped trying to prevent players from stuffing their bags full of towels.

Thousands of tennis fans will scramble to get one of the 100,000 towels made for this year’s tournament inside Wimbledon’s gates or online. The luckiest ones will be in India.

That’s because textile giant Welspun India Ltd. has produced the towels in Gujarat since buying the iconic British towel manufacturer Christy, in 2006.

There are two Wimbledon towels for players. The one given to male players is purple and green with tennis balls and letters in a color called “buttermilk.”

The women’s towel is done up in new colors each year, this year’s is described as “Apple Berry.”

While most people will be lining up to pay £30 (3,015 rupees) for this year’s towel on the sidelines of the hallowed courts, Indian fans can buy one online for 1,295 rupees, or 995 rupees for the women’s version.

“However,” said Dipali Goenka, head of Welspun, “the market for Wimbledon towels in India is very small currently.”

via Wimbledon’s Famous Towels Made, and for Sale, in India – India Real Time – WSJ.

Posted in Economics, India alert | Leave a Comment »

Tags: All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Andy Murray, Golf course, India, London, London Borough of Merton, Maria Sharapova, Metropolitan Police Service, Scotland Yard, Serena Williams, tennis players, The Championships, Welspun India Ltd., Wimbledon

25/06/2015

China says economic losses from drug abuse hit $81 billion a year | Reuters

China on Wednesday gave its first-ever assessment of the scourge of drug abuse, saying it caused annual economic losses of 500 billion yuan ($80.54 billion) and as many as 49,000 deaths last year.

China has intensified a crackdown on drugs as the rise of a new urban class with greater disposable income has fueled a surge in the numbers of drug addicts.

In its fight on drug abuse, the government arrested a string of celebrities, including the son of Hong Kong kungfu movie star Jackie Chan. Jaycee Chan, 32, was released in February, after serving a six-month jail sentence on drug charges.

China has more than 14 million drug users, Liu Yuejin, assistant minister of public security, told a news conference.

“The direct economic losses caused by drug use in the entire country have hit 500 billion yuan annually,” Liu said.

Drug abuse had killed at least 49,000 registered users by the end of 2014 and fueled a rise in crimes such as murder, abduction and rape, Liu added.

China’s share of synthetic drug users eclipsed heroin users for the first time last year, according to an annual report on the drug situation.

By the end of 2014, China had about 1.2 million users of methamphetamine, up almost 41 percent from a year earlier.

Two major overseas drug sources for China are southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle,” where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet, and south Asia’s “Golden Crescent“, which includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, Liu said.

Heroin and methamphetamine are being smuggled into China’s southwestern province of Yunnan and region of Guangxi, which both border Southeast Asia, Liu added.

To fight this situation, China was strengthening law enforcement cooperation with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar and other countries, he said.

via China says economic losses from drug abuse hit $81 billion a year | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, drug addiction, Economics, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Asia, Beijing, Burma, China, Drug Enforcement Administration, Golden Crescent, Jackie Chan, Jaycee Chan, Substance abuse, United States

25/06/2015

Indian and Chinese Car Makers Out-Earn U.S. Rivals – India Real Time – WSJ

U.S. auto makers’ ability to finance costly technology and emissions requirements from earnings will be tested by a broader group of strong competitors that for the first time include more profitable Indian and Chinese car makers.

Top auto makers in China and India earned 37.5% more profit excluding preferred dividends in fiscal 2014 than their U.S. counterparts, joining European and Japanese auto companies in out-earning the Detroit Three, said AlixPartners LLP, a New York-based consulting firm with a global automotive practice. Its 2015 automotive outlook, released on Tuesday, shows emerging Asian auto makers last year generated margins that were about double those of General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s Chrysler unit.

The emergence of Asian powerhouses—notably India’s Tata Motors Ltd. and China’s SAIC Motor Corp. and Great Wall Motor Co.—represents the latest dent in Detroit’s once-global dominance. Over the past 15 years, U.S. auto makers went from delivering more than 60% of world-wide car-company profit to delivering about 17%, the consulting firm said.

The trend raises questions about the global competitiveness of GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler on the eve of labor negotiations with the United Auto Workers union and amid an aggressive push by Fiat Chrysler Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne for industry consolidation. The U.S. market is on pace for 17 million light-vehicle sales in 2015, the best year in more than a decade, but Detroit needs better returns to develop self-driving cars and electric powertrains and to combat new entrants like Google Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc.

via Indian and Chinese Car Makers Out-Earn U.S. Rivals – India Real Time – WSJ.

Posted in car, China alert, Chindia Alert, Economics, India alert | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Chrysler, Dennis A. Williams, Detroit, Fiat, Ford Motor Company, Fuel cell, General Motors, Mary Barra, Sergio Marchionne

25/06/2015

Indians Buy Gold as Chinese Shift to Stocks – India Real Time – WSJ

The rapid run-up in Chinese shares this year is dimming the allure of another popular investment: gold. Luckily for fans of the metal, demand is looking healthy in India, the other big retail market in Asia.

The divergence between gold’s two biggest consumers is unusual. Normally, gold buyers in both countries snap up the metal when it is cheap, hoping prices will surge as they did in 2011, when gold nearly hit $2,000 an ounce. Individuals in both countries tend to sell when gold gets expensive.

This year, as gold prices have meandered around the $1,200 an ounce mark, shares have been more of a draw for Chinese investors. The Shanghai market is up 41%, while mainland Chinese investors have helped push Hong Kong shares up nearly 16%.

“Everybody wants to get on to the stock-market bandwagon,” said Victor Thianpiriya, a precious-metals analyst with Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. “It is having a big impact on jewelry demand.”

China’s gold imports may tumble by as much as 20% this year, Mr. Thianpiriya forecasts.

via Indians Buy Gold as Chinese Shift to Stocks – India Real Time – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Economics, India alert | 5 Comments »

Tags: Census and Statistics Department (Hong Kong), China, Free trade zone, Hong Kong, Hong Kong dollar, jewellery, Mainland China, Precious metal, Round-tripping (finance), World Gold Council

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Archive for ‘Chindia Alert’

China National Security Law Aims to Create ‘Garrison State,’ Experts Say – China Real Time Report – WSJ

NDA constituents Shiv Sena, Shiromani Akali Dal, Swabhimani Paksha red-flag land bill provisions – The Hindu

China’s Communist Party: Still Big, and Getting Bigger – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Wimbledon’s Famous Towels Made, and for Sale, in India – India Real Time – WSJ

Indian and Chinese Car Makers Out-Earn U.S. Rivals – India Real Time – WSJ

Indians Buy Gold as Chinese Shift to Stocks – India Real Time – WSJ

Tags

Creative Commons

Archives

Meta

Blog Stats

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Archive for ‘Chindia Alert’

Related articles

Related articles

Tags

Creative Commons

Archives

Meta

Blog Stats