The map does seem to show that terrorism is moving well outside of Xinjiang into major urban areas.
03/03/2014
China’s media says deployment of troops for war with Japan is now complete; waiting for opportune time to attack
Let’s hope this is mere “sabre ratling” rather than real. But given China’s past conflicts with neighbours around border/territorial issues (India, Russia, Vietnam – see https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/chinese-tensions/) this may be genuine preparation.
02/03/2014
India Wants to Build Its Own Chips to Satisfy Electronics Demand – Businessweek
India’s IT services companies are tops in outsourcing, with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS:IN) and Infosys (INFY) competing globally with IBM (IBM) and Accenture (ACN). The cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad are well established as research centers for such multinationals as Microsoft (MSFT), General Electric (GE), and Intel (INTC).
But when it comes to hardware, India is behind. In 2013 it imported $33.5 billion worth of electronics, from semiconductors to smartphones. That’s more than it spent on any imports except oil and gold. With India’s large and growing middle class buying more digital devices, the reliance on imported semiconductors and other hardware is likely to increase. By next year, according to market analysts Frost & Sullivan, such imports will top $42 billion. “Our manufacturing has not kept pace with our consumption,” says PVG Menon, president of the Indian Electronic & Semiconductor Association. India does some assembly of TVs, mobile phones, computers, and set-top boxes.
The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is trying to address this technology gap. The Indian cabinet on Feb. 14 approved plans for two semiconductor manufacturing projects, requiring an investment of $10.2 billion, with IBM, Geneva-based STMicroelectronics (STM:FP), and Israel’s Tower Semiconductor (TSEM:IT) taking part.
via India Wants to Build Its Own Chips to Satisfy Electronics Demand – Businessweek.
02/03/2014
Chinese Employers Discriminate Against Women Planning to Have Two Children – Businessweek
Late last year, China’s central government announced reforms to the controversial one-child policy—in particular, approving a resolution that would allow couples to have two children if at least one of the parents was an only child. But the change didn’t go into effect instantly; implementation is controlled locally. On Tuesday, Shanghai’s government approved measures to enact the so-called two-child policy, effective March 1. Shanghai is the seventh region in China to adopt guidelines for reforming, not abolishing, the country’s sprawling population-control bureaucracy.
To some extent, the number of children couples can have—and when they can have them—will vary by city. Shanghai’s policies are more liberal than Beijing’s, where new guidelines took hold last Friday. Shanghai parents qualified to have two children can do so regardless of their own ages or the time between births. But Beijing parents with one child must wait until the mother turns 28, or the first child turns 4, before having a second child, as independent newsmagazine Caijing reported.
China’s relaxed birth-control policies also bring unexpected consequences. According to state-run Global Times, some female job applicants are already facing increased hiring discrimination as potential employers appear reluctant to pay for two maternity leaves. “An interviewer asked me if I was going to have two children, and I did not know how to answer,” one young woman in Zhejiang province told the newspaper. “Having children is also making a contribution to society, but they [potential employers] treat us like enemies, which is so unfair.”
via Chinese Employers Discriminate Against Women Planning to Have Two Children – Businessweek.
02/03/2014
The Right to Inherit Isn’t Working for Indian Women, Says U.N. Study – India Real Time – WSJ
As their husbands, fathers, and brothers migrate to cities in search of work, women across India have become the backbone of the country’s agricultural sector. Nearly 80% of all rural women in India labor in the fields.
A study released Sunday by United Nations Women India and Landesa, a U.S.-headquartered nonprofit working to improve land rights for women and men, found that despite their time spent working in orchards, cotton fields, and rice paddies, and changes to inheritance laws, women rarely inherit the land that has sustained them and that they have sustained.
In 2005, the government of India amended its inheritance laws to ensure daughters enjoyed equal rights to inherit their parent’s land and property. But the law seems to be having little impact.
The survey of more than 1,400 women and 360 men in agricultural districts with large numbers of women farmers in three Indian states, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh, found that just one in eight women whose parents own agricultural land inherit any of it.
This has significance far beyond intra-family squabbles over divvying up the family fortune. It is fundamental to India’s rural development and progress on a host of development indicators.
Simply, if women farm the land but don’t own it, they are little more than migrant laborers tilling fields owned by others. Without legal control over the land, or any documentation that they have rights to the ground they farm, they can’t access institutional credit, such as bank loans. Nor can they take advantage of agricultural extension programs, such as government offers of subsidized seeds and fertilizers. All of this stymies agricultural development.
It also limits agricultural production. This doesn’t just mean women have fewer tools for climbing out of poverty, it can also mean that their children are stuck there too: Researchers have found that women simply direct more of their income than men towards their children’s education and nutrition, which in turn lowers child mortality and helps reduce diseases of poverty.
The 2005, Hindu Succession Amendment Act giving sons and daughters equal rights to inheriting family land and property was heralded as an important step forward for India’s women.
The study published Sunday, is the first substantial evaluation of the impact of that amendment and indicates that many women have yet to benefit from the legal changes.
via The Right to Inherit Isn’t Working for Indian Women, Says U.N. Study – India Real Time – WSJ.
02/03/2014
BBC News – China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage
Chinese officials have blamed separatists from the north-western Xinjiang region for a mass knife attack at a railway station that left 29 people dead and at least 130 wounded.
A group of attackers, dressed in black, burst into the station in the south-west city of Kunming and began stabbing people at random.
Images from the scene posted online showed bodies lying in pools of blood.
State news agency Xinhua said police shot at least four suspects dead.
A female suspect was arrested and is being treated in hospital for unspecified injuries while a search continues for others who fled the scene, the BBC’s Celia Hatton in Beijing reports.
Authorities described the incident as an “organised, premeditated, violent terrorist attack”.
via BBC News – China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage.
28/02/2014
India, the Best Customer for America’s Defense Industry – Businessweek
Once again, Indians are mourning after a tragedy aboard one of the navy’s submarines. After an accident on the INS Sindhuratna filled the vessel with smoke yesterday, two officers with severe burns died and seven other sailors suffering from smoke inhalation had to be flown to safety. Last year, an explosion aboard another Indian sub left 18 sailors dead. Shortly after Wednesday’s incident, Indian Navy Chief of Staff D.K. Joshi resigned, effective immediately.
Wednesday’s accident comes at a bad time for India’s embattled government. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress Party, facing a string of corruption scandals as well as a lackluster economy, will probably lose in the upcoming national elections due by May. The leader of the largest opposition party, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is a Hindu nationalist who argues that Singh hasn’t been tough enough, especially toward the country’s assertive neighbor to the north—China.
In his first major speech as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s leader last September, he accused the Congress-led government of not doing enough to protect India’s borders. “Unless there is a capable government, patriotic government, there cannot be any guarantee of security,” Modi said. Over the weekend, Modi criticized what he called China’s “expansionary mindset.”
via India, the Best Customer for America’s Defense Industry – Businessweek.
28/02/2014
Made-in-USA Luxury Brands Win Fans in China – Businessweek
Corina Su would love to own a handbag or shoes from luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton (MC:FP) or Gucci (KER:FP). For now, Kate Spade (KATE), Michael Kors (KORS), or Coach (COH) will do. “We call these the ‘American trendy brands,’ ” says Su, a 25-year-old who works in advertising in Shanghai. She prefers Kate Spade’s bright colors and bold designs to the more muted styles offered by big European luxury houses that tout their heritage to justify charging more. “I might eventually buy an LV or Gucci bag,” Su says. “But it won’t be until I’m much older, I suspect.”
As Chinese shoppers such as Su get better acquainted with American luxury brands, they’re discovering a designer wardrobe doesn’t have to cost months of pay. That’s helping U.S. labels that offer fashions with a foreign pedigree but price tags in the hundreds of dollars even as European luxury-goods makers raise prices for some bags to more than $4,000 to combat slowing growth. “The Chinese market is developing into a middle-class market, looking a bit less elitist and a bit more American,” says Luca Solca, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas.
via Made-in-USA Luxury Brands Win Fans in China – Businessweek.
28/02/2014
* Report Details India’s Worst Recent Human Rights Abuses – India Real Time – WSJ
Abuses by the police and security forces including extrajudicial killings, torture and rape, as well as corruption at all levels of government, are the most significant human rights problems in India, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Congress and published by the State Department this week.
The world’s largest democracy is also dogged by separatist violence, life-threatening prison conditions, sex trafficking of children and an atmosphere of impunity resulting from the overburdened judicial system, the “India 2013 Human Rights Report” said.
The 68-page document, released by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday to mark the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out a timeline of recent human rights abuses by the police, bureaucrats and security forces.
The U.S. report found continuing allegations that the police raped women, including while in police custody. Tribal girls were gang-raped in government hostels, and 48,338 child-rape cases were recorded from 2001 to 2011, the authors said.
“Some rape victims were afraid to come forward and report the crime due to social stigma and possible acts of retribution, compounded by lack of oversight and accountability, especially if the perpetrator was a police officer or other official,” they added.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives state governments the right to declare any state a “disturbed area,” allowing security forces to fire on any person to maintain law and order and to arrest anyone without informing the detainee of the reason for doing so, was also a cause for concern, according to the report. The law gives security forces immunity from civilian prosecution in regions where it operates.
A government-commissioned report on changes needed to the law after the gang rape of a young woman in Delhi in Dec. 2012 had said the AFSPA was being used to legitimize “impunity for systematic or isolated sexual violence in the process of internal security duties” and needed to be reviewed. The government had taken no action in this direction during 2013, according to the authors of the human rights report.
They also provided evidence of a complaint long-held by Indians: that corruption exists at all levels of government and leads to a denial ofjustice.
Nonprofit organizations, the report said, had noted that bribes typically were paid to expedite services, such as police protection, school admission, water supply, or government assistance.
“The CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] registered 583 cases of corruption between the months of January and November,” of last year the report said.
via Report Details India’s Worst Recent Human Rights Abuses – India Real Time – WSJ.
28/02/2014
Chinese criticize state firm behind Three Gorges dam over graft probe | Reuters
A scathing report on corruption at the company that built China’s $59-billion Three Gorges dam, the world’s biggest hydropower scheme, has reignited public anger over a project funded through a special levy paid by all citizens.
The report by the ruling Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog last week found that some officials at the Three Gorges Corporation, set up in 1993 to run the scheme, were guilty of nepotism, shady property deals and dodgy bidding procedures.
Between 1992 and 2009, all citizens had to pay a levy built into power prices across China to channel money to the dam’s construction, a project overshadowed by compulsory relocations of residents and environmental concerns.
“The relatives and friends of some leaders interfered with construction projects, certain bidding was conducted secretly … and some leaders illicitly occupied multiple apartments,” the graft watchdog said on its website(www.ccdi.gov.cn).
The Three Gorges Corporation published a statement on its website on Tuesday saying it would look into the issues the probe raised, and strictly punish any corrupt conduct and violations of the law and party discipline.
The accusations – made as part of President Xi Jinping‘s crackdown on deep-rooted corruption – have spread rapidly across China’s popular Twitter-like service Sina Weibo, and some of China’s more outspoken newspapers have weighed in too.
via Chinese criticize state firm behind Three Gorges dam over graft probe | Reuters.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 