continuously updated blog about China & India
You will be living in their world, very soon
Beware the Waking Dragon
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.
The frontrunner to become India’s next prime minister traveled to a town near the country’s disputed Himalayan border with China over the weekend and bluntly warned Beijing to abandon its territorial ambitions.
In a sign of rising Indian wariness of its northern neighbor, Hindu nationalist opposition leader Narendra Modi said China “will have to leave behind its mindset of expansion” and said Beijing should work for “development and prosperity.”
For Mr. Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for the premiership in upcoming national elections, it was a rare foray into foreign policy on the campaign trail, where he has focused primarily on a weak domestic economy.
Speaking in Pasighat, a town in India’s northeast Arunachal Pradesh state, and again in Assam near India’s border with Bangladesh, Mr. Modi sought to portray himself as strong on defense and unafraid of other regional powers.
“No power on earth can snatch away Arunachal Pradesh from India,” Mr. Modi said.
India’s next leader will inherit a volatile neighborhood.
In addition to a more assertive and well-armed China, which is looking to play a greater role in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, New Delhi also must deal with the fallout of a diminishing U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.
Security experts warn that reduced Western presence there could fuel Islamic militancy along India’s already troubled border with Pakistan. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been gripped by internal political tensions.
via India’s Modi Talks Tough on China – India Real Time – WSJ.
This translated article seems to confirm the views of a senior US military person – https://chindia-alert.org/2014/02/20/china-training-for-short-sharp-war-says-senior-us-naval-officer-ft-com/
China has been to war with India, Russia and Vietnam over border/territorial disputes – https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/chinese-tensions/ – Perhaps this will be another such conflict.
China has been training for a “short, sharp war” against Japan in the East China Sea, a senior US military officer has claimed, in comments that underline the growing military tensions in the western Pacific.
Captain James Fanell, director of intelligence for the US Pacific Fleet, said that a large-scale Chinese military exercise conducted in 2013 was designed to prepare forces for an operation to seize disputed islands in the East China Sea, which Japan calls the Senkaku and China the Diaoyu.
“We witnessed the massive amphibious and cross military region enterprise – Mission Action 2013,” Capt Fanell said at a navy conference last week in San Diego.
“We concluded that the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has been given the new task of being able to conduct a short, sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea following with what can only be an expected seizure of the Senkakus,” he added.
Conducting a training exercise is very different from having an actual plan to seize the islands. For years, the Chinese military has staged exercises designed to mimic a possible invasion of Taiwan.
However, the comments about China’s military training plans come at a time of considerable tension surrounding the contested islands. The regular presence of both Chinese and Japanese vessels and aircraft in the region has raised the risk of an accident that could spark a wider confrontation.
In December, China declared an air defence identification zone for the East China Sea, which the US and many other countries in the region interpreted as an attempt to cement its sovereignty claim over the disputed islands.
Although Capt Fanell’s remarks were unusually blunt in their assessment of China’s intentions, they represent a growing tide of anxiety from senior US officials about Beijing’s ambitions in both the East China Sea and South China Sea.
Earlier in February, Danny Russel, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, warned “there are growing concerns that this pattern of behaviour in the South China Sea reflects incremental effort by China to assert control over the area”. He said that China’s recent actions had “created uncertainty, insecurity and instability in the region”.
Capt Fanell said that Chinese maritime training had shifted in character in the second half of 2013 to prepare for “realistic maritime combat” that its navy might encounter. Last year, it conducted nine operations in the western Pacific that were designed to “practise striking naval targets”.
“I do not know how Chinese intentions could be more transparent,” he said. When Beijing described its activities as the “protection of maritime rights”, this was really “a Chinese euphemism for the coerced seizure of coastal rights of China’s neighbours”, Capt Fanell said.
via China training for ‘short, sharp war’, says senior US naval officer – FT.com.
A Norwegian museum will return seven marble columns, taken about 150 years ago from western Beijing’s Imperial Yuanmingyuan Garden, or the Old Summer Palace.
The deal was reached under a trilateral agreement made by the museum, Chinese tycoon Huang Nubo and Peking University. The columns will return to China in September and be publicly exhibited at Peking University after maintenance and restoration work.
Huang, chairman of Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group, will donate 10 million Norwegian kroner ($1.63 million) to the museum.
Huang told China Daily that the museum donation is not a trade or “throwing away money”, but “a very meaningful action that shows patriotism, as well as a way of repaying back the mother country, which made me rich”.
Karin Hindsbo, director of the Kode Art Museum in Bergen, told China Daily that “the donation shall be used on academic research and the general care of our collections of Chinese art“.
“A donation like this makes a world of difference for Kode,” Hindsbo said.
Huang said he was invited to visit the art museum in Bergen, Norway’s second-largest city, by then-director Erlend G. Hoyersten when Huang was at a Sino-Scandinavian poets’ exchange event in Norway last year.
“The moment I saw the columns, my eyes teared up. After all, the lost relics from Yuanmingyuan represent an indelible history for all Chinese,” Huang said. “I told the museum staff the relics should not be on show, and they were sympathetic to my feelings.”
During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), British and French expeditionary forces invaded the garden in 1860, removing its precious imperial collections and burning the rest.
Norwegian cavalry officer Johan W.N. Munthe got some of them from unknown sources and donated 2,500 Chinese artifacts to the Kode museum in the early 20th century.
via Old palace columns coming home[1]- Chinadaily.com.cn.
Very worrying. China and Japan seem to be sleep-walking into military conflict, with the US not awake at all!
So many of our best winter-flowering shrubs came to the UK from China. I have been following their route in reverse, thanks to the recent exhibition on Chinese painting at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This remarkable show was so popular that it became difficult to see its long scrolls under glass among the queues of so many keen spectators. On my visit, I noted the paintings which related to gardens and flowers and vowed to study them more closely with the help of the expert catalogue. The show has now ended but the catalogue, edited by Hongxing Zhang, lives on in bookshops and is an essential addition to keen gardeners’ libraries. It has increased my initial pleasure.
Which will surprise readers of the Weekend FT more, the discovery that Chinese court ladies played football in the garden in the 15th century, or the discovery that a Mr Tang was painted in that same era, reclining in a rattan garden chair beneath a tree and having a “pure dream”?
I hope the ladies are more unexpected. Mr Tang is not our respected David, House & Home’s agony uncle, taking a nap. He is Tang Yin who ranked as the top scholar in his province’s exams but came to grief when he sat the national exams in Beijing. He was alleged to have given a bung to the senior examiner’s assistant in order to see the papers in advance. There was nothing left for him but to become a Buddhist, paint and write poetry. He is shown in his chair beneath the branches of a Paulownia tree, his eyes closed. “The Paulownia shadows cover the purple moss”, the accompanying poem by Tang says. “The gentleman is at leisure, feeling an intoxicated sleep, For this lifetime, he has already renounced thoughts of rank and fame, The pure sleep should not have dreams of grandeur.” There is no sign that he has taken to advising correspondents on manners and etiquette. In my garden I have two Paulownias, hanging on to life despite the cold winter of 2013. In warmer counties like Hampshire these quick-growing trees sometimes even flower. Perhaps we should set a deckchair beneath them and snooze, remembering VAT inspections of the past.
The footballing ladies are truly surprising. One of them has a dainty foot extended and a big round ball in the air above it. Soccer is an English invention, but if you thought that the English male was the first person to put foot to an inflated ball, you are hundreds of years out of date. Chinese palace ladies were already practising their passing inside the bamboo fence. The ball was lined with an animal bladder and inflated from outside. What about the problem of bound-up feet? Foot-binding was widely imposed on classy women in the Ming period. These 15th-century footballers are moving freely, probably because the painting, as so often, is evoking a much earlier era. Their game was called cuju. If it goes back another 800 years to the Tang era, female footie is inarguably a Chinese invention. Some scholars even claim examples of it in the remote sixth century BC.
via 500-year-old Chinese painting hints at football’s female origins – FT.com.
Engaged in a territorial dispute with China, Japan on Thursday sought to rope in India’s support over “the recent Chinese provocative actions” saying a message needs to be sent to it collectively that status quo cannot be changed by force.
Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said dialogue is the only way to resolve the row created by imposition of restrictions by China in the East China Sea and other areas.
“For both India and Japan, China is an important neighbouring country. Both countries have important economic linkages with China. However, after the recent Chinese provocative actions, entire international community will have to send a message to China,” he told PTI in an interview in New Delhi.
“Both Japan and India should ask for a dialogue with Chinese side and tell China not to change status quo by force. These issues should be solved through dialogue and following international rules,” the Minister said.
He was responding when asked whether India and Japan could come together on issues with China as both the countries have territorial disputes with it.
The security situation in the region against the backdrop of recent tensions between Japan and China triggered by imposition of ‘Air Defence Identification Zone’ (ADIZ) over East China Sea and other areas by China came up during talks between Mr. Onodera and his Indian counterpart A.K. Antony on Monday.
During the meeting, Mr. Antony is understood to have told Onodera that India stands for freedom of navigation in international waters and application of global conventions.
After the ADIZ started creating tensions in the South East Asian region, India had stated that the issue should be resolved between the concerned parties through dialogue in a peaceful way and it was against use of force to resolve the matters.
Asked about an earlier proposal by Tokyo for forming a trilateral grouping of India, Japan and the U.S. to deal with challenges from China, Mr. Onodera said, “India and Japan have good ties with the U.S. Economically and internationally and in terms of military forces, these are big countries.”
He said that, “If India, Japan and the U.S. are in cooperation and send a common message
via Japan wants India’s support on disputes with China – The Hindu.
China\’s Foreign Ministry criticized the United States on Thursday for sending the last three Uighur Chinese inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Slovakia, saying they were \”terrorists\” who posed a real security danger.
Yusef Abbas, Saidullah Khalik, and Hajiakbar Abdul Ghuper are the last of 22 Muslim minority Chinese nationals to be moved from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, according to the Pentagon.
Slovakia\’s Interior Ministry confirmed that it would take in the three. Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking Muslim people from China\’s far western region of Xinjiang.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the three were members of the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which Beijing labels a terror group.
\”They are genuine terrorists. They not only threaten China\’s security, they will threaten the security of the country that receives them,\” he told a daily news briefing.
\”China hopes that the relevant country … does not give asylum to terrorists, and sends them back to China as soon as possible.\”
Qin added that China did not appreciate a recent U.S. State Department call for Chinese security forces to exercise restraint following the latest outbreak of violence in Xinjiang, also blamed by Beijing on \”terrorists\”.
\”These remarks neglect the facts and are feeble,\” he said. \”We urge the United States to abandon their double standards when it comes to terrorism, and immediately stop saying one thing and doing another, to avoid sending the wrong message to violent terrorist forces.\”
via China denounces U.S. for sending Uighur ‘terrorists’ to Slovakia | Reuters.
Ending Taiwan\’s political standoff with mainland China is necessary to boost Taiwan\’s sagging economy and to help it integrate more effectively with the region, the island\’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, said.
China considers Taiwan a renegade province and has not ruled out the use of force to bring the island under its control. Economic ties, however, have grown considerably in recent years, especially since Ma took office in 2008.
In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping said a political solution to the standoff could not be postponed forever. But Ma later said he saw no urgency for political talks and wanted to focus on trade.
\”I fully understand that if the Taiwan economy is to expand further, we need to end the cross-strait standoff,\” Ma was quoted as saying in a statement posted on the Presidential Office\’s website.
The statement did not explain what concrete steps would be taken to end an impasse that has existed since Chiang Kai-shek and his ruling Nationalist Party fled from the mainland to Taiwan at the end of China\’s civil war in 1949.
Ma opened Taiwan to trade with China when he took office in 2008 and they have since signed economic agreements that have made mainland China Taiwan\’s largest trading partner.
But booming trade has not led to progress on political reconciliation or a lessening of military readiness on both sides.
via Taiwan’s Ma says ending China standoff a must for the economy | Reuters.
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 