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

30/09/2013

India and Pakistan Agree to Take Steps to Ease Tension – WSJ.com

India and Pakistan have agreed to take steps to reduce tension on the disputed part of their border, in a much-anticipated meeting that senior officials said made advances in the tense relations between these nuclear-armed neighbors.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif met in New York on Sunday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The talks went better than expected, officials from both sides said.

A series of deadly events in the weeks leading to the discussions had heightened tensions in the countries’ already-fraught relationship.

Washington believes normalizing relations between India and Pakistan would help stabilize the region, as the hostility between the two countries feeds a detrimental competition for influence in Afghanistan. And Islamabad‘s concern over its eastern border with India prevents it from dealing with the al Qaeda-influenced militant groups that menace its northwest.

“There is clearly a desire from both sides to have a much better relationship,” said India’s national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, briefing reporters after the meeting. “We have actually achieved a new stage; we do have some understanding on how to move forward.”

Earlier Pakistan Extends Olive Branch to India. Mr. Sharif, who came to power in June and has a history of pursuing peace with India, had asked for the meeting.

For his part, Mr. Singh has a record of defying hawks at home to reach out to Pakistan. But how far he can go is limited by elections his party faces in India next year. Any supposed softness on Pakistan will be exploited by his conservative opponents.

via India and Pakistan Agree to Take Steps to Ease Tension – WSJ.com.

Posted in India alert, Neighbour conflict, Politics, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Tags: India, India–Pakistan relations, manmohan singh, Nawaz Sharif, New York, Pakistan, Shivshankar Menon, United Nations General Assembly

22/09/2013

Admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He)

From Glimpses of HIstory: “Almost all children around the world learn about Christopher Columbus, and how, as the popular poem starts, “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”, and how Columbus reached the Americas in October of 1492. They also learn that he sailed with three ships: the Nina (“Girl”), the Pinta(“Pint”), and the Santa Maria (“Holy Mary”).

Zheng-He_2

All true. But what is not as well known is that over 75 years earlier a Chinese admiral made several amazing sea voyages. This admiral was seven feet tall. He was a Muslim (Muslims were, and still are, a minority in China). He was born in poverty and had worked as a servant. And he traveled over 31,000 miles and visited 37 countries (including countries in Africa) – with a crew, a fleet, and ships, all much larger than Columbus’s.

Cheng Ho was born in 1371 with the name Ma Ho. His great great grandfather was Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who was the first governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynasty. His father and grandfather had both made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Their travels influenced his upbringing, and he grew up familiar with Chinese, Arabic, and Persian.

When he was ten years old, his town was captured by the Chinese army, and he eventually became a servant to Prince Zhu Di, the fourth son (out of 26 sons) of the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He helped Zhu Di in various battles. After one such battle, Zhu Di renamed him Cheng Ho (also referred to as “Zheng He”), after a place where Cheng Ho’s horse was killed.

In 1402 Zhu Di became Emperor, and one year later Zhu Di appointed Cheng Ho as admiral. He ordered him to build a “Treasure Fleet” for three purposes: to explore the seas, to make China known to the world as a friendly power, and to establish trade relations with other countries.

Between 1405 and 1433 he led seven voyages. 1622 ships were constructed in Nanjing along the Yangtze River. The first voyage had a 30,000 person crew, 62 large ships, and 255 smaller ships. Some of these smaller ships were dedicated to specific purposes such as carrying horses, carrying fresh water, and carrying items to trade such as porcelain dishes, vases and cups, Chinese silk, gold, and silver. Each of the 62 ships were 475 feet long and 193 feet wide, and each held a crew of 1000. By comparison, Columbus’s three ships held 90 men each, and the longest of them, the Santa Maria, was 85 feet long. Cheng Ho’s fleet was so large, that it would not be matched again in history until World War I.”

via Cheng Ho | Glimpses of History.

Posted in China alert, History, innovation | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Cheng Ho, China, Christopher Columbus, Hajj, History, Ming Dynasty, politics, Yuan Dynasty, Zheng He

19/09/2013

Delhi shaped South Asia’s Muslim identity, Pakistani author says

Reuters: “Raza Rumi is based in Lahore, but the public policy specialist and Friday Times editor’s new book is based in another milieu entirely. “Delhi by heart” is a kind of travelogue about a city that is the source of a shared heritage that spans hundreds of years.

By his own admission, it is a “heartfelt account” of how a Pakistani comes to India, an “enemy country”, and discovers that its capital has, in fact, so many things common with Lahore.

“I wanted to write the biography of Darah Shikoh, the great Indian Mughal prince,” Rumi said. “While researching for that, and while visiting Delhi all the time, I felt really it merits a Pakistani version as well because for these five years we have been so much cut off and we have misunderstood each other so much that it is time to sort of build bridges. Hence the book.”

Just two days after the book came out in July, there was fighting on the India-Pakistan border in Kashmir that resulted in the deaths of five Indian soldiers. Relations between the neighbours have since been strained, and there have been reports of cultural and religious exchanges being cancelled.

This backdrop and the past 66 years of separation, mistrust and aggression have forced Pakistan into recasting its history and its heritage in ways that create a blind spot where India used to be, Rumi noted.

“Is this Indian music or Pakistani music? Is it Indian food or Pakistani food?” Rumi said. “For example, the poet Ghalib, the greatest of Urdu poets, is Ghalib an Indian or a Pakistani? It’s very difficult. Amir Khusro, who gave us the Urdu language as we speak (it)… the kind of language that is popular in Bollywood… is he Indian or Pakistani? So Pakistan had a harder task to create an identity and it’s still grappling with that.”

Traveling to Delhi, he said, sharpened this impression. The first thing he noticed, and which reminded him of home, was the azaan, the Muslim call to prayer, which he could hear throughout the city. Then there was the Mughlai food, the qawwali music, the Urdu and Hindi languages with their origin in “Hindustani,” and the shared heritage of Mughal architecture and the common Punjabi character of both cities.

After about a dozen visits to attend various conferences and do research, he sat down with a pile of notes and wrote a book that builds on the shared past and common culture of south Asia. “I think it’s a mix of travelogue and personal narrative with a bit of history thrown in.”

In the beginning, he said, he worried that Delhi is a city that foreigners and Indians have written about at length. He also doubted that anyone back home would be interested in reading about Delhi. He was wrong, he said.

“When I gave the chapters to my father to read, I thought he would object to my whole search for common history and kind of challenging the state narrative of nationalism but, quite interestingly, I found him to be most supportive of the idea …”

There may be differences between the two faiths and countries, but according to Rumi, “through the 1000 years of their shared experiences and interaction, the two did develop a certain composite culture. That composite culture, in many ways, still survives in India.” So much so that despite the political acrimony between the two countries, Rumi sees hope for the future in Pakistan. And Delhi gave him a glimpse of that future.”

via Delhi shaped South Asia’s Muslim identity, Pakistani author says | India Insight.

Posted in Economics, History, India alert, Neighbour conflict, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Delhi, India, Lahore, Pakistan, Pakistani, politics, religion, Urdu

12/09/2013

China finds ancient tomb of ‘female prime minister’

BBC: “The ancient tomb of a female politician in China, described as the country’s “female prime minister”, has been discovered, Chinese media say.

The newly discovered tomb of Shangguan Wan'er, Xianyang, Shaanxi province, 11 September 2013

The tomb of Shangguan Wan’er, who lived from 664-710 AD, was recently found in Shaanxi province. Archaeologists confirmed the tomb was hers this week.

She was a famous politician and poet who served empress Wu Zetian, China’s first female ruler.

However, the tomb was badly damaged, reports said.

The grave was discovered near an airport in Xianyang, Shaanxi province, reports said.

A badly damaged epitaph on the tomb helped archaeologists confirm that the tomb was Shangguan Wan’er’s, state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

Experts described the discovery as one of “major significance”, even though it had been subject to “large-scale damage”.

“The roof had completely collapsed, the four walls were damaged, and all the tiles on the floor had been lifted up,” Geng Qinggang, an archaeology research associate in Shaanxi, told Chinese media.

“Hence, we think it must have been subject to large-scale, organised damage… quite possibly damage organised by officials,” he said.

Shangguan Wan’er was a trusted aide of Wu Zetian, who ruled during China’s prosperous Tang dynasty.

She was killed in a palace coup in 710 AD.

Her story has intrigued many in China, and has even inspired a TV series.

via BBC News – China finds ancient tomb of ‘female prime minister’.

Posted in China alert, History | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, Shaanxi, Shangguan Wan'er, Tang Dynasty, Wu Zetian, Xianyang

27/08/2013

Chinese Hatred of Japan—Real or Government-Created?

The Atlantic: “”On this day in 1945, Japan announced unconditional surrender.” The official account of China Central Television posted this information on Weibo, one of China’s largest social media platforms, and it quickly spread. Three trending posts, with a combined 236,000 retweets, identified the day’s significance and emphasized the number of Chinese who had been wounded and killed during the war — 35 million by China’s official estimates.

Within an hour, the hashtag “#NeverForgetNationalHumiliation” began to trend, drawing a mix of patriotism, anger, and confusion. User @谭兵林 asked, “How can you not mention to whom the Japanese surrendered?” Others criticized the appropriation of a day thought to be a victory to remember a period of national humiliation: “Many people have told me that today is a day of national humiliation,” wrote @Cepheus的旁座-ELF, “but … isn’t today the day Japan surrendered? How can Japan surrendering be a day of national humiliation?”

How much of this anti-Japanese sentiment is real, and how much manufactured? All three trending articles were posted by state-run media, with some users complaining that “50-cent party” users — those alleged to write pro-government posts for money — played a role in spreading and promoting the anti-Japan comments. Yet much of the reaction was organic. In last year’s round of anti-Japan protests, Chinese authorities sought to promote such protests, but also control them, fearing public anger might spiral out of control. While the government may be seeking to use public sentiment, perhaps as a distraction from domestic issues, Chinese dissatisfaction with Japan is not entirely manufactured; it has sharply increased over the last year, while public support for Japan among Chinese has fallen 12 percentage points over the last five years, according to a recent Pew survey.

In particular, Japanese officials’ annual visit to Yasukuni, the shrine memorializing Japanese soldiers who fought in the Second World War, has angered Chinese. One Weibo user wrote, “When I saw on TV that the number of Japanese who visited the Yasukuni Shrine was double that of last year, I felt myself become suddenly enraged.” Many others joined in, calling for an attack on Japan or a boycott of Japanese goods.

Some version of the Yasukuni Shrine controversy replays itself between China and Japan every year, but tensions between the two countries have been especially raw of late. Last year, violent protests erupted throughout China as Japan announced it was nationalizing a chain of islands, known by Japan as the Senkaku and China as the Diaoyu. A survey conducted annually since 2005 showed that last year, 92.8 percent of Chinese and 90.1 percent of Japanese have “unfavorable feelings” toward the other’s country, with 77.6 percent of Chinese citing the aforementioned dispute as the main motivating factor.

Japan’s recent political moves — including the move to nationalize the islands — have added fuel to an already-burning fire. The Chinese education system has long incorporated teachings about Japanese atrocities during World War II and encouraged negative feelings toward the country. But this anti-Japanese sentiment is not simply an expression of regret for the past. As long-time China watchers Orville Schell and John Delury wrote in their new book, Wealth and Power:

Foreign superiority (as remembered in the Opium Wars, colonization, and Japanese occupation) may have been humiliating and shameful, but it also served as a sharp goad urging Chinese to sacrifice for all the various reform movements and revolutions that came to be launched as a way to remove the stigma of their shame.”

via Chinese Hatred of Japan—Real or Government-Created? – China – The Atlantic.

Posted in Foreign invasion, History, Neighbour conflict, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Anti-Japanese sentiment, China, Japan, national humiliation, public anger, public sentiment, Surrender of Japan, unconditional surrender, World War II, Yasukuni Shrine

27/08/2013

Is China Building an “Aircraft Carrier in Disguise?”

If true, another step towards military confrontation.

The Diplomat: “Earlier this month a series of pictures posted on Chinese military forums appeared to show that China was building its first indigenous aircraft carrier, prompting much speculation and commentary including from The Diplomat.

China

Now some claim that this narrative might have been mistaken.

According to Japan’s Kyodo News, Kanwa Information Center, a private Canadian think tank, has published a report that claims that the pictures do not show an aircraft carrier. Instead, the Kanwa report—which is based on Ukraine military sources— says the vessel under construction is China’s first amphibious assault ship capable of carrying hovercraft and helicopters.

In other words, if the report is accurate, China is building a Landing Helicopter Assault (LHA)-like ship not completely unlike the Izumo-class helicopter destroyer Japan launched earlier this month, which Chinese analysts referred to as an “aircraft carrier in disguise.”

Kanwa says the vessel is being built at a shipyard on Shanghai’s Changxing Island and could be commissioned as early as 2015. It will reportedly displace 35,000 tons, roughly double what China’s three existing Type 071 amphibious assault ships, which displace between 17,000-20,000 tons, according to Sino-Defense. The same source says the Type 071 ships were built by Shanghai-based Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard. The location of Changxing Island, suggests that Jiangnan Shipyard is constructing the new vessel.

Japan’s Izumo-class helicopter destroyer reportedly displaces between 20,000-25,000-tons.

China’s new LHA will carry four hovercraft and up to 20 helicopters, according to Kyodo News, which cited the Kanawa report.

There’s reason to think the Kanwa report is accurate. Indeed, last November a Chinese admiral told CCTV, China’s official broadcaster, that the PLAN was building a 40,000-ton amphibious assault ship similar to the U.S. Navy’s LHA.”

via Is China Building an “Aircraft Carrier in Disguise?” | Flashpoints | The Diplomat.

Posted in China alert, Military, Neighbour conflict, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ship, amphibious assault ships, China, Izumo-class cruiser, Japan, Jiangnan Shipyard, military confrontation, Shanghai

25/08/2013

Japan tourist visits to Beijing halved amid tensions over islands row

SCMP: The number of Japanese tourists visiting Beijing fell by more than half in the first seven months of the year amid a spike in tensions between the countries, the city’s statistical bureau said Sunday.

Japanese tourist arrivals this year fell to 136,000 up to the end of July, down 53.7 per cent from the same period last year, the bureau said.

The drop follows violent anti-Japanese protests in Beijing and several other Chinese cities in September in response to complaints from the government over Japan’s move to nationalise uninhabited East China Sea islands claimed by China.

Japanese businesses were torched and Japanese-brand cars, most of which are made by Chinese joint venture firms, were smashed and their drivers assaulted.

There were also scattered reports of assaults on Japanese citizens, although none of the attacks were serious.

Tensions remain high between the sides, with their ships conducting regular patrols in waters surrounding the islands, called the Senkakus by Japan and Diaoyu by China. Taiwan also claims the islands and has negotiated an agreement with Tokyo to permit fishing in the area.

The decline in Japanese visitors was part of an overall 13.9 per cent decline in tourist arrivals blamed on the sluggish global economy, as well as a spike in Beijing’s notoriously bad air pollution.

Numbers of tourists from Asian countries fell 25.4 per cent, including a 19.9 per cent fall in visitors from South Korea. Visitors from the Americas fell by just 3.4 per cent.

via Japan tourist visits to Beijing halved amid tensions over islands row | South China Morning Post.

China Summons Japan Ambassador over Shrine Visits (theepochtimes.com)
China’s military flexes its muscles in the East China Sea amid Japan war shrine tensions (rt.com)
China Rules Out High-Level Summit with Japan over Island Dispute (voanews.com)
Japan summons China envoy over ships near disputed isles (channelnewsasia.com)

Posted in China alert, Economics, Foreign invasion, History, Neighbour conflict, Politics, Tourism | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Anti-Japanese sentiment, Beijing, China, china sea islands, East China Sea, Japan, Senkaku Islands, South Korea, Tokyo

22/08/2013

China develops revolutionary submarine with high speed of 100 knots

The arm race between China, India and Japan gathers pace. What a shame.

China, Japan, and India’s Asian Arms Race (chindia-alert.org)

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Foreign invasion, GeoPolitics, History, India alert, Military, Neighbour conflict, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, India, indian navy, Japan

21/08/2013

China, Japan, and India’s Asian Arms Race

BusinessWeek: “China and Japan managed to get past the Aug. 15 anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II without incident. For weeks leading up to the date, the question was, will he or won’t he? Will Shinzo Abe, the conservative prime minister who last year infuriated the Chinese by visiting the Yasukini Shrine in Tokyo, which commemorates Japan’s war dead—including war criminals from World War II—go to the shrine on the anniversary?

Japan's 19,500-ton Izumo helicopter carrier is launched in Yokohama on Aug. 6

Abe has enough on his agenda without provoking another crisis with China, so he decided to stay clear. Three members of his cabinet did go to Yasukini, part of a group of 100 members of Japan’s parliament who prayed at the shrine. While Abe wasn’t one of them, the prime minister did make a gesture to his nationalist supporters, sending a cash offering to the shrine.

Another day, another crisis in the ongoing saga of the dispute between the two Asian powers over uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea. Today, China’s official China Central Television reported the People’s Liberation Army had started 10 days of live-fire military exercises in the waters near the islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku and the Chinese call the Diaoyu. In a highly symbolic move, one ship taking part in the exercises is the Liaoning, China’s first aircraft carrier.

The Liaoning is part of a three-way arms race involving the naval forces of China, Japan, and the other big Asian power, India. With China embroiled in territorial disputes with both Japan and India, all three countries are coming out with bigger and better warships to make sure they hold their own in the region.

For Japan, the big news is a 19,500-ton helicopter carrier called the Izumo, which the government unveiled on Aug. 6. It’s the third such warship in Japan’s self-defense force and the biggest Japanese-made military vessel since the end of World War II. That’s big for Japan but still small compared with U.S. aircraft carriers, which displace 97,000 tons when fully loaded.

Still, the Chinese are not happy about the Izumo’s launch. The helicopter carrier is a “symbol of Japan’s strong wish to return to its time as a military power,” the Global Times wrote the next day.

India, meanwhile, has launched its first aircraft carrier, unveiled on Monday. That’s a challenge to China, the Global Times editorialized. “China should speed up its construction of domestic aircraft carriers,” it said. “The earlier China establishes its own aircraft carrier capabilities, the earlier it will gain the strategic initiative.”

India has tripled military spending over the past 10 years and in February announced more spending, with a 14 percent increase in defense outlays. The border dispute between India and China isn’t as hot as the one between Japan and China, but it involves much more land: India says China is occupying 38,000 square kilometers of Indian territory in Jummu and Kashmir (the much-disputed region in the north of India that is also claimed by Pakistan). China says India is occupying 90,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory in Arunachal Pradesh (a state in northeastern India near Bhutan and Tibet).””

via China, Japan, and India’s Asian Arms Race – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Diplomacy, Foreign invasion, GeoPolitics, History, India alert, Neighbour conflict, Politics | 2 Comments »

Tags: China, conservative prime minister, East China Sea, helicopter carrier, India, Izumo, Japan, japanese surrender, Liaoning, liaoning china, People's Liberation Army, World War II

21/08/2013

China’s Xi “Lurches” to the Left, Promotes Maoist Revival

Meadia: “In a move sure to dismay the people inside and outside China who hoped Xi Jinping would begin a new era of democratic reform, China’s president has “lurched” to the left, as the WSJ reports, promoting a revitalized version of nationalist Maoism across the country. ”Our red nation will never change color,” Xi said during a ceremony at Mao’s old lakeside mansion in Wuhan, declaring that the villa should become a center to educate young people about patriotism and revolution.

“It isn’t just Mr. Xi’s rhetoric that has taken on a Maoist tinge in recent months,” the Journal reports. “He has borrowed from Mao’s tactical playbook, launching a ‘rectification’ campaign to purify the Communist Party, while tightening limits on discussion of ideas such as democracy, rule of law and enforcement of the constitution.”

Xi appears to have capitalized on some uncertainty at the top levels of the Party after the fall of Bo Xilai, a charismatic and popular leader who also led a Maoist revival campaign and became a threat to the stability of the Party leadership. “Many of Mr. Bo’s former supporters and several powerful princelings have thrown their weight behind Mr. Xi’s efforts to establish himself as much a stronger leader than his predecessor,” party insiders told the WSJ.

Xi’s nationalist streak comes as the country prepares for Bo Xilai’s trial and amid an economic downturn that has caused worry among investors and analysts. At the same time, China and other Asian powers are engaged in a dangerous and accelerating game of military one-upmanship. New ships and maritime units are being unveiled from India to the Philippines to Japan and territorial disputes are growing more intense. Across the region, this trend is driven in part by a rising nationalism among citizens—in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, India, elsewhere—who push their governments into increasingly aggressive and antagonistic positions against the neighbors. China is no exception.”

[Xi Jinping photo courtesy of Shutterstock]

via China’s Xi “Lurches” to the Left, Promotes Maoist Revival | Via Meadia.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Foreign invasion, GeoPolitics, History, Neighbour conflict, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Bo Xilai, China, Japan, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Philippines, politics, South Korea, Xi JinPing

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 ‘History’