Let us hope some of these seven messages are heard by Indian policy-makers.
01/05/2013
* China’s new mental health law to make it harder for authorities to silence petitioners
SCMP: “The director of Xinjiang‘s largest mental health institution has welcomed a new law, which went into effect on Wednesday, banning involuntary inpatient treatment for many people deemed mentally ill.
“Seventy to 80 per cent of the patients have been forcibly admitted to the hospital,” said Xu Xiangdong, director of the Fourth People’s Hospital in the regional capital Urumqi, the Yaxin online news portal reported on Monday.
“Because of this increased consideration for patients’ rights, [the figures] will change fundamentally,” he said, adding that it would put an end to frequent episodes of people being wrongfully declared mentally ill.
The new law, which has been debated for a quarter of a century, is meant to crack down on local authorities aiming to silence petitioners and troublemakers by arbitrarily declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in mental health wards.
Under the law, patients must first give their consent to being hospitalised, except in cases in which they could harm themselves or others.
If patients are still forcibly confined, they or their guardians have the right to seek a second opinion. Forced hospitalisations for reasons other than severe mental illness are banned.
Last week about 200 health practitioners from the region were sent to Xu’s hospital to be trained in the new provisions on patients’ rights stipulated by the new law, the Xinjiang Daily reported.
Two million people in Xinjiang live with mental disabilities, Xu estimated, amounting to more than 9 per cent of the population in the economic backwater of China’s remote northwest.
That compares with almost 8 per cent of China’s population diagnosed with some form of mental illness, according to the Ministry of Health in 2011. A largescale 2009 study estimated a much higher national average at 17.5 per cent.
In Xinjiang, authorities have not been able to provide adquate resources to deal with the increasing number of people living with mental disorders. Xu told the Yaxin portal in 2011 that the number of mentally ill patients had increased by 20 to 30 per cent annually over the last years.
In Monday’s report, he said less than 5 per cent of the two million mentally ill could receive treatment because of a lack of resources and trained staff.
Two years earlier, the regional government had reported plans to build 15 new mental hospitals and to expand current ones. Until now, only one additional hospital in Kashgar has been completed, the Yaxin report said.
In March, a gruesome murder of a seven-year-old Uygur boy by a Chinese man has caused tensions among ethnic communities in the Turpan prefecture east of Urumqi. The man had been declared mentally ill to prevent ethnic revenge attacks, locals told Radio Free Asia.”
30/04/2013
* Experts baffled by China-India border stand-off amid improving ties
SCMP: “It’s more than 5,000 metres above sea level, cold, inhospitable, uninhabited, with hardly any vegetation or wildlife in sight. Welcome to the icy desert wastelands of Daulat Beg Oldi, a forgotten pit stop on the Silk Road catapulted to overnight geopolitical fame as two nuclear neighbours vie for its possession in a dangerous game of tactical brinkmanship.
For two weeks now, Chinese and Indian soldiers have been standing eyeball to eyeball, barely 100 metres apart, at this easternmost point of the Karakoram Range on the western sector of the China-India border.
Both sides claim the land as their own in an unusually public show of mutual defiance that threatens to unhinge some of their newfound comity in an otherwise fraught relationship, and cast a shadow on Premier Li Keqiang‘s visit to India next month.
The trouble began when Indian media started reporting a “deep incursion” on April 15 in which a platoon of about 30 Chinese soldiers entered the Daulat Beg Oldi area in the Depsang Valley of eastern Ladakh in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Shrill media reports of Chinese incursions are not uncommon in India, where Sinophobia has been wired deep into the national psyche since a drubbing by China in a border war in 1962. Every time such reports appear, New Delhi’s stock response is that it’s a misunderstanding caused by “perceptual differences”. This time is no different.
A group of activists protest on Saturday against an alleged incursion two weeks ago by about 30 Chinese troops in the Daulat Beg Oldi area in eastern Ladakh of Indian-administered Kashmir. Photo: AP
India and China do not have a real border marked out on the ground as they never got around to negotiating one. What they follow is an undemarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC), but each side has its own perception of where that line actually lies. As a result, it is not uncommon for patrols to stray into each other’s territory. Years of painstaking talks have gone into creating an elaborate mechanism to prevent such transgressions from snowballing, keeping the peace for 25 years.
What is different this time is that none of the standard operating procedures that comprise this peace mechanism seem to be working. These procedures include waving banners to alert the other patrol if it is on the wrong side of the LAC, and meetings between local commanders. This time, two flag meetings have been held but the stalemate continues. New Delhi insists Chinese troops have entered 18 kilometres into Indian territory and must leave. Beijing maintains its soldiers are on the Chinese side of the LAC and won’t budge. And, in an alarming show of strength, both sides have dug in, pitching tents to strengthen their claims.
The confrontation has sent diplomats into overdrive to calm tempers before Li’s India visit as both sides have set much store by the trip. Bilateral trade, barely about US$3 billion in 2000 following decades of shutting each other out after the war, has now reached nearly US$80 billion, making China India’s largest trading partner. The aim is to reach US$100 billion by 2015, with both sides looking for greater access to each other’s markets. They are also increasingly working together in other areas, ranging from environment to energy security.
“Sino-Indian relations are developing very quickly. Li’s visit will be his first foreign trip after taking office, and is in a complete break with protocol, showing the importance China attaches to relations with India,” says Ma Jiali, an India expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing.
Li’s choice of India as his first port of call had created a burst of goodwill in India for its symbolism. Going by protocol, it was Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh‘s turn to visit Beijing this year to reciprocate for former premier Wen Jiabao‘s tour in 2011.”
via Experts baffled by China-India border stand-off amid improving ties | South China Morning Post.
Related articles
- https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/30/india-foreign-minister-salman-khurshid-to-visit-china/
- China – India Border Tensions Continue (warnewsupdates.blogspot.com)
- This time with feeling: India, China revisit border talks after troop incursion (paksinica.com)
- India asks China to revert to status quo in Ladakh (thehindu.com)
- Ladakh incursion: India and China face-off at the ‘Gate of Hell’ (chindia-alert.org)
- China flew military choppers over Depsang: Sources (ibnlive.in.com)
30/04/2013
* India foreign minister Salman Khurshid to visit China
BBC: “India’s Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid has said he will visit China in May amid tensions near the de facto border in the Himalayas.
Mr Khurshid’s trip comes ahead of a scheduled visit by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to India.
It comes at a time when India has asked China to withdraw troops it says have moved into a territory near the border.
China denies violating Indian territory. The two sides are holding talks to resolve the row.
“I believe we have a mutual interest and we should not destroy years of contribution we have put together,” Mr Khurshid was quoted by AFP news agency as telling reporters on the sidelines of a business event.
“I think it is a good thing that we are having a dialogue.”
Mr Khurshid said he would be visiting China on 9 May, ahead of Mr Li’s visit on 20 May for his first overseas trip, reports say.
India says Chinese troops erected a camp on its side of the ill-defined frontier in Ladakh region last week.
China has dismissed reports of the incursion as media speculation.
The two countries dispute several Himalayan border areas and fought a brief war in 1962. Tensions flare up from time to time.
They have held numerous rounds of border talks, but all have been unsuccessful so far.
The BBC’s Soutik Biswas in Delhi says there has not been a fatality in skirmishes along the undefined India-China boundary since 1967, but the memories of the crushing defeat inflicted by the Chinese on India in the 1962 war have not faded from the minds of some Indians.”
via BBC News – India foreign minister Salman Khurshid to visit China.
Related articles
30/04/2013
The American military is using Chinese satellites
This just shows how inter-linked are the affairs of China and America.
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- Chinese GPS Alternative Opens To Consumers (techweekeurope.co.uk)
- SPACE: China And America Together In Australia (strategypage.com)
29/04/2013
China: Military license plates no longer allowed on luxury cars, more strictly controlled
Good idea!
27/04/2013
* China’s retrieval of lost relics needs time
China Daily: “Two bronze animal heads looted from a Chinese royal garden 149 years ago will soon be returned to China, beaming in a ray of hope despite the difficulties the country faces in bringing its treasure trove of cultural relics home.
English: Looting_of_the_Yuan_Ming_Yuan_by Anglo-French forces in_1860 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The family heading French luxury goods retailer Pinault said on Friday in Beijing that it will donate the rat and rabbit busts back to China for free.
The Pinault family is the majority shareholder of PPR, whose brands include Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Puma, and Pinault Group Chairman and CEO Francois-Henri Pinault has just concluded a two-day visit to China with French President Francois Hollande.
Cao Yuming, director of the administration office of the Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, from which the two pieces were looted, said the move should encourage the return of more Chinese relics.
Cao described the planned donation as “an observation of international convention, a token of friendship and conducive to bringing more relics home.”
He also said an exhibition of the two pieces is likely to be held in the Yuanmingyuan once approved by the state cultural relics authorities.
The busts were among 12 animal head sculptures that formed the zodiacal water clock decorating the Calm Sea of Yuanmingyuan of Emperor Qianlong(1736-1795).
They were taken by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.
But the two became the center of an international tug-of-war when they were auctioned for $39.6 million in Paris in 2009.
China has repeatedly opposed this auction. A Chinese businessman made the winning bid and then refused to pay on the grounds that the heads belong to his native country.
Five of the 12 bronze animal fountain heads in Yuanmingyuan have returned thus far, and the Pinault donation will take the number to seven. But the whereabouts of the five others remains unknown.
China, along with other countries to have lost cultural relics, is making efforts to repatriate such prized possessions, a drive which has generally received a positive response and support from the international community.
But more efforts are needed. UNESCO believes there are at least 17 million Chinese cultural relics abroad, far exceeding the number in the country’s own museums.”
via China’s retrieval of lost relics needs time |Society |chinadaily.com.cn.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/historical-perspectives/
27/04/2013
* Turkey becomes partner of China, Russia-led security bloc
One day Europe may well come to regret not wqelcoming Turkey into the EU.
Reuters: “NATO member Turkey signed up on Friday to became a “dialogue partner” of a security bloc dominated by China and Russia, and declared that its destiny is in Asia.
“This is really a historic day for us,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in Kazakhstan’s commercial capital Almaty after signing a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Secretary General Dmitry Mezentsev.
“Now, with this choice, Turkey is declaring that our destiny is the same as the destiny of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) countries.”
China, Russia and four Central Asian nations – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – formed the SCO in 2001 as a regional security bloc to fight threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighboring Afghanistan.”
via Turkey becomes partner of China, Russia-led security bloc | Reuters.
25/04/2013
* Xi Jinping orders generals and senior PLA officers to serve as privates
SCMP: “Chinese generals and senior officers will have to serve as the lowest-ranking soldiers for at least two weeks under a measure by President Xi Jinping to shake up the military and boost morale.
Xi, as the nation’s commander-in-chief, issued the order over the weekend, which the Ministry of National Defence publicised on its website.
It dictates that officers with the rank of lieutenant-colonel or above must serve as privates – the lowest-ranking soldier – for not less than 15 days. Generals and officers will have to live, eat and serve with junior soldiers during the period.
They need to provide for themselves and pay for their own food. They must not accept any banquet invitation, join any sight-seeing tours, accept gifts or interfere with local affairs
“They need to provide for themselves and pay for their own food. They must not accept any banquet invitation, join any sight-seeing tours, accept gifts or interfere with local affairs,” said the directive, which covers both the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police.
Leaders of regiment- and brigade-level units have to serve on the front line once every three years. Division- and army-level commanders must serve once every four years. Top leaders from army headquarters and military districts will do so once every five years.
The measure recalls a similar shake-up launched by Mao Zedong in 1958. Mao at the time famously said all military leaders should serve as foot soldiers for a month every year.
He used the chance to strengthen his control of the military and forced many powerful marshals and generals into retirement or exile.”
via Xi Jinping orders generals and senior PLA officers to serve as privates | South China Morning Post.
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- PLA generals go for the money, and Xi Jinping raises no objections (worldtribune.com)
25/04/2013
* Southeast Asia to reach out to China on sea disputes
Reuters: “Southeast Asian nations stepped up efforts on Thursday to engage China in talks to resolve maritime tensions, agreeing to meet to try to reach common ground on disputed areas of the South China Sea ahead of planned discussions in Beijing later this year.
Efforts by ASEAN to craft a code of conduct to manage South China Sea tensions all but collapsed last year at a summit chaired by Cambodia, a close economic ally of China, when the group failed to issue a closing statement for the first time.
Cambodia was accused of trying to keep the issue off the agenda despite a surge in tension over disputed areas and growing concern about China’s assertive stance in enforcing its claims over a vast, potentially energy-rich sea area.
Thursday’s initiative came as the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) tried to patch up differences that shook the group last year, but struggled to make progress on long-held plans to agree on a dispute-management mechanism.
Thailand, which has the role of ASEAN coordinator with China, called for the talks ahead of an ASEAN-China meeting expected in August to commemorate 10 years since they formed a “strategic partnership”.”
via Southeast Asia to reach out to China on sea disputes | Reuters.
Related articles
- * China, ASEAN agree to develop code of conduct in South China Sea (chindia-alert.org)
- Asia-Pacific countries poised to start free-trade talks (business.inquirer.net)
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 