Archive for ‘Politics’

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07/04/2013

* China deplores Korea tension, warns against regional turmoil

My belief is that the world has got it wrong.  

I believe that North Korea is trying to reprise the plot of the film “The Mouse That Roared“ which is a 1955 Cold War satirical novel by Irish-American writer Leonard Wibberley, which launched a series of satirical books about an imaginary country in Europe called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Wibberley went beyond the merely comic, using the premise to make still-quoted commentaries about modern politics and world situations, including the nuclear arms race, nuclear weapons in general, and the politics of the United States.  

The Plot: The tiny (three miles by five miles) European Duchy of Grand Fenwick, supposedly located in the Alps between Switzerland and France, proudly retains a pre-industrial economy, dependent almost entirely on making Pinot Grand Fenwick wine. However, an American winery makes a knockoff version, “Pinot Grand Enwick”, putting the country on the verge of bankruptcy.

The prime minister decides that their only course of action is to declare war on the United States. Expecting a quick and total defeat (since their standing army is tiny and equipped with bows and arrows), the country confidently expects to rebuild itself through the generous largesse that the United States bestows on all its vanquished enemies (as it did for Germany through the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II and for Japan through the McArthur Plan).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared. 

Nothing else makes sense.

Reuters: “China deplored tension on the Korean peninsula on Sunday and in an apparent reference to North Korea, said no country should be allowed to plunge the region into chaos after the United States postponed a missile test to ease talk of war.

North Korean soldiers take part in a shooting drill in an unknown location in this picture taken on April 6, 2013 and released by North Korea's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang on April 7, 2013. REUTERS-KCNA

The North, led by 30-year-old Kim Jong-un, has been issuing threats of war against the United States and U.S.-backed South Korea since the United Nations imposed sanctions after its third nuclear weapon test in February.”

via China deplores Korea tension, warns against regional turmoil | Reuters.

 

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06/04/2013

* Who Is Varun Gandhi?

WSJ: “Varun Gandhi has an impressive political pedigree. He belongs to the dynasty that gave India three prime ministers. All were members of the currently ruling Congress party.

His first cousin, Rahul Gandhi, 42, is the vice president of Congress, and viewed as a likely prime ministerial candidate for his party in next year’s national election.

But Varun, 33, has taken a different path. He was elected to Parliament in 2009 with the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, and last week was appointed as party general secretary.

Varun is the son of Sanjay Gandhi, who died in a plane crash in 1980. Until his death, Sanjay was being groomed to succeed his mother, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, as leader of the Congress party.

Sanjay’s younger brother, Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul’s father, took up her mantle instead, and later became prime minister.

Varun was only a few months old when his father died. His mother Maneka Gandhi soon fell out with her mother-in-law, Indira, and in 1983 formed her own political party, the Rashtriya Sanjay Manch. In 2004, she joined the Hindu right-wing BJP.

Varun has been active in politics since he was 19, working with his mother in the Pilibhit constituency in Uttar Pradesh state.

Following in his mother’s footsteps, in the 2004 elections, he campaigned for the BJP.”

via Who Is Varun Gandhi? – India Real Time – WSJ.

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04/04/2013

* Rahul pitches for inclusive growth, says India largest pool of human capital

Times of India: “In a veiled criticism of BJP‘s policies, Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said politics of alienating communities affects growth and the Congress stood for inclusive growth even as he sidestepped questions on becoming Prime Minister.

Rahul Gandhi at a rally in Ernakulam, Kerala.

Rahul Gandhi at a rally in Ernakulam, Kerala. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

India had witnessed faster economic growth under the UPA because it had greatly lowered tensions among communities and fostered harmony, the Congress vice-president said.

“When you play the politics of alienating communities, you stop the movement of people and ideas. When that happens we all suffer. Businesses suffer and the seeds of disharmony are sown and the dreams of our people are severely disrupted,” he said, adding that this damage takes a very long time to reverse.

“It is very dangerous to leave people behind. Inclusive growth is a win-win for everybody,” Rahul said addressing the Annual General Meeting of the CII here.

Likening India to a movement where a billion people were trying to break the shackles, he said there was a need to use the energy and ideas generated by this exercise to help everybody.

“There are two ways this movement can go. It can go harmoniously or it can go disruptively. The idea of the Congress party is that it should go harmoniously and everybody should move together and happily,” he said.

Anger, hatred and prejudice did not contribute to growth, he added.

Spelling out his priorities for India’s growth, Rahul Gandhi said: “The biggest danger is excluding people, excluding the poor, the middle class, the tribals, the Dalits.”

“Whenever we excluded women, the minorities, Dalits… we have always fallen back,” the 42-year-old Gandhi scion said.”

via Rahul pitches for inclusive growth, says India largest pool of human capital – The Times of India.

Posted in Economics, India alert, Leadership change, Politics | 4 Comments »

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03/04/2013

* China, ASEAN agree to develop code of conduct in South China Sea

Maritime claims in the South China Sea

Maritime claims in the South China Sea (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is China becoming more pragmatic on the territorial disputes?

Xinhua: “All participants in the 19th China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Senior Officials’ Consultation have agreed to work toward a code of conduct in the South China Sea.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry press release on Tuesday said after the conclusion of the consultation it was agreed that all parties will commit themselves to fully implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.

They will make joint efforts toward “a code of conduct in the South China Sea” and continue to exchange views on the issue.

According to the press release, China and ASEAN also agreed to co-host celebrations on the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-ASEAN strategic partnership and further expand friendly communication and cooperation in all fields.”

via China, ASEAN agree to develop code of conduct in South China Sea – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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02/04/2013

* Uyghur Jailings Highlight Chinese Media Controls

Eurasia review: “China’s jailing of 20 ethnic Uyghurs this week on terrorism and separatism charges using online activism as a basis for their conviction reflects government moves to increase media controls and use weak laws to suppress voices in the troubled Xinjiang region, Uyghur rights groups say.

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China

The courts said the 20 Uyghur Muslims had had their “thoughts poisoned by religious extremism” and used cell phones and DVDs “to spread Muslim religious propaganda,” the government of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region said on its official news website.

Nineteen of them were given prison sentences ranging from 5 years to life in prison in Xinjiang’s Kashagar prefecture while the 20th suspect was sentenced to 10 years in jail on the same day in the Bayingolin Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture.

They were accused of using the Internet, mobile phones and digital storage devices to organize, lead and participate in an alleged terrorist organization with the intent to “incite splittism,” reports have said.

Leading Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) said that the sentences showed the new Chinese leadership’s “indifference for human rights and democracy” and that it will “continue with the ‘strike hard’ practices of the previous regimes.”

“It further indicates that the Chinese government will not contribute to the peaceful resolution of the conflict in the region in the near future, preferring instead to continue its counterproductive and destructive practices,” the WUC president said in a statement Thursday.”

via Uyghur Jailings Highlight Chinese Media Controls Eurasia Review | Eurasia Review.

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02/04/2013

* China’s Glass Ceiling

Foreign Policy: “It’s over for America,” a Chinese academic told me in late 2008, two days after Goldman Sachs turned itself into a commercial bank in order to fend off possible collapse. “From here on, it’s all downhill.” Sitting in Beijing as American capitalism seemed to be hanging by a thread, it was easy to believe that one era was ending and another beginning.

The past half-decade should have been the glory years for the spread of Chinese influence around the world. After China’s ravishing 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, and its startling recovery from the financial crisis, it had a platform to push for a bigger voice in international affairs. At a time when the United States has been navel-gazing on its own deficiencies and beset by dysfunction and infighting in Congress, China has quickly become the main trading partner for a long list of countries, not just in Asia, which should give it all sorts of sway. And at the very least, many Chinese assume, the country should start to resume its role as the natural leader in Asia.

Yet the years since the crisis have demonstrated something very different. Rather than usher in a new era of Chinese influence, Beijing’s missteps have shown why it is unlikely to become the world’s leading power. Even if it overtakes the United States to have the biggest economy in the world, which many economists believe could happen over the next decade, China will not dislodge Washington from its central position in global affairs for decades to come.

China is certainly not lacking in ambition, even if many of its final goals are not clearly articulated. It is implementing plans which challenge U.S. military, economic, and even political supremacy. But on each front, the last few years have demonstrated China’s limitations, not the inevitability of its rise.

China’s effort to gradually squeeze the U.S. Navy out of the Western Pacific did not start with the financial crisis in 2008. The financial crisis did, however, coincide with a new aggressiveness in the way China has pushed its territorial claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has scored at least one victory, securing control of the Scarborough Shoal, a group of small islands in the South China Sea, from the Philippines in 2012.

But among these tactical successes, China has been sowing the seeds of a strategic defeat. China’s assertiveness is generating intense suspicion, if not outright enmity, among its neighbors. Its “peaceful rise” is not taking place in isolation. There may be echoes in today’s Asia of the late-nineteenth century in Europe and North America, but this is the one critical difference. The United States came into its own as a great power without any major challenge from its neighbors, while Germany’s ascent was aided by the collapsing Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires and Russian monarchy on its frontiers. China, on the other hand, is surrounded by vibrant countries with fast-growing economies, from South Korea to India to Vietnam, who all believe that this is their time, as well. Even Japan, after two decades of stagnation, still has one of the most formidable navies in the world, as well as the world’s third largest economy. China’s strategic misfortune is to be bordered by robust and proud nation-states which expect their own stake in the modern world.

The last few years have shown that these countries have no desire to return to a Sinocentric Asia, as existed before the arrival of Western powers in the late-fifteenth century, and one where China is the undisputed leader. All the talk about the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia has obscured the much bigger shift that has taken place in the region since the crisis — almost all of China’s neighbors are now deeply anxious about what a powerful, expansionist leadership in Beijing portends for their future. They still want to trade with China, but they also want protection from Beijing’s bullying.”

via China’s Glass Ceiling – By Geoff Dyer | Foreign Policy.

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02/04/2013

Wish it was this simple.

Posted in China alert, Culture, History, Politics | Leave a Comment »

02/04/2013

Surely not. Robbing from its own people?

Posted in China alert, Economics, Illegal practices, land grab, Politics, urban development | Leave a Comment »

02/04/2013

Let us hope this author is correct.

Posted in GeoPolitics, History, Politics | 1 Comment »

25/03/2013

* Behind China’s Switch to High-End Exports

WSJ: “As rising labor costs push manufacturing of T-shirts, jeans and the like out of China, the country has been able to offset that loss by grabbing the high end.

[image]

And nowhere is that on better display than the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

When the switch is flipped each night for the span’s two-year artistic light show, the electricity flows through sophisticated power devices made by Gary Hua’s factory not far from Shanghai.

In the six years since it was founded, his company has grown to 1,000 employees, who last year made three million power-supply units for high-efficiency light-emitting diodes. The company, Inventronics Inc., expects to double production this year and export more than half that output.

With labor costs increasing in China, the country is now shifting its manufacturing focus to high-tech exports such as computers and sophisticated power devices. Shaun Rein of China Markets Research tells the WSJ’s Jake Lee how Western countries are reacting.

More Related Video

“The Bay Lights” Transforms San Francisco Skyline

Inventronics exemplifies China’s shift toward producing the higher-end products that are fueling the country’s export growth. China has been increasing exports in industries as varied as computers, car parts, high-technology lamps and optical-surgical equipment, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Chinese, European Union and U.S. trade data.

HSBC economists estimate that China’s share of global exports increased to 11% last year, from 9% before the 2008 financial crisis and around 5% at the turn of the millennium. China’s exports rose 8% last year while global trade expanded just 1.6%, according to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

Chinese employment in higher-value industries such as electrical- and communications-equipment production has jumped since 2008 and now exceeds employment in textiles, garments and leather making, says Royal Bank of Scotland RBS.LN +0.68% economist Louis Kuijs.

High-tech goods are more valuable and are a bigger market than clothes. Over the past two years, Chinese exports to the U.S. of high-tech electronics, auto parts and optical devices rose 24%, to $129 billion, while exports of clothes and footwear rose just 5% to $47 billion. That has caused China’s share of the U.S. trade deficit to expand $20 billion last year to a record $315 billion, according to a U.S. government analysis.

A chunk of what is marked “Made in China” is made up of parts and design that originated elsewhere, making trade data a little fuzzy. The chips in Inventronics’ LED drivers are from the U.S., for example.

But China’s exports contain a rising percentage of materials that were made in the country, according to the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2009, the latest year for which figures are available, 28% of the value of Chinese exports came from foreign producers. In 2005, the figure was 36%.”

via Behind China’s Switch to High-End Exports – WSJ.com.

Posted in China alert, Construction, Economics, exports, GeoPolitics, Infrastructure | 1 Comment »

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