Hope the author is correct!
22/12/2012
* China opens second railway to Kazakhstan
China’s “go west” policy now extends even further west than its most western province! This is good news for Xinjiang, long deemed by its Muslim residents to be looked down upon and mistreated by the majority Han Chinese, for Chinese migrants who would otherwise have headed east into heavily crowded and over-competitive eastern sea board, and for Kazakhstan and countries beyond. A win-win-win situation, indeed.
Xinhua: “A second cross-border railway between China and Kazakhstan opened Saturday.
The railway is composed of a 292-km section in China and the remaining 293-km section in Kazakhstan. They were joined at the Korgas Pass in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Contruction of the Chinese side of the railway cost 6 billion yuan (962 million U.S. dollars), railway officials said.
The rail line is expected to ease the burden of the Alataw trade pass, where the first China-central Asia railway traverses. It handles 15.6 million tonnes of train-laden cargo a year.
Industry observers expect the Korgas pass, which now connects China and Kazakhstan by a railway, a highway, and an oil pipeline, to handle 20 million tonnes of cargo a year by 2020 and 35 million tonnes a year by 2030.
The railway launch followed the meet of Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and his Kazakh counterpart Kairat Kelimbetov in Astana earlier this month, vowing to enhance bilateral cooperation in energy, trade, communication and other fields.
Wang suggested enhancing the China-Kazzkhstan interconnection by the rails and a trans-continental highway that links China with Europe.
China and five central Asian countries have been deepening trade and economic cooperations in recent years. The total trade volume between China and central, west, and south Asian countries increased from 25.4 billion U.S. dollars to more than 370 billion, up about 30 percent annually.
In particular, trade between Xinjiang and five central Asian countries reached a historical high of 16.98 billion U.S. dollars last year, according to the customs figures.
Observers said the railway will also help the border city of Korgas become a key logistics hub with a network of highways, railways and pipelines.
Since 2010, the central government has been redoubling the efforts to build Xinjiang into a regional economic center, eyeing its geological closeness to central Asia and the region’s abundant natural resources including oil, coal and natural gas.”
via China opens second railway to Kazakhstan – Xinhua | English.news.cn.
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22/12/2012
* Japan’s Abe to send envoy to China to mend ties
Commonsense and geo-politics wins over parochial politics. Thank goodness.
Reuters: “Japan’s next Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to send senior ruling party member Masahiko Koumura as an envoy to China as early as next month in a bid to repair ties between Asia’s two largest economies, the Nikkei business daily said.
Abe, a hardliner who has questioned claims by China and others that Japan’s army forced woman from occupied territories into prostitution during World War II, wants to bolster relations with his nation’s biggest neighbor after anti-Japanese protests there this year, the paper reported, without saying where it obtained the information.
Komura will carry a letter from Abe for China’s leaders, the Nikkei said. Komura is a former foreign minister who served as Abe’s defense minister during his first administration in 2007. As head of the Japan-China Friendship Paliamentarians’ Union, the lawmaker is known for his strong ties with China.
During campaigning for the general election that returned his Liberal Democratic Party to power after three years, Abe pledged to take a tough line with China in the dispute over islands in the East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
A Chinese boycott of Japanese cars, electronic gadgets and other products earlier this year, however, hurt Japanese companies, while violent anti-Japanese protests damaged some businesses.”
via Japan’s Abe to send envoy to China to mend ties: Nikkei | Reuters.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/10/05/diaoyu-islands-dispute-hammers-japanese-car-sales-in-china/
22/12/2012
* TATAY RIVER, Cambodia: China is top dam builder, going where others won’t
Miami Herald: “Up a sweeping jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia, Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter- (330-foot-) high dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong province, one of Southeast Asia’s last great wilderness areas.
It’s a scenario that is hardly unique. China’s giant state enterprises and banks have completed, are working on or are proposing some 300 dams from Algeria to Myanmar.
Poor countries contend the dams are crucial to bringing electricity to tens of millions who live without it and boosting living standards. Environmental activists and other opponents counter that China, the world’s No. 1 dam builder, is willing and able to go where most Western companies, the World Bank and others won’t tread any more because of environmental, social, political or financing concerns.
“China is the one financier able to provide money for projects that don’t meet international standards,” said Ian Baird, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin who has worked in Southeast Asia for decades. “You go to China if you want to have them financed.”
The consequence, critics say, is a rollback to an era of ill-conceived, destructive mega-dams that many thought had passed. The most recent trend is to dam entire rivers with a cascade of barriers, as China’s state-owned Sinohydro has proposed on Colombia’s Magdalene River and the Nam Ou in Laos, where contracts for seven dams have been signed.
Viewed by some in the developing world as essential icons of progress, dams in countries as far apart as Ecuador, Myanmar and Zambia have spearheaded or reinforced China’s rising economic might around the world. They are tied to or put up in tandem with other infrastructure projects and businesses, and power generation equipment ranks as China’s second-largest export earner after electrical machinery and equipment.
In energy-starved Cambodia, trade with China has risen to 19 percent of GDP from 10 percent five years ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of International Monetary Fund data.
The year-old $280 million Kamchay Dam in Cambodia’s Kampot province was the largest ever foreign investment when approved as well as a political flag-carrier for Beijing. It has been hailed by both governments as a “symbol of close Chinese-Cambodian ties.”
Cambodia’s electricity demand grew more than 16 percent a year from 2002 to 2011, with shortfalls largely met through costly oil imports, said Bun Narith, a deputy director general in the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy. Only 14 percent of rural homes have electricity, one of the lowest levels in Southeast Asia.
“We have no choice,” Bun Narith said. “Hydropower is the priority, and the Chinese have the initiative and capability, both financial and technical.”
The 20 hydro dams built, being constructed or under study in Cambodia, the bulk of them by the Chinese, would lift Cambodia out of literal darkness and make it energy self-sufficient, he said. “We should have a win-win policy, a balance between environment and energy. After all, electricity is also a basic human need.””
Related articles
- Questions over China dams (eco-business.com)
- Government Defends Chinese Dams (cambodiadaily.com)
- Civil engineer to the world
22/12/2012
* Land grabs are main cause of mainland protests, experts say
If the new Chinese leadership is serious about improving the lives of its citizens and removing reasons to distrust the Party, this is one area it should concentrate on rather than reducing banquets and other ostentatious spending by officials and senior soldiers. The former affects people directly, the latter only peripherally. Though eventually both must change.
SCMP: “Land seizures, pollution and labour disputes have been the three main causes of tens of thousands of mass protests in recent years, according to a top think-tank.
In its 2013 Social Development Blue Book, released on Tuesday, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said the mainland was experiencing frequent social conflict because “social contradictions were diverse and complex”.
It said there had been more than 100,000 “mass incidents” – the central government’s term for large protests involving more than 100 people – every year in recent years.
Professor Chen Guangjing, editor of this year’s book, said that disputes over land grabs accounted for about half of “mass incidents”, while pollution and labour disputes were responsible for 30 per cent. Other kinds of disputes accounted for the remaining 20 per cent.
“Of the tens of thousands of incidents of rural unrest that occur each year in China, the vast majority of them result from land confiscations and home demolitions for development,” Chen told a news conference in Beijing yesterday.
Late last year, about 1,000 villagers from Wukan, Guangdong, rioted and overthrew corrupt local leaders who had profited from illegal sales of village land.
Chen said environmental concerns were also becoming a main cause of social unrest, as evidenced by a series of grass-roots demonstrations over polluting projects.
More than 20,000 people rallied in Xiamen, Fujian province, in June 2007 to protest against plans to build a chemical plant in the city.
The project was subsequently relocated and the Xiamen backdown sparked similar protests in several mainland cities.
The major cause of labour disputes was salary arrears. There over 120 protests that involved more than 100 workers each in the first eight months of this year.
Chen said courts and labour arbitration tribunals had dealt with 479,000 back-pay cases in the first nine months of this year.
The book says 120 million mainlanders are living under the poverty line – with per capita annual disposable income of less than 2,300 yuan (HK$2,830). The government last year raised the poverty line from the previous level of 1,200 yuan, set in 2008.
Professor Li Peilin, the blue book’s editor-in-chief, said household income growth had lagged far behind gross domestic product growth over the past decade.”
via Land grabs are main cause of mainland protests, experts say | South China Morning Post.
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20/12/2012
* Amid China tensions, Southeast Asia looks to India
ASEAN nations turning to India to counter-balance China’s aggressive position on territorial disputes.
Reuters: “Southeast Asian leaders are expected to lay out a vision for closer cooperation with India on security and the economy at a high-level gathering in New Delhi at a time of tension with China in the potentially oil- and gas-rich South China Sea.
The meeting is a ceremonial summit to mark 20 years of cooperation with India and will not include detailed negotiations on regional issues, India’s Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid told Reuters.
But ministry officials said the leaders would also produce a statement which is expected to reiterate a commitment to freedom of navigation, a hot issue because of territorial conflicts in the South China Sea.
Some ASEAN countries contest claims by China in the waters, making it the biggest potential flashpoint in the region. The United States has called for calm, but some are also looking to India, the other regional heavyweight, to get involved.
“They want India to play a larger role. Those concerns are only increasing given the uncertain situation that is emerging,” said C. Raja Mohan, a strategic affairs expert at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank.
For India, improved relations with Southeast Asia will give it entry into one of the fastest-growing economic regions in the world and a source of raw materials needed for its own growth.
Poor there are poor transport links between India and the nations to its southeast, and constraints like India’s tiny diplomatic corps – similar in size to New Zealand’s – mean India trails China in relations with the region.
Trade between India and the 10-member ASEAN was up to $80 billion last year compared with $47 billion in 2008. An agreement on free trade in services and investment could be signed at the New Delhi meeting.
But India’s role in the region is dwarfed by that of China, which enjoyed trade worth a record $363 billion with ASEAN countries in 2011 in an already established free trade area.
“What we need is far greater connectivity,” Khurshid said in an interview with Reuters, mentioning roads, railways and flights as areas needing work. He described a 10-year plan to double the number of diplomats to reflect India’s global ambitions.”
via Amid China tensions, Southeast Asia looks to India | Reuters.
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- Asean Welcomes Rising India as It Looks East (irrawaddy.org)
- Japanese firms shifting production from China to Southeast Asia (wantchinatimes.com)
20/12/2012
* Land acquisition bill deferred till Budget session
The poor landowners in India have to wait a bit longer.
The Hindu: “The controversial Land Acquisition Bill is set for further delay as its consideration was deferred on Tuesday by the Lok Sabha till the next session bowing to the wishes of Opposition members.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath said the Bill will be taken up for consideration as the first measure in the budget session.
His statement came following pleas by BJP member Rajnath Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav (SP), Basudeb Acharia (CPI-M) and Saugata Roy (TMC) for more time to discuss the provisions of the Bill which will have a wide ranging impact on farmers and industries.
The Bill provides for a fair compensation to land owners in both rural and urban areas with the stipulation that consent of 80 per cent of the people for acquiring land for private industry is necessary.
Despite Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council pushing for the law for long, the Bill has been hanging fire for sometime. It was referred to a GoM in the wake of differences in the Cabinet over certain provisions in the Bill, which has been described by Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh as a balanced one.
The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011 was introduced in Parliament in September last year and was referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee which submitted its recommendations in May.”
via The Hindu : News / National : Land acquisition bill deferred till Budget session.
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- Land Acquisition Bill: States to decide on rehab package (thehindu.com)
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17/12/2012
* Testing time for China’s migrants as they demand access to education
If 1/3 of the population of Beijing consists of migrant workers, then the city authority better watch out. Sooner rather than later the anger and frustration will erupt into something very violent. That applies equally to central government unless it reforms the Hukou system that is at least two if not three decades out-of-date.
SCMP: “Dozens of frustrated parents crowded into a Beijing office, surrounding an education official and brandishing copies of the constitution to demand their children be allowed to take an exam.
Mothers and fathers around the world fight to send their children to the best schools they can, in the hopes of drastically improving their futures.
But China’s migrant families are victims of a decade-old residency system that denies urban incomers equal access to advantages from jobs and healthcare to the right to buy a home or car – and education.
Chinese university admission is based on a single test, the “gaokao”.
Cities such as Beijing that host China’s best universities – and large incomer populations – only allow those with official residency permits, or “hukou”, to take their exam and benefit from preferential quotas for places.
Around a third of the capital’s 20 million population are migrants, but many of their families become split by rules requiring their children to go to their “home” provinces – even if they have never lived there – sometimes for years, to study for and take the test, which varies by location.
Even then, because of the quota system they will have to score higher to win places at top schools.
“Either you let the country share in your education resources or you accept the reality that outsiders are stuck in your education gutter,” said Du Guowang, a 12-year Beijing resident from Inner Mongolia.
He and dozens of parents packed Beijing’s education bureau each week hoping – in vain – it would let their children take next year’s exam. But registration closed last week.
“This will directly affect their studies and their future prospects so of course it’s unfair,” said Xu Zhiyong, a prominent legal activist who has assisted the parents.
Over the past three decades more than 230 million people – four times the entire population of Britain – have moved to China’s cities in a phenomenal mass migration.
The hukou system restrictions date back to 1958, when the government sought, among its many controls, to designate where people should farm in rural areas, and work or live for those in towns.
It has loosened the rules in recent decades to encourage urbanisation, and acknowledges the need to better accommodate newcomers – especially as resentment mounts over China’s widening rural-urban inequality.
At a key gathering of the ruling Communist Party last month, President Hu Jintao urged officials to “accelerate” hukou reform and work to “ensure that all permanent urban residents have access to basic urban public services”.
But bigger cities are less willing to share residency or benefits, fearing doing so would burden their already strained resources and spur a new influx.
Some point to congested roads and overcrowded hospitals to argue that cities cannot handle larger loads.
But critics say the system is discriminatory.
Full reform would need years, but should begin sooner to defuse resentment, said Wang Zhenyu, deputy director of a public policy research centre at China University of Political Science and Law.
“From the basics like education and healthcare to social security to employment to buying a home or car, hukou-based discrimination covers every aspect,” he said. “Your hukou will affect you your entire life.””
via Testing time for China’s migrants as they demand access to education | South China Morning Post.
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- * Top China official urges residency permit reform (chindia-alert.org)
- In China, social divisions are written in a little red booklet (latimes.com)
- * Hu’s calls on household registration reform face opposition (chindia-alert.org)
- Discrimination against Rural-to-Urban Migrants: The Role of the Hukou System in China (plosone.org)
- Hard-to-get residency permits stall China’s economy (theglobeandmail.com)
- Top China official urges residency permit reform (news.terra.com)
10/12/2012
* Defiant villager leaves developers stumped over gravesite
Having seen the success of ‘nail house’ resisters in gaining better compensation, we now have ‘nail graves’. Wonder what will come next.
SCMP: “A villager refusing to concede to a property developer’s demands to move a family gravesite off a piece of land left construction workers no choice but to dig around the grave, leaving behind a bizarre sight that has since spread on social media.
The solitary grave, which now sits on a mound of earth 10 metres off the ground in the middle of a construction site in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, has been given the term “nail grave” by netizens.
The term is a play on “nail house”, which was coined by developers for homes belonging to people – “stubborn as nails” – who refused to move even after being offered compensation.
Media reports speculate that developers had offered to pay about one million yuan (US$160,400) to move the grave and headstone.
The construction site, which once served as a public graveyard for local villagers, is giving way to a residential complex expected to be completed in April.
Since construction started in 2009, most villagers had already moved their family’s graves after compensation agreements with the developer.
In the face of China’s rapid economic development, Chinese property developers have been meeting much greater public resistance to what many see as forced land-grabs. Most are compensated with amounts less than their property’s net worth.
“Nail graves are an inevitable product of our country’s progress…the souls of the dead can not rest in peace,” wrote one blogger on Sina Weibo, China’s main microblogging site.
Although China has long encouraged cremation due to an alleged shortage of land for burials, ancestors are traditionally held in deep respect and many in the countryside continue to construct tombs in accordance with culture.
A similar incident occurred last month when authorities from the city of Zhoukou, Henan province, were forced to stop a campaign to clear graves for farmland after the demolition of more than two million tombs sparked an outcry across the country.”
via Defiant villager leaves developers stumped over gravesite | South China Morning Post.
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- * Henan city refuses to stop clearance of graves to make farmland (chindia-alert.org)
- Chinese homeowners defiant as motorway is built around their house (telegraph.co.uk)
10/12/2012
* As China’s clout grows, sea policy proves unfathomable
This analogy is most interesting. One wonders if it is a sign of “the mess China’s foreign policy is” or something much cleverer: like letting Hainan Province appear to be the instigator. If all goes well, central government ratifies the policy and instead of provincial police boats, Chinese naval vessel enter the fray. But if the uproar continues and grows in both volume and participation well beyond the South China Sea, central government disavows itself and ‘reprimand’s Hainan Province for over stepping its mandate. We will see within the next few weeks which it will be. But I’m not taking any bets!
Reuters: “Imagine if the U.S. state of Hawaii passed a law allowing harbor police to board and seize foreign boats operating up to 1,000 km (600 miles) from Honolulu.
That, in effect, is what happened in China about a week ago. The tropical province of Hainan, home to beachfront resorts and one of China’s largest naval bases, authorized a unit of the police to interdict foreign vessels operating “illegally” in the island’s waters, which, according to China, include much of the heavily disputed South China Sea.
At a time when the global community is looking to the world’s second-biggest economy and a burgeoning superpower for increasing maturity and leadership on the international stage, China’s opaque and disjointed foreign policy process is causing confusion and escalating tensions throughout its backyard.
Vietnam and the Philippines, which claim sovereignty over swathes of the South China Sea along with Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan, have issued verbal protests against the Hainan rules.
India, which jointly conducts some oil exploration with Vietnam in the South China Sea, said last week it was prepared to send navy ships to the region to safeguard its interests. And the United States has publicly asked Beijing for clarification as to what, if anything, the new rules mean — thus far to no avail.
“It is really unclear, I think, to most nations (what the regulations mean),” U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Gary Locke told Reuters last week. “Until we really understand what these things are, there is no way to comment. First we need clarification of the extent, the purpose and the reach of these regulations.”
The fact that a provincial government can unilaterally worsen one of China’s most sensitive diplomatic problems highlights the dysfunctionality, and potential danger, of policymaking in this arena, analysts say.
“It shows what a mess Chinese foreign policy is when it comes to the South China Sea,” said a Western diplomat in China, speaking on condition of anonymity.
According to a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) earlier this year, no fewer than 11 government entities — from the tourism administration to the navy — play a role in the South China Sea. All, the ICG said, have the potential to take action that could cause diplomatic fallout.
via Analysis: As China’s clout grows, sea policy proves unfathomable | Reuters.
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- South China Sea: Vietnam Disperses Rare Anti-China Protests (ibtimes.com)
- * India Dips a Toe into the South China Sea Dispute (chindia-alert.org)
- Vietnamese protest against China over sea dispute (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
- * Alarm as China Issues Rules for Disputed Area (chindia-alert.org)
- China’s imperialist designs; showing it’s ugly head and bloody arms (South China Sea) (chindia-alert.org)
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