Archive for ‘Politics’

06/06/2014

China frees three activists after Tiananmen anniversary | Reuters

China released on Thursday three activists who had been detained for a month for attending a meeting to commemorate the military suppression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, their lawyers said.

A police car guards in front of a giant portrait of China's late Chairman Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square in Beijing June 4, 2014. REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic

The activists were freed a day after the 25th anniversary of the bloody crackdown, marked by tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong, even as Chinese authorities sought to whitewash the event in the mainland.

Two of their peers remained in custody.

via China frees three activists after Tiananmen anniversary | Reuters.

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06/06/2014

Modi govt to promote civilian settlements along India-China border – The Times of India

The Narendra Modi government may not only strengthen ITBP deployment and infrastructure along the India-China border, but also promote civilian settlements in border areas.

China-India Map

Unlike the UPA regime that was reluctant to undertake aggressive deployment of troops in stretches close to the India-China border, the Union home ministry may now go for a formal survey of the border gaps and come up with a fresh deployment plan to ensure that ITBP troops are in good strength to discourage incursions on part of the Chinese troops into Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh.

In addition to that, road connectivity will also be strengthened along the border areas. The strengthening of infrastructure will also cover construction of bridges and better mobile connectivity through setting up of BSNL towers.

However, a significant move on part of the Centre would be to promote human settlements towards Indian side of the India-China border. This, sources pointed out, would help reinforce India’s claim to the area in any subsequent border settlement negotiations. A senior government functionary recalled former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee‘s insistence on leaving human settlements untouched while working out the border demarcation.

Meanwhile, with reports indicating that Chinese President Xi Jinping may visit India later this year, there is renewed hope among the people of Arunachal Pradesh that the stapled visa issue would finally be settled. “The two leaders wield all the power to have the final word on betterment of India-China ties,” a senior government functionary pointed out.

via Modi govt to promote civilian settlements along India-China border – The Times of India.

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06/06/2014

Timeline: Indian Prime Minister Visits to the U.S. – India Real Time – WSJ

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took office just last month, has accepted an invitation from President Barack Obama to visit Washington D.C. in September.

If the visit happens as scheduled, he will be the latest leader of the world’s largest democracy to visit the world’s second largest democracy.

The relationship goes both ways. U.S. Presidents going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower have made visits to India. Click here to see the list of U.S. presidents who have made the trek to South Asia.

While most Indian Prime Ministers had official visits to the United States, six Indian premiers–including Lal Bahadur Shastri and H.D. Deve Gowda–did not visit the states while they were in office.

Here is a list of some of the trips made by prime ministers according to the U.S. Department of State.

Jawaharlal Nehru: The first prime minister of independent India went to the U.S. in 1949 and then in 1956 at which time he visited Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania.

Indira Gandhi:  Ms. Gandhi visited the U.S. three times during her years in office. Her first visit was in 1966 when Lyndon B. Johnson was the president. Her second visit came in 1971 and her final visit was in 1982.

Indira Gandhi, left, stood next to Richard Nixon during an official ceremony during her visit to the U.S. in November 1971. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Morarji Desai: Mr. Desai went to the U.S. in 1978 visiting New York, San Francisco and Omaha.

Morarji Desai. Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Rajiv Gandhi: Mr. Gandhi visited the U.S. two times in 1985 and once in 1987. He was assassinated two months after his 1987 visit.

Rajiv Gandhi addressed a crowd during election campaign rally at Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

P.V. Narasimha Rao: Mr. Rao–who is credited for starting to open India’s economy– visited the U.S. twice during his four years in office. He met President George H.W. Bush during a U.N. Security Council Summit in New York in 1992.  He visited again two years later to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

P.V. Narasimha Rao, left, with Hillary Clinton. Douglas E. Curra/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Inder Kumar Gujral:  Though Mr. Gujral served as India’s prime minister for less than a year, he found time to visit New York where he met President Bill Clinton at the U.N. General Assembly in 1997.

Inder Kumar Gujral. Sena Vidanagama/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Mr. Vajpayee—the last prime minister from Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party–visited the U.S. four times during his five years in office, twice in 2001 and once each in 2002 and 2003.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, right, posed for photographs with George W. Bush in New York, Sept. 24, 2003. Luke Frazza/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Manmohan Singh: Mr. Singh was the prime minister for close to ten years until last month. He visited the U.S. on no less than seven occasions.

via Timeline: Indian Prime Minister Visits to the U.S. – India Real Time – WSJ.

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06/06/2014

Modi’s Big Chance to Fix India – Businessweek

After five weeks of staggered voting, more than 550 million ballots cast, and almost $5 billion spent, the world’s largest democracy finally has a new leader. Yet the question that has loomed over India’s long campaign remains: What kind of leader is Narendra Modi going to be?

Narendra Modi speaks to supporters in Vadodara, India, on May 16

Modi fought an impressive campaign focused mostly on the right issues. He successfully cast the election as a referendum on who could better deliver jobs, government services, and economic growth: himself or Rahul Gandhi, the ruling Congress party’s heir apparent. The landslide victory of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party—the biggest for any party since 1984—testifies to Indians’ hunger for decisiveness and efficiency after years of policy drift and corruption scandals.

Yet voters have little idea how Modi will govern. He has given no sign of how far he’ll challenge his own supporters on economic and social policies. Investors expecting miracles are in for a letdown, because India’s political system is bound to intervene. According to JPMorgan Chase (JPM), about 70 percent to 80 percent of regulatory and other roadblocks impeding big industrial projects aren’t within Modi’s power to remove. Even so, he needs to make progress where he can.

via Modi’s Big Chance to Fix India – Businessweek.

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25/05/2014

BBC News – Pakistan PM Sharif to go to Modi inauguration in India

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is to attend the inauguration of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of India on Monday. Narendra Modi (L), Nawaz Sharif (R)

It is the first time since the two countries won independence in 1947 that a prime minister from one state will attend such a ceremony in the other. The two nuclear-armed rivals have fought three wars in the past 60 years. Mr Modi is seen as a hardliner on national security issues. His BJP party advocates a tough stance on Pakistan. But correspondents say his huge election victory gives him a mandate to reach out to Pakistan in a way the previous administration could not.

Bilateral ties suffered badly in the wake of the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, when 166 people were killed by Pakistani gunmen. Relations improved slightly under outgoing PM Manmohan Singh, but there are still regular skirmishes on the disputed border in Kashmir.

Mr Singh was invited to Mr Sharif’s inauguration last year but did not attend.

via BBC News – Pakistan PM Sharif to go to Modi inauguration in India.

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25/05/2014

China and Russia: Best frenemies | The Economist

ON MAY 21st, after a nail-biting session of late-night brinkmanship, China and Russia signed an enormous gas deal worth, at a guess, around $400 billion. Their agreement calls for Russia’s government-controlled Gazprom to supply state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation with up to 38 billion cubic metres of gas a year between 2018 and 2048. The deal capped a two-day visit to China by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that included a regional-security summit and joint military exercises off the Chinese coast.

Mr Putin called the deal the biggest in the history of Russia’s gas industry. But it counts, too, for the geopolitics that underpin it. That an agreement should come now, after a decade of haggling, is no accident. The deal will help the Kremlin reduce Russia’s reliance on gas exports to Europe. It is proof that Mr Putin has allies when he seeks to blunt Western sanctions over Ukraine. Both Russia and China want to assert themselves as regional powers. Both have increasingly strained relations with America, which they accuse of holding them back. Just over 40 years ago Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger persuaded China to turn against the Soviet Union and ally with America. Does today’s collaboration between Russia and China amount to a renewal of the alliance against America?

That is surely the impression Mr Putin wants to create. Ahead of his visit he gushed to Chinese media, saying their country was “Russia’s reliable friend”. Co-operation, he said, is at its “highest level in all its centuries-long history”. From the Chinese side, Xi Jinping chose Russia as the first country he visited on becoming president in 2013.

Commercial ties are growing. China is Russia’s largest single trading partner, with bilateral flows of $90 billion in 2013. Even before the gas deal, the two sides hoped to double that by 2020. If Western banks become more reluctant to extend new loans, financing from China could help Russia fill the gap. China badly needs the natural resources which Russia has in abundance. The gas deal will ease China’s concerns that most of its fuel supplies come through the strategic chokepoint of the Strait of Malacca, and will also enable China to move away from burning so much of the coal that pollutes the air in Chinese cities.

The two have also made common cause in geopolitics. China abstained from a UN security council vote in March that would have rejected a referendum that Russia backed in Crimea before it annexed it. China has also joined Russia in vetoing UN attempts to sanction the regime of Bashar Assad fighting a civil war in Syria. The two have taken similar stances over issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme.

China and Russia share a strong sense of their own historical greatness, now thwarted, as they see it, by American bullying. Both want the freedom to do as they please in their own back yards. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its manoeuvring in eastern Ukraine have vexed America and Europe and left Mr Putin with even fewer friends than before. China’s push into the East and South China Seas is causing similar concerns in Asia, as smaller neighbours worry about its expansionism.

But the West should not panic. Despite all this, Russia and China will struggle to overcome some fundamental differences. Start with the evidence of the gas deal itself: the fact that it took ten years to do, and that the deal was announced at the last minute, suggests how hard it was to reach agreement. The Chinese were rumoured to have driven a hard bargain, knowing that Mr Putin was desperate to have something to show from his trip.

More a grimace than a smile

In this deal, as elsewhere in the relationship, China has the upper hand. Other supplies of gas are coming online in Australia and Central Asia. And whereas China’s global power is growing, Russia is in decline—corroded by corruption and unable to diversify its economy away from natural resources. The Chinese government will expect the Kremlin to recognise this historic shift—a recipe for Chinese impatience and Russian resentment. Although the two countries are united against America, they also need it for its market and as a stabilising influence. And they are tussling for influence in Central Asia. Their vast common border is a constant source of mistrust—the Russian side sparsely populated and stuffed with commodities, the Chinese side full of people. That is why many of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons are pointed at China (see article). In the long run, Russia and China are just as likely to fall out as to form a firm alliance. That is an even more alarming prospect.

via China and Russia: Best frenemies | The Economist.

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25/05/2014

China continues advance into South China Sea; military base to be built on artificial island

24/05/2014

Modi’s Big Chance to Fix India – Businessweek

After five weeks of staggered voting, more than 550 million ballots cast, and almost $5 billion spent, the world’s largest democracy finally has a new leader. Yet the question that has loomed over India’s long campaign remains: What kind of leader is Narendra Modi going to be?

Narendra Modi speaks to supporters in Vadodara, India, on May 16

Modi fought an impressive campaign focused mostly on the right issues. He successfully cast the election as a referendum on who could better deliver jobs, government services, and economic growth: himself or Rahul Gandhi, the ruling Congress party’s heir apparent. The landslide victory of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party—the biggest for any party since 1984—testifies to Indians’ hunger for decisiveness and efficiency after years of policy drift and corruption scandals.

Yet voters have little idea how Modi will govern. He has given no sign of how far he’ll challenge his own supporters on economic and social policies. Investors expecting miracles are in for a letdown, because India’s political system is bound to intervene. According to JPMorgan Chase (JPM), about 70 percent to 80 percent of regulatory and other roadblocks impeding big industrial projects aren’t within Modi’s power to remove. Even so, he needs to make progress where he can.

A good place to start would be to keep an election promise to introduce a combined goods and services tax—something Modi’s own party has long opposed, because it would force revenue losses on state governments. (Modi could offset some of the losses using central revenues.) He should move to phase out petroleum subsidies. He should give state and local governments greater flexibility in regulating labor markets, land sales, and more. Economic competition among the states is key.

Above all, India’s new leader must also reach out to the country’s Muslims—assuring them that he recognizes they are full and valued citizens entitled to an equal measure of security, trust, and respect. Modi’s campaign was based in part on a simple point: India can no longer afford to muddle through, endlessly avoiding difficult decisions. Now it’s time to deliver.

via Modi’s Big Chance to Fix India – Businessweek.

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24/05/2014

‘Four Dishes, One Soup’ Not Enough For Sino-Russian Gas Deal Celebration – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Say you’re the leader of the world’s No. 2 economy. You just signed a massive energy deal with your Russian counterpart that has major political and economic implications – and that, under international protocol, calls for a big-time state wingding. At the same time, you’re pushing a government austerity platform to convince your people that their leaders aren’t corrupt fat cats living large off the people.

What to do?

That’s the dilemma Chinese President Xi Jinping faced this week after he reached a 30-year, potentially $400 billion gas supply deal with Vladimir Putin. His answer, it seems, was to split the difference. The state dinner that followed the high-profile deal-signing had enough fancy dishes, tipple and desserts to fail the sort of austerity test Mr. Xi might apply to, say, a banquet thrown by county-level officials in a tier-three burg.

Still, experts said, the wines steered more to the local than to the Bordeaux, and the whole affair fell short of what you might get at a fancy wedding.

After 10 years of difficult negotiation, China and Russia signed a landmark natural-gas contract on Wednesday. The night before, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan hosted a dinner in Shanghai welcoming more than 300 guests from 46 countries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What dishes were served during the 90-minute dinner?

The dinner was definitely more elaborate than the “four dishes and one soup” set promoted by Xi Jinping as a form of domestic cost-cutting. There were four plates of desserts alone—implying that the anti-corruption rules don’t always apply when it comes to state events, as China doesn’t want to lose face on diplomatic occasions. The six appetizers included mashed green beans, spicy cabbage, sliced whitebait, a pea dish and bamboo shoots with green onions. The five dishes and one soup served included shrimp balls, fried and braised beef, macadamia nuts with greens, flatfish with bean curd sauce, luffa with green beans and mushroom with fish maw. Other dishes included moulded pudding, vegetable dumplings and plates of fruit.

This dinner was intended to be a creative combination of Chinese and western-style cooking, one that highlighted fresh ingredients from southern regions of the Yangtze River. The executive chef behind it, Su Dexing, was also the chief cook for the state banquet during the APEC meeting in 2001, according to Shanghai International Convention Center staff.

As at many state events, China’s ubiquitous luxury liquor Maotai was also served, along with a dry red and dry white wine produced by Cofco Wines & Spirits. According to prices advertised on e-commerce websites, such red and white wine would likely cost between 400-600 yuan ($64-96) per bottle and 300 yuan per bottle, respectively.

Although abundant, the dinner was still simple compared to other options available in Shanghai, where wedding banquets can easily cost a minimum of 500 yuan per person, excluding liquor. In 5-star hotels, such meals might cost more than double that amount.

via ‘Four Dishes, One Soup’ Not Enough For Sino-Russian Gas Deal Celebration – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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23/05/2014

Will New Delhi Be Able to Translate Modi’s Gujarati Guidelines? – India Real Time – WSJ

As India waits for prime minister-designate Narendra Modi to take charge in New Delhi, many are wondering whether he can reproduce the policies that powered growth in his home state of Gujarat.

While the western state has long been one the richer states in the country thanks to a populace packed with entrepreneurs, it prospered even more than usual under Mr. Modi’s rule as chief minister for more than a decade.

Companies say with his leadership the state has cut corruption and restrictions on doing business. Meanwhile its networks of roads, ports and power plants are among the best in India and have even convinced some companies to move operations from other states to Mr. Modi’s vibrant Gujarat.

“He is a very good administrator and he will try to replicate the same model he had in Gujarat at the national level,” said Gautam Singh, an economist at Spark Capital.

The source of power behind Mr. Modi’s magic is debatable but most agree it comes from his ability to simplify government and set deadlines as well as his facility to push through unpopular policies.

Like he did in Gujarat, he is expected to streamline the number of departments and different ministries to make his entourage of key policymakers more nimble and powerful. In New Delhi, Mr. Modi will likely combine related ministries such as coal, renewable energy and petroleum for better policy implementation, said Mr. Singh.

One of the biggest successes of Mr. Modi was in energy, which has made Gujarat one of the few states in India with a power surplus.

Across India, power companies are often forced to give away power and depend on massive state subsidies. They are also hurt by theft during transmission and distribution. With little incentive or money to expand, the power generating and distributing companies have failed to keep up with demand. The resulting frequent power interruptions force other companies to set up their own expensive, captive power-generating units.

Gujarat has been able to cut power subsidies where many states haven’t been able to muster the political will to do so. It separated the power supply lines for households and farmers, helping target power subsidies. This meant non-agricultural users had to pay higher tariffs but they received a more reliable power supply.

While Mr. Modi was in charge, Gujarat took steps to ease India’s ridiculously restrictive labor laws which make it difficult for larger companies to hire and fire people as they please. Gujarat used its own version of special economic zones to promote industry. In these zones companies were given more freedom to adjust their workforces depending on demand.

One Goldman study suggests that if a similar easing were to be applied across India, 40 million jobs would be created in the next ten years.

Land acquisition is another perennial problem for companies as well as local governments as they look for spots to build facilities and infrastructure. While businesses wanting to set up operations in most states have to go through tedious procedures to get land, Gujarat has been able to significantly cut down on the red-tape by building a huge land bank that was earmarked for setting up industrial units. A recent study by Accenture to identify best practices in different states showed Gujarat’s policies were indeed helping. It now takes just 45 days for applicants to get possession of land in the state, the study showed.

via Will New Delhi Be Able to Translate Modi’s Gujarati Guidelines? – India Real Time – WSJ.

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