Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
KOLKATA (Reuters) – Indian and Chinese troops on border patrol duties had a brief skirmish in Sikkim, a northeastern Indian state bordering China, the Indian Defence Ministry said on Sunday, blaming both sides for the incident.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. The two sides disengaged after dialogue and interaction at the local level,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Indian daily Hindustan Times, citing a military source, said four Indian soldiers and seven Chinese troops were injured when some of the soldiers exchanged blows during the confrontation, which it said took place on Saturday and involved some 150 soldiers.
The Defence Ministry said the incident took place in the Nakula area but did not give details of how it started, or what caused the injuries.
China’s Ministry of Defense could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday.
India and China have often accused each other of intrusions into each other’s territories, but clashes are rare.
There is still deep mistrust between the two countries over their festering border dispute, which triggered a brief war in 1962.
Hundreds of troops from both sides were deployed in 2017 on the Doklam plateau, near the borders of India, Bhutan, and China after India objected to Chinese construction of a road in the Himalayan area, in the most serious standoff in years.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Hundreds of foreign companies are actively procuring components for India and Pakistan’s nuclear programmes, taking advantage of gaps in the global regulation of the industry, according to a report by a U.S.-based research group.
Using open-source data, the nonprofit Centre For Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) report provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of networks supplying the rivals, in a region regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear flashpoints.
“India and Pakistan are taking advantage of gaps in global non-proliferation regimes and export controls to get what they need,” said Jack Margolin, a C4ADS analyst and co-author of the report.
It is seldom possible to determine whether individual transactions are illegal by using publicly available data, Margolin said, and the report does not suggest that companies mentioned broke national or international laws or regulations.
But past reports by the think tank, whose financial backers include the Carnegie Corporation and the Wyss Foundation, have often led to action by law enforcement agencies.
Spokesmen from the offices of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan did not respond to requests for comment. Pakistan’s military, which plays a major role in decision-making for the nuclear weapons programme, also declined to comment.
To identify companies involved, C4ADS analysed more than 125 million records of public trade and tender data and documents, and then checked them against already-identified entities listed by export control authorities in the United States and Japan.
Pakistan, which is subject to strict international export controls on its programme, has 113 suspected foreign suppliers listed by the United States and Japan. But the C4ADS report found an additional 46, many in shipment hubs like Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
“In Pakistan’s case, they have a lot more stringent controls, and they get around these by using transnational networks… and exploiting opaque jurisdictions,” Margolin said.
The father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, AQ Khan, admitted in 2004 to selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya. He was pardoned a day later by Pakistani authorities, which have refused requests from international investigators to question him.
India has a waiver that allows it to buy nuclear technology from international markets. The Indian government allows inspections of some nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but not all of them.
Neither India or Pakistan have signed the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, adhered to by most nuclear powers. Consequently, they are not obliged to submit to IAEA oversight over all of their facilities.
C4ADS identified 222 companies that did business with the nuclear facilities in India that had no IAEA oversight. Of these, 86 companies did business with more than one such nuclear facility in India.
“It’s evidence that more needs to be done, and that there needs to be a more sophisticated approach taken to India,” Margolin said. “Just because the product is not explicitly bound for a military facility, that doesn’t mean that the due diligence process ends there.”
India and Pakistan have gone to war three times – twice over the disputed Kashmir region – since they won independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Having for years secretly developed nuclear weapons capability, the two declared themselves nuclear powers following tit-for-tat atomic tests in 1998.
A few years later, in 2002, the two foes almost went to war for a fourth time, following an attack by Pakistan-based militants on the parliament in New Delhi. And a year ago, a suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group in a part of Kashmir controlled by India sparked another flare up in tensions.
Both countries are estimated to have around 150 useable nuclear warheads apiece, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit group tracking stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The Chinese city of Wuhan recently lifted its strict quarantine measures
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated last year, has raised its official Covid-19 death toll by 50%, adding 1,290 fatalities.
Wuhan officials attributed the new figure to updated reporting and deaths outside hospitals. China has insisted there was no cover-up.
It has been accused of downplaying the severity of its virus outbreak.
Wuhan’s 11 million residents spent months in strict lockdown conditions, which have only recently been eased.
The latest official figures bring the death toll in the city in China’s central Hubei province to 3,869, increasing the national total to more than 4,600.
China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
What’s China’s explanation for the rise in deaths?
In a statement released on Friday, officials in Wuhan said the revised figures were the result of new data received from multiple sources, including records kept by funeral homes and prisons.
Deaths linked to the virus outside hospitals, such as people who died at home, had not previously been recorded.
Media caption Learn how Wuhan dealt with the lockdown
The “statistical verification” followed efforts by authorities to “ensure that information on the city’s Covid-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the data [is] accurate”, the statement said.
It added that health systems were initially overwhelmed and cases were “mistakenly reported” – in some instances counted more than once and in others missed entirely.
A shortage of testing capacity in the early stages meant that many infected patients were not accounted for, it said.
A spokesman for China’s National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said the new death count came from a “comprehensive review” of epidemic data.
In its daily news conference, the foreign ministry said accusations of a cover-up, which have been made most stridently on the world stage by US President Donald Trump, were unsubstantiated. “We’ll never allow any concealment,” a spokesman said.
Why are there concerns over China’s figures?
Friday’s revised figures come amid growing international concern that deaths in China have been under-reported. Questions have also been raised about Beijing’s handling of the epidemic, particularly in its early stages.
In December 2019, Chinese authorities launched an investigation into a mysterious viral pneumonia after cases began circulating in Wuhan.
China reported the cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN’s global health agency, on 31 December.
But WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000 cases.
The mayor of Wuhan has previously admitted there was a lack of action between the start of January – when about 100 cases had been confirmed – and 23 January, when city-wide restrictions were enacted.
Around that time, a doctor who tried to warn his colleagues about an outbreak of a Sars-like virus was silenced by the authorities. Dr Li Wenliang later died from Covid-19.
Wuhan’s death toll increase of almost exactly 50% has left some analysts wondering if this is all a bit too neat.
For months questions have been asked about the veracity of China’s official coronavirus statistics.
The inference has been that some Chinese officials may have deliberately under-reported deaths and infections to give the impression that cities and towns were successfully managing the emergency.
If that was the case, Chinese officials were not to know just how bad this crisis would get in other countries, making its own figures now seem implausibly small.
The authorities in Wuhan, where the first cluster of this disease was reported, said there had been no deliberate misrepresentation of data, rather that a stabilisation in the emergency had allowed them time to revisit the reported cases and to add any previously missed.
That the new death toll was released at the same time as a press conference announcing a total collapse in China’s economic growth figures has led some to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to bury one or other of these stories.
Then again, it could also be a complete coincidence.
China has been pushing back against US suggestions that the coronavirus came from a laboratory studying infectious diseases in Wuhan, the BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher in Washington DC reports.
US President Donald Trump and some of his officials have been flirting with the outlier theory in the midst of a propaganda war with China over the origin and handling of the pandemic, our correspondent says.
Mr Trump this week halted funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of making deadly mistakes and overly trusting China.
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” Mr Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.
On Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how [coronavirus] came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier.”
But China has also been praised for its handling of the crisis and the unprecedented restrictions that it instituted to slow the spread of the virus.
The US invaded Afghanistan weeks after the September 2001 attacks in New York by the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda group.
More than 2,400 US troops have been killed during the conflict. About 12,000 are still stationed in the country. President Trump has promised to put an end to the conflict.
What happened in Doha?
The deal was signed by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar with Mr Pompeo as a witness.
In a speech, Mr Pompeo urged the militant group to “keep your promises to cut ties with al-Qaeda”.
Meanwhile US Defence Secretary Mark Esper was in the Afghan capital Kabul alongside Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani – whose government did not take part in the US-Taliban talks.
Mr Esper said: “This is a hopeful moment, but it is only the beginning. The road ahead will not be easy. Achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan will require patience and compromise among all parties.” He said the US would continue to support the Afghan government.
What’s in the agreement?
Within the first 135 days of the deal the US will reduce its forces in Afghanistan to 8,600, with allies also drawing down their forces proportionately.
The move would allow US President Donald Trump to show that he has brought troops home ahead of the US presidential election in November.
The deal also provides for a prisoner swap. Some 5,000 Taliban prisoners and 1,000 Afghan security force prisoners would be exchanged by 10 March, when talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are due to start.
The US will also lift sanctions against the Taliban and work with the UN to lift its separate sanctions against the group.
Landmark deal rife with uncertainties
This historic deal has been years in the making, as all sides kept seeking advantage on the battlefield.
The agreement is born of America’s determination to bring troops home and a recognition, at least by some Taliban, that talks are the best route to return to Kabul.
It’s a significant step forward, despite deep uncertainty and scepticism over where it will lead. When the only alternative is unending war, many Afghans seem ready to take this risk for peace.
Taliban leaders say they’ve changed since their harsh rule of the 1990s still seared in the memory of many, and most of all Afghan women.
This process will test the Taliban, but also veteran Afghan leaders of the past, and a new generation which has come of age in the last two decades and is hoping against hope for a different future.
How did US-Taliban talks come about?
Since 2011, Qatar has hosted Taliban leaders who have moved there to discuss peace in Afghanistan. It has been a chequered process. A Taliban office was opened in 2013, and closed the same year amid rows over flags. Other attempts at talks stalled.
In December 2018, the militants announced they would meet US officials to try to find a “roadmap to peace”. But the hard-line Islamist group continued to refuse to hold official talks with the Afghan government, whom they dismissed as American “puppets”.
Media caption The view from Lashkar Gah province on whether peace with the Taliban is possible
Following nine rounds of US-Taliban talks in Qatar, the two sides seemed close to an agreement.
Washington’s top negotiator announced last September that the US would withdraw 5,400 troops from Afghanistan within 20 weeks as part of a deal agreed “in principle” with Taliban militants.
Days later, Mr Trump said the talks were “dead”, after the group killed a US soldier. But within weeks the two sides resumed discussions behind the scenes.
A week ago the Taliban agreed to a “reduction of violence” – although Afghan officials say at least 22 soldiers and 14 civilians have been killed in Taliban attacks over that period.
Media caption Meet Fatima and Fiza, some of the women removing landmines in Afghanistan
It began when the US launched air strikes one month following the 11 September 2001 attacks and after the Taliban had refused to hand over the man behind them, Osama bin Laden.
Media caption Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers have been killed and injured. This is their story
The US was joined by an international coalition and the Taliban were quickly removed from power. However, they turned into an insurgent force and continued deadly attacks, destabilising subsequent Afghan governments.
The international coalition ended its combat mission in 2014, staying only to train Afghan forces. But the US continued its own, scaled-back combat operation, including air strikes.
The Taliban has however continued to gain momentum and last year the BBC found they were active across 70% of Afghanistan.
Media caption Zan TV presenter Ogai Wardak: “If the Taliban come, I will fight them”
Nearly 3,500 members of the international coalition forces have died in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
The figures for Afghan civilians, militants and government forces are more difficult to quantify. In a February 2019 report, the UN said that more than 32,000 civilians had died. The Watson Institute at Brown University says 58,000 security personnel and 42,000 opposition combatants have been killed.
Why has the war lasted so long?
There are many reasons for this. But they include a combination of fierce Taliban resistance, the limitations of Afghan forces and governance, and other countries’ reluctance to keep their troops for longer in Afghanistan.
At times over the past 18 years, the Taliban have been on the back foot. In late 2009, US President Barack Obama announced a troop “surge” that saw the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan top 100,000.
Media caption The BBC was given exclusive access to spend a week with ambulance workers in Afghanistan.
The surge helped drive the Taliban out of parts of southern Afghanistan, but it was never destined to last for years.
The BBC World Service’s Dawood Azami says there are five main reasons the war is still going on now. They include:
a lack of political clarity since the invasion began, and questions about the effectiveness of the US strategy over the past 18 years
the fact each side is trying to break what has become a stalemate – and that the Taliban have been trying maximise their leverage during peace negotiations
an increase in violence by Islamic State militants in Afghanistan – they’ve been behind some of the bloodiest attacks recently
There’s also the role played by Afghanistan’s neighbour, Pakistan.
SHANGHAI/HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s President Xi Jinping is enlisting the state-dominated financial sector in a war against a virus outbreak that has killed more than 500, mobilising lenders, brokerages and fund managers to pump resources into stricken parts of the economy.
Answering Beijing’s call, banks are rushing to offer virus-fighting loans at ultra-low rates, investment banks are helping companies issue anti-virus bonds faster, and managers of mutual funds are refraining from selling stocks, to damp market panic.
Concerted efforts to rein in the virus that emerged late last year in the central city of Wuhan highlight the centralized power the ruling Communist Party wields in a sector dominated by state-owned companies.
But the campaign, which has stirred memories of government rescue efforts during a market crash in 2015, deepens concern over corporate governance in China and risks sowing seeds of future trouble.
Wuhan DDMC Culture & Sports Co (600136.SS), a leisure company in the city, won Shanghai Stock Exchange approval to issue bonds of up to 600 million yuan (66.32 million pounds) via a “green channel” created for virus-hit companies, it said on Thursday.
“It’s like receiving charcoal on a snowy day,” the company, whose operations were wrecked by the epidemic, said on its website.
Three other companies – Zhuhai Huafa Group, Sichuan Kelun Pharmaceutical and China Nanshan Development Group – have raised a combined 2.1 billion yuan ($301 million) this week by issuing bonds via the interbank market, to fund virus-battling efforts.
Proceeds from the debt issuance, which won quicker-than-usual approval from regulators, will fund drug discovery programmes and hospital construction, the companies said.
Regulators have also asked banks to inject cheap funds into virus-stricken areas, and not to withdraw loans from companies suffering the impact. Sectors such as tourism, transport and leisure are the worst-hit.
Bank of Suzhou, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, vowed to cut financing costs for hundreds of small corporate clients and bolster lending.
For companies such as food producers, logistics firms and makers of anti-virus drugs, it will cut the rate on loans by 10 basis points below the lending benchmark, to stand as low as 3.98%.
A loan officer at Bank of China promised special treatment for those defaulting because of virus fallout, saying the central bank would cap interest on loans to firms with operations critical to beating the virus, such as makers of masks and drugs.
He added, “Such companies will enjoy the lowest possible rates.”
But the orchestrated support also triggered concerns of moral hazard among some.
“I’m afraid many companies about to go bankrupt will come and say their businesses are affected by the virus outbreak,” said a bond fund manager, who declined to be named.
A flurry of government support has helped stabilise stocks in China’s equity market after a plunge on Monday.
Regulators have told major mutual fund companies and insurers not to cut net equity positions this week, and urged brokerages to limit short-selling activities by clients, said sources who sought anonymity.
Fund managers were also nudged to do their bit. China’s fund association, which is supervised by the securities regulator, said employees at 26 mutual fund houses had put their own money – or more than 2 billion yuan ($287 million) – into fund products since Monday.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionAn Indian man watches the news broadcasting images of the released Indian pilot
As tensions between India and Pakistan escalated following a deadly suicide attack last month, there was another battle being played out on the airwaves. Television stations in both countries were accused of sensationalism and partiality. But how far did they take it? The BBC’s Rajini Vaidyanathan in Delhi and Secunder Kermani in Islamabad take a look.
It was drama that was almost made for television.
The relationship between India and Pakistan – tense at the best of times – came to a head on 26 February when India announced it had launched airstrikes on militant camps in Pakistan’s Balakot region as “retaliation” for a suicide attack that had killed 40 troops in Indian-administered Kashmir almost two weeks earlier.
A day later, on 27 February, Pakistan shot down an Indian jet fighter and captured its pilot.
Abhinandan Varthaman was freed as a “peace gesture”, and Pakistan PM Imran Khan warned that neither country could afford a miscalculation, with a nuclear arsenal on each side.
Suddenly people were hooked, India’s TV journalists included.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionIndian PM Narendra Modi is accused of exploiting India-Pakistan hostilities for political gain
So were they more patriots than journalists?
Rajini Vaidyanathan: Indian television networks showed no restraint when it came to their breathless coverage of the story. Rolling news was at fever pitch.
The coverage often fell into jingoism and nationalism, with headlines such as “Pakistan teaches India a lesson”, “Dastardly Pakistan”, and “Stay Calm and Back India” prominently displayed on screens.
Some reporters and commentators called for India to use missiles and strike back. One reporter in south India hosted an entire segment dressed in combat fatigues, holding a toy gun.
And while I was reporting on the return of the Indian pilot at the international border between the two countries in the northern city of Amritsar, I saw a woman getting an Indian flag painted on her cheek. “I’m a journalist too,” she said, as she smiled at me in slight embarrassment.
Print journalist Salil Tripathi wrote a scathing critique of the way reporters in both India and Pakistan covered the events, arguing they had lost all sense of impartiality and perspective. “Not one of the fulminating television-news anchors exhibited the criticality demanded of their profession,” she said.
Media captionIndia and Pakistan’s ‘war-mongering’ media
Secunder Kermani: Shortly after shooting down at least one Indian plane last week, the Pakistani military held a press conference.
As it ended, the journalists there began chanting “Pakistan Zindabad” (Long Live Pakistan). It wasn’t the only example of “journalistic patriotism” during the recent crisis.
Two anchors from private channel 92 News donned military uniforms as they presented the news – though other Pakistani journalists criticised their decision.
But on the whole, while Indian TV presenters angrily demanded military action, journalists in Pakistan were more restrained, with many mocking what they called the “war mongering and hysteria” across the border.
In response to Indian media reports about farmers refusing to export tomatoes to Pakistan anymore for instance, one popular presenter tweeted about a “Tomatical strike” – a reference to Indian claims they carried out a “surgical strike” in 2016 during another period of conflict between the countries.
Media analyst Adnan Rehmat noted that while the Pakistani media did play a “peace monger as opposed to a warmonger” role, in doing so, it was following the lead of Pakistani officials who warned against the risks of escalation, which “served as a cue for the media.”
What were they reporting?
Rajini Vaidyanathan: As TV networks furiously broadcast bulletins from makeshift “war rooms” complete with virtual reality missiles, questions were raised not just about the reporters but what they were reporting.
Indian channels were quick to swallow the government version of events, rather than question or challenge it, said Shailaja Bajpai, media editor at The Print. “The media has stopped asking any kind of legitimate questions, by and large,” she said. “There’s no pretence of objectiveness.”
In recent years in fact, a handful of commentators have complained about the lack of critical questioning in the Indian media.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionIndians celebrated news of the strikes
“For some in the Indian press corps the very thought of challenging the ‘official version’ of events is the equivalent of being anti-national”, said Ms Bajpai. “We know there have been intelligence lapses but nobody is questioning that.”
Senior defence and science reporter Pallava Bagla agreed. “The first casualty in a war is always factual information. Sometimes nationalistic fervour can make facts fade away,” he said.
This critique isn’t unique to India, or even this period in time. During the 2003 Iraq war, western journalists embedded with their country’s militaries were also, on many occasions, simply reporting the official narrative.
Secunder Kermani: In Pakistan, both media and public reacted with scepticism to Indian claims about the damage caused by the airstrikes in Balakot, which India claimed killed a large number of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militants in a training camp.
Hamid Mir, one of the most influential TV anchors in the country travelled to the area and proclaimed, “We haven’t seen any such (militant) infrastructure… we haven’t seen any bodies, any funerals.”
“Actually,” he paused, “We have found one body… this crow.” The camera panned down to a dead crow, while Mr Mir asked viewers if the crow “looks like a terrorist or not?”
There seems to be no evidence to substantiate Indian claims that a militant training camp was hit, but other journalists working for international outlets, including the BBC, found evidence of a madrassa, linked to JeM, near the site.
Image copyrightPLANET LABS INC./HANDOUT VIA REUTERSImage captionThe satellite image shows a close-up of a madrassa near Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber Paktunkhwa
A photo of a signpost giving directions to the madrassa even surfaced on social media. It described the madrassa as being “under the supervision of Masood Azhar”. Mr Azhar is the founder of JeM.
The signpost’s existence was confirmed by a BBC reporter and Al Jazeera, though by the time Reuters visited it had apparently been removed. Despite this, the madrassa and its links received little to no coverage in the Pakistani press.
Media analyst Adnan Rehmat told the BBC that “there was no emphasis on investigating independently or thoroughly enough” the status of the madrassa.
In Pakistan, reporting on alleged links between the intelligence services and militant groups is often seen as a “red line”. Journalists fear for their physical safety, whilst editors know their newspapers or TV channels could face severe pressure if they publish anything that could be construed as “anti-state”.
Who did it better: Khan or Modi?
Rajini Vaidyanathan: With a general election due in a few months, PM Narendra Modi continued with his campaign schedule, mentioning the crisis in some of his stump speeches. But he never directly addressed the ongoing tensions through an address to the nation or a press conference.
This was not a surprise. Mr Modi rarely holds news conference or gives interviews to the media. When news of the suicide attack broke, Mr Modi was criticised for continuing with a photo shoot.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionImran Khan was praised for his measured approach
The leader of the main opposition Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, dubbed him a “Prime Time Minister” claiming the PM had carried on filming for three hours. PM Modi has also been accused of managing his military response as a way to court votes.
At a campaign rally in his home state of Gujarat he seemed unflustered by his critics, quipping “they’re busy with strikes on Modi, and Modi is launching strikes on terror.”
Secunder Kermani: Imran Khan won praise even from many of his critics in Pakistan, for his measured approach to the conflict. In two appearances on state TV, and one in parliament, he appeared firm, but also called for dialogue with India.
His stance helped set the comparatively more measured tone for Pakistani media coverage.
Officials in Islamabad, buoyed by Mr Khan’s decision to release the captured Indian pilot, have portrayed themselves as the more responsible side, which made overtures for peace.
On Twitter, a hashtag calling for Mr Khan to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize was trending for a while. But his lack of specific references to JeM, mean internationally there is likely to be scepticism, at least initially, about his claims that Pakistan will no longer tolerate militant groups targeting India.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionMr Modi is accused of exploiting India-Pakistan hostilities for political gain
A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth, American political journalist Michael Kinsley said.
Last week, a prominent leader of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appeared to have done exactly that. BS Yeddyurappa said the armed aerial hostilities between India and Pakistan would help his party win some two dozen seats in the upcoming general election.
The remark by Mr Yeddyurappa, former chief minister of Karnataka, was remarkable in its candour. Not surprisingly, it was immediately seized upon by opposition parties. They said it was a brazen admission of the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party was mining the tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals ahead of general elections, which are barely a month away. Mr Modi’s party is looking at a second term in power.
Mr Yeddyurappa’s plain-spokenness appeared to have embarrassed even the BJP. Federal minister VK Singh issued a statement, saying the government’s decision to carry out air strikes in Pakistan last week was to “safeguard our nation and ensure safety of our citizens, not to win a few seats”. No political party can afford to concede that it was exploiting a near war for electoral gains.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionThe BJP has put up election posters of Mr Modi posing with guns
Even as tensions between India and Pakistan ratcheted up last week, Mr Modi went on with business as usual. Hours after the Indian attack in Pakistan’s Balakot region, he told a packed election meeting that the country was in safe hands and would “no longer be helpless in the face of terror”. Next morning, Pakistan retaliated and captured an Indian pilot who ejected from a downed fighter jet. Two days later, Pakistan returned the pilot to India.
Mr Modi then told a gathering of scientists that India’s aerial strikes were merely a “pilot project” and hinted there was more to come. Elsewhere, his party chief Amit Shah said India had killed more than 250 militants in the Balakot attack even as senior defence officials said they didn’t know how many had died. Gaudy BJP posters showing Mr Modi holding guns and flanked by soldiers, fighter jets and orange explosions have been put up in parts of the country. “Really uncomfortable with pictures of soldiers on election posters and podiums. This should be banned. Surely the uniform is sullied by vote gathering in its name,” tweeted Barkha Dutt, an Indian television journalist and author.
Mr Modi has appealed to the opposition to refrain from politicising the hostilities. The opposition parties are peeved because they believe Mr Modi has not kept his word. Last week, they issued a statement saying “national security must transcend narrow political considerations”.
‘Petty political gain’
But can the recent conflict fetch more votes for Mr Modi? In other words, can national security become a campaign plank?
Many believe Mr Modi is likely to make national security the pivot of his campaign. Before last month’s suicide attack – claimed by Pakistan-based militants – killed more than 40 Indian paramilitaries in Kashmir, Mr Modi was looking a little vulnerable. His party had lost three state elections on the trot to the Congress party. Looming farm and jobs crises were threatening to hurt the BJP’s prospects.
Now, many believe, Mr Modi’s chances look brighter as he positions himself as a “muscular” protector of the country’s borders. “This is one of the worst attempts to use war to win [an] election, and to use national security as petty political gain. But I don’t know whether it will succeed or not,” says Yogendra Yadav, a politician and psephologist.
Image copyrightEPAImage captionMany Indians have celebrated India’s strike in Pakistani territory
Evidence is mixed on whether national security helps ruling parties win elections in India. Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of political science at Brown University in the US, says previous national security disruptions in India were “distant from the national elections”.
The wars in 1962 (against China) and 1971 (against Pakistan) broke out after general elections. Elections were still two years away when India and Pakistan fought a war in 1965. The 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that brought the two countries to the brink of war happened two years after a general election. The Mumbai attacks in 2008 took place five months before the elections in 2009 – and the then ruling Congress party won without making national security a campaign plank.
For one, he says, it comes just weeks ahead of a general election in a highly polarised country. The vast expansion of the urban middle class means that national security has a larger constituency. And most importantly, according to Dr Varshney, “the nature of the regime in Delhi” is an important variable. “Hindu nationalists have always been tougher on national security than the Congress. And with rare exceptions, national security does not dominate the horizons of regional parties, governed as they are by caste and regional identities.”
Bhanu Joshi, a political scientist also at Brown University, believes Mr Modi’s adoption of a muscular and robust foreign policy and his frequent international trips to meet foreign leaders may have touched a chord with a section of voters. “During my work in northern India, people would continuously invoke the improvement in India’s stature in the international arena. These perceptions get reinforced with an event like [the] Balakot strikes and form impressions which I think voters, particularly on a bipolar contest of India and Pakistan, care about,” says Mr Joshi.
Others like Milan Vaishnav, senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, echo a similar sentiment. He told me that although foreign policy has never been a “mass” issue in India’s domestic politics, “given the proximity of the conflict to the elections, the salience of Pakistan, and the ability of the Modi government to claim credit for striking back hard, I expect it will become an important part of the campaign”.
But Dr Vaishnav believes it will not displace the economy and farm distress as an issue, especially in village communities. “Where it will help the BJP most is among swing voters, especially in urban constituencies. If there were fence-sitters unsure of how to vote in 2019, this emotive issue might compel them to stick with the incumbent.”
How the opposition counters Mr Modi’s agenda-setting on national security will be interesting to watch. Even if the hostilities end up giving a slight bump to BJP prospects in the crucial bellwether states in the north, it could help take the party over the winning line. But then even a week is a long time in politics.
“Drilling soldiers and war preparations are the fundamental jobs and work focus of our military, and at no time should we allow any slack in these areas,” the PLA Daily said in its New Year’s Day editorial.
“We should be well prepared for all directions of military struggle and comprehensively improve troops’ combat response in emergencies … to ensure we can meet the challenge and win when there is a situation.”
Other priorities outlined in the editorial included thorough planning and implementation to develop the military, fostering reform and innovation, and party building within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
President Xi Jinping, who also heads the military, has been pushing the PLA to boost its combat readiness since he took the top job in late 2012. Observers said stepping up drills could be about flexing the PLA’s military muscle, but spelling it out at the start of the year also suggested it was a more important part of the plan for 2019.
“During the 20 years I spent in the PLA before I left in 2004, military training to boost combat readiness was always one of our top tasks,” said Zeng Zhiping, a retired lieutenant colonel and military analyst based in Nanchang, Jiangxi province.
“But this is something different. When training and preparation for war is highlighted at the beginning of a year it means this is a plan for the whole year, although we don’t know what the real intention behind the rhetoric is at this stage.”
Taiwan’s former deputy defence minister Lin Chong-Pin said it was about showing the PLA’s military strength.
“Prioritising military training and preparation for war is nothing more than a move to boost its diplomatic strength, which the PLA has been emphasising over the past four decades – though it has never gone into battle with any other country during that time,” Lin said.
“This comes at a time when the US has increased pressure on China with a series of military operations. But listen, I’m 100 per cent sure that the PLA will not be waging any war, no matter whether it’s in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait. It will only become more cautious when it starts rising more rapidly.”
Meanwhile, at least 38 senior colonels were promoted to the rank of major general in late December, according to local media and Chinese military watchers.
Lin said they were carefully selected by the president himself. “These new major generals were definitely hand-picked by Xi – he intends to build his own army, or the so-called Xi force,” Lin said.
Of those promoted to major general, nine were from the PLA’s ground forces, four were from the air force, three were from the rocket force and 22 from the People’s Armed Police Force.
The military has undergone major upheaval and reform during the past six years, with dozens of generals brought down amid an unprecedented anti-corruption campaign.
They include top generals Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, both former Central Military Commission vice-chairmen, Fang Fenghui, who was the PLA chief of staff, and Zhang Yang, former head of the PLA’s General Political Department.
The world’s second largest economy started the year with the strong intentions to improve the quality of growth but ended it hoping for a better 2019
The trade war with the United States, the government’s deleveraging campaign to reduce debt and an unhappy private sector all played their part
PUBLISHED : Monday, 31 December, 2018, 6:33pm
UPDATED : Monday, 31 December, 2018, 6:33pm
If there is a single Chinese word to describe China’s economy in 2018, there may be no better one than gang, which translates to dispute and leverage.
Beijing started the year with the strong intentions to improve the quality of growth, vowing to reduce deeply troubling risks in the financial system and to control rampant pollution.
But in reality it was disputes – either between China and the United States, or with the Chinese private economy and state-owned enterprises – that dominated the headlines.
The world’s second-biggest economy is expected to achieve the government’s growth target of “around 6.5 per cent” this year, but the deviation from its original policy intentions, a mixed result of misjudgment, excess pride and uncontrollable external factors, have turned out to be very costly.
Unprecedented trade war
The Chinese government’s strategy of making major purchases of US products managed to prevent the US China-bashing from damaging bilateral ties in the first year of Donald Trump’s term as US president which began in January 2017, but that strategy was no longer effective in 2018.
Beijing’s tough retaliatory stance in the face of the first US tariffs starting in July did nothing to deter more American taxes.
And by the end of September, Washington had imposed tariffs on half of the Chinese exports to the US and threatened to sanction the rest if an acceptable trade deal was not agreed by March 1.
“We were relatively slow to foresee [the US actions] … and underestimated [the Trump administration’s] determination. Also, policy support was not well prepared,” said Qu Fengjie, director of the external economy research institute under the National Development and Reform Commission.
“It’s not simply economic friction, but a turning point of bilateral ties and a strategic adjustment of the US,” warned Li Wei, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University of China.
Despite the 90-day truce agreed on December 1, there remains a huge question whether a bilateral trade deal can be reached at any point, creating great uncertainty that is increasingly haunting the national economy.
China’s lowest first-quarter growth rate was 6.4 per cent in 2009, meaning a drop below 6 per cent would represent a record low since the National Bureau of Statistics started publishing quarterly figures in 1992.
The government’s deleveraging campaign to cut excess debt and risky borrowing – one of the three major tasks laid out at the start of the year by the top leadership – sought to tackle the risk from the huge, and often hidden, debt accumulated in a decade of economic stimulus since the 2008 global financial crisis.
Risk from the deleveraging campaign
The country’s debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio stood at 253 per cent of GDP at end of June, one of the highest rates in the world.
Beijing slashed its fiscal deficit ratio for the first time in six years, while a clampdown on shadow banking rippled to capital-thirsty private firms, local government controlled financing vehicles and public-partnership projects.
“Its impact on the economy has exceeded expectation upon a variety factors, most notably the trade war, a shadow banking curb and environmental protection,” Bank of Communications senior researcher Liu Xuezhi said.
“Particular, infrastructure investment has registered a free fall.”
The infrastructure investment growth, a major government tool in previous rounds of economic stabilisation, plunged to 7.3 per cent in the first half of this year, compared to 21.1 per cent a year earlier.
And despite the offsetting measures that started in July, the slowdown continued, with January-November growth of only 3.7 per cent.
Li Yang, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a former policy adviser of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), said the deleveraging campaign was meant to avoid a financial crisis rather than exacerbate an economic slowdown.
“If it progresses too quickly – rather than having a controlled timing and pace in coordination with other policies – it could artificially create a Minsky moment or even Lehman Brothers moment,” he said.
Minsky and Lehman Brothers moments refer to the sudden collapse of a financial market or institutions, usually triggered by debt, currency or other issues.
The first is named after economist Hyman Minsky, while the second refers to the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers 10 years ago that rocked global stock markets and led to the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression.
A year ago, former PBOC governor Zhou Xiaochuan warned that China must stay alert for a Minsky moment.
After the first US tariffs were imposed on Chinese products in July, Beijing’s policymakers continued the deleveraging campaign even though they shifted the policy direction to economic stabilisation.
At the Central Economic Work Conference in December, the top leadership vowed to carry on “structural deleveraging”, paving the way for a bigger economic stimulus.
“It will become a long-term policy goal” rather than an immediate priority, Li said.
Structural deleveraging means structural changes among different sectors. For instance, the government can have higher leverage, but corporate leverage should be lowered, therefore the overall debt-to-GDP ratio will be kept roughly stable.
Private economy outcry
Private firms, the major victims of both financial deleveraging and the trade war, have been hit the hardest by the economic slowdown.
A total of 33 firms for the first time registered bond defaults by November 5, 28 of which were private firms, according to Everbright Securities, compared to only nine private firms in 2017.
In addition, dozens of private owners of listed firms risked losing their controlling stakes when the value of the shares they pledged to banks as collateral for loans fell with the rest of the stock market.
As well as the decade-old problems of lack of access to credit and high fundraising costs, the governments support of state-owned enterprises to become bigger and stronger and feelings of those who wanted to eliminate private ownership turned out to be the last straw.
The desperate voices of entrepreneurs, which increased ahead of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up policy, forced top leaders to emphasis the government’s support for the private sector, including the introduction of new credit and tax policies to help small businesses.
Xi also rolled up his sleeves at a high-profile symposium at the start of November.
“Some argue that the private economy has completed its mission and will fade out. All these statements are completely wrong and do not conform to the party’s policies,” he told dozens of private sector representatives.
Lu Feng, a professor of economics at Peking University, said the arguments of those advocating elimination of private ownership were not well formulated.
Chief of the Army Staff General Bikram Singh received by Director for General Staff Duties Sanjeev Chopra (Photo credit: UN Women Asia & the Pacific)
Operationalisation of a new border defence agreement to deal with recurring troop incursions along the LAC besides improving defence ties, is expected to top the agenda of General Bikram Singh as he starts a rare visit by an Indian Army chief to China from tomorrow.
“Currently India and China maintain exchanges and cooperation at various levels. This is very significant for the two countries,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said here today.
“The visit you mentioned will be an important event in military to military exchanges between China and India,” he said commenting on Singh’s visit at a media briefing.
“We wish full success of this visit so that the mutual trust between the two armies can be enhanced,” he said.
To deal with tensions arising out of the incursions by both sides, India and China signed the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) last year.
Singh’s visit was aimed at implementing a number of steps incorporated by BDCA on the ground, officials said.
The Indian Army chief’s four-day visit is taking place after a gap of nine years.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
Indian, Chinese border troops in brief skirmish on northeast Indian border, India says
KOLKATA (Reuters) – Indian and Chinese troops on border patrol duties had a brief skirmish in Sikkim, a northeastern Indian state bordering China, the Indian Defence Ministry said on Sunday, blaming both sides for the incident.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. The two sides disengaged after dialogue and interaction at the local level,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Indian daily Hindustan Times, citing a military source, said four Indian soldiers and seven Chinese troops were injured when some of the soldiers exchanged blows during the confrontation, which it said took place on Saturday and involved some 150 soldiers.
The Defence Ministry said the incident took place in the Nakula area but did not give details of how it started, or what caused the injuries.
China’s Ministry of Defense could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday.
India and China have often accused each other of intrusions into each other’s territories, but clashes are rare.
There is still deep mistrust between the two countries over their festering border dispute, which triggered a brief war in 1962.
Hundreds of troops from both sides were deployed in 2017 on the Doklam plateau, near the borders of India, Bhutan, and China after India objected to Chinese construction of a road in the Himalayan area, in the most serious standoff in years.
Source: Reuters
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