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Beware the Waking Dragon
TAIYUAN, May 11 (Xinhua) — Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on Monday inspected north China’s Shanxi Province.
On Monday afternoon, Xi visited an organic daylily farm in Yunzhou District of Datong City, and a village in the city’s Xiping Township to learn about poverty alleviation efforts.
He then went to the Yungang Grottoes to learn about historical and cultural heritage protection efforts.
(Xinhua/Li Xueren, Xie Huanchi, Liu Bin)
GUBEI WATER TOWN, China (Reuters) – The mock Qing dynasty village nestled below the Great Wall would normally be teeming with tourists on Labour Day, but the thin crowds on Friday showed that while China’s coronavirus epidemic has subsided, people’s fears could take longer to fade.
During holidays, some 100,000 visitors a day would traipse round the quaint stone-paved streets of Gubei Water Town, 110 kilometres (68 miles) northeast of Beijing. Its marketing manager reckoned on getting just a tenth of that number this year.
“People have concerns about the virus and are unwilling to travel long distances,” said Guo Baorong. For a start, there will be no international tourists this time, he said, noting foreigners would normally make up around 15% of visitors.
About 70% of China’s tourist attractions had reopened as of Thursday, according to China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, but all sites have had to cap visitors to 30% of designed capacity.
More sites, including the Forbidden City in Beijing, were set to reopen Friday.
Staff at the entrance to Gubei Water Town checked visitors’ temperatures and health tracking codes. And inside, lines on the ground directed tourists to stand one meter apart and stores used ropes to keep crowds from forming. Like everywhere in China since the lockdowns were imposed to stem the epidemic, everyone wore masks.
Still, in places where tourists squeezed together as the streets narrowed, staff shouted at them to spread out.
Some tourists enjoyed the smaller crowds.
Xiao Chen, a 24-year-old student wearing traditional Chinese garb known as “Hanfu” came to Gubei to take pictures around ancient architecture.
“It’s good to come out of the city. There was barely anyone in Gubei Water Town yesterday, and even today, it’s not crowded,” she said.
The tranquility may not last. Room bookings jumped on Thursday after Beijing and nearby areas began easing coronavirus restrictions, with about 90% of accommodation now reserved.
“We were not expecting that many people to come in,” said Guo.
Source: Reuters
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTIComic crusader Priya, a gang-rape survivor who earlier campaigned against rape and acid attack, is back in a new avatar. This time she is fighting the trafficking of girls and women for sex.
The “modern-day female superhero” was first launched in December 2014, exactly two years after the horrific gang rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi, to focus attention on the problems of gender and sexual violence in India.
In the first edition, Priya Shakti, the tiger-riding heroine challenges the stigma surrounding rape while in Priya’s Mirror, the second edition, she returns to fight acid attacks.
In the latest edition – Priya and the Lost Girls – she takes on the powerful sex-trafficker Rahu, the evil demon who runs an underworld brothel city where he has entrapped many women, including Priya’s sister Lakshmi.
Indian-American actor and writer Dipti Mehta, who wrote the script of the comic, draws on ancient Indian mythology to create larger-than-life fantastical characters and delivers a powerful feminist statement.
The story of Lost Girls begins when the protagonist returns home to find that there are no girls in her village.
She then mounts her flying tiger Sahas (Hindi for courage) and arrives in Rahu’s den. It’s a city ruled by greed, jealousy and lust, where women exist only to serve and please men – and those who resist are turned into stone.
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTIPriya is threatened and attacked, a woman who works for Rahu tries to lure her into the sex trade saying: “If you work for us, you’d serve only five to six men and not 20”, but in the end, good wins over evil and she manages to vanquish Rahu and liberate her sister and all the other trafficked girls.
But victory still eludes her. The families of rescued girls refuse to take them back. The survivors are treated like “lepers”, facing stigma, scorn and ridicule.
But Priya and the other girls stand up to confront patriarchy, says Ms Mehta, “just as women have broken their silence to talk about MeToo”, the campaign against sexual harassment and abuse that started in Hollywood in October 2107 and later spread to many other parts of the world.
“I was very clear from the start that Lost Girls can’t be just another comic book where good guy wins and evil dies, it had to be much more than that,” Ms Mehta says.
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTIRam Devineni, the Indian-American creator of the comic series, told the BBC that he had decided to focus on sex trafficking in this edition after visiting Sonagachi, India’s largest red-light area in the eastern city of Kolkata, where he met several women engaged in sex work.
“Half of them told me they had been tricked into coming there and, once there, they were forced into the sex trade. The other half said they’d agreed to do this for a living because they were dirt poor and they had no alternative.
“Often there were two to three women sharing a small dingy room, many of them had young children who lived with them, and some of them said their children slept in the same bed where they serviced clients.
“I found that really disheartening.”
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTIAccording to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking is the second largest organised criminal business in the world after the arms trade. It is even ahead of the drugs trade.“It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry,” anti-trafficking activist Ruchira Gupta told the BBC on the phone from New York.
Ms Gupta, who supports trafficked girls and women in India through her charity Apne Aap Women Worldwide, says there are 100 million people trapped in human trafficking globally, of which 27 million are in India alone, and most of the trafficking is in girls and young women.
India, Bangladesh and Nepal, she says, make up “the epicentre” of global sex trafficking.
Ms Gupta, who collaborated on Priya and the Lost Girls, says she plans to take the comic to schools and colleges in India and the US to use it as a talking tool, “as a conversation starter on what is a very difficult topic”.
The only way to fight trafficking, she believes, is to “de-normalise” sex trade – and cinema, art and pop culture are tools that can help do that.
The comic is made to appeal to young people. After its launch, it can be downloaded for free anywhere in the world; it also has “augmented reality features”, which means people can see special animation and movies by scanning the artwork with their smartphones.
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTI“People often make flippant comments to say that prostitution is the oldest occupation in the world, but they don’t realise that trafficking is not some poor woman getting money in exchange for having sex with a man. It is the extreme exploitation of most vulnerable girls,” Ms Gupta says.
To stop this “commodification” of girls, she adds, we need to create revulsion in men’s minds about sex trade – and it’s best to catch them young.
“We must work with young boys and teenagers, 13 to 14 year olds, through storytelling and pop culture. They learn about sex from porn sites which portray sex workers as happy hookers, and no-one sees the girl behind her.
“I want to demolish that myth of the happy hooker. I want to ensure that people see the girl behind her.”
Artwork by Syd Fini and Neda Kazemifar
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Source: The BBC
“Sometimes they had to remove the debris with their bare hands which were already covered in blood,” he said.
“But they just carried on and eventually pulled dozens of people out of the rubble. I knew then that I wanted to be one of them.”
Having the troops in his village made Cheng feel safe, he said, and he spent his days following them around and doing what he could to help.
Three months later, when the soldiers had completed their work and were preparing to pull out, Cheng said he was determined to show his new heroes just how grateful he was to them.
As the villagers gathered at the roadside to bid farewell to the men who had become their saviours, the young boy held up a handwritten sign. It said simply: “I want to be an airborne soldier when I grow up.”
The moment was captured on camera by a press photographer, and the image soon became a symbol of the gratitude felt by the people who had seen their lives and communities shattered but knew they had not been forsaken.
Five years after the troops rolled out, Cheng was preparing to go to college when he heard the PLA was recruiting and that there were places available with the airborne division.
The teenager did not need a second invitation, and after securing a place on a training course and successfully completing it he joined the ranks of his heroes in 2013.
Not that everything was plain sailing, however.
“When I first jumped out of a plane I felt very dizzy and didn’t really know what was going on,” he said.
Thankfully Cheng managed to overcome his vertigo and went on to become a squad leader.
When the preparations were being made for next week’s anniversary celebrations in Beijing, Cheng said he and his squad were chosen to take part.
He said that during the rehearsals for the grand parade, he was repeatedly reprimanded by his trainer for not keeping his knees close enough together, for lifting his feet too high and for letting his gun slip off shoulder.
But he was determined to get it right, and after weeks of hard work and 11 years on from the tragedy that devastated his world, he said he was now ready to put his best foot forward.
“The nightmare of earthquake has long gone,” he said. “I am here to continue the glory of the airborne troops. I am ready for inspection.”
Source: SCMP
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, visits a revolutionary memorial hall in Xinxian County, central China’s Henan Province, Sept. 16, 2019. Xi went on an inspection tour in Henan Monday. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)
ZHENGZHOU, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping called for unshakable confidence and hard work with great determination to write a magnificent chapter of the central region in the new era during his inspection tour to Henan Province from Monday to Wednesday.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, called for efforts to promote the continuous and healthy development of the economy as well as social harmony and stability to give people a stronger sense of fulfillment, happiness and security.
On Wednesday afternoon, Xi listened to the work reports of the CPC Henan Provincial Committee and the provincial government.
Xi said that China’s development is in good shape, but the international situation is still complicated. China is faced with new risks and challenges and must manage its own affairs well.
Calling on Henan to promote high-quality economic development and seize the opportunities provided by the strategy for the rise of central China, he urged the province to focus on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry and give priority to innovation in the overall development.
Xi also stressed efforts to actively push forward the supply-side reform in agriculture.
Xi noted that priority should be given to the protection of ecosystems and addressing environmental issues at the source.
On improving people’s living standards, Xi called for particular attention to ensuring employment for key groups such as college graduates, veterans, laid-off and rural migrant workers, as well as those returning to rural areas.He also called for efforts to help culture flourish, and promote the preservation, innovation and development of fine traditional Chinese culture.
Xi stressed that the first stage of the education campaign themed “staying true to our founding mission” had been concluded while the second stage had just begun, and called for efforts focused on dealing with the most urgent problems facing the people.
Education on red traditions should make Party members and officials remain true to the original aspiration and undertake their mission, and strive to advance the great cause that the martyrs fought and sacrificed themselves for, Xi said.
During the three-day inspection, Xi visited a martyrs cemetery and a museum in an old revolutionary base, handicraft shops and a homestay in a township, as well as an oil-seed camellia plantation, a village which had escaped poverty and a coal mining machinery company.
He also inspected the ecological protection of the Yellow River at a museum and a national geopark and met with senior military officers stationed in Henan.
Source: Xinhua
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, inspects the Babusha Forest Farm, an afforestation program in a desert area of Gansu, where he learns about the latest developments in desertification control and environmental protection, in Gulang County of Wuwei City, northwest China’s Gansu Province, Aug. 21, 2019. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)
LANZHOU, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) — Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, visited a rural community and an afforestation area in northwest China’s Gansu Province Wednesday.
Xi visited a new community in Gulang County, which is home to rural residents relocated out of ecological concerns, and inquired about their livelihoods and progress on poverty relief.
He also inspected an afforestation program in a desert area of Gansu, where he learned about the latest developments in desertification control and environmental protection.
Source: Xinhua
Image copyrightAFPThe Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, said last year that his government had reached its target of providing every village in India with electricity.
“Yesterday, we fulfilled a commitment due to which the lives of several Indians will be changed forever,” Mr Modi tweeted in April 2018.
In the run-up to the Indian election, which gets under way on 11 April, BBC Reality Check examines claims and pledges made by the main political parties.
So does this claim stand up to scrutiny?
Let’s start by looking at villages.
There are almost 600,000 villages in India, according to the 2011 census.
The government defines a village as fully electrified if 10% of its households, as well as public places such as schools and health centres, are connected to the grid.
By this definition, all villages have now been electrified, according to official data.
However, much of the work had been done under the previous governments.
When Mr Modi took office, 96% of all the villages in India were already electrified. That left about 18,000 villages to go.
Before the BJP came to power, India had the world’s largest electricity access deficit – 270 million people.
That accounted for just under a third of the overall global deficit, according to the World Bank’s 2017 State of Electricity Access report.
The World Bank estimates that nearly 85% of the entire population now has access to power supply – that’s slightly higher than the government estimate of 82%.
The project Mr Modi launched in September 2017 aimed to provide electricity to all Indian households by December 2018, covering 40 million families, primarily targeting rural India.
Virtually all Indian households have now been electrified, according to the government’s data. As of March, just 19,753 households are left.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESThe current government has suggested it has been electrifying villages at a faster rate than the previous one.
However, using central electricity authority data, we found that under the previous Congress-led government, an average of more than 9,000 villages a year were being electrified compared with the Modi government’s average of more than 4,000 villages a year.
Although substantial progress has been made to electrify Indian villages – both by the current and previous administrations – the quality of the supply remains a problem, especially in rural areas.
Only six out of 29 states receive a 24-hour power supply, according to a government response to a question in India’s parliament.
Just under half of villages have more than 12 hours of domestic electricity a day and a third receive between eight and 12 hours, according to government data.
States with the highest percentage of villages that receive between just one and four hours of electricity a day include Jharkhand, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.
Source: The BBC
NAYABANS, India (Reuters) – Nayabans isn’t remarkable as northern Indian villages go. Sugar cane grows in surrounding fields, women carry animal feed in bullock carts through narrow lanes, people chatter outside a store, and cows loiter.
But this week, the village in Uttar Pradesh state became a symbol of the deepening communal divide in India as some Hindu men from the area complained they had seen a group of Muslims slaughtering cows in a mango orchard a couple of miles away.
That infuriated Hindus, who regard the cow as a sacred animal. Anger against Muslims turned into outrage that police had not stopped an illegal practise, and a Hindu mob blocked a highway, threw stones, burned vehicles and eventually two people were shot and killed – including a police officer.
The events throw a spotlight on the religious strains in places like Nayabans since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the national level in 2014 and in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Tensions are ratcheting up ahead of the next general election, due to be held by May.
The BJP said it was “bizarre” to assume the party would benefit from any religious disharmony, dismissing suggestions that its supporters were largely responsible for the tensions.
“In a large country like India nobody can ensure that nothing will go wrong, but it’s our responsibility to maintain law and order and we understand that,” party spokesman Gopal Krishna Agarwal said. “But people are trying to politicize these issues.”
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Nayabans, just about three hour’s drive from Delhi, has about 400 Muslims out of a population of 4,000, the rest are Hindu. Relations between the communities began deteriorating around the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last year when Hindus in the village demanded that loudspeakers used to call for prayer at a makeshift mosque be removed, local Muslims said.
“For 40 years mikes were used in the mosque, calls for prayer were made five times a day, but no one objected,” said Waseem Khan, a 28-year-old Muslim community leader in Nayabans.
“We resisted initially but then we thought it’s better to live in peace then create a dispute over a mike,” he said. “We don’t want to give them a chance to fan communal tensions.”
Reuters spoke with more than a dozen Muslims from the village but except for Khan, no one else wanted to be named for fear of angering the Hindu population.
Several among a group of Muslim women and girls standing outside the mosque said they have been living in fear since the BJP came to power in the state in 2017.
They said that Hindu groups now hold provocative processions through the village during every Hindu festival, loudspeakers blaring, something that used to happen rarely before. They said they felt “terrorised” by Hindu activists.
“While passing through our areas during their religious rallies, they chant ‘Pakistan murdabad’ (down with Pakistan) as if we have some connection to Pakistan just because we are Muslims,” Khan said.
The subcontinent was divided into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India at the time of independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
During the violence on Monday, many Muslims in Nayabans locked themselves in their homes fearing attacks. Some who had attended a three-day Muslim religious congregation some miles away stayed outside the area that night to avoid making themselves targets for the mob.
Muslim villagers say they are particularly fearful of the top elected official in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is a Hindu priest and senior BJP figure. Hindu hardliners started asserting themselves more in the village after he was elected, they say.
Uttar Pradesh sends 80 lawmakers to the lower house of parliament, the largest of any state in the country.
Considered the county’s political crucible, it has also been the scene for spiralling Hindu-Muslim tensions.
Slideshow (8 Images)
Adityanath said the lead up to the rioting in Nayabans was a “big conspiracy”, but did not elaborate.
In the only statement from his office on the incident, Adityanath ordered police to arrest those directly or indirectly involved in the slaughter of cows and made no mention of the death of the police inspector. He announced 1 million rupees ($14,110) as compensation for the family of the other dead man, a local who is among those accused by police for the violence.
Both men were Hindus and died of bullet wounds, although police said it was not yet clear who shot whom.
Police say they have arrested up to five people for the cow slaughter but have not given their religion. Locals say all the arrested people are Muslims. Four Hindu men have been arrested for the violence leading to the deaths.
“All invidious elements who may have conspired to vitiate the situation will be exposed through a fair and transparent investigation,” Anand Kumar, the second highest police official in Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters.
Asked if there was any bias against Muslims, Uttar Pradesh government spokesman Sidharth Nath Singh – who is also the state’s health minister – told Reuters: “We believe in equality and our motto is sabka saath, sabka vikas”, using a Hindi phrase often used by Modi that means “collective effort, inclusive growth”.
The two communities in Nayabans have lived in relative harmony for years, residents from both groups said.
But now Hindus in the village, who mostly say they support Yogi, accuse the Muslims of trying to turn themselves into the victims when they weren’t.
“Can’t believe they are raising our processions with journalists!” said Daulat, a Hindu daily wage labourer who goes by one name. “They are making it a Hindu-Muslim issue, we are not. Their people have been accused of killing cows, so they are playing the victim.”
At a middle school, metres from the police outpost near where the two men got killed, two women teachers, sitting on a veranda soaking in the winter sun, said its 66 students stopped coming for classes in the first few days after the violence.
“We worship cows and their slaughter can’t be accepted,” said one of the teachers, Uma Rani. “Two Hindus died here but nothing happened to the cow killers.”
Both teachers were Hindus.
Political analysts say relations between the two communities are likely to stay tense ahead of the national vote, particularly in polarised states such as Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP made a near-clean sweep in Uttar Pradesh in 2014, helping Modi win the country’s biggest parliamentary mandate in three decades, but pollsters predict a tighter contest next year because of a lack of jobs and low farm prices.
“Facing economic headwinds and lacklustre job growth, Modi will rally his conservative base by selectively resorting to Hindu nationalism,” global security consultancy Stratfor said last month.
Muslims say they increasingly feel like second-class citizens in their own country.
“The BJP will definitely benefit from such incidents,” said Tahir Saifi, a Muslim community leader a few miles from the area of violence who supports a regional opposition party in Uttar Pradesh. “They want all Hindus to unite, and when religion comes into the picture, other issues like development take a back seat.”
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 