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04/07/2019

China, Bulgaria lift ties to strategic partnership

CHINA-BEIJING-XI JINPING-BULGARIAN PRESIDENT-TALKS (CN)

Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd R) and his wife Peng Liyuan (1st R) pose for photos with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev (2nd L) and his wife in Beijing, capital of China, July 3, 2019. Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev here Wednesday. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday held talks with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, and they decided to lift state-to-state ties to a strategic partnership.

Bulgaria was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with New China, Xi noted, hoping that the two countries take the strategic partnership as a new starting point, work together to cope with the test of international changes and inject new impetus into bilateral cooperation.

Xi stressed that the two sides should respect and trust each other and strengthen exchanges between the two governments, legislative bodies and political parties while maintaining mutual support on issues involving each other’s core interests and major concerns.

“The two countries share many of the same or similar views on the international situation and should jointly safeguard the international system based on multilateralism and the international law,” said Xi.

Bulgaria is also one of the first Central and Eastern European countries to sign intergovernmental cooperation documents with China on the Belt and Road Initiative. Xi said China is willing to strengthen the synergy between the two countries’ development strategies, promote infrastructure connectivity, expand trade and investment and cement people-to-people exchanges.

Xi reiterated China’s firm support for the European integration process, EU’s unity and growth and Europe’s more important role in international affairs, saying that China’s upholding such stances is not an expedient measure.

“It is hoped that the new EU institutions will maintain the stability and continuity of their China policy,” said Xi, who also expected the new EU institutions to work with China to promote the building of partnership on the basis of mutual respect, fairness and justice, cooperation and win-win result.

“Bulgaria is a good friend and partner of China in the EU and an important participant and advocate of the cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European countries. It is hoped that the Bulgarian side will continue to play a constructive role in this regard,” said Xi.

Radev said he was very happy to visit China on the occasion of celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic ties.

Lifting the bilateral ties to a strategic partnership will further strengthen the foundation of bilateral relations, said Radev.

Radev said the Bulgarian side is ready to deeply participate in the Belt and Road Initiative by giving full play to its advantages of location in the region and trying to become a gateway and hub connecting Europe and Asia.

The Bulgarian side is willing to expand cooperation with the Chinese side in such areas as trade, transportation, aviation, logistics, finance, innovation, local areas and people-people exchanges, and welcomes Chinese enterprises to increase investment in Bulgaria, said Radev.

While expressing Bulgaria’s support for multilateralism and the World Trade Organization, the Bulgarian president said his country stands ready to step up communication and work for advancing Europe-China relations and cooperation between the Central and Eastern European countries and China.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in Beijing, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Bulgaria, Bulgarian President, Central and Eastern European countries, China alert, Chinese President Xi Jinping, European integration process, Great Hall of the People, lift ties, strategic partnership, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

04/07/2019

China’s top talent now wants to work for rising domestic tech stars, not big brand multinationals

China’s talent is turning away from multinationals and towards domestic tech champions in the search for a more fulfilling career
Change in sentiment comes amid raging US-China tech war and perceptions of ‘bamboo ceiling’ in the West

An increasing number of Chinese jobseekers are looking towards domestic tech firms. Image: SCMP

Molly Liu left her hometown Beijing to pursue a master’s degree in the United States in the 1990s.

After graduation, she fought hard to win an entry-level position at a US-based consultancy and after a period was later sent back to China to help the company’s expansion.

In the land of opportunity, the ambitious US firm showered her with avenues to pursue her career and she ended up working in Hong Kong as well as being one of the first people on the ground for the consultancy in Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei and Singapore.

Times have changed, though. Recently, her only son, Ben Zhang, turned down a hard-to-get job offer from a Boeing subsidiary in the US after gaining a master’s degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Chinese students educated in the US are now looking more at jobs in China. Photo: SCMP

He decided to return to Beijing in 2018 and now works as a product manager at Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. He is convinced that the start-up turned tech major can offer him the same sort of opportunities today that the US tech consultancy offered his mother in the 1990s.

This family story about the career choices of two different generations of US-educated Chinese students reflects a wider trend. Once upon a time, US corporations could cherry-pick top Chinese talent from American universities with the promise of large salaries, generous benefits and the chance to work at market-leading organisations.

Today, China’s cutting-edge technology companies – often referred to as China Tech Corporation (CTC) – are the most sought-after employers among many Chinese students, who want more than just a cushy life.

This marks another blow for multinational corporations (MNCs) already struggling to do business in China amid a myriad of restrictions and growing hostility towards them as the US-China trade and tech war gathers pace.

“What I look for in a job is not money. My parents are not counting on me to support them,” says 28-year-old Zhang, whose team in Xiaomi is working on a wide array of connected devices, from televisions to lamps to smart locks. “What I care about most is personal improvement and access to the best resources a company can offer.”

“In Boeing, I could probably work on a new product once every two to three years. But at Xiaomi, every three months, we can roll out a new product,” he added. “You can bring so many things into people’s everyday lives in China, like using your voice to control a TV or an air conditioner – things you can only imagine in the US.”

Zhang is not alone and many Chinese today perceive a “bamboo ceiling” in the US, where they are more often seen as engineers rather than executives.

One Chinese executive who now oversees the technology unit of a listed finance and insurance firm in China said that he used to lead a team of 20 engineers at one of the world’s most valuable tech companies in Silicon Valley.

“My job was to keep optimising the performance of a product [in Silicon Valley],” he said.

“But within three years in China, I was promoted to the chief scientist of our entire company, leading a team of 1,000,” said the man, who asked to remain anonymous as some of his family still reside in the US.

How Trump’s assault on Huawei is forcing the world to contemplate a digital iron curtain

According to an April survey by professional networking site LinkedIn, an increasing number of Chinese jobseekers share Zhang’s outlook. LinkedIn compiled a list of the top 25 most desired employers in China, and about 60 per cent were local Chinese companies, with 13 of them internet firms.

CTC bagged four of the top five spots, with e-commerce giant Alibaba, search giant operator Baidu and Bytedance – which operates short video hit TikTok – taking the lead.

Tesla ranked sixth behind its Chinese challenger Nio. Amazon, the only other foreign company in the top ten, ranked eighth.

Alibaba is the owner of the South China Morning Post.

Li Qiang, executive vice-president of Zhaopin, one of China’s largest online recruiters, described the rising status of CTC among jobseekers as “the dawning of a new era”.

“Nowadays, there is nothing a multinational can offer that a domestic firm cannot, be it a compensation package or the chance to be part of international expansion,” said Beijing-based Li.

“Jobseekers are not particularly looking for domestic firms or multinational firms. They are after good firms and most of the good firms in China these days happen to be domestic tech firms,” said Li.

Li’s comments reflect the wider opportunities within the domestic economy for Chinese jobseekers today, after the rise of many successful private-sector companies and a thriving start-up scene over the past 10 years, meaning it’s not just a one-way street to a state-owned enterprise (SOE) any longer.

A survey by Zhaopin in late 2018 found that 28 per cent of Chinese university students said MNCs were their employer of choice, down from 33.6 per cent in 2017.

Even on pay and benefits, CTC is catching up with multinationals. Zhang said Xiaomi matched the offer from the Boeing unit in the US and many leading tech firms offer benefits such as gym memberships and childcare facilities.

And the rags-to-riches stories of many leading China tech entrepreneurs, some of whom have become billionaires, continue to grab media attention and inspire the younger generation.

To be sure, Chinese students would still rather work for an MNC than an SOE – but the rise of CTC can be seen in company rankings and in the total number of CTC companies in the top employer list, according to Zhaopin.

For a growing number of Chinese students, the doors to America are closing

William Wu, China country manager of global employer brand consultancy Universum, said that the one element Chinese jobseekers pay most attention to these days is whether or not a job can be “a good reference point for a future career”. And a growing number of private Chinese companies now have global brand recognition.

A recent survey by Universum shows that Apple and Siemens were the only two Western names in the top 10 ideal employers for Chinese students in the engineering sector this year, while there were four foreign firms in the top 10 list in 2017.

Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecoms giant that has been put on a US trade blacklist after the Trump administration said it was a national security risk, ranked top in the Universum list. Xiaomi, the smartphone maker Ben Zhang works for, ranked second while Apple, one of the most valuable tech firms in the US, ranked seventh.

It seems that China’s rising clout in the world is now an attractive factor for jobseekers.

“Every engineer would like to see the technology they’ve worked on have the potential to change the world one day,” said Li Yan, head of multimedia understanding at Chinese short video major Kuaishou. “In the old times Chinese companies were at the bottom of the global value chain, now they are climbing up, providing more opportunities for talent to create world-changing products.”

At Beijing-based Kuaishou, Li’s 100-strong artificial intelligence algorithm team – many of whom joined from Microsoft Asia Research – is working to make machines understand content better than humans by studying the millions of user-generated videos on the company’s platform every day.

CTC companies do have a strong home advantage, with big Western firms having to navigate a myriad of restrictions.

For example, the “Great Firewall” lets Chinese authorities control the content and information reaching the country’s 800 million-plus internet population. Western firms also face other forms of red tape, such as having to form joint ventures with local partners.

Amazon earlier this year announced the close of its China marketplace, giving up the brutal fight with Chinese online shopping giants such as Alibaba to capture domestic e-commerce market share. Oracle China reportedly laid off 900 people in March as it winds down its research and development center in the country.

Job applicants visit a provincial job fair at Qujiang International Conference and Exhibition Center in Xian, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province in February. Photo: Xinhua

Oracle has never confirmed the number of lay-offs but said the job cuts formed part of an overall global strategy transformation.

However, there has been little sympathy for those losing their jobs in China, judging by social media posts.

Some people posted that those working for big US tech firms are not “wolf” enough compared with counterparts who work for local tech firms, referring to the long work-hours culture of the domestic tech scene.

A viral story titled “Why there should be no pity for the sacked Oracle China employees” said the company was Beijing’s biggest nursery because of the flexible “work from home” culture and generous compensation package offered to employees.

Oracle said to begin mass lay-offs in China as part of global move to cloud services

“They had every chance to join rising domestic internet firms. But they settled for high salary and low work pressure, which eventually made them frogs in boiling water. Why pity them?” said the article, adding that the earlier people give up on the “glory” of working for MNCs, the quicker they will benefit.

Not all Chinese workers would agree, and there has been a recent backlash against the “996” culture within China’s tech sector, where people routinely work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

With geopolitical uncertainty growing day by day, though, many Chinese are asking why leave the family behind for an uncertain fate overseas?

A survey done by consultancy BCG and The Network in 2018 showed that only one in three China residents was willing to move abroad for work, down from 61 per cent in 2014. The country is also the 20th most popular destination worldwide to relocate for a job, compared with 29th in the 2014.

“One of my graduate classmates in the US just gave up a six-digit package at Oracle and joined drone maker DJI in Shenzhen,” said Ben Zhang. “I asked what prompted his return to China. He sent me the viral article and asked, ‘who wants a life that one can see the end of from the very beginning?’”

Source: SCMP

Posted in Alibaba, Apple, ‘bamboo ceiling’, “Great Firewall”, Baidu, Beijing, big brand multinationals, Boeing, Bytedance, Carnegie Mellon University, China Tech Corporation (CTC), China’s top talent, Hong Kong, huawei technologies, Kuaishou, LinkedIn, multinational corporations (MNCs), Nio. Amazon, Oracle China\, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Qujiang International Conference and Exhibition Center, rising domestic tech stars, shaanxi province, Shanghai, Siemens, Silicon Valley, Singapore, south china morning post, state-owned enterprise (SOE), Taipei, Tesla, TikTok, Uncategorized, Universum, wants to work, Xi'an, Xiaomi | Leave a Comment »

04/07/2019

How US-trained telecoms entrepreneur Bill Huang turned to China for a wireless technology America couldn’t offer

‘There’s no need for a confrontation in technology because science has no borders,’ says the founder of CloudMinds
Huang has watched from up close as the US gradually descended from its telecoms supremacy and China caught up

Bill Huang in 2018. Photo: YouTube

Bill Huang, a Chinese-American telecoms industry veteran, used to target China and its vast, untapped market with the technological know-how he had learned in the US.

But over the past few years, the tables have turned. In his latest business endeavour, the engineer turned entrepreneur is relying on China for a key technology that would transform mobile communication for the next decade – and it is a technology the US has fallen behind on.

As one of the first young mainland Chinese to attend graduate school in the US after diplomatic relations were resumed 40 years ago, and as one of the early participants in Beijing’s global recruitment programme to attract top talent in science and technology, Huang has a unique perspective on the current bilateral stand-off that centres on technology.

CloudMinds Technology, a privately held robotics sector company he founded in 2015, needs the superfast 5G network to support its cloud-based platforms for operating intelligent robots. The next-generation wireless technology has become a flash point in the escalating US-China tech rivalry, and Huang is at the forefront of it all.

“It’s kind of like a one-sided rivalry. Because the US doesn’t have the [5G] technology,” Huang said on the sidelines of a recent conference on China in Philadelphia.

For months, the US government has waged a campaign to block the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei from dominating global 5G networks, lobbying allies to shun the company for what it says are risks of espionage or sabotage by Beijing.

Huawei is already ahead of its European rivals in market share thanks in part to its lower prices. But so far no companies in the US – which has long led the telecoms industry – can make the equipment needed to build the next generation of networks.

Huang, 57, who spent three decades in the mobile communication sector, has watched from up close as the US gradually descended from its telecoms supremacy and China quietly caught up.

Technology is not like martial arts, or Shakespeare’s book, it’s not like everything is copyrighted Bill Huang, CEO of CloudMinds Technology

In its heyday, US giants like AT&T sold network equipment to countries around the world. Huang himself once worked at AT&T’s research hub Bell Labs, a dominant leader in telecoms innovation known as “the idea factory” and arguably the most innovative scientific institution for a long stretch of the 20th century.

“In the last 20 years, the US went from [being] No 1 in the telecommunications industry to now almost exiting telecommunications equipment manufacturing,” Huang said, citing the acquisition of Lucent and Motorola by European counterparts.

It was a decline Huang witnessed with an initial sense of sadness. As a veteran of Bell Labs, he said, he had felt extremely proud of the company’s contribution not only to America, but to telecoms technology worldwide.

“But secondly I also felt a level of pride for China,” he said, “because it went from nothing in telecommunications to lead the world in telecommunications in less than 30 years.”

Huawei was under secret US surveillance, US fraud hearing told

Glenn O’Donnell, an analyst at Forrester Research, said the decline of major US telecoms providers had little to do with politics, but was a function of inadequate interest in innovatation because of their dominance in the field.

“The long lease cycles and until recently the relative maturity of the market really didn’t lend itself well for real innovation,” he said.

“And that’s now changing, and all of those players that decided not to play in telecommunications are now wishing they had a stake because there’s a lucrative new market.”

Also drastically different today is the state of relations between China and the US. As they fight their costly trade war, tensions and acrimony have spilled into other aspects of bilateral relations, from technology, defence and geopolitics to ideology. There are even warnings of “decoupling” – something almost unimaginable to Huang, whose personal trajectory has been shaped by the intertwined ties between his homeland and his adopted country.

Fifth-generation mobile telecommunications technology, or 5G, enables data to be transferred at a speed that is 20 times faster than current standards. Photo: Reuters

He calls himself “a product of China-US relations”. Such was his proud conviction that he gave his son the middle name “Nixon”, after the president who put relations with China back on track in 1972 with a historic trip to Beijing that ended over two decades of antagonism and isolation since the Chinese Communist Party took power.

The visit by Richard Nixon – who died in 1994, the same year Huang’s son was born – not only mended bilateral relations, but created an opportunity for Huang and many others like him: to learn the most advanced science and technology from the world’s leading innovation powerhouse.

Born in 1962 into an intellectual family in southwestern China, Huang spent most of his childhood in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

“As professors, my parents had a very difficult time during the Cultural Revolution. But they insisted that we spend time to study,” he said.

Huang recalled being a “wild kid”, going to school to “have fun”. But when the time came to study, he was able to pick up the pace, which he attributed to the academic minds that run in his family.

Hailed as a “child prodigy”, he passed the country’s first university entrance exam in a decade at the age of 15. A year later, in 1978, he was in the first batch of students to enter university after the disruptions of the decade-long upheaval. He chose to major in electrical engineering, following in his father’s footsteps.

In his sophomore year at the Huazhong Institute of Technology, his parents told him to apply for graduate programmes in the US.

“They think the US has the best technology in the world, and they wanted me to come here to study,” he said. “I read everything about the US … and I was very eager to come.”

Arriving at the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus in 1982, at age 20, Huang was one of the first new Chinese graduates to further their studies in the US after the re-establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979. He did not speak English (although he could read it), and had to enrol in a three-month language training program before he could attend lectures.

He studied computer science in addition to electrical engineering, working day and night on projects in the lab – a time he looks back on with fondness.

“It was some of the most intense time in my life, I suppose,” Huang said. “But I was young and relentless, and I could go on for three days without sleep. … I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

US to speed up 5G development plans as race with China accelerates

Despite their vastly different cultural backgrounds, Huang made friends with his American classmates and fellow foreign students, some of whom were from India and what was then the Soviet Union.

“I experienced zero racial prejudice,” he said. “That was Chicago in the 1980s. I don’t know what happened today, [but back then] it was thoroughly what I thought was the ‘melting pot’.”

In his computer science classes, Huang learned Unix – a state-of-the-art operating system developed by Bell Labs – from adjunct professors who had helped create the program.

Little did he know he would later become a researcher at Bell Labs. “That was the holy ground of telecommunications,” he said, still beaming with pride when speaking of his former employer, which invented, among other things, the communications satellite and the cellular telephone system.

Bill Huang as a graduate student in Chicago in the early 1980s. Photo: CCTV

In 1994, Huang joined 10 other former Bell Labs engineers at a California-based telecoms infrastructure provider that targeted the vast and underserved Chinese market. A year later, the company merged with a telecoms software company to become UTStarcom, with Huang as its co-founder and chief technology officer.

UTStarcom tapped into the fast-growing Chinese telecoms market with a low-cost, limited-range wireless service known as the Personal Access System (PAS). It went public on the Nasdaq exchange five years later. In 2001, China passed the US as having the most mobile phone customers. The rapidly expanding market propelled UTStarcom’s growth; its revenues increased tenfold between its IPO and 2003, when it controlled 60 per cent of China’s PAS market.

In 2007, having lived in the US for longer than he did in China and having become an American citizen, Huang moved from Silicon Valley to Beijing with his wife and son. China Mobile, the country’s largest telecoms operator, had asked him to help build a “Bell Labs for China” – a request he readily accepted.

“It was not only a simple job, but a responsibility, a challenge I thought I should accept no matter what,” he told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV in 2017.

Smartphone screen with resolution million times higher than iPhone: Chinese researchers make technology breakthrough

As the head of the China Mobile Research Institute, Huang led the carrier’s leap from 3G to 4G, and he was also at the centre of 5G research. “We put a lot of effort into researching what standards are required for the future network,” he said.

His return to China preceded the “Thousand Talents Plan”, a state-backed recruitment drive to lure the world’s brightest scientists and experts – especially those with roots in China – with lavish grants. But when the plan was set up in 2008, Huang was among the first batch of researchers to be enlisted.

“I express my heartfelt thanks to the state and the people for giving me such a good opportunity and condition to return home and serve the country,” Huang was quoted as saying at a forum for recipients of Thousand Talents awards hosted by People’s Daily in 2010.

“I worked for over 20 years abroad, and all my work was in the field of technology. I hope to bring the whole set of things I know back to China,” he added.

The recruitment scheme, much celebrated at the time, has become a sensitive subject today as tensions between the US and China escalate. It has drawn growing scrutiny and suspicion from the US, where investigators are looking for any connection to theft of American intellectual property. In response, China hushed up or deleted references to the programme in universities, companies and cyberspace.

A robot made by CloudMinds Technology showcased at the Mobile World Congress Barcelona in February. Photo: Handout

When asked about US complaints regarding China’s alleged technology theft, Huang gave a vehement defence of China.

“I think these are just basically blatant accusations with no ground,” he said. “Ninety-nine per cent [of the technologies] are not stolen. There are industrial espionage cases … but they’re not systematic cases, and they’re not [the result of the] rivalry between China and the US – they’re the result of competition.”

Huang also dismissed accusations that Chinese scientists and experts have “stolen” US technology.

“Technology is not like martial arts, or Shakespeare’s book, it’s not like everything is copyrighted,” he said.

“Everyone in Silicon Valley in the last 50 years started from somewhere, and then they become an entrepreneur and they move [on] to start their own companies. So in the early days, everyone took a little bit from what they have worked on.”

“It was customary, and then it became very litigious. Then people started saying: wait a minute, you can do that? So there were many exemplary cases, then it became more and more refined in what you can take and what you cannot take; what is protected and what is not protected. All of these things are happening industry-wide, it’s not a single US and China issue.”

Can China meet US demands over IP theft and forced technology transfer?

But intellectual property theft is not the only American grievance. Many US companies have accused China of forced technology transfers, with foreign businesses required to hand over technology to their Chinese partners in exchange for access to the market.

Huang said that complaint “has been there since day one”.

“Chinese companies will always complain about American companies. American companies will always complain about Chinese companies. The reason is very simple: every company would want to use regulations and law to their advantage,” he said.

A trained engineer, Huang holds a “globalist” view of technology – at odds with the national security perspective that has become prevalent in Washington.

“There’s no need for a confrontation in technology because science has no borders,” he said.

“In Huawei labs, there are many American engineers. In Intel and Qualcomm’s labs, I can assure you there are many Chinese engineers, and there are many German, French, Swedish engineers in all of these organisations. The fact they’re sold by a Chinese company or they’re sold by an American company has no meaning because behind the technologies is an international effort.”

To make his point, Huang calls the technology created by CloudMinds a “US and China technology”.

“I mean, how do you categorise it? Is it created by China or the US? It’s created by both. Because we have engineers in Silicon Valley, and we have engineers in Beijing.”

Protecting IP in China is hard, but awareness is rising, thanks to Trump

The company has dual headquarters, with its global operation based in Santa Clara, California, and its China operation based in Beijing – a structure Huang says now “makes perfect sense”.

“That was by design, by our lawyers. They kind of foresaw, if there [are] going to be trade tensions, this would be the right way to do it.”

But Huang questions if these tensions – a large part of which he said had been “politicised” – are so deeply embedded in every corner of society.

“I come to the United States very often, and I talk to the industry. I still feel it is the same America.”

“I encountered no scrutiny, no warning, and everyone is encouraging us, both from the US and from China, to continue our practice,” he said, adding that he only felt the tension when speaking to lawyers and government officials.

“But I am worried by all these stories. I think that’s why I said earlier: in the media it all looks very scary, but in practice, it’s all business as usual.”

Source: SCMP

Posted in America couldn’t offer, AT&T, Beijing, Bell Labs, Bill Huang, California, China Mobile Research Institute, Chinese engineers, CloudMinds, Cultural Revolution, Forrester Research, French, German, Huawei, Huazhong Institute of Technology, Intel, IP theft, People’s Daily, Qualcomm Inc, Richard Nixon, Santa Clara, Silicon Valley, Swedish, Thousand Talents awards, Uncategorized, University of Illinois, Unix, US-trained telecoms entrepreneur, UTStarcom, wireless technology | Leave a Comment »

04/07/2019

Samsung and other South Korean companies’ exodus from China sets an example to Western firms fleeing trade war tariffs

Lotte, Kia and Hyundai are also gradually winding down their China business due to political risks, tariffs and losing market share
Western companies fleeing Donald Trump’s tariffs may not have luxury of a managed exit, but should look at the South Korean case studies closely, experts say

Samsung’s last mobile phone production line remaining in China in Huizhou is winding down, implementing a voluntary retirement programme. Photo: He Huifeng

Upon landing in Australia in 2017 to attend a seminar, a senior politician with South Korea’s parliamentary defence committee was greeted by Julie Bishop, then Australia’s foreign minister, who had a burning question: “How are you dealing with the China threat?”

Bishop was referring to the treatment of South Korean firms in China, which escalated after Seoul agreed in 2016 to a long-standing request from the United States to allow the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system (THAAD) on South Korean soil.

Lotte Corporation, one of Korea’s chaebol conglomerates that dominate its economy, had sold a plot of land in Seongju county to the South Korean government, on which the system’s radar and interceptor missiles were set up. While both Washington and Seoul said it was meant to counter threats from North Korea, Beijing viewed THAAD as a security risk, since its radar had the range to monitor China’s nearby military facilities.

After it was deployed in 2017, THAAD triggered widespread boycotts of Lotte’s retail operations in China, with the state-owned media acting as aggressive cheerleaders. The company was sanctioned by Beijing, with its expansion plans in China grinding to a halt on the orders of the Chinese government.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) arrived in Seongju in September 2017. Photo: Reuters

Australia – like South Korea – is heavily dependent on trade with China, but is also closely bound to the US in defence and political terms, and Bishop feared that should Australia fall out of favour with Beijing, Australian companies could face similar risks, and so she sought the counsel of the politician, who asked not to be named.

The case of Canadian canola and meat exports being banned from China, reportedly in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, also known as Sabrina Meng and Cathy Meng, is an example of how third nations can be drawn into the modern day superpower rivalry.

Many analysts say the efforts of South Korean firms in China should be essential study material for Western governments and businesses about the political risks of doing business in the mainland, which are growing as the US-China trade war threatens to draw in other nations and expand into a broader geopolitical struggle.

But large South Korean firms have been gradually withdrawing from China for a number of years – even before the THAAD crisis – and have been able to leave on a managed basis. They are leaving to avoid a repeat of the political crisis that ruined Lotte’s China business, and to avoid tariffs on exports of their China-made products to the US.

Lotte have been forced to close retail operations in China. Photo: Reuters

But they are also leaving because Chinese firms have become much more competitive in the domestic market that South Korean companies had found so fruitful for more than a decade – a fate that could easily befall Western companies that are eyeing China’s burgeoning middle-class consumer market. Now, while American firms are considering exiting China and setting up in nations that have lower tariff access to the US, South

Korean competitors have had a few years’ head start.

“In a way, all the problems that some South Korean companies had since 2017 might be a blessing in disguise. It meant that they started all of this [supply chain shift] two years before all the other companies,” said Andrew Gilholm, Seoul-based director of analysis for China and Korea at political risk advisory, Control Risks.

Another chaebol, Samsung Electronics, opened its first plant in Vietnam in 2008 and this long-term presence has enabled it to build a supply chain of South Korean companies, which in turn makes it easier for other South Korean firms to establish a base in the Southeast Asian nation.

We have experienced some of the worst situations in China over the past few years and learnt that the political risk there wouldn’t just simply go away overnight Ex-Lotte Shopping manager

As a result, South Korean investment into Vietnam climbed to US$1.97 billion in the first half of 2018, exceeding the country’s investment in China of US$1.6 billion over the same period for the first time, according to the Export-Import Bank of Korea.

Overall in 2018, South Korea’s total investment to the Southeast Asian country totalled US$3.2 billion. Its exports to Vietnam also increased to US$48.6 billion, 121 times that of 1992, when the two countries established diplomatic relations, and the trend is expected to continue.

“We have experienced some of the worst situations in China over the past few years and learnt that the political risk there wouldn’t just simply go away overnight,” said a former manager of Lotte Shopping, the chaebol’s retail arm, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“China may pass all the legislation ensuring the safety of foreign investments and the rights of multinational companies, but the chance of it swinging away again when there is another political confrontation is just too high … we cannot afford to take any more risk.”

China eventually lifted its economic sanctions on Lotte in April, and the municipal government of Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province in Northeastern China, gave the company permission in May to resume work on the US$2.6 billion Lotte Town shopping and leisure development.

But according to a person close to the project, Lotte is considering selling the complex after its completion, as it does not wish to continue its retail business in China. A Lotte spokesman declined to comment, saying the situation is “complicated”.

On one hand, its eagerness to leave China reflects the volatility in the market, but on the other, its decision to complete the construction of project before leaving suggests an unwillingness to burn bridges in the process, analysts said.

Samsung is another South Korean giant downsizing its Chinese manufacturing presence after it closed its Shenzhen production line in May 2018, followed by its Tianjin factory in December.

Samsung has been very aware of the potential issues around those closuresJason Wright

Its last remaining mobile phone production line in

China, in Huizhou, is also winding down,

implementing a voluntary retirement programme. Samsung is also considering moving some television manufacturing from China to Vietnam, according to a company insider.

However, it too, is carefully managing its exit strategy, said Jason Wright, founder of Hong Kong-based intelligence firm Argo Associates, who is advising a growing number of South Korean companies seeking to leave China. Samsung is still a large supplier of microchips to Chinese companies like Huawei, and to exit on negative terms could disrupt its ongoing business.

“Samsung has been quite generous in the packages that have been offered [to workers in the factories that it has closed],” Wright said. “Samsung has been very aware of the potential issues around those closures.”

As well as the political risks and tariffs, Samsung has seen its mainland market share in several product queues shrink dramatically due to competition from Chinese rivals. Its share of China’s smartphone market, for example, fell from 20 per cent in 2013 to just 0.8 per cent last year, according to Strategy Analytics, a market research firm.

Over the same period, it has been moving its supply chain out of China in a “subtle and imperceptible” way, according to Julien Chaisse, a professor of trade law at City University of Hong Kong who has advised, among others, Lotte on its plans to relocate to Vietnam.

Samsung Electronics opened its first plant in Vietnam in 2008. Photo: Cissy Zhou

As stories emerged in June that Apple was considering a partial exit of China, it was impossible not to see parallels. iPhone sales in China fell 30 per cent in the first quarter of 2019, according to research firm Canalys, while smartphones will be among those facing a potential tariff of up to 25 per cent, although this has been at least delayed after the trade war truce agreed by

US President Donald Trump

and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the

G20 summit in Osaka.

Meanwhile, South Korean car companies Kia and Hyundai’s combined market share in China fell to 2.7 per cent last year, from about 10 per cent at the beginning of the decade. Both companies, which have shared ownership, are downsizing their Chinese operations.

“In the past, China was just a great market, but for Korea, now China has become a competitor. So that is really a change in the dynamic over the last five years. China was not really able to compete with Korea in most areas,” said Wright from Argo Associates.

City University of Hong Kong professor Chaisse traces the exodus of South Korean firms back to 2014, before THAAD and before the trade war, and highlighted an arcane arbitration case at the United Nations’ dispute settlement courts as a turning point. After that case, South Korean companies in China faced an increasingly hostile environment.

Filed in 2014 and settled in 2017, the case emerged after South Korean company Ansung Housing had been forced to sell a golf resort it was developing in Eastern China after a change in the country’s real estate legislation.

Ansung took the case to an arbitration panel, claiming it breached a Sino-Korean investment treaty. The company won – only the second defeat for China in two decades of participation in the court, but this ushered in a “change in atmosphere” for South Korean firms.

“My take is that while the Korean case is unique for a number of reasons, it highlights what is going to happen to many other foreign companies operating in China,” Chaisse said.

“I think very soon even European companies will be reconsidering their businesses in China. Every time it will be a different story: different countries, different companies, in different economic sectors will have different reaction times and the magnitude of their withdrawal may vary.”

But for those now fleeing trade war tariffs, they may not have the luxury of long-term planning that companies like Samsung and Lotte have had, said Gilholm from Control Risks.

“Long term, I think the Korean firms that are moving out of China have had it easier because they haven’t had to do it under quite such pressured and scrutinised circumstances as a company which starts to move things now,” he said.

Source: SCMP

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04/07/2019

Sri Lanka could help Chinese manufacturers offset trade war impact

Development minister leads high-level investment forum in Beijing
Points to free trade agreements and preferential duty deals to offset trade war pressures for Chinese factories

Sri Lankan Minister for Development Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrama at the Sri Lanka Investment Forum in Beijing on Wednesday. Photo: Simon Song

Sri Lanka is wooing Chinese manufacturers, urging them to make use of its preferential duty-free treatment by the US and Europe as a way to offset the growing tariff pressure of the trade war.

The country’s development minister, Malik Samarawickrama, was in Beijing on Wednesday as part of an investment forum at the Sri Lankan embassy attended by dozens of Chinese businesspeople.

“China has invested heavily in infrastructure and they are assisting us to invest in ports, roads, railways, water supplies and so on. Now we would like China to get involved in setting up their manufacturing plants in Sri Lanka, primarily for the purpose of exports,” he said.

“They can make use of the preferential market access we have – we have duty free access to the European Union countries and we have free trade agreements with Pakistan, Singapore and India. And, since the cost of manufacturing in China is going up, we would like the Chinese to look at Sri Lanka for their manufacturing and we want it to be exported back to China.”

Sri Lanka, bruised from Easter bombings, seeks US$1 billion loan from China

Along with trade officials and diplomats, Samarawickrama, one of Sri Lanka’s most senior government ministers, was also keen to boost investor confidence following the deadly Easter Sunday bombings in Colombo which killed 253 people.

“Let me assure you, absolutely, Sri Lanka is safe for investment,” he told the dozens of representatives from Chinese state-owned and private companies who attended the forum.

“We must bring to your notice that none of the industries have been affected as a result of the bombings and none of the export orders were cancelled or delayed. This is a testament to the resilience of the economy.”

China is one of Sri Lanka’s largest trading partners and – sometimes controversially – the largest financier of its booming new infrastructure. Other big lenders to the island nation are the Asian Development Bank and Japan.

Earlier this year the Sri Lankan government signed a US$989.5 million loan agreement with China’s Export-Import Bank for a major new motorway project. And last month Sri Lanka’s finance ministry confirmed it was in talks with the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for a further loan of nearly US$1 billion for energy and motorways.

Did Japan and India just launch a counter to China’s Belt and Road?

The surge of Chinese investment has raised concerns that Sri Lanka could become caught up in the rivalry between China and India as Beijing seeks to expand its influence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Last month, Sri Lanka signed an agreement with India and Japan to jointly develop the East Container Terminal at the Port of Colombo, which some observers said could become a competitor to the China-funded Hambantota Port, and was perhaps a sign that the island nation was seeking to neutralise the growing influence of China.

Samarawickrama denied claims the involvement of Japan and India in Sri Lanka’s biggest port project was to counter China’s influence.

Under the agreement, he said, the terminal was owned by Sri Lanka Port Authority, with a 51 per cent stake, while Japan and India would develop the remaining 49 per cent.

“We need the expertise from Japan,” Samarawickrama said. “We need the Indians to get involved in the operation because 75 per cent of the transshipment cargoes in the Colombo port come from India and India is extremely important to us.

“They are the operators of the terminal and they are not building any ports.”

Source: SCMP

Posted in Asian Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Beijing, Belt and Road (B&R), China alert, China’s Export-Import Bank, chinese manufacturers, Colombo, East Container Terminal, energy, impact, India alert, Indian Ocean, Japan, major new motorway project, motorways, offset, Port of Colombo, South Asia, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Investment Forum, Sri Lankan Minister for Development Strategies and International Trade, trade war, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

04/07/2019

China to Britain: Keep your ‘colonial’ hands off Hong Kong

BEIJING/LONDON (Reuters) – China told Britain to keep its hands off Hong Kong on Wednesday while London called for Beijing to honour the agreements made when the city was handed over in 1997, escalating a diplomatic spat over the former British colony.

Beijing denounced British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt as “shameless” and said it had made a diplomatic complaint to London after he warned of consequences if China neglected its commitments to guarantee basic freedoms.

“In the minds of some people, they regard Hong Kong as still under British rule. They forget … that Hong Kong has now returned to the embrace of the Motherland,” China’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, said.

“I tell them: hands off Hong Kong and show respect. This colonial mindset is still haunting the minds of some officials or politicians,” Liu told reporters.

The growing war of words between China and Britain follows mass protests in Hong Kong against a now suspended bill that would allow extradition to mainland China.

Hundreds of protesters in the former British colony besieged and broke into the legislature on Monday after a demonstration marking the anniversary of return to Chinese rule.

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Britain summons Chinese ambassador over Hong Kong comments -source
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China called the violence an “undisguised challenge” to the “one country, two systems” model under which Hong Kong has been ruled for 22 years.

On Tuesday, Hunt warned of consequences if China did not abide by the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 on the terms of the return of Hong Kong, which allows freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China, including the right to protest.

“We can make it clear we stand behind the people of Hong Kong in defence of the freedoms that we negotiated for them when we agreed to the handover in 1997 and we can remind everyone that we expect all countries to honour their international obligations,” Hunt told Reuters.

Hunt is one of two contenders vying to replace Theresa May as British prime minister and his rival Boris Johnson told Reuters on Wednesday that he also backed the people of Hong Kong “every inch of the way”.

The comments clearly irked Beijing. China’s London envoy scolded Britain and said meddling in Hong Kong would cause a “problem in the relationship” between them.

“The UK government chose to stand on the wrong side: it has made inappropriate remarks not only to interfere in internal affairs of Hong Kong but also to back up the violent law-breakers,” Liu said.

‘SHAMELESS’

Earlier, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang chided Hunt, saying that only after Hong Kong’s return to China did its people get an “unprecedented” guarantee about democracy and freedom.

“To say that the freedoms of Hong Kong residents is something Britain strived for is simply shameless,” he told a news briefing. “I would like to ask Mr. Hunt, during the British colonial era in Hong Kong, was there any democracy to speak of? Hong Kongers didn’t even have the right to protest.”

China had lodged “stern representations” with Britain both in Beijing and London about Hunt’s remarks, he added.

Britain said it had summoned Liu to the foreign office following his “unacceptable” comments, a government source said.

“Message to Chinese govt: good relations between countries are based on mutual respect and honouring the legally binding agreements between them,” Hunt said on Twitter after Liu’s media briefing.

“That is the best way to preserve the great relationship between the UK and China.”

RESETTING TIES

The turbulence in Hong Kong was triggered by an extradition bill opponents say will undermine Hong Kong’s much-cherished rule of law and give Beijing powers to prosecute activists in mainland courts, which are controlled by the Communist Party.

Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader Carrie Lam had strongly promoted the bill, but suspended it on June 15 in the face of public protests against it. Critics have called on her to officially kill the bill, but she has resisted.

Britain and China had been seeking to reset ties after a row over the disputed South China Sea last year, with Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua visiting London last month to oversee the start of a link between its stock exchange and that of Shanghai.

Confrontation and lawlessness in Hong Kong could damage its reputation as an international business hub and seriously hurt its economy, China’s top newspaper, the People’s Daily, said in an editorial.

“It will not only serve no purpose, but will also severely hinder economic and social development,” the ruling Communist Party’s official paper said, denouncing what it called artificially created division and opposition.

China has blamed Western countries, particularly the United States and Britain, for offering succour to the protests.

In an editorial, the official China Daily, an English-language newspaper Beijing often uses to send its message to the world, condemned “outside agitations”.

“What has also been notable is the hypocrisy of some Western governments – the United States and United Kingdom most prominently – which have called for a stop to the violence, as if they have had nothing to do with it,” the paper said.

“But, looking back at the whole protest saga, they have been deeply involved in fuelling it since its inception.”

Source: Reuters

Posted in 'colonial' hands, “one country, two systems” model, boris johnson, Britain, British Foreign Secretary, China Daily, China to Britain, chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Chinese Vice Premier, Communist Party, Jeremy Hunt, motherland, off Hong Kong, People’s Daily, Sino-British Joint Declaration, South China Sea, Theresa May, Uncategorized, United States | Leave a Comment »

03/07/2019

Indeed! Gold found in garbage as Shanghai mandates sorting

SHANGHAI, July 2 (Xinhua) — Many Shanghai residents may be experiencing headaches as they face daily tests as to which piece of garbage goes in dry refuse and which goes in recyclable.

A man surnamed Liu, however, may not be that grumpy after all because he managed to retrieve 18 pieces of gold ornaments from his trash.

The Shanghai police told Xinhua that a resident surnamed Liu, who lives in the Putuo District of the city, threw a cardboard carton away a few days ago. He sorted it correctly by putting it into a waste bin labeled recyclable, but he received a call about his trash from the local residents’ committee.

Xun Siwei, a garbage collector in the neighborhood, found that the carton contained a plastic bag full of golden accessories.

“I looked at the gold, and my heartbeat went up. They are gold, but I know they belong to someone else. I can not keep them,” said Xun.

Xun reported his finding to the police on June 28. Police checked the accessories and found a name and birth date inscribed onto a golden badge. Based on the details, police contacted the residential neighborhood Liu lives in and got in touch with him.

Liu said had been searching for the gold for three years, but failed to locate it.

“Getting these valuables back is the boon of garbage sorting,” he said. “My family will spare no effort in carrying out the garbage sorting campaign.”

Shanghai is widely promoting a mandatory garbage sorting system, which requires residents to throw away garbage at a fixed time and place. A disposal site is designated for every 300 to 500 households, where volunteers carefully check whether the household waste is accurately classified.

The city enacted a set of regulations on household garbage sorting and recycling starting Monday, which requires residents to sort household garbage into four categories: dry refuse, wet trash, recyclable waste and hazardous waste. Individuals who fail to sort garbage may be fined up to 200 yuan (about 29 U.S. dollars).

Mr Liu’s gold being retrieved has gathered interested commentators online. “There is really hidden gold in your garbage,” one netizen exclaimed.

“Have faith in garbage sorting, it will bring you good luck,” anther netizen commented.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in found, garbage, garbage collector, Gold, gold ornaments, golden accessories, mandates, Shanghai, sorting, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

03/07/2019

Xi, Turkish president hold talks, agreeing to deepen strategic cooperation

CHINA-BEIJING-XI JINPING-TURKISH PRESIDENT-TALKS (CN)

Chinese President Xi Jinping holds a welcome ceremony for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before their talks in Beijing, capital of China, July 2, 2019. Xi held talks with Erdogan at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

BEIJING, July 2 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Great Hall of the People on Tuesday, pledging more efforts to promote strategic cooperation between the two sides and work for sound bilateral ties.

Noting China and Turkey are both major emerging markets and developing countries, Xi said enhancing strategic cooperation is of great significance.

He called on the two sides to deepen political mutual trust, beef up strategic communication, respect each other’s core interests and major concerns on issues pertaining to national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and consolidate the political foundation underlying the development of China-Turkey strategic cooperative relationship to keep bilateral ties on a healthy and stable track.

On anti-terrorism security cooperation, Xi said China appreciates Erdogan’s reiteration on many occasions about not allowing anti-China separatist activities instigated by any force in Turkey, and highly values the repeated emphasis by the Turkish side on supporting China’s anti-terrorism efforts, noting that China is ready to strengthen cooperation with Turkey in the field of international anti-terrorism.

Speaking of synergizing development strategies and expanding pragmatic cooperation, Xi called Turkey an important partner in jointly building the Belt and Road.

“China is willing to move faster in dovetailing the Belt and Road Initiative with the Middle Corridor project, steadily promote cooperation on trade, investment, science and technology, energy, infrastructure and major projects and actively seek cooperation in small and medium-sized programs and those that benefit the people, to deliver concrete benefits to more enterprises and the people,” the Chinese president said.

Xi also called for expanding people-to-people exchanges and tourism cooperation for better mutual understanding between the two peoples, to solidify the popular support for China-Turkey friendship.

In the face of major shifts in the international situation, China and Turkey should firmly uphold the international system with the United Nations at the core and the international law as the basis, safeguard multilateralism and international fairness and justice, as well as the multilateral trading regime with World Trade Organization at the core, Xi said.

He urged the two sides to deepen the strategic cooperative relationship, guard the common interests of China and Turkey as well as developing countries at large and jointly forge a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness and justice, and win-win cooperation.

“We should keep in contact and coordination in regional affairs and jointly advance political settlements for hotspot issues, to contribute to regional peace, stability and development,” Xi said.

Noting that the time-honored Turkey-China friendship which can be traced back to the time of ancient Silk Road is consolidated today, Erdogan said the close bilateral ties are significant for regional peace and prosperity.

Turkey stays committed to the one-China policy, Erdogan said, stressing that residents of various ethnicities living happily in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region thanks to China’s prosperity is a hard fact, and Turkey will not allow anyone to drive a wedge in its relations with China. He also expressed the readiness to deepen political mutual trust and strengthen security cooperation with China in opposing extremism.

Voicing firm support for the Belt and Road Initiative, the Turkish president said he hopes the two sides can step up cooperation in areas such as trade, investment and 5G networks as well as exchanges in educational, cultural and scientific research sectors.

Prior to the talks, Xi held a welcoming ceremony for Erdogan.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in anti-terrorism security cooperation, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China alert, China-Turkey friendship, China-Turkey strategic cooperative relationship, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Great Hall of the People, independence, Middle Corridor project, national sovereignty, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, territorial integrity, Turkey, Uncategorized, United Nations | Leave a Comment »

02/07/2019

Viewpoint: Why India’s Chennai has run out of water

Indian women with empty plastic pots protest as they demand drinking water in Chennai on June 22, 2019.

Chennai (formerly Madras), the capital of India’s southern Tamil Nadu state, is gaining notoriety as the disaster capital of the world – floods one year, cyclone the next, and drought the year after. But it is not alone. Environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman explains why.

As I write this, it has rained in Chennai – the first real welcome shower, but one that lasted only 30 minutes. But, still, that has been enough to flood the streets and stall traffic. The irony is that Chennai’s vulnerability to floods and its water scarcity have common roots. Blinded by a hurry to grow, the city has paved over the very infrastructures that nurtured water.

Between 1980 and 2010, heavy construction in the city meant its area under buildings increased from 47 sq km to 402 sq km. Meanwhile, areas under wetlands declined from 186 to 71.5 sq km.

The city is no stranger to drought or heavy rains. The north-east monsoon, which brings most of the water to this region in October and November, is unpredictable. Some years it pours, and in other years, it just fails to show up.

Any settlement in the region ought to have been designed for both eventualities – with growth limited not by availability of land but of water. Early agrarian settlements in Chennai and its surrounding districts did exactly this.

Shallow, spacious tanks – called erys in Tamil- were carved out on the region’s flat coastal plains by erecting bunds with the same earth that was scooped out to deepen them. Essentially, the infrastructure for water to stay and flow was created first; the settlements came later.

In this photo taken on June 20, 2019, Indian residents collect water from a community well in Chennai after reservoirs for the city ran dry.

This agrarian logic valourised open spaces. Each village had vast tracts of land, including water bodies, grazing grounds and wood lots, demarcated as Poromboke or commons. Construction was outlawed in the commons. The three districts of Chennai, Thiruvallur and Kanchipuram alone had more than 6000 erys – some as old as 1,500 years.

So rather than transport water over long distances against gravity, early settlers had the technology and good sense to harvest water where it fell.

But this faded with the advent of modern technology.

As urban logic took root, built-up spaces began to be seen as more valuable than open earth. In fact, one could argue that Chennai’s date with “zero water” was made in the 17th Century when it was incorporated as a city by Royal Charter. Born a colony of the British, the city rapidly became a coloniser of the countryside.

The British commandeered a small irrigation ery in a village called Puzhal, and vastly expanded its capacity to supply drinking water to the city, in response to the Madras famine of 1876. Renamed the Redhills Reservoir, this was Chennai’s first centralised, big-budget drinking water project.

For more on the Chennai water crisis:

Reliance on a distant water source disconnected residents of the fast urbanising settlement from local water and landscapes. For the urban agenda, this was great as it freed up inner-city water bodies for real estate development.

In the 1920s for instance, the ancient 70 acre Mylapore tank was filled up to create what is now a bustling residential and commercial area called T Nagar.

That tank was part of a larger complex called the Long Tank that extended nearly 10 km (6.21 miles) to the north. Now all that remains of these tanks are thoroughfares named Spurtank Road and Tank Bund Road.

The city has pursued its aspirations to become an economic hub by promoting itself as a major IT and automotive manufacturing centre. In addition to attracting new settlers to Chennai and vastly increasing the pressure on scant resources, these industries have dealt death blows to the region’s water infrastructure.

Land-use planning today is a far cry from the simple principles that prevailed in medieval Tamil Nadu.

Wetlands were off-limits for construction, and only low-density buildings were permitted on lands immediately upstream of tanks. The reason: These lands have to soak up the rainwater before letting it to run to the reservoir.

It is this sub-surface water that will flow to the lake as the levels go down with use and time. Unmindful of such common sense, the IT Corridor (a road which houses a large number of IT companies in the city) was built almost entirely on Chennai’s precious Pallikaranai marshlands.

Indian workers collect water from the Puzhal reservoir on the outskirts of Chennai on June 20, 2019. - Water levels in the four main reservoirs in Chennai have fallen to one of its lowest levels in 70 years, according to local media reports — Image caption Puzhal reservoir was Chennai’s first centralised, big-budget drinking water project

And the area immediately upstream of Chembarambakkam – the city’s largest drinking water tank – has now been converted into an automotive special economic zone (SEZ).

Other water bodies have been treated with similar disdain.

The Perungudi garbage dump spreads out through the middle of the Pallikaranai marshlands.

The Manali marshlands were drained in the 1960s for Tamil Nadu’s largest petrochemical refinery. Electricity for the city comes from a cluster of power plants built on the Ennore Creek, a tidal wetland that has been converted into a dump for coal-ash.

The Pallavaram Big Tank, which is perhaps more than 1,000 years old, has over the last two decades been bisected by a high-speed road with the remainder serving as a garbage dump for the locality.

In Chennai, the water utility supplies are barely a fourth of the total water demand. The remainder is supplied by a powerful network of commercial water suppliers who are sucking resources in the region dry.

Along the periphery of Chennai, and far into the hinterland, the land is dotted with communities whose water and livelihoods have been forcibly taken to feed the city. The water crises in these localities desiccated by the city never make it to the news.

Indian residents queue with plastic recipients to get drinking water from a distribution tanker in the outskirts of Chennai on May 29, 2019.

The world won’t change unless we replace capitalism with other ways of doing business that are not premised on the exploitation of nature and people.

Our dominant economic model, with its blind faith in technology, is doomed.

Modern economy views open, un-built land as useless. It believes that value can be extracted from such lands only by digging, drilling, filling, mining, paving or building on it.

Degrading land use change is colliding with climate change in all the modern cities of the world, exposing their vulnerabilities.

Chennai’s struggles with water – be it flooding or scarcity – cannot be addressed unless the city re-examines its values, and how it treats its land and water.

Further growth and more buildings are not an option – it needs to actively shrink in size instead.

By ushering in policies to promote land-friendly economies in the state’s hinterland, the government can make it easier for people to migrate out of the city in a planned and feasible way.

Although difficult, this would be less painful than what would happen if they were to wait for nature to do the job.

Source: The BBC

Posted in automotive special economic zone (SEZ, British, Chembarambakkam, Chennai, IT companies, IT Corridor, Kanchipuram, Long Tank, Madras, Manali marshlands, Mylapore tank, Pallikaranai marshlands, Perungudi garbage dump, Puzhal reservoir, Royal Charter, run out of water, T Nagar, Tamil, Tamil Nadu, Thiruvallur, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

02/07/2019

Heavy rains in India kill 27, cripple financial capital

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Monsoon rains caused wall collapses that killed 27 people in India on Tuesday, as a second day of bad weather disrupted rail and air traffic in the financial capital Mumbai, prompting officials to shut schools and offices, though markets were open.

During every monsoon season, which runs from June to September, India experiences fatal incidents of building and wall collapses as rainfall weakens the foundations of poorly-built structures.

Heavy rain brought a wall crashing down on shanties built on a hill slope in Malad, a western suburb of Mumbai, a fire brigade official said, killing 18 people.

“Rescue work is still going on,” the official added. “So far we have rescued more than two dozen people.”

Three people died when a school wall collapsed in the city of Kalyan, 42 km (26 miles) north of Mumbai.

In the nearby western city of Pune, six people were killed in a wall collapse on Tuesday, a fire brigade official said, after a similar incident on Saturday killed 15.

Mumbai is looking to turn itself into a global financial hub but large parts of the city struggle to cope with annual monsoon rains, as widespread construction and garbage-clogged drains and waterways make it increasingly vulnerable to chaos.

More than 300 mm (11.8 inches) of rain fell over 24 hours in some areas of Mumbai, flooding streets and railway tracks, forcing the suspension of some suburban train services, which millions of commuters ride to work each day.

About 1,000 people stranded in low-lying areas of the city were rescued after a swollen river began to overflow, municipal authorities said.

As weather officials forecast intermittent heavy showers and isolated extremely heavy rainfall, authorities called a holiday for government offices and educational institutions.

“Rain is expected to remain intense even today,” city authorities said on Twitter. “We request you to stay indoors unless there’s an emergency.”

Financial markets were open on Tuesday, though trading volumes were expected to be lower than normal. Many firms asked employees to work from home.

The main runway at Mumbai airport, India’s second biggest, was closed from midnight after a SpiceJet flight overshot the runway while landing, an airport spokeswoman said.

The secondary runway is operational, but 55 flights were diverted and another 52 were cancelled due to bad weather, she said.

In 2005, floods killed more than 500 people in Mumbai, the majority in shantytown slums home to more than half the city’s population.

Source: Reuters

Posted in cripple, financial capital, Heavy rains, India alert, kill, main runway at Mumbai airport, mumbai, overshot the runway, SpiceJet flight, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon