Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
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Donald Trump has said he will raise tariffs on $200bn in Chinese goods this week, because talks on a US-China trade deal are moving “too slowly”.
The US president tweeted that tariffs of 10% would rise to 25% on Friday, saying: “The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!”
Some $325bn of untaxed goods will also face 25% duties “shortly”, he said.
It follows signals from Washington that a US-China trade deal was imminent.
For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA of 25% on 50 Billion Dollars of High Tech, and 10% on 200 Billion Dollars of other goods. These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results. The 10% will go up to 25% on Friday. 325 Billions Dollars….
The move dramatically increases the pressure on China, after Mr Trump previously delayed the tariff increases earlier in the year, citing progress in talks.
Trade trade talks are due to resume this week, with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He due to travel to Washington.
That follows talks in April in Beijing that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called “productive.”
So far, the US has imposed tariffs ranging from 10-25% on $250bn (£191bn) of Chinese goods, having accused the country of various unfair trade practices
Beijing has hit back with duties on $110bn of US goods, blaming the US for starting “the largest trade war in economic history”.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States accused China on Friday of putting well more than a million minority Muslims in “concentration camps,” in some of the strongest U.S. condemnation to date of what it calls Beijing’s mass detention of mostly Muslim Uighur minority and other Muslim groups.
The comments by Randall Schriver, who leads Asia policy at the U.S. Defense Department, are likely to increase tension with Beijing, which is sensitive to international criticism and describes the sites as vocational education training centres aimed at stemming the threat of Islamic extremism.
Former detainees have described to Reuters being tortured during interrogation at the camps, living in crowded cells and being subjected to a brutal daily regimen of party indoctrination that drove some people to suicide.
Some of the sprawling facilities are ringed with razor wire and watch towers.
“The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps,” Schriver told a Pentagon briefing during a broader discussion about China’s military, estimating that the number of detained Muslims could be “closer to 3 million citizens.”
Schriver, an assistant secretary of defence, defended his use of a term normally associated with Nazi Germany as appropriate, under the circumstances.
When asked by a reporter why he used the term, Schriver said that it was justified “given what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention, at least a million but likely closer to 3 million citizens out of a population of about 10 million.””So a very significant portion of the population, (given) what’s happening there, what the goals are of the Chinese government and their own public comments make that a very, I think, appropriate description,” he said.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday used the term re-education camps to describe the sites and said Chinese activity was “reminiscent of the 1930s.”
The U.S. government has weighed sanctions against senior Chinese officials in Xinjiang, a vast region bordering central Asia that is home to millions of Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities. China has warned that it would retaliate “in proportion” against any U.S. sanctions.
The governor of Xinjiang in March directly dismissed comparisons to concentration camps, saying they were “the same as boarding schools.”
U.S. officials have said China has made criminal many aspects of religious practice and culture in Xinjiang, including punishment for teaching Muslim texts to children and bans on parents giving their children Uighur names.
Academics and journalists have documented grid-style police checkpoints across Xinjiang and mass DNA collection, and human rights advocates have decried martial law-type conditions there.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage caption Mr Kumar is a candidate for the Communist Party of India
A district in one of India’s poorest states has made national headlines in the ongoing general election after a firebrand student leader decided to run for a seat there. Kanhaiya Kumar, who was charged with “sedition” for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans and spent a few weeks in jail in 2016, is a candidate from Begusarai constituency where voting was held on Monday. Neha Thirani Bagri reports.
It is early morning in the Bihari village of Bihat, when Kanhaiya Kumar emerges from his home.
He is immediately swamped by young men rushing to shake his hand, asking to take selfies with him, wearing t-shirts emblazoned with his image.
Mr Kumar, who grew up here, shot to fame in 2016 when he was arrested and charged with sedition.
Then a student union leader at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, he was accused of chanting anti-India slogans at a campus event to commemorate the anniversary of the hanging of Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri man convicted of plotting the 2001 attacks on the Indian parliament.
His arrest became the rallying cry for critics of the Hindu nationalist politics of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with student protests organised across the country.
Mr Kumar is still fighting the charge of sedition, a colonial-era statute that has been used to clamp down on dissent in India, which he calls “completely false propaganda.”
“Kanhaiya Kumar has become a symbol of protest against the politics which is represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” said Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
Mr Kumar has since completed his PhD. On Monday, he had his first foray into politics, when he ran for election in the constituency of Begusarai in the fourth phase of polling in the Indian election. Votes will only be counted in late May.
The constituency was once a communist stronghold known as the “Leningrad of Bihar.”
“This was not a choice, to enter politics. It was a forced responsibility,” Mr Kumar said during a full day of campaigning before his constituency went to the polls.
Mr Kumar is from the Communist Party of India (CPI), the influence of which has been waning over the past few years.
“Our constitution talks about a secular country. If they are attempting to invoke a particular religion and change the character of the state, then, of course, we will oppose this.”
While Mr Modi swept to a historic victory in India’s last election in 2014 on the promise of better days ahead, many rural Indians have been disappointed with rising unemployment and an agrarian crisis.
Mr Modi and other BJP leaders have been criticised for spouting communally-charged rhetoric and remaining silent in the face of increasing religious violence.
The main opposition Congress party has struggled to mount a strong challenge, though gained some momentum with victories in key state elections last year.
Bihar, India’s third most populous state, elects 40 members out of 545 to India’s lower house of parliament. In the 2014 general election, the BJP won 22 of the 40 seats.
On Monday, Mr Kumar went up against BJP’s Giriraj Singh, who once said that those who oppose Mr Modi should go to Pakistan. It was a three-way contest with the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which has fielded a Muslim candidate.
Media captionKanhaiya Kumar talks about his politics
“Right now, people’s real issues have vanished from the conversation,” said Mr Kumar.
He has become known for often emphasising education, jobs, public healthcare, and minority rights in his speeches.
Mr Kumar has garnered the support of civil rights campaigners, activists, and celebrities from across India.
His outsized social media presence has also made him particularly popular with young people, many of whom are drawn towards Mr Kumar’s charismatic personality, fiery oratory, and local roots.
‘Connect with the young’
Videos of his speeches, often critical of the BJP and right-wing politics, have garnered millions of views on YouTube and Facebook.
“Kanhaiya’s thinking connects with us young people,” said Pankaj Kumar, 24, adding that he often shares the politician’s speeches with his friends on WhatsApp.
“If Kanhaiya wins at least we will have pride – it was because of him that Begusarai became famous in India and even the whole world.”
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionMr Kumar’s fiery speeches have drawn in voters
Mr Kumar’s speeches have also attracted a sizeable number of Muslim voters – many in the district were vocal supporters of him.
“People with power in this country are only thinking about how to create religious division,” said Mohammed Shoaib Alam.
“Kanhaiya will raise his voice for the issues of poor people,” he added.
While Mr Kumar’s popularity has drawn national attention to the contest for the parliamentary seat from this remote constituency, his victory is far from certain.
“All odds are against him,” said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, adding that Mr Kumar did not benefit from having the backing of a large political party or coalition or the consolidated vote from one community.
“If he pulls this off – and he is massively popular on the ground – it would just be a testament to his individual political skill.”
ZADSHI VILLAGE, India (Reuters) – Three years ago, brick mason Pundlik Bhandekar was always busy as farmers in his tiny hamlet in Maharashtra commissioned new houses and nearby towns were undergoing rapid urbanisation. Now, as the rural economy sinks and the pace of construction slows, Bhandekar is struggling to get work.
“I used to get a new construction project before I could even finish one. People would come to my house to check when I would be free to work for them,” said Bhandekar, as he sat with friends under the shade of a tree on a hot afternoon.
From daily wage workers such as masons, to barbers and grocery shop owners – just about everyone in Zadshi village, some 720 km (450 miles) from India’s financial hub Mumbai, says a drop in farm incomes has dented their livelihoods.
Their woes are symptomatic of a wider problem across India, where more than half of the country’s 1.3 billion people are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, as the slowdown in the rural economy is felt in the dampening sales of consumer goods, especially the biggest such as car and motorbike sales.
The slowdown has also dented Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity in the hinterland that propelled him to power in 2014, and political strategists say it may mean he struggles to form a majority after voting in a staggered general election that began on April 11 concludes on May 19.
Zadshi has been almost entirely dependent on annual cotton and soybean crops that, according to farmers, have given lacklustre returns in the past few years due to a dip in prices, droughts and pest attacks.
And as incomes have dropped, farmers have cut back on big-ticket spending such as building new houses, digging wells or laying water pipelines, squeezing employment opportunities for people such as Bhandkekar.
“No one is interested in hiring us. We are ready to work even at 250 rupees ($3.60) per day,” said Bhandekar, who charged 300 rupees a day when work was steady, but now gets work only once or twice in a fortnight.
LOWER WAGES, LESS SPENDING
Economic data reflects the plight of farmers and daily wage workers.
Retail food inflation in the fiscal year ended on March 31 fell to 0.74 percent, even as core inflation stood at 5.2 percent, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch Research, eroding the spending power of farmers.
Inflation adjusted wage growth for workers involved in crop sowing was just 0.6 percent 2018/19 compared with 6.5 percent in 2013/14.
The value of farm produce at constant prices grew 15 percent in the past five years, compared with 23 percent in the previous five, while the manufacturing sector grew 40 percent, against 32.6 percent in the previous five years, government data shows.
“Lower rural wages will result in lesser spending, which in turn will reduce demand for goods and services that are part of the rural basket,” Rupa Rege Nitsure, group chief economist at L&T Finance Holdings in Mumbai, told Reuters.
The government needs to spend more in rural areas to generate employment and boost incomes, Nitsure said.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist government did introduce various support schemes in the past six months, such as a 6,000 rupees yearly handout to small farmers.
The main opposition Congress party has gone much further with its pledges though, saying it would introduce a basic minimum income, where the country’s poorest families would get 72,000 rupees annually, benefiting some 250 million people.
RISING UNEMPLOYMENT
In Zadshi, as the mercury touched a searing 40 degrees Celsius(104F), a group of villagers gathered under the trees lining a dusty road and began chatting about everything from crop prices to politics.
“What else we can do? Had work been available in urban areas, we could have moved there but even in the cities construction has slowed down,” said Amol Sontakke, an unskilled labourer who works in farms and on construction sites.
Job opportunities have slowed even in urban areas and India’s unemployment rate touched 7.2 percent in February, the highest since September 2016, according to data compiled by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). Official data is unavailable for recent periods.
The mood in Zadshi was glum. While four dozen villagers interviewed by Reuters were hopeful that if there was a good monsoon this year it could improve farm incomes, they’ve been cutting back on spending in the meantime.
“People are thinking twice before buying new clothes during festivals,” said Avinash Gaurkar, a farmer currently doubling up as a part-time driver. “Buying big-ticket items such as motorcycles or refrigerators is out of the question.”
Two years ago Gaurkar began building a house, but had to give up midway as his five-acre farm could not generate the money needed, he said, pointing towards a half-finished structure without doors.
In 2018, just four villagers bought new motorbikes compared with as many as 10 a year about four years ago, said cotton farmer Raju Kohale, whose son is sitting at home unemployed after graduating as an engineer.
“Poor monsoon or lower prices, something or the other has been hurting us in the past few years,” Kohale said.
MODI AGAIN?
In the 2014 general election, most in Zadshi voted for Modi, but the farmers’ distress has swayed many towards the opposition Congress party. That was clear from Reuters’ interviews with 48 villagers, who cast their ballots last month.
Farmers are at the bottom of the Modi administration’s priority list, said labourer Sagar Bahalavi.
“They are building big roads to connect metros and calling it development. How is that useful for us?” he said.
Some, though, want to give Modi a second chance.
“Modi’s intentions are good, it’s the bureaucratic system that is not supporting him,” said Gulab Chalakh, who owns a 20-acre farm and is among the richest in the village. “We should give him another chance.”
ZHANJIANG, Guangdong, May 1 (Xinhua) — China and Thailand’s naval forces will hold their joint training, code-named Blue Commando-2019, starting on Thursday.
The fleet of Thai forces arrived at the port city of Zhanjiang, south China’s Guangdong Province on Wednesday.
They were welcomed by the navy of the Southern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
The drill will be held both on land and at sea, as Chinese and Thai fleets and marines will train on subjects including fleet defense, landing, live-fire attacks and marine rescue.
LHASA, May 1 (Xinhua) — China’s Tibet Autonomous Region Tuesday launched its first innovation and entrepreneurship base for small and micro venture companies wanting to take a share of the booming cultural industry.
The base, established by the regional department of culture, prioritizes incubating locally-established cultural startups by providing innovation-oriented training as well as displaying featured cultural products.
Sambo, deputy head of the department, said the base aims to promote Tibetan culture through innovative companies and their featured cultural products.
Official data shows the number of cultural companies in Tibet exceeded 6,000 with more than 50,000 employees by the end of 2018. Their total annual output value surpassed 4.6 billion yuan (about 683 million U.S. dollars), with average yearly growth being maintained at over 15 percent.
This combo photo shows Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, posing for photos with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. They held the tenth round of China-U.S. high-level economic and trade consultations in Beijing from April 30, 2019 to May 1, 2019. (Xinhua/Shen Hong, Zhai Jianlan)
BEIJING, May 1 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held the tenth round of China-U.S. high-level economic and trade consultations in Beijing from Tuesday to Wednesday.
As planned, the two sides will hold the 11th round of high-level economic and trade consultations in Washington D.C. next week.
Liu is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue.
MACAO, April 30 (Xinhua) — China International Emergency Medical Team (Macao SAR) successfully passed the evaluation and certification of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, becoming the fifth Chinese international emergency medical team, a WHO verification team said in the special administrative region (SAR).
Macao SAR Health Bureau held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon to introduce the preparation work of Macao’s international emergency medical team, and show its facilities and operation to local media.
Ian Norton, a representative from WHO Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Secretariat, told media that the Macao team not only meets the relevant WHO standards, but also has unique advantages in use of languages. Besides their mother tongue, the team members can also speak in English and Portuguese, and can be deployed to Portuguese-speaking countries.
He added that the Macao team will also bring back the experience and expertise they have learned from assistance missions, and better serve Macao and its residents.
The medical team members were drawn from the staff of Health Bureau and Fire Department of Macao SAR government. A total of 120 members were divided into four squads, each consisting of doctors, paramedics, pharmacists, engineers and logistics personnel.
The standard deployment of the whole team covers an area of 3,600 square meters with 41 tents, can diagnose and treat over 100 persons per day, and independently complete the clinical medical work for 14 days.
Macao’s international emergency medical team is the 25th in the world and the fifth in China certified by WHO.
Major highways gridlocked for hours at start of four-day break
Chaos at railway stations as ticket-holding passengers turned away
Holiday crowds pack the promenade on the Bund along the Huangpu River in Shanghai on the first day of China’s May break. Photo: AFP
China’s Labour Day holiday started on Wednesday with gridlocked roads and chaos at railway stations as millions of people took advantage of this year’s unusually long break.
Motorists reported being stuck in traffic jams which did not move for hours, while ticket-holding passengers were turned away from some trains due to severe overcrowding on the first day of the holiday.
Travel agency Ctrip estimated that around 160 million domestic tourists would be travelling over the four-day break, according to data from travel booking platforms.
Forty major highways recorded a 75 per cent spike in traffic on Wednesday, according to Xinhua, as toll fares for cars were suspended for the holiday.
Tourists enjoy the first day of China’s four-day May holiday on a beach in Haikou, Hainan province, southern China. Photo: Xinhua
Monitoring stations on major routes – including the Beijing-Tibet Expressway, the Shanghai-Shaanxi Expressway, Shanghai’s Humin Elevated Road and the Beijing section of the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway – recorded a 200 per cent increase in traffic from Tuesday onwards, Xinhua said.
The Ministry of Public Security’s traffic management bureau has warned holiday motorists to drive safely, especially on winding mountainside routes.
Online news portal The Paper reported on Thursday that traffic jams on some major routes were so severe that the drive from Shanghai to Hangzhou, capital of neighbouring Zhejiang province, took some travellers seven hours instead of the usual two.
Passengers board the train at Chongqing North Railway Station in southwest China on Tuesday, hoping to beat the May holiday travel rush. Photo: Xinhua
Meanwhile, more than 54,000 tourists visited the popular Badaling section of the Great Wall on Wednesday, according to Beijing Youth Daily. The attraction’s management team had increased the number of volunteers, parking spaces and shuttle buses to prepare for the influx, the report said.
More than 53,000 tourists had visited the Shanghai International Tourism Resort and Shanghai Disneyland by 4pm on Wednesday, according to data from the Shanghai municipal government’s real-time visitor tracker. The Shanghai Zoo attracted more than 24,000 people, and more than 9,200 visited the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.
Despite the crowds, no records were broken at the Shanghai attractions, which reached about 70 per cent of their maximum visitor numbers recorded, The Paper reported.
At railway stations, ticket-holding passengers were stopped from boarding trains between Nanjing and the city of Zibo in Shandong province, eastern China, due to severe overcrowding, Beijing Youth Daily reported on Wednesday.
Station staff promised full refunds to customers with pre-booked tickets who were refused entry.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 