Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) — China’s national observatory on Sunday forecast that some northern and eastern parts of the country would be shrouded in smog in the coming days while snow will hit western regions.
Thick smog will envelop northern and eastern areas including Hebei and Shandong provinces until Thursday, according to the National Meteorological Center (NMC).
From Sunday night to Monday morning, thick fog will be seen in the provinces of Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Hubei, reducing visibility in some areas to less than 200 meters, the NMC said.
From Sunday night to Tuesday, snow will hit west China’s Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu, while rain will soak the south from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Bad weather could disrupt traffic after the Spring Festival holiday when many people are returning to work after the break.
China’s Spring Festival travel rush started from Jan. 21 and will last till March 1.
BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) — Railway trips in China hit a record high as travelers returned to work after the Spring Festival break, data from the national railway operator showed.
On Saturday, some 13.17 million passenger trips were made by rail, a daily record for the travel rush, up 38.8 percent year on year, according to the China Railway Corporation (CRC).
On Sunday, 12.2 million railway trips are expected to be made as the travel rush continues, the CRC said.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese went back to their hometowns to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year with their families.
The annual travel rush around the festival (chunyun) often puts the transport system to the test.
As more trains have been put into operation, railway transport capacity improved by 5.3 percent this year during the travel rush, according to the CRC.
The Spring Festival travel rush started from Jan. 21 and will last till March 1, with railway trips expected to hit 413 million in total, up 8.3 percent.
Local herdsmen roll packaged fodders in Zhiduo Village, Zhaduo Township of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China’s Qinghai Province, Feb. 23, 2019. Around 80 tonnes of donated fodders arrived at the blizzard-ravaged village Friday night and were distributed to local herdsmen in time to prevent livestock from starving. Yushu has been hit by a number of blizzards since December last year. (Xinhua/Wu Gang)
Tears of joy as hundreds turn out to welcome home the lost boy of their village
DNA samples crack the case after decades of heartache
Chinese kidnap victim reunited with parents after 31 years
25 Feb 2019
16 Feb 2019
The tearful moment a man is finally reunited with his parents 31 years after he was abducted as a three-year-old. Photo: Weibo
A man who was abducted as a child 31 years ago was finally reunited with his parents in a celebration which included hundreds of people from surrounding villages in Sichuan province, southwest China.
Qin Yujie – whose given name was Cheng Xueping – knelt and sobbed as he hugged his long-lost parents in Chengjiawan village, surrounded by “Welcome Home” banners and the noise of firecrackers.
“I have been looking for you for years and couldn’t find a clue,” Qin told his weeping parents Cheng Jiguang and Gaolingzhen at their reunion on Friday, according to the Western China City Daily newspaper.
As well as the joy of seeing their son again, the Chengs were also able to meet Qin’s wife and children for the first time as hundreds of people gathered around them, many of them in tears.
Qin was three years old in 1988 when he was snatched from a construction site in Guizhou province, southern China, where his parents were working. They searched frantically for their son over many hours that day and, since then, have spent their life savings and borrowed money to travel all over China looking for traces of their son.
Eventually they provided DNA samples to a national database established by the police to assist in the search for China’s many abducted children.
After three decades they finally learned the truth – that their son had been abducted and sold to a village in north China’s Hebei province.
In 2018, a DNA sample Qin provided to his employers yielded an unexpected result. Sichuan police were alerted to a match between Qin’s DNA sample and Cheng’s, his birth father.
Police tracked him down and contacted the Chengs to provide another DNA sample to be sure of the results and, in February this year, the new test confirmed that Cheng and Gao were indeed Qin’s biological parents.
A video of their emotional reunion has been making the rounds on Chinese social media.
The abduction of women and children is a common crime in China. In December 2018 two child traffickers, Zhang Weiping and Zhou Rongping, were sentenced to death for their role in eight separate cases, involving the sale of nine children between 2003 and 2005.
In one particularly brutal case, their gang broke into a rented home, tied up a woman and took away her son to be sold through a middleman, police said. Zhang, Zhou and the other gang members were finally detained in 2016.
In recent years, there have been several official as well as grassroots efforts to help abducted children find their parents. The Ministry of Public Security established an official system called Tuanyuan in 2016 which sends alerts of missing children’s information through social media platforms and mobile phone texts, similar to the “Amber Alert” system in the US.
As of May 2018, Chinese media reported the system had published information about 3,053 missing children and helped find 2,980 of them.
On Baobeihuijia, a grassroots website run by volunteers, there are still 43,858 families looking for their children and 39,446 people looking for their families.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionPresident Trump met China’s Vice Premier Liu He on Friday
President Donald Trump has announced that the US will delay imposing further trade tariffs on Chinese goods.
The rise in import duties on Chinese goods from 10% to 25% was due to come into effect on 1 March.
Mr Trump said both sides had made “substantial progress” in trade talks, which sent Chinese stocks up nearly 5%.
He added that he was planning a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida to cement the trade deal if more progress was made.
A report from China’s official news agency Xinhua also noted “substantial progress” on specific issues such as technology transfer, intellectual property protection and agriculture.
Mr Trump’s decision to delay tariff increases on $200bn (£153bn) worth of Chinese goods was seen as a sign that the two sides are making progress on settling their damaging trade war.
Last week, Mr Trump noted progress in the latest round of negotiations in Washington, including an agreement on currency manipulation, though no details were disclosed.
Sources told CNBC on Friday that China had committed to buying up to $1.2 trillion in US goods, but there had been no progress on the intellectual property issues.
What has happened in the trade war so far?
Mr Trump initiated the trade war over complaints of unfair Chinese trading practices.
That included accusing China of stealing intellectual property from American firms, forcing them to transfer technology to China.
The US has imposed tariffs on $250bn worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated by imposing duties on $110bn of US products.
Mr Trump has also threatened further tariffs on an additional $267bn worth of Chinese products – which would see virtually all of Chinese imports into the US become subject to duties.
(This Feb. 24 story corrects paragraph 12 to show Huawei was world’s third-largest smartphone vendor last year, not second largest)
BARCELONA (Reuters) – China’s Huawei welcomed comments from President Donald Trump about the future of U.S. mobile communications on Sunday and asserted its position as a world-leading smartphone producer as Washington and Beijing seek a trade war ceasefire.
U.S. and Chinese negotiators are set to meet for a sixth straight day of negotiations on Sunday as they work to strike a deal ahead of a March 1 deadline on a trade dispute which has disrupted global commerce and slowed the world economy.
At the center of the imbroglio is Huawei Technologies, accused by Washington of sanctions busting, intellectual property theft and facilitating Chinese state espionage operations.
Speaking ahead of the mobile industry’s biggest global event which begins in Barcelona on Monday, Huawei Chairman Guo Ping reiterated his company’s position that it has never and would never allow any country to spy through its equipment.
Guo, who holds Huawei’s rotating chairmanship, said Trump’s recent assertion that the United States needed to get ahead in mobile communications through competition rather than seeking to block technology was “clear and correct”.
Trump’s tweets on Thursday did not specifically mention Huawei, the world’s largest producer of mobile network equipment, but appeared to soften earlier U.S. statements that it should be barred from Western networks on security grounds.
“I have noticed the president’s Twitter, he said that the U.S. needs faster and smarter 5G, or even 6G in the future, and he has realized that the U.S. is lagging behind in this respect, and I think his message is clear and correct,” Guo said, speaking through an interpreter.
He said the United States did not represent the whole world and called for equipment makers, network operators and governments to work together to devise trustworthy standards to manage cyber security risks.
The Huawei logo is displayed ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC 19) in Barcelona, Spain, February 24, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez
“We need to have unified standard that should be verifiable. It should not be based on politics,” Guo said.
FOLDING PHONE, RIGID PRICE TAG
Huawei also sought to reaffirm its position as one of the world’s leading technology companies, unveiling a folding 5G smartphone to an audience of media and analysts in Barcelona.
Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor after Samsung and Apple, said it had taken the lead in developing phones for 5G – which promises super-fast internet speeds – because it was also involved in developing the networks.
The new Huawei Mate X will have two back-to-back screens which unfold to become an eight-inch tablet display, and goes on sale later this year priced at 2,299 euros ($2,607), setting a new upper limit for consumer smartphones.
Samsung had unveiled its own folding smartphone last week, priced at nearly $2,000, as part of a bid to top the technology of Chinese rivals and Apple Inc.
Thomas Husson, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said the Mate X showed Huawei was an innovative technology company and no longer trailing American and Korean competitors.
“The fact that Huawei is not just a network equipment provider but also a smartphone manufacturer … gives them a competitive advantage for 5G. It is also a double-edge sword as some argue the security risks are higher,” Husson said.
China’s Xiaomi, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker, also unveiled a 5G handset on Sunday, but without the folding screen or high price tags touted by the Huawei and Samsung devices. Xiaomi’s offering will start at 599 euros ($679) when it hits the market in May.
Image captionSneh, 22, attended the awards ceremony where the film won an Oscar
A film based on young women in an Indian village who make sanitary pads has won an Oscar for best documentary short. The BBC’s Geeta Pandey met with the women in their village before the ceremony.
Sneh was 15 when she started menstruating. The first time she bled, she had no idea what was happening to her.
“I was very scared. I thought I was sick with something very serious and began crying,” she told me when I visited her home in Kathikhera village not far from Delhi earlier this week.
“I didn’t have the courage to tell my mother so I confided in my aunt. She said: ‘You’re a grown woman now, don’t cry, it’s normal.’ It was her who told my mother.”
Sneh, now 22, has travelled a long way from that point. She works in a small factory in her village that makes sanitary pads and is the protagonist of Period. End of Sentence., a documentary that has been nominated for an Oscar. She will be attending Sunday’s ceremony in Los Angeles.
The film came about after a student group in North Hollywood used crowdfunding to send a pad-making machine – and Iranian-American filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi – to Sneh’s village.
Just 115km (71 miles) from Delhi, Kathikhera village in Hapur district is a world far removed from the glitzy malls and high-rises of the Indian capital. Normally, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Delhi, but construction work on the highway slows it down to four hours for us. And the final 7.5km drive to the village from Hapur town is a crawl, on narrow winding roads lined with open drains on both sides.
The documentary is filmed in the farms and fields – and classrooms – of Kathikhera. Like in the rest of India, periods are a taboo topic; menstruating women are considered impure and barred from entering religious places and often excluded from social events too.
Image captionSneh says that previously, menstruation was not discussed – even among girls
With so much stigma surrounding the issue, it’s no surprise that Sneh had never heard of periods before she started getting them herself.
“It was not a topic that was discussed – even among girls,” she says.
But things began to change when Action India, a charity that works on reproductive health issues, set up a sanitary napkin manufacturing unit in Kathikhera.
Image captionThe women employees work from 9-5 six days a weekImage captionA pack is priced at 30 rupees ($0.40; £0.30)
In January 2017, Sneh was asked by Suman, a neighbour who works with Action India, if she wanted to work in the factory.
A college graduate who dreams of working for the Delhi police one day, Sneh says she was excited. After all, there were “no other job opportunities” in the village.
“When I sought my mum’s permission, she said, ‘ask your father’. In our families, all important decisions are taken by men.”
She was too embarrassed to tell her father that she was going to be making pads so she told him that she would be making children’s diapers.
“It was two months into the job that mum told him that I was making pads,” she laughs. Much to her relief, he said, “That’s alright, work is work.”
Today, the unit employs seven women, between 18 and 31 years of age. They work from 9-5, six days a week and are paid a monthly salary of 2,500 rupees ($35; £27). The centre produces 600 pads a day and they are sold under the brand name Fly.
Image captionThe centre produces 600 pads a dayImage captionMost women in the village used to use old clothes when they got their periods, now 70% use pads“The biggest problem we face is power cuts. Sometimes we have to come back at night to work when the power is back to meet the targets,” Sneh says.
This little business, run from two rooms in a village home, has helped improve feminine hygiene. Until it was set up most women in the village were using pieces of cloth cut out from old saris or bedsheets when they had their period, now 70% use pads.
It’s also de-stigmatised menstruation and changed attitudes in a conservative society in ways that were unimaginable just a couple of years ago.
Sneh says menstruation is now discussed openly among women. But, she says, it’s not been an easy ride.
“It was difficult at the start. I had to help my mother with housework, I had to study and do this job. Sometimes during my exams, when the pressure became too much, my mother went to work instead of me,” she says.
Her father, Rajendra Singh Tanwar, says he is “very proud” of his daughter. “If her work benefits the society, especially women, then I feel happy about it.”
Image captionRajendra Singh Tanwar says he’s proud of what Sneh (left) has doneImage captionSushma Devi’s husband does not want her to work there – but she won’t give it up
Initially, the women faced objections from some villagers who were suspicious about what was happening at the factory. And once the film crew arrived, there were questions about what they were doing.
And some, like 31-year-old Sushma Devi, still have to fight daily battles at home.
The mother-of-two says her husband agreed to let her work only after Sneh’s mother spoke to him. He also insisted that she finish all the housework before going to the factory.
“So I wake up at 05:00, clean the house, do the laundry, feed the buffaloes, make dung cakes which we use as cooking fuel, bathe, and make breakfast and lunch before I step out. In the evening, I cook dinner once I get back.”
But her husband is still unhappy with the arrangement. “He often gets angry with me. He says there’s enough work at home, why do you have to go out to work? My neighbours too say it’s not a good job, they also say the salary is low.”
Two of Sushma’s neighbours had worked at the factory too, but left after a few months. Sushma has no intention of doing the same: “Even if my husband beats me up, I will not give up my job. I enjoy working here.”
Image captionAction India, a charity that works on reproductive health issues, set up the manufacturing unit two years ago
In the documentary, Sushma is heard saying she’d spent some of her earnings to buy clothes for her younger brother. “If I’d known this was going to go to Oscars, I would have said something more intelligent,” she says, laughing.
For Sushma, Sneh and their fellow workers, the Oscar nomination has come as a big boost. The film, which is available on Netflix, is nominated in the Best Short Documentary category.
As Sneh prepares to leave for Los Angeles, her neighbours are appreciative of the “prestige and fame” she has brought the village.
“No-one from Kathikhera has ever travelled abroad so I’ll be the first one to do so,” she says. “I’m now recognised and respected in the village, people say they are proud of me.”
Sneh says she had heard of Oscars and knew they were the biggest cinema awards in the world. But she had never watched a ceremony, and certainly didn’t think that one day she would be on the red carpet.
“I never thought I would go to America. Even now I can’t fully process what’s happening. For me, the nomination itself is an award. It’s a dream that I’m dreaming with my eyes open.”
SRINAGAR (Reuters) – Five people were killed in a gun battle between members of a Pakistani militant group and Indian security forces in disputed Kashmir on Sunday as India intensified a security
Indian authorities have killed at least eight JeM militants and detained around 50 militants, sympathizers and their relatives since the bomb attack, which also sparked the roundup of separatists which India says is needed to head off trouble ahead of a general election to be held by May.
Most of those rounded up over the last two days were linked to the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI).
“Since JeI has a wider network across Kashmir and they are mobilising anti-India protests, their arrest could help in curbing such protests ahead of elections,” the senior police officer said.
One well-known separatist leader, Abdul Gani Bhat, was placed under house arrest, according to his political party.
Separatists called a strike to protest against the detentions. Many shops, petrol stations, and businesses closed, with few people and vehicles on streets in sensitive areas, except for troop patrols.
In some areas of the main city of Srinagar, the government limited the movement of people and vehicles.
“The restrictions have been imposed as a precautionary measure to avoid any untoward incident,” the police said.
FUEL SUPPLIES LOW
The government of Jammu and Kashmir said fuel rationing had been introduced in the Kashmir Valley where there was only enough gasoline for one day, diesel for four days and no liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
The government said it would seek to increase supplies to the region and that shortages are the result of road blockages after the suicide bomb attack.
Indian paramilitary troops in riot gear arrived in strength at first light, said Shakeel Ahmad, a resident of Nowhatta in the Srinagar district.
“At places, they have blocked the main roads with steel barricades and concertina wire,” he said.
State Governor Satya Pal Malik called on residents not to believe “rumours of any extreme nature”. The government said an increase in police numbers was to prevent candidates and voters from being intimidated into not standing or voting in the general election.
Separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who chairs the Hurriyat Conference of separatist groups, said arbitrary arrests and jailing of leaders, activists and young people for their political beliefs had happened across Kashmir for 30 years.
“Intimidating activists and leadership will not deter them from their path, nor will it stop people from demanding the resolution of the Kashmir dispute through self-determination,” he said.
Reuters’ telephone calls to the Indian home ministry to seek comment went unanswered.
TENSIONS RAISED
The suicide bomb attack has raised tensions between India and Pakistan which both claim Kashmir in full but rule it in part. India blames Pakistan for harbouring militant groups operating in Kashmir, which Pakistan denies.
After the attack, India dropped trade privileges for Pakistan and prepared to send as many as 10,000 more troops to the contested area, according to a home ministry letter seen by Reuters.
The Indian army said that early on Sunday evening Pakistan violated the two nations’ ceasefire at the Rajouri area of the border, through shelling from mortars and small arms fire. Defence spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand said the Indian army was “retaliating strongly and effectively”.
Ceasefire violations are not unusual along the border.
A Pakistani security official said Pakistani forces had not initiated any action but had responded to Indian firing.
Kashmir is likely to be a key issue in India’s election, distracting from concerns about how Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have managed the economy.
Modi has promised a strong response to the attack, saying in a monthly radio broadcast on Sunday that it had caused anguish to all of India.
Modi added that the army had vowed to destroy the militants and those who helped them.
Islamabad has warned it would respond with “full force” if attacked. On Sunday, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi called on India to show restraint or it would put “the entire region’s peace and security at stake”.
India’s Supreme Court will hear a case this week seeking to drop a constitutional provision that bars non-residents from moving to the state of Jammu and Kashmir that encompasses the Muslim-majority region.
Mamata Banerjee claimed that her party Trinamool Congress(TMC) will win all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in the polls.
INDIAUpdated: Feb 25, 2019 16:35 IST
Press Trust of India
Kolkata
Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee during a press conference at Press Club of India, in New Delhi, on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. (HT Photot)
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee Monday alleged that though the Modi government had intelligence inputs about the Pulwama attack, it did not take any step as it was more keen on “playing politics over the dead bodies of jawans”.
Banerjee, while addressing the Trinamool Congress’s extended core committee meeting in Kolkata, vowed to oust the “dictatorial Narendra Modi government” from power in the upcoming general election.
She claimed that her party Trinamool Congress(TMC) will win all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in the polls.
“The central government was aware that such an attack can take place, there were intelligence inputs. Then why didn’t the government take action to protect our jawans. The government allowed them to die so that they can do politics over the dead body of jawans in the elections,” Banerjee said.
They want to create a “war hysteria” ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the TMC president alleged.
The central government is functioning in a peculiar way and union ministers are not aware of important decisions, Banerjee claimed.
“This government is being run by two brothers (Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah), who have blood of innocents on their hands,” she said.
“Our party workers and cadre should be cautious as efforts are on to tamper EVMs (electronic voting machines) during the Lok Sabha polls. You all have to thwart those efforts,” she said. On February 14, 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed in Jammu and Kashmir after a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into their bus in Pulwama district.
PM Modi said that he told him ‘let us fight against poverty and illiteracy’ and Khan gave his word saying he is a Pathan’s son, ‘but went back on it’.
SNS Web | New Delhi | February 25, 2019 10:53 am
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday asked his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to “give peace a chance” and assured him that he “stands by” his words and will “immediately act” if New Delhi provides Islamabad with “actionable intelligence” on the Pulwama attack.
Khan’s remarks came a day after PM Modi in a rally in Rajasthan, recalled his conversation with the Pakistan PM during a congratulatory call after he became the country’s premier.
PM Modi had told him “let us fight against poverty and illiteracy” and Khan gave his word saying he is a Pathan’s son “but went back on it”.
“There is consensus in the entire world against terrorism. We are moving ahead with strength to punish the perpetrators of terrorism…The scores will be settled this time, settled for good…This is a changed India, this pain will not be tolerated…We know how to crush terrorism,” PM Modi further said.
A statement released by the Pakistan Prime Minister’s Office said, “PM Imran Khan stand by his words that if India gives us actionable intelligence, we will immediately act.”
PM Modi should “give peace a chance”, Khan said in the statement.
In his first statement issued since the February 14 attack, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had on Tuesday accused India of blaming his country “without evidence” and warned of retaliation against any military action by India.
However, he assured India that he would act against the perpetrators of the deadly Pulwama terror attack, carried out by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror group and said that the issue between the two countries can be solved through dialogue.
India had called Khan’s offer to investigate the attack if provided proof as a “lame excuse”.
The already sour relations between India and Pakistan have worsened over the past few weeks as New Delhi accused Islamabad of the Pulwama attack.
India has accused Islamabad’s spy agency ISI of being involved in the attack and has maintained that the terror group JeM is a “child of the Pakistan Army”.
Following the attack, India immediately withdrew the ‘Most Favoured Nation’ status granted to Pakistan and initiated steps to isolate the neighbouring country from the international community.
Earlier, India had also announced its decision to stop the flow of its share of water from the Beas, Ravi and Sutlej to Pakistan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in many of his public speeches after the attack, said that the security forces have been given full freedom to decide the future course of action regarding the terrorist attack in Pulwama.
India’s neighbours, including Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Bhutan—and other countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Russia, Germany, Canada, UK, Australia and Canada came out in strong support of New Delhi following the terror attack.
Over 44 CRPF personnel were killed and many injured on February 14 in one of the deadliest terror strikes in Jammu-Kashmir when a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) suicide bomber blew up an explosive-laden vehicle near their bus in Pulwama district.
The bus was part of a convoy of 78 vehicles carrying around 2500 CRPF personnel from Jammu to Srinagar.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 