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, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) — China on Wednesday issued a white paper on progress in human rights since its reform and opening up drive.
The white paper, titled “Progress in Human Rights over the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up in China,” said reform and opening up has helped liberate and develop social productive forces, opened up a path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and ushered in a new chapter in the development of human rights.
Over the four decades, the Chinese people have worked hard as one under the strong and coherent leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the white paper said. Huge changes have taken place, and living standards have significantly improved.
The CPC has always prioritized the people’s interests, ensuring that reform is conducted for the people and by the people, and that its benefits are shared by the people, it added.
China has showed respect for, protected and promoted human rights in the course of reform and opening up, blazing a trail of human rights development that conforms to the national conditions, and created new experiences and made progress in safeguarding human rights, it said.
China has summed up its historical experience, drawn on the achievements of human civilization, combined the universal principles of human rights with the realities of the country, and generated a series of innovative ideas on human rights, it said.
China has brought into being basic rights that center on the people and prioritize their rights to subsistence and development, and proposed that China should follow a path of comprehensive and coordinated human rights development under the rule of law.
The white paper said China has carried out extensive exchanges and cooperation in the field of human rights and earnestly fulfilled its international human rights obligations.
BEIJING, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — A compilation of remarks by President Xi Jinping on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) over the past five years has been published by the Central Party Literature Press.
The book contains 42 articles drawn from the speeches and public remarks made by Xi, beginning with a speech he delivered at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, in September 2013 calling for jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt, and ending with the one he delivered at the opening ceremony of the 8th Ministerial Meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in July 2018.
The book, with about 130,000 Chinese characters, was compiled by the Institute of Party History and Literature of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.
The BRI, first proposed by Xi, has received warm responses from the international community, especially the countries along the BRI routes. Jointly pursuing the BRI is becoming a Chinese solution for the country to participate in global opening-up and cooperation, improve the global economic governance, push for common development and prosperity of the world and build a community with a shared future for humanity.
The book will be available nationwide starting Tuesday.
SHIJIAZHUANG, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — As China seeks to curb air pollution and win the battle for blue skies, more Chinese cities have switched from coal to geothermal heating during this year’s winter heating season, as part of their efforts to become “smokeless cities.”
“My family has replaced coal-fired boiler with geothermal heating this year,” said Sun Shujuan, a villager in Xiongxian County, northern China’s Hebei Province. “Burning coal was dirty and tiring.”
Xiongxian, about 130 kilometers away from Beijing, is part of the Xiongan New Area, another new area of “national significance” established in April 2017 to facilitate the coordinated development of Beijing and the surrounding region.
The county began exploiting its rich geothermal resources, a clean and sustainable energy, in 2009. Now it provides geothermal heating to all its urban areas and is looking to expand in rural households.
“We have provided geothermal heating for about 6,000 households in Xiongxian’s 12 villages this year,” said Chen Menghui, deputy general manager of Sinopec Green Energy Geothermal Development Co., Ltd.
The company, established in 2006, is a joint venture between Arctic Green Energy Corporation of Iceland and Sinopec Star Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), China’s largest geothermal developer.
“Compared with coal-fired boilers, geothermal heating can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least half,” Chen said. “It is estimated that we can replace over 10,000 tonnes of coal and cut emissions of more than 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide this year in Xiongxian.”
He added that the cost of geothermal heating is about half that of natural gas heating.
Xiongxian is one of the 10 Chinese cities where Sinopec has helped replace coal with geothermal energy, including cities in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan provinces.
The company now provides geothermal heating to an area of around 50 square km, and it aims to increase the area by 100 square km by 2023 and help build a total of 20 “smokeless cities” nationwide.
“Local governments are very willing to cooperate with us given the mounting pressure of environmental protection,” Chen said.
China aims to have clean energy replace 74 million tonnes of coal and generate 50 percent of winter heating in northern China by 2019, according to a plan released by Chinese government in 2017.
Rich in resources of geothermal energy, the country now has about 150 square km of geothermal energy heated areas, according to an international forum on geothermal energy held in Shanghai in November.
The areas that have access to geothermal heating or cooling are expected to reach 1,600 square km by 2020, according to a five-year plan for developing geothermal energy released by Chinese government in 2017.
BEIJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) — A white paper released Wednesday by the State Council Information Office said China has firmly established a governance principle of respecting and protecting human rights.
“It is the determination and ultimate goal of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government to respect and protect human rights,” said the document, titled “Progress in Human Rights over the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up in China.”
Since the launch of reform and opening up in 1978, “respecting and protecting human rights” has been written into the reports to CPC National Congresses, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the Constitution of the CPC, and strategies and plans for national development, becoming an important principle of governance for the CPC and the Chinese government, it said.
According to the white paper, that the state respects and protects human rights has been established as an important principle of the Constitution of China.
Also, the CPC pursues human rights protection in its governance, the document said.
The white paper noted that it has become a core goal of national development to respect and protect human rights.
Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China(CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference(CPPCC), visits a community in Nanning, capital of south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Dec. 11, 2018. Wang led a division of a central delegation to conduct the visit. (Xinhua/Liu Bin)
NANNING, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — China’s top political advisor Wang Yang on Tuesday visited local people in the city of Nanning, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, which is marking its 60th anniversary.
Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, led a division of a central delegation to conduct the visit.
During their visit to a local hospital, Wang stressed the importance to develop traditional medicine of ethnic minority groups, calling for efforts to promote the local traditional medicine to better serve the people.
Wang also urged improving public service, environmental governance, and education when visiting a community, a wetland park, and Guangxi University.
When addressing a symposium with local cadres and people, Wang said Nanning’s significant progress is a microcosm of Guangxi’s remarkable achievements during the past 60 years, attributing the progress to the Party’s policies concerning ethnic groups, as well as the joint efforts of different ethnic groups.
Wang called for more hard work to unite the cadres and people of all ethnic groups in the city and lead them to achieve greater success in its development in the new era.
Four other divisions of the central delegation visited other areas of Guangxi on Tuesday.
The delegation arrived in Guangxi on Sunday for the anniversary celebrations.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionCongress supporters celebrate initial poll results in Delhi
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing BJP party appear to be facing a political setback, with swings against it in three key state elections.
The opposition Congress Party looks set to form governments in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, while Madhya Pradesh heads for a photo-finish.
Correspondents say a win for the depleted Congress in at least two states will see it regain credibility.
General elections are due in 2019.
Early results in the central state of Madhya Pradesh put the Congress well ahead, but the BJP has been making a late comeback. It is still unclear which of the parties will eventually form the government there.
However the opposition, headed by Rahul Gandhi, has a clear lead in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which are former BJP strongholds.
Mr Modi, whose brand of Hindu nationalism helped him come to power in 2014, campaigned aggressively in all three states.
A shot in the arm for the opposition?
Soutik Biswas, BBC News, Delhi
This is the last round of state polls before general elections, which will be held in the next few months.
The Congress’s vastly improved performance in the three key heartland states will help change the perception that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP is invincible, boost the morale of Congress party workers and make it more acceptable to sceptical regional allies in the run-up to general elections. It will also help raise the profile of the Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi, who led a spirited campaign in the three states.
In 2014, the BJP won 62 of the 65 parliamentary seats in these three states.
Tuesday’s performance will be a shot in the arm for the Congress, which has consistently lost state elections since 2014 – the party rules in only two major states.
But state polls are often a poor predictor for the general elections.
It will take a lot more – including a powerful counter narrative and wider voter acceptability – for the Congress to mount a serious challenge to Mr Modi next year.
The good news is that politics in India is beginning to look competitive again.
Election results are also being declared for the southern state of Telangana and the north-eastern state of Mizoram.
Regional parties – the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and the Mizo National Front (MNF) – are headed for a landslide victory in these states.
Image captionThe regional Telangana Rashtriya Samiti has won a landslide in the southern state
The Congress was widely expected to win in the northern state of Rajasthan, while Madhya Pradesh was always seen as a close contest between the two parties.
But results in Chhattisgarh, where the Congress appears poised to win by a wide margin, have been the most surprising.
“The reason behind the Congress victory is anti-incumbency because people feel that there is a lack of development in most parts of the state despite 15 years of the BJP governing there,” reports BBC Hindi’s Salman Ravi from the state capital Raipur. “Farmers in particular, who have been angry about what they see as a lack of state support for their profession, voted for the Congress in large numbers. People in the state were clearly looking for change this time,”
An anti-incumbency vote against the BJP in the three key states had been predicted, and some analysts point out people vote differently at state and national level.
But the results so far suggest a very visible setback for the BJP, which had steadily increased its state footprint since coming to office in 2014.
And issues of rural discontent – such as unemployment, lack of development and farming distress – are being seen as issues that could affect ballots next year.
BBC Hindi’s Nitin Srivastava who is in Rajasthan, has been posting photos of the starkly different atmospheres at the BJP and Congress party offices in the state.
Red-faced rhesus macaques have spread havoc, snatching food and mobile telephones, breaking into homes and terrorising people in and around the Indian capital.
They have colonised areas around parliament and the sites of key ministries, from the prime minister’s office to the finance and defence ministries, frightening both civil servants and the public.
“Very often they snatch food from people as they are walking, and sometimes they even tear files and documents by climbing in through the windows,” said Ragini Sharma, a home ministry employee.
Ahead of Tuesday’s start of parliament’s winter session, an advisory to members of parliament last month detailed ways they could keep simian attacks at bay. Don’t tease or make direct eye contact with a monkey, the advisory said, and definitely don’t get between a mother and her infant.
The rapid growth of cities has displaced macaques, geographically the most widely distributed primates in the world after humans, driving them into human habitats to hunt for food.
A monkey sits on a pavement outside India’s Parliament building in New Delhi, India, November 15, 2018. Picture taken November 15, 2018. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis
Many in Hindu-majority India revere and feed the animals they consider to be connected to the demigod Hanuman, who takes the form of a monkey.
“This socio-religious tradition of feeding has created a vicious cycle,” said ecology researcher Asmita Sengupta.
“They become used to being fed by humans and lose their sense of fear,” said Sengupta, of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.
“They start actively seeking supplementary food and if we don’t feed them, they turn aggressive.”
‘APE REPELLERS’
The monkeys have hardly proved an ally for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Hundreds of macaques feasting on optic fibre cables strung along the banks of the river Ganges derailed his plan to roll out wifi in his constituency, the crowded 3,000-year-old holy city of Varanasi, in 2015.
Men were hired to swat the monkeys away with broomsticks and slingshots, when then U.S. President Barack Obama toured New Delhi that year, media said.
In 2007, monkeys pushed the deputy mayor of Delhi, S.S. Bajwa, off his balcony to his death. Last month, one of the animals snatched a 12-day-old boy from his mother and killed him in Agra, home to the famed monument to love, the Taj Mahal.
Monkeys have bred rapidly in Delhi and neighbouring states as they have protected status, but there is no official estimate of their numbers.
India has tried several strategies to fight the menace.
Authorities stumbled on a partially successful solution four years ago, after hiring 40 men to disguise themselves as langurs and squeal monkey-like to try and terrify the macaques away.
“We call them ‘ape repellers’ and they are contract employees,” said a government official, who asked not to be identified. The stratagem works temporarily as the monkeys flee on hearing the calls, but they return once the men depart.
Primatologist S.M. Mohnot recommends sterilisation and moving the animals to forests, as well as lifting a ban on their capture for biomedical research and resuming exports of the macaques, as components of a solution.
“The monkey menace can be checked only by a multi-pronged approach,” said Mohnot, the chairman of the Primate Research Centre, a federal institute in the western city of Jodhpur.
Assembly election result 2018: The leaders decided to lay a roadmap for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to oust the BJP from power by evolving a common strategy.
Assembly election result 2018: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was among the 21 opposition party leaders who on Monday agreed to work together to defeat the BJP.(AP)
It was people’s verdict and their victory, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted as the Congress was ahead in three states with votes being counted in the assembly elections, billed as the semi-final before next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
All three states — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh — were won last time by the BJP, which had also won 60 of the 65 total parliament seats in these states in the 2014 general elections.
Votes are also being counted in Telangana, where K Chandrashekhar Rao’s Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) has raced to a massive lead, validating his decision to call early elections. In Mizoram, the Congress’ last bastion in the state, the Mizo National Front is ahead.
“Victory of democracy and victory against injustice, atrocities, destruction of institutions, misuse of agencies, no work for poor people, farmers, youth, Dalits, SC, ST, OBC, minorities and general caste,” Banerjee tweeted.
“Semifinal proves that BJP is nowhere in all the states. This is a real democratic indication of 2019 final match. Ultimately, people are always the ‘man of the match’ of democracy. My congrats to the winners,” she said.
Banerjee was among the 21 opposition party leaders who on Monday agreed to work together to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and “stop their assault on the Constitution and institutions such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Election Commission” in a key meeting ahead of the Lok Sabha election next year.
The leaders decided to lay a roadmap for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to oust the BJP from power by evolving a common strategy.
“In the course of the next few months, we will place before the people of the country, a comprehensive programme of work anchored in complete transparency and accountability,” read a joint statement issued after the meeting.
The parties also appealed to all “liberal, progressive and secular forces to join them in their battle to save the Constitution and protect parliamentary democracy”.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China and the United States discussed a road map for the next stage of their trade talks on Tuesday, during a telephone call between Vice Premier Liu He and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed at a Dec. 1 meeting in Argentina to a truce that delayed the planned Jan. 1 U.S. increase of tariffs to 25 percent from 10 percent on $200 billion (157 billion pounds) worth of Chinese goods.
Lighthizer said on Sunday that unless U.S.-China trade talks wrapped up successfully by March 1, new tariffs would be imposed, clarifying there was a “hard deadline” after a week of seeming confusion among Trump and his advisers.
China’s commerce ministry said in a statement Liu had spoken to Mnuchin and Lighthizer on Tuesday morning, Beijing time, on a pre-arranged telephone call.
“Both sides exchanged views on putting into effect the consensus reached by the two countries’ leaders at their meeting, and pushing forward the timetable and roadmap for the next stage of economic and trade consultations work,” the ministry said.
It did not elaborate.
A U.S. Treasury spokesman confirmed that the call with Liu took place, but offered no further details. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office did not immediately respond to a query about the call.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the issue, said Liu planned to go to Washington after the new year.
The Harvard-education Liu, Xi’s top economic adviser, is leading the talks on the Chinese side.
In comments reported separately by China’s Foreign Ministry, the government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, said if China and the United States cooperated, it would benefit the whole world.
Stock selloff snowballs on fresh fears for world growth
“If China and the United States are antagonistic, then there are no winners, and it will hurt the whole world,” Wang told a forum.
The United States should look at China’s development in a more positive light, and constantly look to “expand the space and prospects for mutual benefit”, he said.
Global markets are jittery about a growing clash between the world’s two largest economic powers over China’s huge trade surplus with the United States and Washington’s claims that Beijing is stealing intellectual property and technology.
The arrest of a top executive at China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] has also roiled global markets amid fears that it could further inflame the China-U.S. trade row.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionMeng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver on 1 December
A high-flying Chinese executive has been caught in the centre of a growing geo-political dispute between two of the world’s largest economies.
Meng Wanzhou is the chief financial officer of Huawei and the elder daughter of the telecom giant’s founder.
She was arrested in Canada last week for allegedly breaking US sanctions on Iran and faces extradition to the US.
China and Huawei insist that she has not broken any laws but she could be jailed for up to 30 years if found guilty.
So who is she?
Ms Meng, also known as Sabrina Meng and Cathy Meng, has risen up the ranks of Huawei, China’s largest private company.
The 46-year-old started her career as a receptionist in 1993, and after graduating with a master’s degree in accountancy from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1999, she joined Huawei’s finance department.
She became the company’s chief finance officer (CFO) in 2011 and was promoted to vice-chair a few months before her arrest.
In 2018, she was ranked 12th on Forbes’ list of top Chinese businesswomen, four spots lower than where she ranked the year before.
Image captionMs Meng has met world leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin in 2014
Ms Meng’s links to her father, billionaire Ren Zhengfei, were not known to the public until a few years ago.
At the age of 16, in a practice highly unusual in Chinese tradition, she took the surname of her mother, Meng Jun, who was Mr Ren’s first wife.
What is she charged with?
Ms Meng was taken into custody in Vancouver while she was changing planes on 1 December.
Prosecutors say she conspired to defraud banks by telling banks a Huawei subsidiary was a separate company – thereby helping Huawei circumvent US trade bans.
The US has been investigating the world’s largest smartphone maker since 2016, which it believes used a subsidiary to bring US manufacturing equipment and millions of dollars in transactions to Iran.
Ms Meng’s arrest has now sparked an escalating diplomatic incident between China, Canada and the US.
Life revealed in court
In documents filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, where Ms Meng’s case is being heard, details have emerged revealing the CFO’s personal life.
She is a thyroid cancer survivor who suffers from hypertension and a sleep disorder, her lawyers said, in need of daily doses of medication.
“I continue to feel unwell and I am worried about my health deteriorating while I am incarcerated,” she said in the filing. “I currently have difficulty eating solid foods and have had to modify my diet to address those issues.”
Her lawyers are seeking bail for the mother of four, who, they say, is not a flight risk because of her “strong roots” in Vancouver.
She told the court she was a Canadian resident until 2009, after which she returned to China.
Image captionMs Meng and her husband have put up two homes in Vancouver as collateral for bail
However, she bought a six-bedroom house with her second husband in the city and would return regularly to visit him and her children, some of whom attended Canadian schools until 2012.
That home is now reported to be worth C$5.6m (£3.3m, $4.2m), according to property records and an affidavit Ms Meng read out in court.
In 2016, the couple bought a second property, a mansion worth C$16.3m – both homes have been put up as collateral for bail.
Why Vancouver?
The court papers give a fascinating insight into the life of a senior Chinese executive, says BBC World Service Asia-Pacific editor Michael Bristow.
“Vancouver has for some years been a destination of choice for wealthy Chinese people; as a place to live, educate their children, or as an insurance policy against the uncertainties of life back in China.
“People will be intrigued to find out Ms Meng has not one but two homes in Vancouver, and wonder at how she was able to hold seven passports at the same time.”
How does she have seven passports?
This remains somewhat of a mystery.
According to media reports, the tech boss has at least four Chinese passports and three Hong Kong passports.
“In the past 11 years, Meng has been issued no fewer than seven different passports from both China and Hong Kong,” a letter from the US Department of Justice to Canada read, claiming she was a flight risk. It also listed the numbers of the seven passports.
Chinese rules dictate that if citizens want to get a passport from another country or region, they must give up their Chinese one.
Hong Kong immigration officials would not comment on Ms Meng’s case but stated no passport holder would be “in possession of more than one” at a time.
According to arrival and departure records of US Customs and Border Protection, Ms Meng used three different HK passports to enter the US on 33 occasions between 2014 and 2017.
Her second son is said to be studying at a school in Massachusetts but Ms Meng has not been back to the US since March 2017.
Canadian police told the court Huawei executives appeared to have “altered their travel plans” to avoid the US, since becoming aware of a criminal investigation into the company in April 2017.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 