10/11/2016

PM Modi heads to Japan to seal nuclear deal amid uncertainty over U.S. policy | Reuters

Prime Minister Narendra Modi headed to Japan on Thursday to seal a landmark nuclear energy pact and strengthen ties, as China’s regional influence grows and Donald Trump’s election throws U.S. policies across Asia into doubt.

India, Japan and the United States have been building security ties and holding three-way naval exercises, but Trump’s “America First” campaign promise has stirred concern about a reduced U.S. engagement in the region.

Such an approach by Washington could draw Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe even closer, said foreign policy commentator and former Indian ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar.

Officials in New Delhi and Tokyo said a deal that will allow Japan to supply nuclear reactors, fuel and technology is ready for signing after six years of negotiations to find a way around Tokyo’s reservations about such an agreement with a country that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

India says the NPT is discriminatory and it has concerns about nuclear-armed China as well as its long-time rival Pakistan.

Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, has been seeking assurances from New Delhi that it would not conduct nuclear tests any more.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said the two sides had reached a broad agreement on nuclear collaboration as early as last December and had since been trying to finalise the document.

A “legal, technical scrub” of the agreed text has now been done, he said, but added that he could not pre-judge the outcome of Modi’s summit talks with Abe over Friday and Saturday.

A Japanese ruling party lawmaker said the two sides will sign an agreement during Modi’s visit. A Japanese foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment.

JAPANESE AIRCRAFT ALSO DISCUSSED

The nuclear agreement with Japan follows a similar one with the United States in 2008 which gave India access to nuclear technology after decades of isolation.

That step was seen as the first big move to build India into a regional counterweight to China.

India hopes to lift ties with the United States to a new height, Modi said in a message to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday.

A final deal with Japan could also benefit U.S. firms.

India is in advanced negotiations with U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric, owned by Japan’s Toshiba, to build six nuclear reactors in southern India, part of New Delhi’s plan to ramp up nuclear capacity more than ten times by 2032.

“Japan is keen to put aside it’s staunch non-proliferation principles and engage with the lucrative Indian programme,” said Manpreet Sethi, nuclear affairs expert at the Centre for Air Power Studies, a New Delhi think-tank.

But the agreement will still have to be ratified by the Japanese parliament, she said.

Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper said the main accord will likely be accompanied by a separate document stipulating that Tokyo will suspend nuclear cooperation if India conducts a nuclear test. Initially, Japan wanted that inserted into the agreement itself, but India resisted, it said.India has declared a moratorium on such testing since its last explosions in 1998.

The two countries have also been trying to close a deal on the supply of amphibious rescue aircraft US-2 to the Indian navy, which would be one of Japan’s first sales of military equipment since Abe lifted a 50-year ban on arms exports.

India’s Defence Acquisitions Council met earlier this week to consider the purchase of 12 of the planes made by ShinMaywa Industries, but failed to reach a decision.

An Indian government source said opinion within the military was divided over whether to buy the aircraft when it was struggling to find resources to replace ageing and accident-prone submarines and address a shortage of helicopters.

A Japanese defence source said Japan was considering a cost reduction, which would mean a price cut for India as well as for the Japanese navy which it supplies. A US-2 currently costs about 13 billion yen ($123 million).

Source: PM Modi heads to Japan to seal nuclear deal amid uncertainty over U.S. policy | Reuters

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10/11/2016

China state media warns Trump against isolationism, calls for status quo | Reuters

Chinese state media has warned the U.S. president-elect against isolationism and interventionism, calling instead for the United States to actively work with China to maintain the international status quo.

President-elect Donald Trump threatened to tear up trade deals and pursue a more unilateral foreign policy under his “America First” principle during a tempestuous election campaign.

But China and other foreign governments are uncertain how much of Trump’s rhetoric will be translated into policy because he has at times made contradictory statements and provided few details of how he would deal with the world.

Trump often targeted China in the campaign, blaming Beijing for U.S. job losses and vowing to impose 45 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. The Republican also promised to call China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. U.S. isolationist policies had “accelerated the country’s economic crisis” during the Great Depression, warned a commentary by China’s official Xinhua News Agency, though it added that “election talk is just election talk”.

The commentary also cautioned against any tilt towards intervention.

POTENTIAL PRAGMATIST

The Chinese media in the past have criticized the United States and other Western powers for intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq and meddling in international hot spots such as Ukraine.

“History has proven that U.S. overseas military interventionism causes them to pay disastrous political and economic costs,” the commentary said. Hillary Clinton was widely seen in China as the more hawkish of the two candidates, while some Chinese commentators saw Trump as a potential pragmatist on foreign policy. But Beijing fears the unpredictability of a Trump presidency as it seeks to maintain an equilibrium in Sino-U.S. relations while dealing with the daunting tasks of a reform agenda to combat a slowing economy at home.

A second Xinhua commentary published on Thursday morning said the new U.S. president and China should “jointly build a new model of major power relations”. That echoes the position of Chinese President Xi Jinping that says global powers should work to accommodate, not contain, a rising China in the international system.

‘SHOCK OF HERESY’

Trump’s victory was watched closely on the Chinese internet with the tag “Trump has won” becoming the most-searched term on Weibo, a popular Chinese microblog service, on Wednesday afternoon in Asia, well before the race was conceded.

Some of the posts agreed that Trump might be just the change agent the United States needs now.

The U.S. has chosen indeterminacy in order to create change,” according to a post by Tsinghua University professor Sun Liping on Thursday that has been shared over a thousand times. “When the usual, determined method has already been unable to solve the problems, then you need the shock of heresy instead.”

Chinese state media had previously said the U.S. election process reflects a troubled political system, and showed an increasingly divided, disillusioned and indignant U.S. citizenry. “This election has also made clear that the U.S. political system is already caught in a predicament,” a third Xinhua commentary said. “As for when it will exit this predicament, the answer is still unknown.” The Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling party’s People’s Daily newspaper, said Trump’s victory had “dealt a heavy blow to the heart of U.S. politics” but that he would be unable to make many changes in U.S. foreign policy.”

In an elite-controlled U.S., most of those holding power don’t support Trump. And U.S. allies across the world will pressure Washington to restrain Trump from isolationism,” it said.

Source: China state media warns Trump against isolationism, calls for status quo | Reuters

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10/11/2016

How the Trump Win Played Out in South Asia – India Real Time – WSJ

As Donald Trump was winning his first states in the U.S., South Asia was getting up to follow the results.In Pakistan, Javed Hassan, a former investment banker who previously worked in London and Hong Kong, got up early, at 4 a.m. local time (6 p.m. Tuesday ET), to watch election results come in at his home in the city of Karachi. On Whatsapp, he started trading messages with his son, Ali, a 20-year-old studying economics and politics at New York University.

The younger Mr. Hassan, Ali, watching TV with friends at his dorm at NYU, started his evening telling his worried father that there was no chance of a Trump victory.

“Trump won’t get enough votes in the north and the American people will not go for his racism,” he told his father.

The elder Mr. Hassan, however, was switching between CNN and BBC coverage and was seeing “long queues of white people” waiting to vote, he said, and seeing the state-by-state projections.

By 7 a.m. Pakistan time (9 p.m. Tuesday ET), father and son started to see the trends in states like Michigan.

“What really did it was when Hillary started losing in Wisconsin,” said Mr. Hassan, 51, who now runs a non-governmental organizational that provides vocational training across Pakistan. His son, enveloped in a New York bubble, with all his friends voting for Mrs. Clinton, could not see it coming, said Mr. Hassan.

Meanwhile in India, Sagar Chordia, executive director of Panchshil Realty, a real estate firm which this year built the country’s first Trump Towers in the western city of Pune, had gotten up at 5 a.m. (6.30 p.m. Tuesday ET) to watch the results on television.

Mr. Chordia said he tracked the Twitter and Facebook updates of Donald Trump Jr., who was instrumental in signing the deal with his company.

Mr. Chordia typically leaves for the office around 9 a.m. (10.30 p.m. Tuesday ET), but on Wednesday he stayed at home in Pune, glued to the TV for another hour or so, until Mr. Trump had garnered 220 electoral votes. “Now, I know he’s the winner,” he thought at the time.

Mr. Chordia said that once he got to the office, he found his staff were happy with the result, as many of them met Mr. Trump when he visited Pune in 2014. Then, Mr. Chordia said, he and his team threw a big party for Mr. Trump, with 800 guests.

He said Mr. Trump’s election is good for India, because the president elect has traveled to the country and has praised Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “They really love India and they want to do more and more projects in this country,” he said of the Trumps.

In Mumbai, India, Alok Churiwala, a 48-year-old stock broker, was waiting for the benchmark stock index to open at 9.15 a.m. (10.45 p.m. Tuesday ET). Mr. Churiwala was tracking the election results on television, as well as Twitter and on his Whatsapp account.

He prepared for the market to open down, given that the Dow Jones futures were already trading lower, but he wasn’t ready for the 5% fall.“We were horrified when the markets opened,” he said.

At his morning meeting with dealers, Mr. Churiwala told his staff that clients should be kept from doing anything reckless. They were not to encourage clients to short the market, bet against it, or borrow for day trades.

As stocks swooned, he was swamped by clients calling to ask what was happening.

“Phones were ringing off the hook, because everybody was worried,” he said. “You’d think that this is apocalypse,” said Mr. Churiwala.

He skipped lunch.

He said one client who is based in the U.K. called. “What is it about Trump that is so horrifying for the market?” he said she asked him.

He said that he was neutral to both U.S. presidential candidates and he believed that Mr. Trump may not carry through on some drastic steps he had suggested on the campaign trail. “Politicians are known to make promises before elections when they want to woo voters,” he said.

In India’s capital New Delhi, members of a small Hindu nationalist group were ready for the news of Mr. Trump’s win. They began gathering at 11 a.m. (12:30 a.m. Wednesday ET) to celebrate a Trump lead they were certain would result in a victory. The group, known as the Hindu Sena, or Hindu army, had hosted a prayer ritual for such an outcome a few months ago. It even held a birthday celebration for Mr. Trump in June.

A member of Hindu Sena celebrated Mr. Trump’s victory, in New Delhi, India, Nov. 9, 2016. PHOTO: CATHAL MCNAUGHTON/REUTERS

More than four dozen supporters gathered at a prominent square on Wednesday. They distributed Indian sweets to passers-by and beat traditional drums. Modifying a popular slogan from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election campaign two years ago, they chanted in Hindi, “this time, a Trump government.”

Vishnu Gupta, who founded the group in 2011, said he’d sent out text messages at 7 p.m. (8:30 a.m. Tuesday ET) the previous day, asking supporters to watch the news closely and gather in the late morning. Mr. Gupta himself hadn’t slept all night, he said, glued to the television as Americans cast their ballots.

To Mr. Gupta, Mr. Trump, represents strong leadership against what he called Islamic terrorism, much like India’s Mr. Modi, he said. “Many people criticized Trump’s proposals to stop radical Muslims from entering the U.S. and mocked us for celebrating the man,” he said. “But today, we’ve come out ahead.”

Back in the U.S., the younger Mr. Hassan didn’t wait up for Trump’s victory speech. “Screw this,” he told his father in Pakistan and went to sleep at around midnight in New York.

The elder Mr. Hassan said that he was worried about his holdings on the local Karachi Stock Exchange, which plunged 2% early on Wednesday, before recovering.

Source: How the Trump Win Played Out in South Asia – India Real Time – WSJ

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10/11/2016

Chinese Flag-Maker Flooded With Orders in Wake of Trump Win – China Real Time Report – WSJ

While China’s leaders weigh what to make of Donald Trump’s impending presidency, one manufacturer in the scenic city of Shaoxing has been enthusiastically carrying Mr. Trump’s banner.

Or, more accurately, he’s been printing, folding and shipping it.Yao Dandan is the owner of Shaoxing Jiahao Banner and Handicrafts Co. Ltd. Since election results suggesting a Trump victory began pouring in Wednesday morning, he says, he’s fielded a barrage of orders for Trump-themed flags.

The total number ordered as of Thursday morning: more than 40,000.

“I knew there would be demand for Trump flags after the election, so I made extra. But it’s not enough, so now I have to make more,” Mr. Yao said.The 30-year-old said that he’s been in the flag-making business for a decade and that Shaoxing’s factories specialize in making election banners. His factory has taken orders for close to half a million Trump banners in the past two months, he said.

Mr. Trump has taken heat for vowing tough restrictions on Chinese imports while over the years turning to China to source goods ranging from ties to steel, but there’s no evidence the next U.S. president purchased banners from Shaoxing. Mr. Yao said most of the orders he’s received came from Chinese clients living in the U.S.

Flags bound for the U.S. have to be higher quality than most, he said. He charges 2.5 yuan ($0.37) a piece for the smallest Trump banners, which his clients typically sell in the U.S. for between $1 or $2 (they sell for 5 yuan on e-commerce site Alibaba). The factory has produced every U.S. state flag, and earlier this year got multiple orders for Confederate flags.

What about orders for Hillary Clinton banners? Mr. Yao, who counts himself a Trump supporter, said he’s been asked but now refuses to make them because he believes Mrs. Clinton is unfair to China.

The news of Trump’s win was “a pleasant surprise,” he said. “It means I didn’t strive these past couple of months in vain.”

Asked about Mr. Trump’s vow to impose a 45% across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods, Mr. Yao confessed he wasn’t aware of that part of the property mogul’s platform but said he thought China’s government would make sure it wasn’t implemented.

The flag-maker said he’d never been to the U.S. but planned to remedy that soon.

“When things slow down, I’m going to go to the U.S. and have a look. At the very least I also contributed a little!” he said.

Source: Chinese Flag-Maker Flooded With Orders in Wake of Trump Win – China Real Time Report – WSJ

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09/11/2016

5 Sectors Likely to Be Affected by India’s Surprise Move to Replace Large Rupee Notes – Briefly – WSJ

India’s move to curb corruption and counterfeiting by replacing high-denomination bank notes with new ones will likely have a significant impact on some sectors wrapped up in the cash economy.

Here are five industries likely to see change.

1 Real Estate

Many property transactions in India are made using cash. Builders often accept 10% to 20% of an asking price in cash to lower both the buyer’s and seller’s tax liability.“You may yourself have experienced when buying land or a house, that apart from the amount paid by check, a large amount is demanded in cash. This creates problems for an honest person in buying property,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Tuesday.The use of counterfeit or undeclared earnings in this way has increased the price of real estate, Mr. Modi said. The move to scrap the current 500 and 1,000 rupee bills could reduce prices, analysts said.“This will clean up the real estate sector and bring down the cost of doing business,” says Dhiraj Relli, chief executive of HDFC Securities.

2 Gold

Investing in gold is another way some Indians keep money from the eyes of tax officials. The country is one of the world’s biggest consumers of the precious metal, along with China.According to various estimates, the current volume of gold in Indian households is above 20,000 tons. Analysts say if people are no longer able to use wads of 500- and 1,000-rupee notes to buy gold, they will have to put it into the formal banking system or invest it in stocks, mutual funds or bonds instead. This is also likely to slow down India’s gold imports and reduce foreign-currency outflows.

3 Two-Wheelers

India is one of the largest two-wheeler markets globally. In rural India, many farmers buy motorbikes and scooters with cash after they sell their their crops.The current measure may slow down two-wheeler sales as buyers are expected to postpone their purchases until they replace their existing bank notes with the new ones.No wonder, two-wheelers stocks are one of the biggest losers on India’s benchmark S&P BSE Sensex index today, falling between 4% and 6%.

4 Consumer Durables

rMany people in India also prefer to buy televisions, fridges or air-conditioners with cash. Some of those purchases involve money derived from corruption.Others are made by people who might not have a bank account and are purchasing the products as dowry items. As a result, the move to replace the existing high-denomination notes is expected to hurt sales in this segment.

5 Microfinance

rMicrofinance companies that disburse loans to poor people will likely face difficulty collecting or disbursing cash in the near term. In the worst case, they may have to postpone loan-repayment installments and disbursements may not happen in the next 10 days due to a shortage of currency notes, says broker Religare Capital Markets Ltd. However, things will likely stabilize after few weeks, it adds.

Source: 5 Sectors Likely to Be Affected by India’s Surprise Move to Replace Large Rupee Notes – Briefly – WSJ

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09/11/2016

Watching Trump Inch Towards Victory, With Cheers, in China – China Real Time Report – WSJ

As vote tallies came in late Tuesday night, it was Wednesday morning in China and inside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, many Chinese watchers were celebrating the increasingly likely prospect of a Donald Trump win.

The event, intended to give Chinese locals the opportunity to experience a U.S. election, featured a mock vote and the opportunity for locals to pose with large cut-out photos of Mr. Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as remarks from U.S. Ambassador Max Baucus.

As he stood and watched the results roll in on a large overhead screen, Tian Junwu, a professor at the Beihang University School of Foreign Languages, said he was rooting for Mr. Trump’s victory.

“I’m a man. I don’t like a woman to be too strong,” said Mr. Tian. “She is too overbearing, like my wife. I think Trump is funny.”

Though the Republican candidate has threatened to slap a 45% tariff on Chinese goods, Mr. Tian said such a prospect wasn’t too alarming. “We [Chinese people] know now that candidates say one thing when they are running, but becoming a president is a different thing.”

Zhong Shaoliang, the Beijing representative of the industry group World Steel Association, said that the candidates seemed similar to him, but that he preferred Mr. Trump because he seemed more authentic. “He’s more American that way,” he said.

Still, he said that if he was American himself, he would see some perhaps worrying aspects at the prospect of a Trump win. “Hillary would be better for overall harmony. Trump will likely continue to further divide America up.”

As Florida was called for Mr. Trump, a pair of second-year college students studying English at the Beijing Language and Culture University said they were pleased.

“Clinton gives me kind of a sinister feeling, I’m kind of scared of her,” said Xu Xiayan, 19, who said she and her friends were paying more attention to the election this year, mostly for its entertainment value. “She’s good at pretending. Like when Trump is saying things and making her angry, she still maintains a slight smile.” Her friend agreed.Kang Xiaoguang, a professor at Renmin University’s China Institute for Philosophy and Social Innovation, said many of his friends were also cheering for Mr. Trump. “He’s saying things that people in America in their hearts might really feel — like about immigrants, about Muslims — but don’t dare say.” And from a foreign-policy perspective, he said, he thought Mr. Trump would be more likely to pull back on a global stage, including in places such as the South China Sea. “That way, China won’t have so much pressure on it,” he said.

“Also, some people feel the U.S. makes too much trouble for China, so if there’s a person making trouble in the U.S., they think Trump becoming president is a good thing,” he added.

Given the chance, he said, he might have cast his ballot for Mrs. Clinton, who he sees as steadier and easier to predict. A recent Pew survey found that Chinese respondents have a poor image of both presidential candidates, but viewed Mrs. Clinton slightly more favorably than her opponent.

Still, no matter what he does in office, Mr. Kang said he didn’t think that Trump’s impact would necessarily be too great. “America is a very mature system,” he said. It won’t be easily rocked by one person.”

Source: Watching Trump Inch Towards Victory, With Cheers, in China – China Real Time Report – WSJ

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07/11/2016

China and Taiwan struggle over Sun Yat-sen’s legacy | The Economist

FOR decades Taiwan’s rulers have paid their respects from afar to Sun Yat-sen, also known as Sun Zhongshan: “father of the nation”, founder of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party, and first president of the Republic of China.

In a ritual called yaoji, they face towards Sun’s mausoleum in Nanjing, 800km (500 miles) to the north-west in China, and offer fruit, burn incense and recite prayers.

Now that links across the Taiwan Strait are better, Sun-worshippers may make the pilgrimage in person. On October 31st it was the turn of the KMT’s chairwoman, Hung Hsiu-chu. But not only do some Taiwanese adore Sun. Museums in his honour also exist in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Penang. He has a memorial park in Hawaii, where the great republican spent his teenage years, and a plaque in London, where he lived in exile from 1896-97. Most striking of all, he is admired by the Chinese Communists, who “liberated” China in 1949 from KMT rule.

In the Communist telling, Sun is the “forerunner of the democratic revolution”. As one visitor to his mausoleum put it this week: just as one sun and one moon hang in the sky, “there is only one father of the country.” There may be more Zhongshan Streets in China’s cities than Liberation Avenues. To mark this month’s anniversary of Sun’s birth 150 years ago, the state is minting a set of commemorative coins, including 300m five-yuan (75-cent) pieces that will go into circulation. It is a signal honour for a non-Communist. The party views Sun as a proto-revolutionary.

He makes an unlikely hero. Sun spent much of his life not in the thick of action but abroad. Half-a-dozen revolts that he helped organise against an ossified Qing dynasty were failures. As for the Wuchang uprising of October 1911, the catalyst for the end of three centuries of Manchu domination, he learnt of it from a Denver newspaper. He was back at the head of China’s first republican government early the following year, but merely as “provisional” president. Lacking the military strength to pull a fractured country together, he said he was the place-warmer for a strongman, Yuan Shikai. The nascent republic soon shattered and Yuan crowned himself emperor. Pressure from Western powers and Japan exacerbated China’s bleak situation. By 1916 Sun was back in exile again, in Japan.

For all that, Sun had brought down a rotten empire. For years he had raised the alarm over China’s direction, denouncing the Manchus and the rapaciousness of external powers. All his life, Sun had strived for a new republican order to turn a stricken China into a modern nation-state.

His ideas were hardly systematic, but he never deviated from the priorities of fostering national unity among Chinese, promoting democracy and improving people’s livelihoods—his “Three Principles of the People”. While railing against foreign depredations, he called for Chinese to embrace Western freedoms and rights (Sun’s messianic drive may have derived from his version of Christianity). His was an astonishingly more cosmopolitan world-view than that displayed by today’s Chinese leaders.Yet the longest-lasting impact of Sun on Chinese political life derives from something different. In the early 1920s he listened to advisers from the Soviet Union, which had won his admiration by renouncing territorial claims in China. He reorganised the KMT along Leninist lines, giving himself almost dictatorial powers (in Leninspeak: “democratic centralism”). The immediate effects were striking: an alliance between the KMT and the young Communist Party and a northward military advance in 1926 under Chiang Kai-shek, Sun’s heir, that toppled the warlords who were then wreaking havoc. Sun had died of liver failure the year before. He did not live to experience the brief national unity that Chiang imposed, nor the parties’ fatal split and descent into bloodshed, nor their struggle over Sun’s mantle.

Follow the Sun

And his legacy today? Consider that among his three principles, the two 20th-century dictators, Mao Zedong in mainland China and Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan, gave a damn only about the first, national unity, on which, by their standards, they must be judged poorly. Sun’s Leninist party organisation—never one of his hallowed principles—had a far more profound impact on the two autocrats, and still does on China’s rulers today.

In Taiwan dictatorial KMT rule began crumbling a few years after Chiang’s death in 1975. Democratic development since then, including within the KMT, and the growth of a prosperous civil society, seem in line with Sun’s second and third principles relating to democracy and prosperity. But as for the first, a Chinese nationalism: forget it. Sun’s portrait still hangs in schools and government offices, and looks serenely down on the frequent fisticuffs in Taiwan’s parliament. But after resounding defeat in elections early this year, the KMT struggles for relevance on an island that is proud of its separateness from China. If there is any echo of Sun’s idealism, it is in the student “Sunflower Movement”, which wants to keep China at bay. For many Taiwanese, the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name, is a figleaf for independence; Sun is an old ineffectual ghost. The current president, Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, performed no yaoji this year.

And China? Democratic centralism still prevails—exemplified by the party’s monopoly on power, Xi Jinping’s autocratic rule and the suppression of dissent. Were Sun to speak from his tomb, he might remind Mr Xi how, under the Communist Party, national unity, real democracy and even broad-based prosperity remain elusive. He might point out, too, that when Sun adopted Leninism it was to advance rather than trump his beloved principles. In his final will, Sun wrote: “The work of the revolution is not done yet.” “Blimey,” he might now say: “Couldn’t you think of trying something different?”

Source: China and Taiwan struggle over Sun Yat-sen’s legacy | The Economist

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07/11/2016

Theresa May Says U.K. May Improve Visa System for Indians – India Real Time – WSJ

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday said the U.K. may make improvements to its visa system for Indians, as she sought to lay the foundations for a future trade deal once Britain leaves the European Union.

On a two-day trip to India focused on trade, Mrs. May, speaking alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the partnership between the U.K. and India was natural, since the countries have shared values and culture. But a key sticking point in U.K.-India relations has been Britain’s reluctance to loosen restrictions for Indians wanting to work or study in the U.K., and this will likely be a difficult point to settle in any free-trade negotiations.

“The U.K. will consider further improvements to our visa offer if at the same time we can step up the speed and volume of returns of Indians with no right to remain in the U.K.,” she said.

Mrs. May is unlikely to implement any changes that would result in big increases of Indians entering the U.K. She has said the June vote to leave the EU was underpinned by frustrations about rising levels of immigration and has pledged to reduce numbers.The U.K. is seeking to go beyond its traditional trading partners in Europe as it prepares to leave the European Union. While it can’t finalize trade deals while still a member of the EU, Britain is in preliminary discussions on trade with countries including Australia and India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Any deal is likely to take years to complete.

Source: Theresa May Says U.K. May Improve Visa System for Indians – India Real Time – WSJ

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04/11/2016

The Economist explains: Why Britain is wooing India | The Economist

WHEN Britain eventually leaves the European Union it will prosper by trading farther afield. So argues Theresa May, Britain’s prime minister, ahead of her first big bilateral trip abroad, a three-day visit to India, which begins on Sunday, November 6th. She talks of forging a “new global role” with this trade mission, hobnobbing with Indian leaders and championing free trade in general. The idea is to promote ties between small and medium businesses in the two countries. Yet creating a stronger economic relationship with India will prove much tougher than Mrs May and her colleagues expect.

On the face of it, the signs are good. India has nearly 1.3bn people. Many are emerging as middle-class consumers for the first time. The country is creating a single market for goods and services, reducing internal and external barriers to trade and tackling some corruption and bureaucracy. Its economy, worth over $2trn, is the fastest-growing large one in the world. It is likely to rattle along quickly for many years to come; by 2030, India could rank as the world’s third-largest. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, wants to make it less difficult for businesses to operate there, and to win more foreign investment and trade deals. British firms are already among the biggest investors. Now India is opening up for foreign activity in sectors that might suit British firms especially: notably in insurance, defence, railways and some retail. At the same time, large Indian firms—such as Tata, which owns Jaguar Land Rover, as well as Tata Steel—are in Britain. London has also become a base for Indian firms, for example in business consulting, that tap the wider EU market. A common language, shared cultural, historic, legal and sporting ties, plus the influence of the Indian diaspora in Britain, bode well for closer ties.

Mrs May is thus right to reach out. But anyone expecting quick gains will be disappointed. One of India’s priorities, for example, is avoiding complications over a long-stalled free trade agreement with the EU, which has been under negotiation since June 2007. After 12 rounds of talks, some consensus has been found on issues including trade in rice, sugar, textiles and pharmaceuticals. It is not clear that India’s overstretched trade negotiators will see much benefit in being diverted to work on a deal with Britain alone, especially if that makes it harder to complete one with the bigger EU market. Even if they do decide to talk biltaterally, among the sticking points has been India’s 150% tariff on imports of whisky from Scotland. Future British negotiators would struggle to be more effective than their European counterparts at getting that scrapped. The biggest concern, however, is about Britain’s ever colder shoulder towards Indians who want to travel and study there. Under the Conservatives, Britain has in the past six years become less welcoming to foreigners, notably from South Asia, who hope to attend university and then work. Eye-wateringly expensive visas, increasingly hostile rules to get them, official talk of cracking down on foreign students in Britain, and graduates who lose the right to work after finishing a degree in Britain all leave Indians feeling unwelcome. Anecdotes abound of bright Indian students who win places at the best British universities but are refused visas to travel. Perceptions of generally rising xenophobia in Britain are discouraging to Indians too.

For Mrs May to win a warm welcome in India she needs to offer a message that is not only about investment and trade, but also sets out that Britain—in particular its universities—will again become more open to Indian visitors, migrants, students and their families. America is proving far more successful at attracting the highest-skilled migrants, especially software and other engineers. Other countries, including some in Europe, are rolling out policies to attract more Indian students to their universities. Yet Britain appears more hostile to migrants than it has in many decades. Within a few years, it is worth remembering, India’s economy will be bigger than Britain’s. Welcoming more exchanges of people, as well as encouraging higher levels of trade and investment, would make sense for both sides.

Source: The Economist explains: Why Britain is wooing India | The Economist

Posted in Economics, exports, Import, India alert | 1 Comment »

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04/11/2016

Xi Jinping gets a new title | The Economist

COMMUNIST leaders relish weird and wonderful titles. Kim Jong Il, the late father of North Korea’s current “Great Leader”, was, on special occasions, “Dear Leader who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have” (it doesn’t sound much better in Korean). China’s rulers like a more prosaic, mysterious epithet: hexin, meaning “the core”.

Xi Jinping—China’s president, commander-in-chief, Communist Party boss and so forth—is now also officially “the core”, having been called that in a report issued by the party’s Central Committee after a recent annual meeting.

The term was made up in 1989 by Deng Xiaoping, apparently to give his anointed successor, Jiang Zemin, greater credibility after the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests. Just as Mao had been the core of the first generation of party leaders and Deng himself of the second, so Mr Jiang was of the third. (Hu Jintao, Mr Xi’s predecessor, was supposedly offered the title of fourth-generation core but modestly turned it down.)

Being core confers no extra powers. Mr Xi has little need of those; he is chairman of everything anyway. Status, though, is what really matters in China (Deng ruled the country for a while with no other title than honorary chairman of the China Bridge Association). And Mr Xi seems to be finding that all his formal power does not convey enough. Early this year, in what looked like a testing of the waters, a succession of provincial party leaders kowtowed verbally to Xi-the-core. But the term soon disappeared from public discourse. Its revival makes it look as if Mr Xi has won a struggle to claim it.

That may augur well for him in his forthcoming battles over the appointment of a new generation of lesser officials (the peel?) at a party congress next year. Mr Xi wants to replace some of the 350-odd members of the central committee with his own people, while keeping as many of his allies as he can. In a sign that he might be able to do that, officials have started dismissing as “folklore” an unwritten rule that members of the Politburo have to retire at 68. The rule is commonly known as “seven up, eight down” (qi shang, ba xia), meaning 67 is fine, 68 is over the hill. Getting rid of it would seem to open the way to the non-retirement of several of Mr Xi’s close allies, notably 68-year-old Wang Qishan, who is in charge of fighting graft. It might even pave the way for Mr Xi’s own refusal to collect his pension when his second (and supposedly final) term as party chief is up in 2022, and he will be 69.

There is another parallel between political language now and in 1989. The recent meeting eschewed the party’s usual practice of tying current events to the triumphs of earlier Communist history and instead set the scene by referring mostly to the congress in 2012, when Mr Xi became leader. Another time when the party ignored history in this way was after the Tiananmen killings, when it wanted to draw a veil over what had just occurred and signal a fresh, dictatorial start. Mr Xi seems to be saying, implicitly, that a new era has begun with him, core among equals.

Source: Xi Jinping gets a new title | The Economist

Posted in China alert, Internal politics, Politics | Leave a Comment »

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