Let us hope some of these seven messages are heard by Indian policy-makers.
02/05/2013
* 28,000 rivers disappeared in China
Is this a case of “Statistics, statistics and damned lies!”?
01/05/2013
* China’s new mental health law to make it harder for authorities to silence petitioners
SCMP: “The director of Xinjiang‘s largest mental health institution has welcomed a new law, which went into effect on Wednesday, banning involuntary inpatient treatment for many people deemed mentally ill.
“Seventy to 80 per cent of the patients have been forcibly admitted to the hospital,” said Xu Xiangdong, director of the Fourth People’s Hospital in the regional capital Urumqi, the Yaxin online news portal reported on Monday.
“Because of this increased consideration for patients’ rights, [the figures] will change fundamentally,” he said, adding that it would put an end to frequent episodes of people being wrongfully declared mentally ill.
The new law, which has been debated for a quarter of a century, is meant to crack down on local authorities aiming to silence petitioners and troublemakers by arbitrarily declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in mental health wards.
Under the law, patients must first give their consent to being hospitalised, except in cases in which they could harm themselves or others.
If patients are still forcibly confined, they or their guardians have the right to seek a second opinion. Forced hospitalisations for reasons other than severe mental illness are banned.
Last week about 200 health practitioners from the region were sent to Xu’s hospital to be trained in the new provisions on patients’ rights stipulated by the new law, the Xinjiang Daily reported.
Two million people in Xinjiang live with mental disabilities, Xu estimated, amounting to more than 9 per cent of the population in the economic backwater of China’s remote northwest.
That compares with almost 8 per cent of China’s population diagnosed with some form of mental illness, according to the Ministry of Health in 2011. A largescale 2009 study estimated a much higher national average at 17.5 per cent.
In Xinjiang, authorities have not been able to provide adquate resources to deal with the increasing number of people living with mental disorders. Xu told the Yaxin portal in 2011 that the number of mentally ill patients had increased by 20 to 30 per cent annually over the last years.
In Monday’s report, he said less than 5 per cent of the two million mentally ill could receive treatment because of a lack of resources and trained staff.
Two years earlier, the regional government had reported plans to build 15 new mental hospitals and to expand current ones. Until now, only one additional hospital in Kashgar has been completed, the Yaxin report said.
In March, a gruesome murder of a seven-year-old Uygur boy by a Chinese man has caused tensions among ethnic communities in the Turpan prefecture east of Urumqi. The man had been declared mentally ill to prevent ethnic revenge attacks, locals told Radio Free Asia.”
01/05/2013
* China Manufacturers Survive by Moving to Asian Neighbors
WSJ: First in a Series: China’s Changing Work Force
“In a corner of a sprawling factory in this coastal southern city, sewing machines that stitched blouses and shirts for Lever Style Inc.’s clients now gather dust. As the din on the factory floor has dropped, so, too, has the payroll. Over the past two years, Lever Style’s employee count in China has declined by one-third to 5,000 workers.
The company in April began moving apparel production for Japanese retail chain Uniqlo to Vietnam, where wages can be half those in China. Lever Style also is testing a shift to India for U.S. department-store chain Nordstrom Inc. JWN -0.34% and moving production for other customers.
It’s a matter of survival. After a decade of nearly 20% annual wage increases in China, Lever Style says it can no longer make money here.
A board shows workers’ statuses at each production line at Lever Style’s factory in Shenzhen, China.
“Operating in Southern China is a break-even proposition at best,” says Stanley Szeto, a former investment banker who took over the family business from his father in 2000.
Companies from leather-goods chain Coach Inc. COH -0.53% to clogs maker Crocs Inc. CROX -0.94% also are shifting some manufacturing to other countries as the onetime factory to the world becomes less competitive because of sharply rising wages and a persistent labor shortage. The moves allow the companies to keep consumer prices in check, although competition for labor in places such as Vietnam and Cambodia is pushing up wages in those countries as well.
At Crocs, 65% of its colorful shoes are expected to be made in China this year through third-party manufacturers, down from 80% last year. Coach will reduce its overall production in China to about 50% by 2015 from more than 80% in 2011 so the handbag maker isn’t too reliant on one country, a spokeswoman says.
Some migration of apparel manufacturing from China is expected, and even encouraged by the government, as the country’s economy matures. As other Asian nations become efficient at mass manufacturing, China must embrace research and high-technology production to transform its economy as South Korea and Japan once did. But healthy economic growth requires that China expand its service sector and create higher-skilled manufacturing jobs at a rapid clip to compensate.
“If costs continue to rise, but China is unable to become more innovative or develop home-grown technologies, then the jobs that move offshore won’t be replaced by anything,” says Andrew Polk, a Beijing-based economist for the Conference Board, a research group for big American and European companies.
China continues to be the developing world’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment, attracting $112 billion last year. But that was down 3.7% from a year earlier. And exports still are rising in the double-digit percentages. Growth is slowing.”
via China Manufacturers Survive by Moving to Asian Neighbors – WSJ.com.
Related articles
- * Toy Maker Brings K’Nex Production Back to U.S. (chindia-alert.org)
- * Behind China’s Switch to High-End Exports (chindia-alert.org)
- Made in China: The Case for and Against (makezine.com)
01/05/2013
* China Grapples With Labor Shortage as Workers Shun Factories
The government’s plan to shift the economy from manufacturing and export to services and internal consumption may be a step in the right direction to re-balance the economy – see https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/19/chinas-growth-the-making-of-an-economic-superpower-dr-linda-yueh/. But only if the move doesn’t “hollow out” manufacturing and export as a result. Otherwise, China will be treading a path Western nations have trod and are still treading to one of slow growth and increasing debt.
WSJ:
Second in a Series: China’s Changing Work Force
“For 15 years, Cui Haifeng worked in China’s manufacturing industry, stitching together leather to make soccer balls before working her way up to warehouse manager at a wood-flooring factory.
A young woman stands in the street as a hostess and advertisement for a hotpot restaurant in the shopping district Dongman in Shenzhen.
Last month the coal miner’s daughter traded a past of factory uniforms for a blouse and skirt, training as a customer-service representative for a life insurer in Guangzhou, southern China’s largest city.
The insurance industry “provides a more promising future and flexible working hours,” says Ms. Cui, 34 years old, who grew up in central China’s poor Henan province. “I want to earn more money to give my two kids a better and stable living environment.”
Her experience mirrors a transition sweeping China. This year, service-related positions—such as those in retail, travel and leisure—for the first time will account for more of the country’s gross domestic product than industrial-sector jobs, J.P. Morgan Chase JPM -1.90% predicts. Government figures show that the service sector created 37 million new jobs in the past five years, compared with 29 million in the industrial sector, which includes manufacturing, construction and mining.
Growing competition between the service and industrial sector for migrant workers like Ms. Cui is contributing to China’s tightest labor market in years, putting upward pressure on wages that already are rising in the double digits annually. That is leading apparel manufacturers to shift some production out of China, although concerns about worker safety in countries such as Bangladesh are forcing factory owners to consider the risks of doing so.
Demand for urban workers in China exceeded supply by a record amount in the first quarter, according to the government. Meanwhile, the average monthly income for migrant workers rose 12.1% from a year earlier.
“There is no let up in the labor shortage,” says Kelvin Lau, a senior economist Standard Chartered Bank. Manufacturers “are realizing that this is not a cyclical thing. It’s not about riding out a storm.”
In southern China’s industry-heavy Pearl River Delta region, nearly 90% of factory owners surveyed by Standard Chartered say the labor shortage will remain the same or get more severe this year.
Stronger growth for service-sector jobs signals that the government’s long-promised transition from an industrial economy focused on exports to one led by domestic demand is under way. Creating jobs in hair salons and insurance companies, instead of in steel mills and soccer-ball factories, helps fuel growth in the world’s second-largest economy.”
via China Grapples With Labor Shortage as Workers Shun Factories – WSJ.com.
Related articles
- * Where Have China’s Workers Gone? (chindia-alert.org)
- Labor shortage eroding China’s edge (fresnobee.com)
- The real cause and impact of China’s labour shortage (chindia-alert.org)
- Foxconn Plant in Peanut Field Shows Labor Eroding China’s Edge – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
- A Turning Tide? Why More Chinese Migrant Workers Are Saying ‘Goodbye’ to First-Tier Cities (tealeafnation.com)
- * Wages Rising in Chinese Factories? Only For Some (chindia-alert.org)
30/04/2013
* Author Sam Geall on China’s Green Awakening
BusinessWeek: “Most of the headlines about China’s environment involve victims and villains. On one side are the regular people suffering from exposure to toxic rivers and contaminated food; on the other, greedy factory owners and recalcitrant officials. Not visible in that black-and-white picture are China’s emerging ranks of environmental activists—some full-time nongovernmental organization workers and others simply volunteers responding ad hoc to threats to their health and livelihood. China’s first environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, was allowed to legally register in 1994, and since then thousands more have followed in its footsteps.
A new book edited by Oxford University lecturer Sam Geall, China and the Environment: The Green Revolution, traces the evolution of green activism in China. Geall is also executive editor of the online magazine ChinaDialogue.net. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, he shared his perspective on civil society in an authoritarian country—and how technology changes the picture.
Who are China’s environmentalists? How would you characterize today’s green advocates?
Journalists and broadcasters founded many of China’s most prominent green NGOs—after all, they witnessed the scale of the unfolding environmental crisis. China actually has a long history of civil society, which was suppressed during the Mao era. But the past 20 years have seen a flourishing of green NGOs. Now there are thousands registered, and many more unregistered. Today all sorts of people get involved in China’s environmental campaigns, from university students and middle-class urban residents protesting against the construction of polluting petrochemical factories or incinerators, to villagers in the countryside angry about pollution ruining their crops and their health.”
via Q&A: Author Sam Geall on China’s Green Awakening – Businessweek.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/
30/04/2013
* Experts baffled by China-India border stand-off amid improving ties
SCMP: “It’s more than 5,000 metres above sea level, cold, inhospitable, uninhabited, with hardly any vegetation or wildlife in sight. Welcome to the icy desert wastelands of Daulat Beg Oldi, a forgotten pit stop on the Silk Road catapulted to overnight geopolitical fame as two nuclear neighbours vie for its possession in a dangerous game of tactical brinkmanship.
For two weeks now, Chinese and Indian soldiers have been standing eyeball to eyeball, barely 100 metres apart, at this easternmost point of the Karakoram Range on the western sector of the China-India border.
Both sides claim the land as their own in an unusually public show of mutual defiance that threatens to unhinge some of their newfound comity in an otherwise fraught relationship, and cast a shadow on Premier Li Keqiang‘s visit to India next month.
The trouble began when Indian media started reporting a “deep incursion” on April 15 in which a platoon of about 30 Chinese soldiers entered the Daulat Beg Oldi area in the Depsang Valley of eastern Ladakh in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Shrill media reports of Chinese incursions are not uncommon in India, where Sinophobia has been wired deep into the national psyche since a drubbing by China in a border war in 1962. Every time such reports appear, New Delhi’s stock response is that it’s a misunderstanding caused by “perceptual differences”. This time is no different.
A group of activists protest on Saturday against an alleged incursion two weeks ago by about 30 Chinese troops in the Daulat Beg Oldi area in eastern Ladakh of Indian-administered Kashmir. Photo: AP
India and China do not have a real border marked out on the ground as they never got around to negotiating one. What they follow is an undemarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC), but each side has its own perception of where that line actually lies. As a result, it is not uncommon for patrols to stray into each other’s territory. Years of painstaking talks have gone into creating an elaborate mechanism to prevent such transgressions from snowballing, keeping the peace for 25 years.
What is different this time is that none of the standard operating procedures that comprise this peace mechanism seem to be working. These procedures include waving banners to alert the other patrol if it is on the wrong side of the LAC, and meetings between local commanders. This time, two flag meetings have been held but the stalemate continues. New Delhi insists Chinese troops have entered 18 kilometres into Indian territory and must leave. Beijing maintains its soldiers are on the Chinese side of the LAC and won’t budge. And, in an alarming show of strength, both sides have dug in, pitching tents to strengthen their claims.
The confrontation has sent diplomats into overdrive to calm tempers before Li’s India visit as both sides have set much store by the trip. Bilateral trade, barely about US$3 billion in 2000 following decades of shutting each other out after the war, has now reached nearly US$80 billion, making China India’s largest trading partner. The aim is to reach US$100 billion by 2015, with both sides looking for greater access to each other’s markets. They are also increasingly working together in other areas, ranging from environment to energy security.
“Sino-Indian relations are developing very quickly. Li’s visit will be his first foreign trip after taking office, and is in a complete break with protocol, showing the importance China attaches to relations with India,” says Ma Jiali, an India expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing.
Li’s choice of India as his first port of call had created a burst of goodwill in India for its symbolism. Going by protocol, it was Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh‘s turn to visit Beijing this year to reciprocate for former premier Wen Jiabao‘s tour in 2011.”
via Experts baffled by China-India border stand-off amid improving ties | South China Morning Post.
Related articles
- https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/30/india-foreign-minister-salman-khurshid-to-visit-china/
- China – India Border Tensions Continue (warnewsupdates.blogspot.com)
- This time with feeling: India, China revisit border talks after troop incursion (paksinica.com)
- India asks China to revert to status quo in Ladakh (thehindu.com)
- Ladakh incursion: India and China face-off at the ‘Gate of Hell’ (chindia-alert.org)
- China flew military choppers over Depsang: Sources (ibnlive.in.com)
30/04/2013
* India foreign minister Salman Khurshid to visit China
BBC: “India’s Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid has said he will visit China in May amid tensions near the de facto border in the Himalayas.
Mr Khurshid’s trip comes ahead of a scheduled visit by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to India.
It comes at a time when India has asked China to withdraw troops it says have moved into a territory near the border.
China denies violating Indian territory. The two sides are holding talks to resolve the row.
“I believe we have a mutual interest and we should not destroy years of contribution we have put together,” Mr Khurshid was quoted by AFP news agency as telling reporters on the sidelines of a business event.
“I think it is a good thing that we are having a dialogue.”
Mr Khurshid said he would be visiting China on 9 May, ahead of Mr Li’s visit on 20 May for his first overseas trip, reports say.
India says Chinese troops erected a camp on its side of the ill-defined frontier in Ladakh region last week.
China has dismissed reports of the incursion as media speculation.
The two countries dispute several Himalayan border areas and fought a brief war in 1962. Tensions flare up from time to time.
They have held numerous rounds of border talks, but all have been unsuccessful so far.
The BBC’s Soutik Biswas in Delhi says there has not been a fatality in skirmishes along the undefined India-China boundary since 1967, but the memories of the crushing defeat inflicted by the Chinese on India in the 1962 war have not faded from the minds of some Indians.”
via BBC News – India foreign minister Salman Khurshid to visit China.
Related articles
30/04/2013
The American military is using Chinese satellites
This just shows how inter-linked are the affairs of China and America.
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- Chinese GPS Alternative Opens To Consumers (techweekeurope.co.uk)
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27/04/2013
* China’s retrieval of lost relics needs time
China Daily: “Two bronze animal heads looted from a Chinese royal garden 149 years ago will soon be returned to China, beaming in a ray of hope despite the difficulties the country faces in bringing its treasure trove of cultural relics home.
English: Looting_of_the_Yuan_Ming_Yuan_by Anglo-French forces in_1860 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The family heading French luxury goods retailer Pinault said on Friday in Beijing that it will donate the rat and rabbit busts back to China for free.
The Pinault family is the majority shareholder of PPR, whose brands include Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Puma, and Pinault Group Chairman and CEO Francois-Henri Pinault has just concluded a two-day visit to China with French President Francois Hollande.
Cao Yuming, director of the administration office of the Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, from which the two pieces were looted, said the move should encourage the return of more Chinese relics.
Cao described the planned donation as “an observation of international convention, a token of friendship and conducive to bringing more relics home.”
He also said an exhibition of the two pieces is likely to be held in the Yuanmingyuan once approved by the state cultural relics authorities.
The busts were among 12 animal head sculptures that formed the zodiacal water clock decorating the Calm Sea of Yuanmingyuan of Emperor Qianlong(1736-1795).
They were taken by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.
But the two became the center of an international tug-of-war when they were auctioned for $39.6 million in Paris in 2009.
China has repeatedly opposed this auction. A Chinese businessman made the winning bid and then refused to pay on the grounds that the heads belong to his native country.
Five of the 12 bronze animal fountain heads in Yuanmingyuan have returned thus far, and the Pinault donation will take the number to seven. But the whereabouts of the five others remains unknown.
China, along with other countries to have lost cultural relics, is making efforts to repatriate such prized possessions, a drive which has generally received a positive response and support from the international community.
But more efforts are needed. UNESCO believes there are at least 17 million Chinese cultural relics abroad, far exceeding the number in the country’s own museums.”
via China’s retrieval of lost relics needs time |Society |chinadaily.com.cn.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/historical-perspectives/
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