Nobel Peace Prize | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

16/12/2016

China upset as Dalai Lama meets President Pranab Mukherjee | Reuters

China expressed dissatisfaction on Friday after exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama met President Pranab Mukherjee, saying it hoped India would recognise the Nobel Peace Prize winning monk as a separatist in religious guise.

Mukherjee hosted the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Peace laureates at a conference on children’s rights at the presidential palace on Sunday.

Those who attended, and spoke, included Princess Charlene of Monaco and the former president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta.

The Indian government had ignored China’s “strong opposition and insisted” on arranging for the Dalai Lama to share the stage with Mukherjee, and meet him, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing in the Chinese capital.

“China is strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed to this,” he said, adding that the Dalai Lama used the guise of religion to engage in separatist activities and China opposed any form of official contacts with him.China wanted India to recognise the “anti-China, separatist essence of the Dalai Lama clique and take steps to banish the negative impact of this incident” to avoid disrupting ties between the Asian giants, Geng said.

While the Dalai Lama has had private meetings with Indian leaders, Sunday’s conference was the first public event, said the political head of the Tibetan government in exile based in the hill town of Dharamsala.

“There are many European governments shying away from hosting His Holiness,” he told Reuters. “Here you have the president of India hosting His Holiness. I think is a powerful message to the world, and particularly to Beijing.”

China regards the Dalai Lama as a separatist, though he says he merely seeks genuine autonomy for his Himalayan homeland Tibet, which Communist Chinese troops “peacefully liberated” in 1950.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

China also expressed displeasure with India this month over the visit to a sensitive border region of another senior Tibetan religious figure, the Karmapa Lama, Tibetan Buddhism‘s third-most-senior monk, who fled into exile in India in 2000.India is home to a large exiled Tibetan community.

Source: China upset as Dalai Lama meets President Pranab Mukherjee | Reuters

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Foreign invasion, History, India alert, Neighbour conflict, Politics, self determination, Tibet | 1 Comment »

Tags: -elect, Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Paris Peace Accords

15/12/2016

Trump and China: 5 Views From Beijing – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Stephen Sestanovich, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama.” He is on Twitter: @SSestanovich.

When the Chinese Foreign Ministry expresses “serious concern” about things Donald Trump has said about Taiwan—and a party-controlled newspaper calls him “as ignorant as a child”—it’s clear that Beijing is alarmed. Yet after spending last week in China, I came away struck by the overall complacency of Chinese attitudes toward the president-elect. From officials (and former officials), entrepreneurs, journalists, NGO leaders, and think-tankers, I heard five different reasons for not worrying too much about how Mr. Trump could affect U.S.-China relations.

1. China is powerful.

Sure, a new administration might want to rethink the relationship between Beijing and Washington, but that can’t be the end of the story, I heard. China has so many ways to push back. Soon enough the Americans would come to their senses.

2. The U.S. is constrained.

Standing up to China is expensive, I was reminded. As one former trade official told me, “America may decide it wants to patrol the South China Sea more often, but that costs money.” (I pointed out to people I talked to that Mr. Trump was committed to a big increase in the Pentagon budget—but everyone knows there are a lot of claims on those dollars, and many would have no impact on China.)

3. Businessmen are practical people.

China’s economic surge, now more than three decades old, was premised on an abandonment of ideology. As a successful businessman, Mr. Trump—I was told—must be a pragmatist at heart. One journalist I talked to thought it might help the president-elect to cultivate a Nixon-style “mad man” reputation, but most of my interlocutors seemed confident this was all for show.

4. Bureaucratic and interest-group politics.

The Chinese have seen previous presidents campaign on anti-Chinese themes only to abandon them in office. Why, they ask, does this happen? Their answer: the institutions of the U.S. government know how to bury new ideas. Someone like Mr. Trump, with no prior experience in Washington, will find it difficult to ignore Congress and the federal bureaucracy.

5. Habit and mutual benefit.

Chinese of all outlooks believe that, in the 45 years since Henry Kissinger first visited Beijing, a relationship has been created from which both sides derive obvious benefits. “Win-win” seems to be a favorite buzz phrase in China, and the idea that it would be questioned evokes a certain incredulity.The status quo has a powerful hold on people’s imaginations everywhere. Still, the Chinese assumption of policy continuity—after everything that has happened this year!—was a surprise for me. I told the people I spoke to that Mr. Trump had convinced many voters that he is determined to scrap outmoded policies. One person, who knows the U.S. well, had an interesting response: “You mean ‘win-win’ could be one of them?”

Source: Trump and China: 5 Views From Beijing – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Posted in China alert, Economics, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: -elect, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, hillary clinton, History of the United States, Mitt Romney, National Security Advisor (United States), Nobel Peace Prize

11/05/2014

Chinese elite push for release of jailed Nobel laureate | Reuters

A group of “princelings“, children of China’s political elite, has quietly urged the Communist Party leadership to release jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo on parole to improve the country’s international image, two sources said.

Workers prepare the Nobel Peace Prize laureate exhibition ''I Have No Enemies'' for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo December 9, 2010. REUTERS/Toby Melville

Liu‘s release is not high on the agenda of the party, which is trying to push through painful economic, judicial and military reforms amid the most extensive crackdown on corruption in over six decades, the sources with ties to the leadership said, requesting anonymity.

But the back channel push for Liu’s parole shows that a debate is taking place among leaders about damage to China’s reputation caused by his jailing. It also suggests the ruling elite are not monolithic when it comes to views on dissent.

Liu, 58, a veteran dissident involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests crushed by the army, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 on subversion charges for organizing a petition urging an end to one-party rule. He won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.

“For many princelings, the pros of freeing Liu Xiaobo outweigh the cons,” one of the sources said. “Liu Xiaobo will definitely be freed early. The question is when.”

He is eligible for parole after serving half his term.

via Chinese elite push for release of jailed Nobel laureate | Reuters.