Posts tagged ‘Tibet’

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26/06/2014

Two major generals detained as graft probes widen in Sichuan | South China Morning Post

Two Chinese major generals that have connections with Sichuan have been detained for a graft investigation, according to two separate sources.

yewanyong.jpg

Both People’s Liberation Army officers were taken into custody in May, the sources close to the military said.

One of those held was retired Ye Wanyong, a former commissar of the Sichuan military region. Ye, in his 60s, was removed yesterday from his position as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the nation’s top political advisory body. But the reason was not specified by the CPPCC.

Ye’s house was searched by the authorities, according to the sources.

The other, Wei Jin, 55, is a vice-commissar of the Tibet military region, a post he was promoted to in 2011. He has held senior military posts in the southwest province of Sichuan, including as senior army propaganda officer in Chengdu, the province’s capital.

The latest investigation into Ye and Wei is also believed to be part of the wider anti-corruption campaign in the PLA. President Xi Jinping, who also leads the military as chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), has repeatedly vowed to clean up the beleaguered military.

Ye left the military in January after reaching the retirement age of 60. He has served in the Sichuan military region since 2006.

His early military career started in Tibet, Sichuan’s neighbour in the west, but most of the time Ye served in liaison offices in Sichuan.

via Two major generals detained as graft probes widen in Sichuan | South China Morning Post.

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21/05/2014

Tibet on track to become global tourist attraction[1]- Chinadaily.com.cn

Tourism increased in the Tibet autonomous region in the first four months of the year, as the region aspires to become a world-class travel destination.

Tibet on track to become global tourist attraction

The region had more than 830,000 tourists from January through April, a year-on-year increase of 23.4 percent, the regional tourism bureau said on Tuesday.

Foreign tourists numbered 20,000, an increase of 10.3 percent, and the number of domestic tourists was 810,000, an increase of 23.8 percent.

Meanwhile, the revenue generated by the tourism industry was 926 million yuan ($148.4 million), an increase of 26.2 percent, it said.

Karral Millar, 62, an Australian tourist, said she had a good time in Tibet.

“It’s wonderful. It’s been three days now. We have visited the Potala Palace and many temples, and we are learning new things about Tibetan Buddhism and history,” Millar said on Tuesday.

Cycling has become a popular way to tour the region in recent years, as many tourists want to have close contact with the natural scenery and culture of Tibet.

“It’s my second time in Tibet. I am absolutely impressed with the natural scenery and unique culture. I feel as if I am at home here,” said Liu Xiaojun, from Hebei province.

“I am also overwhelmed with the hospitality and politeness of the local people,” said Liu, adding that he plans to make a bicycle tour to Zhangmu Port in Tibet’s Xigaze prefecture.

Many businesses near the scenic spots in Lhasa see the coming of summer peak season as a harvest.

“Compared with the same period last year, we had more guests this year. We have 62 rooms, and more than half are booked every day,” said India, 41, a receptionist at the Kyichu Hotel, a Nepalese hotel in Lhasa.

Tibet received more than 12 million tourists from home and abroad lastar.

The region hopes to have 15 million tourists this year.

via Tibet on track to become global tourist attraction[1]- Chinadaily.com.cn.

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04/03/2014

Is China Siding With Putin in the Ukraine Crisis? – Businessweek

China’s leaders are struggling to come up with a comprehensible position on the crisis in Ukraine. The Chinese might naturally sympathize with Vladimir Putin, someone willing to stick it to Western leaders such as President Obama. However, China has long opposed actions that smack of interference in other countries’ internal affairs, in part to keep outsiders away from such sensitive issues as Tibet and Chinese dissidents.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi

So for now, the government’s solution seems to be simple: obfuscate. The Chinese and Russian foreign ministers spoke by telephone today, and while Russia’s Sergei Lavrov said afterwards that the two countries are in agreement about the crisis, China’s official spokesman shied away from taking a stand.

First, the Russian take: According to the Voice of America, Putin’s foreign ministry said today, “Russia and China have coinciding views on the situation in Ukraine.”

via Is China Siding With Putin in the Ukraine Crisis? – Businessweek.

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11/02/2014

Spanish judge issues arrest warrants for China’s former President, PM – CNN.com

A Spanish judge issued international arrest warrants Monday for China’s former President Jiang Zemin and former Prime Minister Li Peng for alleged genocide against the people of Tibet, Spain’s National Court in Madrid said.

[File photo] Former President of China Jiang Zemin (left) and former PM Li Peng in Beijing on 17 March (year unknown).

The warrants against them and three other senior Chinese officials are the latest chapter in a long-running lawsuit by pro-Tibetan groups and a dual Tibetan-Spanish citizen who seek international legal action against some Chinese officials.

Judge Ismael Moreno issued the arrest warrants for alleged “genocide, torture and crimes against humanity,” and ordered them to be sent to Interpol, the international police agency, according to a copy of the order viewed by CNN.

The former officials will surely not be arrested in China, but there’s a “medium chance” of them being arrested if they go abroad, “depending on the country and its ethics,” said Alan Cantos, president of the Barcelona-based Tibet Support Committee.

Cantos expressed satisfaction with the judge’s order, which his group has been pushing with its co-plaintiffs: the House of Tibet Foundation and Thubten Wangchen Sherpa Sherpa, a Tibetan who has lived in Spain for about 20 years and has Spanish citizenship.

“It shows that justice after all works, against all odds. If you let justice work, victims can have retribution,” Cantos said.

via Spanish judge issues arrest warrants for China’s former President, PM – CNN.com.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/10/23/spain-probes-hu-jintao-genocide-in-tibet-court-case-bbc-news/

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07/02/2014

Internal trade: It’s a continent, actually | The Economist

China’s external imbalances are as nothing compared with its internal ones

Feb 8th 2014 | HONG KONG AND YINCHUAN | From the print edition

NINGXIA, an autonomous region in China’s north-west, is home to 6.3m people. About a third of them are Muslims, descendants of travellers along the Silk Road. The region is keen to revive the kind of trade networks that created its unique ethnic mix, so that it can diversify an economy which relies too much on coal, metals and chemicals.

In that regard Ningxia is hoping to sell nutritious goji berries to people worried about their bodies, certified halal foods to Muslims worried about their souls, and fine red wines to people relaxed about both. If these schemes succeed, they will help Ningxia to close its big trade gap with the rest of the world—and the rest of the country.

China trades more goods across its international borders than any other country. Its provinces also trade a lot with each other, but this trade is far from balanced. If each of China’s provinces were treated as an independent economy, they would record enormous trade deficits and surpluses with the rest of the country and the world (see chart).

The biggest deficit, in absolute terms, in 2012 was recorded by the central province of Henan, out of which China’s civilisation sprang and into which flowed goods and services worth a net 580 billion yuan ($96 billion). In relative terms, however, the widest deficits appear in China’s western provinces. Ningxia’s deficit amounted to almost 40% of its GDP, bigger than the current-account deficit of any actual country. Even wider trade gaps were recorded in Qinghai, Yunnan and Tibet.

These deficits reflect the government’s “Go West” campaign, an effort to invest in the infrastructure of the west. Net “imports” from the rest of China and beyond allow poor provinces to spend more on consumption and investment than they earn. Ningxia’s investment rate was 89% of GDP in 2012. In Tibet, the “roof of the world”, the investment rate was through the ceiling at 101% of GDP.

Signs of investment are everywhere in Ningxia’s capital, Yinchuan. Foreign firms are helping to build a posh hotel and mall, shaped like a flying dragon, which will attract international brands. But not everything is imported. The coal, piled around the dormitories where the labourers live and cook, is local.

via Internal trade: It’s a continent, actually | The Economist.

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23/10/2013

Spain probes Hu Jintao ‘genocide’ in Tibet court case – BBC News

Spain’s top criminal court has decided to hear a case brought by Tibetan rights activists who allege that China’s former President Hu Jintao committed genocide in Tibet.

Hu Jintao, 27 Sep 10

Judges ruled that they were competent to handle the case because one of the activists, Tibetan monk Thubten Wangchen, is a Spanish citizen.

Hu Jintao was the Communist Party leader in Tibet in 1988-1992, when Chinese troops quelled mass protests.

China imposed martial law in Tibet.

The remote mountainous territory is an autonomous region ruled by Beijing.

In their lawsuit against Hu Jintao the Madrid-based Tibetan Support Committee allege that as Communist leader in the region he was ultimately responsible for actions “aimed at eliminating the uniqueness and existence of Tibet as a country, imposing martial law, carrying out forced deportations, mass sterilisation campaigns, torture of dissidents”.

The Spanish legal system recognises the universal justice principle, under which genocide suspects can be put on trial outside their home country. But for Spain to hold the trial there is a requirement that at least one victim of alleged genocide must be a Spanish citizen.

Beijing claims a centuries-old sovereignty over Tibet, but many Tibetans remain loyal to the exiled Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. He is seen by his followers as a living god, but by China as a separatist threat.

Genocide, the gravest crime against humanity, is understood to mean actions aimed at the mass extermination of a whole group of people.

via BBC News – Spain probes Hu Jintao ‘genocide’ in Tibet court case.

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23/10/2013

Swelling lakes in Hol Xil pose railway threat – Xinhua

Swelling lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a notable sign of global warming, are threatening the safety of the world\’s highest railway, according to climate and ecological experts.

One flooded lake is now only 8 km away from a section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway in the depopulated area of Hol Xil Nature Reserve, according to the latest satellite monitoring by the Qinghai Provincial Academy of Meteorological Sciences.

Liu Baokang, engineer with the academy\’s remote-sensing and ecological evaluation center, said several lakes in the nature reserve have been overflowing since 2011 after receiving an increasing volume of melted snow from glaciers on the plateau, known as the \”roof of the world.\”

Liu said the center\’s research shows that the lakes have become a threat to the railway\’s roadbed and roads on the Qinghai-Tibet Highway as well as important oil pipelines, cables and power facilities that run through the region.

Sitting 4,600 meters above sea level, the 45,000 square km Hol Xil nature reserve is China\’s largest unpopulated area and is home to wild yaks and endangered Tibetan antelope.

Major lakes in the reserve, namely Zhuonai Lake, Qusay Lake and a salt lake, are all holding water at historically high levels.

Following a dyke breach in 2011, water has flowed from Zhuonai Lake and fed into Qusay Lake. The latter\’s overflow has resulted in swelling of the salt lake downstream, which has more than tripled its 2011 size, endangering the rail line.

Wang Xinwen, a spokesman with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Co., said the company has \”prepared a comprehensive set of contingency plans to cope with an emergency.\” But he declined to give details of measures to be taken if the rail track were to become submerged in lake water.

Wang affirmed that, so far, no harm to the railway\’s foundation from the flooding lake has been monitored.

The railway boasts a length of 1,956 km at an altitude of over 4,000 meters, connecting northwest China\’s Qinghai Province and Lhasa, capital of southwest China\’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

Data from the provincial weather bureau showed that temperatures in the Hol Xil region rose by an average of 0.38 degrees Celsius every ten years.

\”Rising temperatures have accelerated the melting of glaciers. Increased precipitation in the region has also contributed to the expanding lakes,\” said Liu.

He said lake flooding has also triggered changes in the landscape.

Rangers patrolling the region this year discovered that a gorge, which appeared after the 2011 dyke breach on Zhuonai Lake, is blocking the migration route of a herd of about 3,000 Tibetan antelope. The animal has lately grown accustomed to giving birth by the lakeside instead of travelling to its traditional pasture for breeding, which has affected vegetation in the area as the antelopes graze on nearby plants.

\”This has accelerated desertification by the lakeside,\” said Zhao Xinlu, director of the Zhuonai Lake Conservation Station.

The provincial government has organized meteorological, hydrological and environmental protection experts to closely monitor flooding on the lakes.

via Swelling lakes in Hol Xil pose railway threat – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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16/09/2013

China opens world’s highest civilian airport

Reuters: “China opened the world’s highest civilian airport on Monday, in a restive and remote Tibetan region of southwestern Sichuan province, which will cut journey times from the provincial capital from two days to a little more than one hour.

Local Tibetans wave hada, or traditional silk scarves, as they greet the first group of passengers who landed at Daocheng Yading Airport in Daocheng county of Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province September 16, 2013. The airport, at 4,411 metres (14,472 feet) above sea level, surpassed the Qamdo Bangda Airport which has an altitude of 4,334 metres (14,219 feet), and became the highest airport in the world after its inauguration on Monday, according to local media. REUTERS/China Daily

Daocheng airport in Garzi, a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan, is 4,411 meters (14,472 feet) above sea level, and overtakes Qamdo airport in Tibet, which sits at 4,334 meters above sea level, for the title of world’s highest.

The official Xinhua news agency said flights would initially connect with Chengdu, the provincial capital, otherwise a two-day bus trip away. Flights to cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing will begin at a later date.

The 1.58 billion yuan ($258 million) airport, designed to handle 280,000 passengers a year, will help open up the nearby Yading Nature Reserve to tourism, Xinhua added, referring to an area renowned for its untouched natural beauty.

China has embarked upon a multi-billion-dollar program in recent years to revamp old airports and build new ones, especially in the remote west, as a way of boosting the economy.

Some of these airports have been located in Tibetan regions, whose population chafes at Chinese political control, and often have a dual military purpose so troops can be bought in quickly during periods of unrest.

Garzi has been the scene of numerous self-immolation protests against Chinese rule in the last three years or so and remains under tight security.”

via China opens world’s highest civilian airport | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/chinas-infrastructure/

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21/06/2013

Tibet policy: Bold new proposals

Finally some one with a new idea for Tibet. Hopefully some progress will be made.

The Economist: “FEW outside China think the Communist Party’s strategy for Tibet is working. A combination of economic development and political repression was meant to reconcile Tibetans to Chinese rule and wean them off their loyalty to the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader. Instead disaffection is still rife, especially among the young. And all across Tibetan areas of China, Tibetans still display the Dalai Lama’s portrait, sometimes openly. Since March 2011 more than 100 Tibetans—especially in Tibetan areas of provinces bordering what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)—have set themselves on fire. Most have done so in part to call for the Dalai Lama’s homecoming. An overwhelming security presence and the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence mean that the unrest is easily contained. Hence little has suggested that China’s leaders are concerned about the bleak implications for the future: that their rule in Tibet can be maintained only by the indefinite deployment of massive coercive force.

So for a Chinese scholar, Jin Wei, who is director of ethnic and religious studies at the Central Party School in Beijing, to call for a “creative” new approach is startling. For her to do so publicly, in an interview this month with a Hong Kong magazine, Asia Weekly, suggests that she has high-level backing. A report from a Beijing think-tank in 2009 challenged the official line that rioting in Tibet the year before was instigated from abroad. But Robert Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York, describes Ms Jin’s intervention as a sign that, after two decades, “debate has re-emerged within China about the government’s hard-line policies in Tibet”. Ms Jin even accused former party chiefs in Tibet of being “biased against the practice of religious affairs”. This, she said, “foreshadowed the accumulation of grievances today.”

Bold new proposals

One former party secretary in Tibet (from 1988-92) was Hu Jintao, who went on to head the party nationally for ten years until last November, when he gave way to Xi Jinping. Those who have forecast that Mr Xi might prove a bolder reformer than the cautious Mr Hu have so far seen little to back them up. Here, on Tibet, is at least a hint of a crack in the hardline consensus. Some have detected another in the appointment of Yu Zhengsheng to head the party’s main policy group on Tibet and Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region in the north-west. Mr Yu is the head of an advisory body designed to promote national unity. Previous heads of the group have been security specialists.

This is new

Ms Jin’s analysis, though couched in the terminology of party orthodoxy, is similar to that of many foreign observers. She argues that, by demonising the Dalai Lama, and viewing any expression of Tibetan culture as potentially subversive, the party has turned even those Tibetans sympathetic to its aims against it. The struggle has evolved from “a contradiction between the central government and the Dalai Lama separatist clique into an ethnic conflict between Han Chinese and Tibetans”.

She is not advocating a new soft approach to “political” issues, such as the Dalai Lama’s call for greater autonomy for Tibet and Tibetans’ hankering after a “greater Tibet”—ie, within its historic borders, beyond the TAR. But in fact, most protests in Tibet are not about “politics”, defined like this. Many have been sparked by anger at Chinese repression—of Tibetan culture, language and tradition, or of individual protesters. It is a vicious circle, made worse by anger at the large-scale immigration into Tibet of Han Chinese.

Ms Jin has ideas on how to break the impasse. Talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives, stalled since the most recent of nine fruitless rounds in 2010, should resume, she says. They should concentrate on “easy” issues first, setting contentious debate about Tibet’s status to one side for now. China should consider inviting the Dalai Lama to visit one of its semi-autonomous cities, Hong Kong or Macau, and eventually allowing him back to Tibet. It should also try to defuse the crisis his death will bring by agreeing with him on a chosen reincarnation from inside China’s borders. Otherwise, China risks having to deal with two incarnations: one it endorses and one in exile who is more likely to be revered by most Tibetans.”

via Tibet policy: Bold new proposals | The Economist.

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14/04/2013

* China Makes Inroads in Nepal, Stemming Tibetan Presence

NY Times: “The wind-scoured desert valley here, just south of Tibet, was once a famed transit point for the Tibetan yak caravans laden with salt that lumbered over the icy ramparts of the Himalayas. In the 1960s, it became a base for Tibetan guerrillas trained by the C.I.A. to attack Chinese troops occupying their homeland.

Prayer wheels at a temple in the Mustang area of Nepal. The Chinese are trying to restrain the flow of disaffected Tibetans fleeing to Nepal and to enlist the help of the Nepalese authorities.

These days, it is the Chinese who are showing up in this far tip of the Buddhist kingdom of Mustang, northwest of Katmandu, Nepal. Chinese officials are seeking to stem the flow of disaffected Tibetans fleeing to Nepal and to enlist the help of the Nepalese authorities in cracking down on the political activities of the 20,000 Tibetans already here.

China is exerting its influence across Nepal in a variety of ways, mostly involving financial incentives. In Mustang, China is providing $50,000 in annual food aid and sending military officials across the border to discuss with local Nepalese what the ceremonial prince of Mustang calls “border security.”

Their efforts across the country have borne fruit. The Nepalese police regularly detain Tibetans during anti-China protests in Katmandu, and they have even curbed celebrations of the birthday of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, according to Tibetans living in Nepal.

via China Makes Inroads in Nepal, Stemming Tibetan Presence – NYTimes.com.

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