FRIENDS OF CHINA

GHANA HAILS SINO-AFRICAN STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

2012-02-01T11:38:00.001-08:00

[Ghanaian and African revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah with Chinese revolutionary, Mao]

Interview: Ghanaian official hail Africa-China relations

ACCRA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- A senior Ghanaian official has hailed the friendship between African countries and China, saying that the relations had brought benefit to the whole African continent.

In an interview with Xinhua here on Monday, Martha Pobee, Director for Information and Public Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, said that the huge headquarters of the African Union (AU), donated by the Chinese government, showed that the ties between Ghana and China since the west African nation attained independence in 1957 had inured to the benefit of, not only Ghana, but the whole continent.

"China's role in African development today is not coincidental, nor is it coincidental that they have built the AU building with the bust of Kwame Nkrumah (the first president of independent Ghana) in the foreground, but a relationship that has been nurtured over a long time," Pobee explained.

Pobee and many other high profile Ghanaians have expressed joy for the AU to honor Ghana's founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, with a bust at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

African leaders, including Ghanaian President John Evans Atta Mills and the chairman of the AU Commission Jean Ping, unveiled a huge bronze bust of Nkrumah at the courtyard of the magnificent AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital last Saturday.

It was extremely welcome news for the country, Pobee said, adding that "Ghana, and for that matter Nkrumah, championed the decolonization of Africa and also fought hard for continental unity, and our first president linked Ghana's independence to the total liberation of Africa and so the honor being done to him today is well in place".

WHY THE WEST WANT REGIME CHANGE IN RUSSIA

2012-01-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

Introduction

The following article is an good contribution in the understanding of why the Russian state under the leadership of Putin is such a target for attack, containment and ideally (for imperialism, that is) for regime change.

The old Soviet Union was probably the most important state for the movements for independence against imperialism, along with the People's Republic of China. The USSR funded, trained, educated many leading cadres of the anti-colonial and socialist movements across the world right until the last years of its existence in 1991.

The collapse of the Socialist Bloc and the related historic defeat of the world anti-imperialist revolution saw the west lose its head in celebrations, and we saw the rest of the 1990s as a victory march of the empire, with it expressing its world dominance with the concept of the 'New Word Order', and Iraq being crucified with the deaths of millions of Iraqi people and especially children, which in the words of yankee sec of state Albright said the deaths of millions of Iraqis was "worth it".

However, although the Socialist Bloc was smashed, in Russia the army and the intel services from the Soviet era maintained their control of the state, but the progressive socialist policies were lost with the defeat of the Communist Party. However, the CP of the Russian Federation led by Zyuganov remains the second biggest political party in Russia, and pushed for socialist policies and a more assertive anti-imperialist position that even Putin.

After the years under Russian president Yeltsin, the state assets of the old Soviet Union were all sold off with the resultant catastrophe in social conditions of the Russian masses.

Putin represents the more patriotic elements of the Russian elite, who believe in standing up against western hegemony, and in this position it has sucessfully fought off many aggressive moves of imperialism, most clearly illustrated in ostensibly defeating nato over the Georgian conflict in 2008, and turning off the gas to europe in Jan 2009, showing that it has the political will to confront and defeat empire in these battles.

The situation in Syria is also indicative of why imperialism wants the current Russian leadership smashed, it is well know throughout Syria and the wider world, that without Russian diplomatic and ultimately military support, Syria would now be subject to the war and trauma that befell Libya. All commentators state that Russia and China will not fall for the massive media and diplomatic swindle which was the lead up to the implementation of the "no fly zone" on Libya in early 2011.

Anti-imperialists call for the Russian leadership to increase its current support for the struggle of the Global South against western hegemony, and although one would like to see the leadership of Russia going to a political movement such as the CPRF with its more militant anti-imperialist position and progressive socialist policies, we must at the same time support anti-imperialist unity within Russia. In this regard relations between Putin and Zyuganov and the CPRF look quite cordial despite their differences. Finally, it is fundamentally important for anti-imperialists that in the interests of our peoples and countries of the Global South that Russia and China continue to develop its assertiveness in relation to empire.

Without Russia and China, imperialism would be ravaging a lot more countries across the world that it is currently doing.

Without Russia and China Syria would be destroyed.

Sukant Chanda - Sons of Malcolm/Friends of China

Regime Change in the Russian Federation?
Why Washington Wants ‘Finito’ with Vladimir Putin

By F. William Engdahl

[source]

Washington clearly wants ‘finito’ with Russia’s Putin as in basta! or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya--enough!. Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia’s prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why. Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower.

On December 8 several days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, “The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”[1]

Putin went on to claim that Clinton’s premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton’s comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated, became a “signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State.” [2]

Major western media chose either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement. A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of his country. In this case the country is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world’s second nuclear superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is playing with thermonuclear fire.
Democracy or something else?

No mistake, Putin is not a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch jobs after Russia’s March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as crass power politics and backroom deal-making. That being said, what Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution for American citizens[3] is posing as world supreme judge of others’ adherence to what they define as democracy.

Let’s examine closely Putin’s charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over the place inside Russia.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is financing an International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous “youth advocacy” and leadership workshops to “help youth engage in political activism.” In fact, officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs across Russia. Spending for 2011 won’t be published until later in 2012. [4]

The NED is also financing key parts of the Russian “independent” polling and election monitoring, a crucial part of being able to claim election fraud. They finance in part the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties “GOLOS.” According to the NED Annual Report the funds went “to carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections.”[5]

In September, 2011, a few weeks before the December elections the NED financed a Washington invitation-only conference featuring the Russian “independent” polling organization, the Levada Center. According to NED’s own website Levada, another recipient of NED money, [6] had done a series of opinion polls, a standard method used in the West to analyze the feelings of citizens. The polls profiled “the mood of the electorate in the run up to the Duma and presidential elections, perceptions of candidates and parties, and voter confidence in the system of ‘managed democracy’ that has been established over the last decade.”

One of the featured speakers at that Washington conference was Vladimir Kara-Murza, member of the federal council of Solidarnost (“Solidarity”), Russia’s democratic opposition movement. He is also “advisor to Duma opposition leader Boris Nemtsov” according to NED. Another speaker came from the right-wing neo-conservative Hudson Institute. [7]

Nemtsov, one of the most prominent figures of the Putin opposition today is also co-chairman of Solidarnost, a name curiously enough imitated from the Cold War days when the CIA financed the Polish Solidarnosc workers’ opposition of Lech Walesa. More on Nemtsov later.

And on December 15, 2011, again in Washington, just as the series of US-supported protests were being launched against Putin, led by Solidarnost and other organizations, the NED held another conference titled, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference? The featured speaker was Tamirlan Kurbanov, who according to the NED, “most recently served as a program officer at the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he was involved in developing and expanding the capacities of political and civic organizations; promoting citizen participation in public life, youth engagement in particular.” [8] The National Democratic Institute is an arm of the NED.

The Shady History of The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

Helping youth engage in political activism is precisely what the same NED did in Egypt over the past several years in the lead up to the toppling of Mubarak. The same NED was instrumental by informed accounts in the US-backed “Color Revolutions” in 2003-2004 in Ukraine and Georgia that brought US-backed pro-NATO surrogates to power. The same NED has been active in promoting “human rights” in Myanmar, in Tibet, and China’s oil-rich Xinjiang province. [9]

As careful analysts of the 2004 Ukraine “Orange revolution” and the numerous other US-financed color revolutions discovered, control of polling and ability to dominate international media perceptions, especially major TV such as CNN or BBC is an essential component of the Washington destabilization agenda. The Levada Center would likely be in a crucial position in this regard to issue polls showing discontent with the regime.

By their description, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, NED supports more than 1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.”[10]

It couldn’t sound more noble or high-minded. However, they prefer to leave out their own true history. In the early 1980’s CIA director Bill Casey convinced President Ronald Reagan to create a plausibly private NGO, the NED, to advance Washington’s global agenda via other means than direct CIA action. It was a part of the process of “privatizing” US intelligence to make their work more “effective.” Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington Post interview in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”[11] Interesting. The majority of funds for NED come from US taxpayers through Congress. It is in every way, shape and form a US Government intelligence community asset.

The NED was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized so as to allow it more freedom of action. NED board members are typically drawn from the Pentagon and US intelligence community. It has included retired NATO General Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of Serbia in 1999. Key figures linked to clandestine CIA actions who served on NED’s board have included Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, founder of the ultraconservative organization, Empower America, and campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush. Current NED chairman is John Bohn, former CEO of the controversial Moody’s rating agency which played a nefarious role in the still-unraveling US mortgage securities collapse. As well today’s NED board includes neo-conservative Bush-era ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad.[12]
Putin’s well-rehearsed opposition

It’s also instructive to look at the leading opposition figures who seem to have stepped forward in Russia in recent days. The current opposition “poster boy” favorite of Russian youth and especially western media is Russian blogger Alexei Navalny whose blog is titled LiveJournal. Navalny has featured prominently as a quasi-martyr of the protest movement after spending 15 days in Putin’s jail for partaking in a banned protest. At a large protest rally on Christmas Day December 25 in Moscow, Navalny, perhaps intoxicated by seeing too many romantic Sergei Eisenstein films of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told the crowd, “I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and the White House (Russia’s Presidential home-w.e.) right now...”[13]

Western establishment media is infatuated with Navalny. England’s BBC described Navalny as "arguably the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years," and US Time magazine called him "Russia's Erin Brockovich," a curious reference to the Hollywood film starring Julie Roberts as a researcher and legal activist. However, more relevant is the fact that Navalny went to the elite American East Coast Yale University, also home to the Bush family, where he was a “Yale World Fellow.” [14]

The charismatic Navalny however is also or has been on the payroll of Washington’s regime-destabilizing National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to a posting on Navalny’s own blog, LiveJournal, he was supported in 2007-2008 by the NED. [15] [16]

Along with Navalny, key actors in the anti-Putin protest movement are centered around Solidarnost which was created in December 2008 by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and others. Nemtsov is hardly one to protest corruption. According to Business Week Russia of September 23, 2007, Nemtsov introduced Russian banker Boris Brevnov to Gretchen Wilson, a US citizen and an employee of the International Finance Corporation, a financing arm of the World Bank. Wilson and Brevnov married. With the help of Nemtsov Wilson managed to privatize Balakhna Pulp and Paper mill at the giveaway price of just $7 million. The enterprise was sucked dry and then sold to the Wall Street-Swiss investment bank, CS First Boston bank. The annual turnover of the mill was reportedly $250 million. [17]

CS First Boston bank also paid for Nemtsov's trips to the very expensive Davos World Economic Forum. When Nemtsov became a member of the cabinet, his protégé Brevnov was appointed the chairman of the Unified Energy System of Russia JSC. Two years later in 2009 Boris Nemtsov, today’s “Mr anti-corruption,” used his influence reportedly to get Brevnov off the hook for charges of embezzling billions from assets of Unified Energy System. [18]

Nemtsov also took money from jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 1999 when the latter was using his billions to try to buy the Russian parliament or Duma. In 2004 Nemtsov met with exiled billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky in a secret gathering with other exiled Russian tycoons. When Nemtsov was detailed by Russian authorities for allegations of foreign funding of his new political party, “For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption,” US Senators John McCain and Joe Liberman and Mike Hammer of the Obama National Security Council came to support of Nemtsov. [19]

Nemtsov’s close crony, Vladimir Ryzhkov of Solidarnost is also closely tied to the Swiss Davos circles, even founding a Siberian Davos. According to Russian press accounts from April 2005, Ryzhkov formed a Committee 2008 in 2003 to “draw” funds of the imprisoned Khodorkovsky along with soliciting funds from fugitive oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and western foundations such as the Soros Foundation. The stated aim of the effort was to rally “democratic” forces against Putin. On May 23, 2011 Ryzhkov, Nemtzov and several others filed to register a new Party of Peoples’ Freedom to ostensibly field a presidential candidate against Putin in 2012.[20]

Another prominent face in the recent anti-Putin rallies is former world chess champion turned right-wing politician, Garry Kasparov, another founder of Solidarnost. Kasparov was identified several years ago as being a board member of a Washington neo-conservative military think-tank. In April 2007, Kasparov admitted he was a board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security Policy, a "non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security." Inside Russia Kasparov is more infamous for his earlier financial ties to Leonid Nevzlin, former Yukos vice-president and partner of Michael Khodorokvsky. Nevzlin fled to Israel on being charged in Russia on charges of murder and hiring contract killers to eliminate “objectionable people” while Yukos vice-president. [21]

In 2009 Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov met with no less than Barack Obama to discuss Russia’s opposition to Putin at the US President’s personal invitation at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel. Nemtsov had called for Obama to meet with opposition forces in Russia: “If the White House agrees to Putin’s suggestion to speak only with pro-Putin organizations... this will mean that Putin has won, but not only that: Putin will become be assured that Obama is weak,” he said. During the same 2009 US trip Nemtsov was invited to speak at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, perhaps the most influential US foreign policy think-tank. Significantly, not only has the US State Department and US-backed political NGOs such as NED poured millions into building an anti-Putin coalition inside Russia. The President personally has intervened into the process.[22]

Ryzhkov, Nemtzov, Navalty and Putin’s former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in organizing the December 25th Moscow Christmas anti-Putin rally which drew an estimated 120,000.[23]
Why Putin?

The salient question is why Putin at this point? We need not look far for the answer.

Washington and especially Barack Obama’s Administration don’t give a hoot about whether Russia is democratic or not. Their concern is the obstacle to Washington’s plans for Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet that a Putin Presidency will represent. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office in the Russian Federation. He will take direct control of defense and foreign policy.

We must ask what policy? Clearly strong countermeasures against the blatant NATO encirclement of Russia with Washington’s dangerous ballistic missile installations around Russia will be high on Putin’s agenda. Hillary Clinton’s “reset” will be in the dustbin if it is not already. We can also expect a more aggressive use of Russia’s energy card with pipeline diplomacy to deepen economic ties between European NATO members such as Germany, France and Italy, ultimately weakening the EU support for aggressive NATO measures against Russia. We can expect a deepening of Russia’s turn towards Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and perhaps India to firm up the shaky spine of resistance to Washington’s New World Order plans.

It will take more than a few demonstrations in sub-freezing weather in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a gaggle of corrupt or shady opposition figures such as Nemtsov or Kasparov to derail Russia. What is clear is that Washington is pushing on all fronts—Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, on China, now on Russia, and on the Eurozone countries led by Germany. It has the smell of an end-game attempt by a declining superpower.

The United States today is a de facto bankrupt nuclear superpower. The reserve currency role of the dollar is being challenged as never since Bretton Woods in 1944. That role along with maintaining the United States as the world’s unchallenged military power have been the basis of the American Century hegemony since 1945.

Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as reserve currency, China is now settling trade with Japan in bilateral currencies, side-stepping the dollar. Russia is implementing similar steps with her major trade partners. The primary reason Washington launched a full-scale currency war against the Euro in late 2009 was to preempt a growing threat that China and others would turn away from the dollar to the Euro as reserve currency. That is no small matter. In effect Washington finances its foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere through the fact that China and other trade surplus nations invest their surplus trade dollars in US government Treasury debt. Were that to shift significantly, US interest rates would rise substantially and the financial pressures on Washington would become immense.

Faced with growing erosion of her unchallenged global status as sole superpower, Washington appears now to be turning increasingly to raw military force to hold that. For that to succeed Russia must be neutralized along with China and Iran. This will be the prime agenda of whoever is next US President.

F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, He may be reached via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

Notes

[1] Alexei Druzhinin, Putin says US encouraging Russian opposition, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 8, 2011
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jonathan Turley, The NDAA's historic assault on American liberty, guardian.co.uk, 2 January 2012, accessed in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/ndaa-historic-assault-american-liberty.
[4] National Endowment for Democracy, Russia, from NED Annual Report 2010, Washington, DC, published in August 2011, accessed in http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/russia.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] NED, Elections in Russia: Polling and Perspectives, September 14, 2011, accessed in http://ned.org/events/elections-in-russia-polling-and-perspectives.
[8] NED, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference?, December 15, 2011, accessed in http://ned.org/events/youth-activism-in-russia-can-a-new-generation-make-a-difference.
[9] F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, 2010, edition. Engdahl press. The book describes in detail the origins of the NED and various US-sponsored “human rights” NGOs and how they have been used to topple regimes not friendly to a larger USA geopolitical agenda.
[10] National Endowment for Democracy, About Us, accessed in www.ned.org.
[11] David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September-6 October,1991, 24-25.
[12] F. William Engdahl, Op. Cit., p.50.
[13] Yulia Ponomareva, Navalny and Kudrin boost giant opposition rally, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 25, 2011.
[14] Yale University, Yale World Fellows: Alexey Navalny, 2010, accessed in http://www.yale.edu/worldfellows/fellows/navalny.html.
[15] Alexey Navalny, emails between Navalny and Conatser, accessed in Russian (English summary provided to the author by www.warandpeace.ru) on http://alansalbiev.livejournal.com/28124.html.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Business Week Russia, Boris Nemtsov: Co-chairman of Solidarnost political movement, Business Week Russia, September 23, 2007, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1648.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Russian Mafia.ru, Vladimir Ryzhkov: Co-chairman of the Party of People's Freedom, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1713.
[21] Russian Mafia.ru, Garry Kasparov: The leader of United Civil Front, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1518.
[22] The OtherRussia, Obama Will Meet With Russian Opposition, July 3, 2009, accessed in http://www.theotherrussia.org/2009/07/03/obama-will-meet-with-russian-opposition/.
[23] Yulia Ponomareva, op. Cit.

CHINA DEVELOP GAME WHEREBY LIBERATION ARMY CAN BATTLE YANKS

2012-01-11T11:52:00.001-08:00

About time our side developed their gaming to counter the neo-colonial violence in games like C.O.D - Sons of Malcolm/Friends of China

[source]

Recently, an office from China's Nanjing Military Region has finished developing a military game named Glorious Mission, which has China-owned property rights, jointly with Giant Interactive Group, Inc. (Wuxi).

Military games have been developed for years. They have formed a system and been put into use in education as well as training in some foreign armies. However, China's own development of military games is still in the primary steps.

Although some foreign military games have been used in some Chinese armies' daily training, they may not suit Chinese soldiers and even mislead them due to the different concepts of values and military thoughts.

The finished Glorious Mission with completely-independent China-owned property rights is not only full of Chinese characteristics but also brings China up to speed on military game development.

The Glorious Mission is set from a soldier's perspective and his barrack life. The game follows along as the soldier keeps promoting himself in training and finally qualifies to join a large-scale military exercise codenamed "Glorious Mission" and how he does in the military exercise.

The departments that invented the game are promoting the current game and looking forward to integrating more informationized and systematic concepts into it. And the promoted game software will be tried in some chosen armies.

By Wang Hanlu, People's Daily Online

SCOTLAND's INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT BUILDS CLOSER LINKS TO CHINA

2012-01-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang meets visiting Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond in Beijing on Dec 5

Scottish Nationalists growing close relationship to Communist China is unsurprising for a political movement in Scotland which has control of the Scottish national Assembly, and one which seeks independence from the oldest colonial entity on the planet - the 'United Kingdom'.

For any progressive nationalist movement in the world, developing good relations with the powerful nations of the Global South, especially China, is a necessity in a post-western-hegemonic world, as the west sees its finance-capitalist system descend into growing crises in the coming period.

The Nepalese Maoists, who are now politically leading Nepal, are another example of a small nation that cannot do without good relations with China, this is especially interesting as the Nepalese Maoists had until in recent years a hostile and dogmatic attitude to China.

Due to China's socialist state, China will continue to see development for its nation and people in a smoother trajectory than many other countries in the world, although there are definitely challenges that confront it, but like the recent Wukan case, China is able to traverse these challenges in the interest of people-centred development.

China will continue to be the most important component part of the rising Global South economically, politically and gradually militarily, and as a developing anti-imperialist country China is a sure partner for other nations wanting mutually beneficial relationship in economic development in a growing multi-polar world.

Sons of Malcolm wishes the Scottish people the very best in their struggle for independence from English colonialism, and for developing South-South relations in the world, Scottish moves for closer ties with China again shows that the national struggles of the Scots, Welsh and Irish are part of the struggle of the Global South for independence and social justice.

Sukant Chanda - Sons of Malcolm/Friends of China

Leader sees China links key to Scotland's future

[source]

"My third visit to China as first minister was an important one," says Salmond, Scotland's first minister since 2007.

Salmond's Scottish National Party's landslide victory at the Scottish elections in May has made the prospect of a referendum on full independence a very real possibility. It is of little surprise that he should be looking to strengthen Scottish ties elsewhere at this time.

"While our relations with China have strengthened in recent years I realize that, like any friendship, we must show continuing commitment," Salmond says.

Salmond also spoke at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee in Beijing, a rare privilege for foreign politicians.

By laying the groundwork now, Salmond is ensuring that should Scotland split from the UK, the country will have established independent relations with global superpowers such as China upon which to build.

These benefits were just one of several areas Salmond discussed with Vice-Premier Li Keqiang, in hope that Scotland and China can forge closer ties. It is hoped that the meeting will pave the way not only for major Chinese investment in Scotland, but also for an expansion of Scottish technical expertise into China.

"I was very pleased to meet Vice-Premier Li Keqiang again, to discuss areas for further Sino-Scot collaboration in areas such as healthcare and infrastructure. I also had a very positive discussion about major infrastructure projects in Scotland with the China Investment Corporation, which we will welcome to Scotland next year."

Infrastructure was central to the discussions, with hopes of developing a direct air link between Scotland and China in the coming years as a way of increasing bilateral exchanges.

"I am looking forward to the arrival of a senior Chinese aviation industry delegation in 2012 to explore a direct air link," Salmond says. "Our entire delegation - 'Team Scotland' - was warmly welcomed by all of our hosts and I can promise our visitors from China a very warm Scottish welcome in the coming months and years."

Of course it is not inconceivable that Salmond might be welcoming these Chinese visitors not only as head of the Scottish government, but as head of an independent Scotland a few years down the line.

By laying the groundwork now, Salmond is ensuring that should Scotland split from the UK, the country will have established independent relations with global superpowers such as China upon which to build.

"As Vice-Premier Li Keqiang remarked when I welcomed him to Edinburgh Castle in January, Scotland is a land of invention. Of course, so too is the great nation of China and it is by working together in areas of common advantage, experience and innovation that our two nations can most effectively provide solutions to wider global challenges.

"Of course, with such challenges, come opportunities and I am determined that Scotland, working with China, seizes those opportunities."

[source]

Edinburgh's engagement with Beijing, spanning educational and economic links, pays off.

Back in 2006, the Scottish government released a paper setting out a plan of action to ensure that Scotland responded to China's emergence on the global stage by strengthening ties to the mutual benefit of both nations.

Entitled "Scotland's strategy for stronger engagement with China", the blueprint highlighted key areas, including educational, economic and cultural links, to build bilateral relationships.

"The rise of China is changing the world," wrote Tom McCabe, then a member of the Scottish parliament, in the foreword to the document. "How we, in Scotland, respond to the opportunities and challenges that flow from this will be critical for our country's future."

CHINA MILITARY GENERAL COMMENTS ON RISING WAR MOVES FROM uSA

2012-01-10T06:56:00.001-08:00

Major General Luo Yuan

This is an interesting commentary from Major Gernal Luo Yuan of China's Peoples Liberation Army in the Liberation Army Daily. China clearly understands the military plans and strategies of imperialism, it has known ever since the revolution that led to the establishment of Communist China in 1949.

Especially interesting is the comments regarding the u.s imperialist strategy in the Asia Pacific region to develop its military presence, and develop relations with countries on the basis of militarily containing and aggressing China. The usa and uk's rapproachment with Myanmar is indeed in line with their regional strategy of trying to bring certain nations closer to their hegemony in order to isolate China. Major Luo Yuan states in the article below:

""We must be adept at maneuvering and use smart diplomacy, and the more friends we can make the better," he wrote.

"Some countries have been swindled by America, and now are walking alongside the United States out of their own interests, but in essence they don't fit together," said Luo. "They share the same bed but have different dreams.""

This is classic Chinese diplomatic strategy, the Chines realise that there is no real long term sense in any country building relations with imperialism due to imperialism economic and military decline historically, however the Chinese also realise that while imperialism is in historic decline, it is at the same time prepared to take humanity into war and trauma in a desperate attempt to maintain its domination.

Sukant Chandan - Sons of Malcolm/Friends of China

China top military paper warns U.S. aims to contain rise

[source]

The United States' new defense strategy focused on the Asia-Pacific region is directed at containing China's rise, the People's Liberation Army's newspaper said on Tuesday in Beijing's strongest warning yet against the new Pentagon stance.

The commentary in the Liberation Army Daily, however, also said China's sensible response to the U.S. military re-focus on Asia should be "vigilance" and smart diplomacy, not panic.

The United States is "laying out forces across the Asia-Pacific region in advance to contain the rise of China," said the commentary in the paper by Major General Luo Yuan.

Washington's assertions that the military re-focus announced last week is not directed at China are "simply making their real intent all the more obvious."

"Casting our eyes around we can see that the United States has been bolstering its five major military alliances in the Asia-Pacific region, and is adjusting the positioning of its five major military base clusters, while also seeking more entry rights for military bases around China," wrote Luo.

"Who can believe that you are not directing this at China? Isn't this the return of a Cold War mentality?"

Luo is well-known for his hawkish views, often published in popular Chinese newspapers and online. But the appearance of his commentary in the Liberation Army Daily, which is heavily vetted as the chief paper of the military, suggests that his latest comments enjoy some level of official endorsement.

On Monday, China's Ministry of Defense warned the United States to be "careful in its words and actions" after last week announcing the defense rethink that stresses responding to China's rise by shoring up U.S. alliances and bases across Asia.

The new U.S. strategy promises to boost strength in Asia in an attempt to counter China's growing ability to check U.S. power in the region, even as U.S. forces draw back elsewhere across the globe.

Under the new strategy, the United States will maintain large bases in Japan and South Korea and deploy U.S. Marines, navy ships and aircraft to Australia's Northern Territory.

The strategy also calls for countering potential attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

China has sought to balance voicing its wariness about the U.S. moves with its desire for steady relations with Washington, especially as both sides grapple with domestic politics this year, when President Barack Obama faces a re-election fight and China's ruling Communist Party undergoes a leadership handover.

Luo warned against panic.

Instead, Beijing must do a better job at courting friends in the region, charming countries away from the United States' orbit, he wrote.

"In the face of this adjustment in the U.S. strategic focus, we must possess a sense of peril and maintain a high degree of vigilance, but there is no need to be alarmed about the expected," wrote Luo.

"We must be adept at maneuvering and use smart diplomacy, and the more friends we can make the better," he wrote.

"Some countries have been swindled by America, and now are walking alongside the United States out of their own interests, but in essence they don't fit together," said Luo. "They share the same bed but have different dreams."

CHINA TELLS USA WAR MACHINE TO "BE CAREFUL IN WORDS & ACTIONS" OVER WAR MOVES AGAINST IT

2012-01-10T06:55:00.002-08:00

China warns US to be careful after Obama's defence strategy rethink

[source]

China's ministry of defence has warned the United States to be "careful in its words and actions" after it announced a defence rethink that stressed responding to China's rise by shoring up alliances and bases across Asia.

The statement from the ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was Beijing's fullest reaction so far to the new US strategy unveiled last week. It echoed the mixture of wariness and outward restraint that has marked China's response to the Obama administration's "pivot" to Asia since late last year.

"We have noted that the United States issued this guide to its defence strategy, and we will closely observe the impact that US military strategic adjustment has on the Asia-Pacific region and on global security developments," Geng said in a statement issued on the ministry's website.

"The accusations levelled at China by the US side in this document are totally baseless.

"We hope that the United States will flow with the tide of the era, and deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, will be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries."

The new US strategy promises to boost strength in Asia in an attempt to counter China's growing ability to check US power in the region, even as US forces draw back elsewhere across the globe.

Under the new strategy the US will maintain large bases in Japan and South Korea and deploy marines, navy ships and aircraft to Australia's Northern Territory.

The strategy calls for countering potential attempts by China and Iran to block US capabilities in areas such as the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

MAINSTREAM PRESS IN OVERDRIVE IN PUSHING WAR PROPAGANDA AGAINST CHINA & IRAN

2012-01-10T06:55:00.000-08:00

There are now countless western mainstream media reports talking up war with China, and this one is just one example of that.

Isnt it time serious anti-imperialists in the west, people who will assertively believe in eace and respect with the nations of the Global South to now put the defence of China, and building positive relations with the Chinese people and leadership as some of the foremost anti-war strategies, along with the defence of Syria and Iran?
Sukant Chandan - Sons of Malcolm/Friends of China

U.S. Defense Strategy Plan Focuses on Thwarting China, Iran

[source]

The U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines must combine resources to thwart any efforts by countries such as China and Iran to block America’s access to the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and other strategic regions, according to a draft of a Pentagon review.

...

The U.S. should be able to deter any emerging anti-access capabilities such as the diesel attack submarines being developed by China and the anti-ship ballistic missiles deployed by China and Iran, and if necessary, defeat them, said the administration official.

...

The review is expected to conclude that the U.S. no longer will engage in protracted large-scale stabilization operations, as it has in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it won’t have sufficient forces to fight two major conflicts at the same time, according to the official.

Rather, the U.S. will be able to fight in one major conflict and have the ability to deploy forces to deter another potential adversary from pursuing another major conflict, said the official.

...

“China sticks to the path of peaceful development and is always a force in maintaining regional and world peace,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a regular briefing in Beijing today in response to a question about the U.S. strategy. He said he had not seen the draft and that China and the U.S. must work together. “Cooperation is the only way,” he said.

While Chinese officials generally downplay offensive intentions, Iranians have threatened to use military force to block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in the event of an oil embargo or full conflict with the U.S. over its nuclear program.

...

The state-run Fars news agency yesterday cited the head of Iran’s army, Ataollah Salehi, as “warning” the U.S. not to return an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. Pentagon spokesman George Little said the deployment of ships in the region “will continue as it has for decades.”

[end]

CHINA SEES YANKEE SEA POWER THREAT AND PREPARES ACCORDINGLY

2012-01-10T06:54:00.000-08:00

[source]

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urged the navy to prepare for military combat, amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.

The navy should "accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for military combat in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security," he said.

Addressing the powerful Central Military Commission, Hu said: "Our work must closely encircle the main theme of national defence and military building."

His comments, which were posted in a statement on a government website, come as the United States and Beijing's neighbours have expressed concerns over its naval ambitions, particularly in the South China Sea.

Several Asian nations have competing claims over parts of the South China Sea, believed to encompass huge oil and gas reserves, while China claims it all. One-third of global seaborne trade passes through the region.

Vietnam and the Philippines have accused Chinese forces of increasing aggression there.

In a translation of Hu's comments, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the president as saying China's navy should "make extended preparations for warfare."

The Pentagon however downplayed Hu's speech, saying that Beijing had the right to develop its military, although it should do so transparently.

"They have a right to develop military capabilities and to plan, just as we do," said Pentagon spokesman George Little, but he added, "We have repeatedly called for transparency from the Chinese and that's part of the relationship we're continuing to build with the Chinese military."

"Nobody's looking for a scrap here," insisted another spokesman, Admiral John Kirby. "Certainly we wouldn't begrudge any other nation the opportunity, the right to develop naval forces to be ready.

"Our naval forces are ready and they'll stay ready."

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: "We want to see stronger military-to-military ties with China and we want to see greater transparency. That helps answer questions we might have about Chinese intentions."

Hu's announcement comes in the wake of trips to Asia by several senior US officials, including President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

US undersecretary of defence Michelle Flournoy is due to meet in Beijing with her Chinese counterparts on Wednesday for military-to-military talks.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month warned against interference by "external forces" in regional territorial disputes including those in the South China Sea.

And China said late last month it would conduct naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean, after Obama, who has dubbed himself America's first Pacific president, said the US would deploy up to 2,500 Marines to Australia.

China's People's Liberation Army, the largest military in the world, is primarily a land force, but its navy is playing an increasingly important role as Beijing grows more assertive about its territorial claims.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon warned that Beijing was increasingly focused on its naval power and had invested in high-tech weaponry that would extend its reach in the Pacific and beyond.

China's first aircraft carrier began its second sea trial last week after undergoing refurbishments and testing, the government said.

The 300-metre (990-foot) ship, a refitted former Soviet carrier, underwent five days of trials in August that sparked international concern about China's widening naval reach.

Beijing only confirmed this year that it was revamping the old Soviet ship and has repeatedly insisted that the carrier poses no threat to its neighbours and will be used mainly for training and research purposes.

But the August sea trials were met with concern from regional powers including Japan and the United States, which called on Beijing to explain why it needs an aircraft carrier.

China, which publicly announced around 50 separate naval exercises in the seas off its coast over the past two years -- usually after the event -- says its military is only focused on defending the country's territory.

PRO-EMPIRE TYPES DISCUSS WAR WITH CHINA

2012-01-10T06:52:00.001-08:00

CHINA STEPS UP THE THE CULTURAL BATTLE WITH EMPIRE

2012-01-10T06:51:00.000-08:00

Good to see the Pres Hu Jintao addressing this issue, perhaps the most important issue in the war of liberation against imperialism and empire's machinations to conquer the minds of especially our young people. The only way the Global South, including China, can win our youth to our side is by developing a more effective cultural front of struggle than the empire's.

Imperialism is using the internet and satellite channels such as Al-Jazeera as their vanguard in the attempt to colonise the minds of our youth, and they have been relatively successful doing this. We in the Global South will continue to lose this cultural battle if we do not develop effective cultural struggle to beat the empire, and go on the cultural offensive.

People should also remember, that historically Communist China has had a profound revolutionary cultural impact on the struggle of oppressed peoples in the 'west', especially the Black Liberation Movement, see HERE for more information on this.

Sukant Chandan - Sons of Malcolm/Friends of China

Chinese President Hu Jintao warns of cultural warfare from

[source]

Chinese President Hu Jintao said the Party must meet the 'growing spiritual and cultural demands of the people'

The West is using cultural warfare to divide China, Chinese President Hu Jintao warned the Communist Party on Monday.

Mr Hu called on the 80 million-plus Party members to fight "hostile international powers" and meet the "cultural demands" of the people.

"Hostile international powers are strengthening their efforts to Westernise and divide us," Mr Hu wrote in the latest edition of Communist Party's magazine, Seeking the Truth.

"We must be aware of the seriousness and complexity of the struggles and take powerful measures to prevent and deal with them," he warned in his article.

Mr Hu was writing in the revolutionary magazine used by Chairman Mao to spread his ideology after it was launched in 1958.

"The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak," Mr Hu's article said. "Ideological and cultural fields are their [western forces'] main targets," Mr Hu wrote.

He also said the Party must meet the "growing spiritual and cultural demands of the people".

The call to arms against the West's perceived collective cultural genocidal policy follows recent Government orders to propaganda officials to push harder China's expensive global "soft power" drive.

The Communist Party is splashing out 45 billion yuan (£4 billion) to expand its overseas media, including a United States and UK edition of the state-run and heavily censored China Daily, the state news agency Xinhua, and China Central Television's (CCTV) multilingual news and culture programming.

Overseas Confucius Institutes have also sprung up to try and win over a sceptical international audience impressed by Beijing's economic success but wary of its harsh authoritarian governance.

Mr Hu's article is also part of general Party rhetoric aimed at countering the growing influence of the internet and increasing commercialism in China – all of which is leading to a more confident and louder public criticism of the government.

Spooked since the start of the Arab Spring uprisings a year ago, Beijing has been further tightening internet and media control in an attempt to "improve positive publicity" and guide public opinion.

Western-style TV programmes such as talent shows – which have proved a huge hit in China – have also been targeted in the crackdown.

In November, the country's media watchdog banned advertisements during television dramas.

However, Western tastes and themes, including festivals such as Christmas and Valentines' Day, are growing in popularity among the middle classes and young, And it's not just western ideology that threatens the Party's desire for strong red culture at home and abroad.

A walk down any main street in a first or second tier Chinese city reveals how China's internet-savvy youth are fast-becoming fashion conscious and are adopting the hairstyle, clothes and musical tastes of their cutting-edge peers – in neighbouring South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

China's President Pushes Back Against Western Culture

[source]

BEIJING - President Hu Jintao of China has said that the West is trying to dominate China by spreading its culture and ideology and that China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the assault, according to an essay in a Communist Party policy magazine published this week.

Mr. Hu's words signaled that a major policy initiative announced last October would continue well into 2012.

The essay, which was signed by Mr. Hu and based on a speech he gave in October, drew a sharp line between the cultures of the West and China and effectively said the two sides were engaged in an escalating culture war. It was published in Seeking Truth, a magazine founded by Mao Zedong as a platform for establishing Communist Party principles.

"We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration," Mr. Hu said, according to a translation by Reuters.

"We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarms and remain vigilant and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond," he added.

Those measures, Mr. Hu said, should be centered on developing cultural products that can draw the interest of the Chinese and meet the "growing spiritual and cultural demands of the people."

Chinese leaders have long lamented the fact that Western expressions of popular culture and art seem to overshadow those from China. The top grossing films in China have been "Avatar" and "Transformers 3," and the music of Lady Gaga is as popular here as that of any that of any Chinese pop singer. In October, at the annual plenum of the party's Central Committee, where Mr. Hu gave his speech, officials discussed the need for bolstering the "cultural security" of China.

"The overall strength of Chinese culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China's international status," Mr. Hu said in his essay, according to another translation.

"The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak," he said.

Mr. Hu did not address the widespread assertion by Chinese artists and intellectuals that state censorship is what prevents artists and their works from reaching their full potential. Last week, Han Han, a novelist and China's most popular blogger, discussed the issue in an online essay called "On Freedom."

"The restriction on cultural activities makes it impossible for China to influence literature and cinema on a global basis or for us culturati to raise our heads up proud," Han Han wrote.

The publication of Mr. Hu's essay and other articles in Seeking Truth on bolstering China's cultural power signaled that this would be a central initiative in 2012, which is a transition year for the Chinese leadership as seven of the top nine party members step down from the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Mr. Hu appeared keen to enshrine the culture drive as a final defining moment of his decade-long tenure at China's helm.

The Central Committee meeting in October established the ideological foundation for a tightening of a cultural sphere that is only now beginning to unfold. Right after the meeting, officials announced a sweeping new policy to wipe scores of so-called entertainment shows off the air. That took effect on Sunday. Television stations have been racing to come up with new programs that will be deemed "socially responsible" by the censors.

Last month, officials in Beijing and other cities ordered Internet companies to ensure that people posting on microblogs, called Sina Weibo in Chinese, had registered their accounts using their real names, though they could still post under an alias. Officials have been putting pressure on executives and editors running the microblog platforms to self-censor, and many microblog users say the microblogs have been getting less interesting.

At the same time, China has been making a push to increase its cultural influence abroad, or its "soft power." The government has opened up Confucius Institutes around the world to aid foreigners in learning Chinese. The state is also lavishing financing on opening operations of large state-run news organizations, including Xinhua, the state news agency, and China Central Television in cities around the world. Officials from those organizations say they hope their version of the world events becomes as common as those from Western news organizations.

COMMUNIST CHINA SAYS VILLAGERS WERE RIGHT TO REBEL

2012-01-10T06:49:00.001-08:00

How many times has one heard that there is no democracy in China, and the Chinese authorities clamp down on their people? These types of comments show that those making them either know nothing about China, or have a pro-empire regime-change agenda. Fact is that the Chinese masses are a very confident people, who are militant and ready to protest for their rights, but these protests, of which there are many in China, are not anti-Communist Party or anti-state, rather these protests contain people who are loyal to their ruling party and system, are in support of the Chinese revolution of 1948 which continues today, but are against localised corruption as in the case of this Wukan situation. Full respect goes to the Chinese authorities who have essentially endorsed the protests of the people of Wukan. China has many social contradictions as a result of the economic reforms of recent decades, reforms which have been historic in many achievements such as lifting over 300 million out of abject poverty, nevertheless the Chinese nation will continue to meet the challenges of socialist construction in the typically wise and successful Chinese way.

Finally, if the Chinese state and ruling party has essentially said the villagers of Wukan were right to rebel in this instance, one can imagine that this has given many millions of others in China the empowered status that they too can develop movements and protests against other corrupt officials and seek the support of the leadership of the Communist Party in so doing.

- Sukant Chandan, Sons of Malcolm/Friends of China

[source]

Residents of a south China village who tested the ruling Communist Party's control with more than a week of protests had "legitimate complaints" over a land grab that sparked the rebellion, state news agency Xinhua has said.

Ten days of protests over confiscated farmland and the death of a protest organizer in Wukan in booming Guangdong province earlier this month drew widespread attention as a rebuff to the stability-obsessed government.

The standoff ended after authorities offered concessions in a rare example of the government backing down to mobilised citizens.

The residents had "legitimate complaints against officials over wrongdoing concerning land use and financial management," Xinhua said in a report released late on Friday, citing a provincial investigation team.

"In terms of land use, the provincial investigators ... found that Lufeng Fengtian livestock company used more land than was officially approved," it cited investigator Yang Junbo, deputy head of Guangdong's Land and Resources Department, as saying.

Another company, Guangdong Yidazhou Group, "was in arrears with its land compensation to village residents," Yang added.

The village's former Communist Party boss, Xue Chang, also "embezzled money to buy a vehicle for personal use," Xinhua said.

The investigation continues, the report added, without providing further details.

This week, the government also annulled the result of an election for Wukan village head held in February "after finding several violations," and another vote would be organised soon, Xinhua said.

Villagers had denounced local officials as corrupt and heartless throughout their months-long wrangle, which erupted in rioting in September, but they ended up welcoming provincial party officials as brokers who finally stepped in to compromise.

Protests in China have become relatively common over corruption, pollution, wages, and land grabs that local-level officials justify in the name of development.

Chinese experts put the number of "mass incidents," as such protests are known, at about 90,000 a year in recent years.

The grip of Communist Party rule is not directly threatened by such bursts of unrest, but officials fear they could coalesce into broader, more organised challenges to their power.

WIKILEAKS: WEST WANT TO CRUSH CHINA BY WAR, BUT CANNOT DO IT DUE TO CHINA'S STRENGTH; WEST ARE NO LONGER WORLD'S OVERLORDS

2010-12-06T06:06:00.001-08:00

WikiLeaks: Hillary Clinton's question: how can we stand up to Beijing?

Australia's ex-PM Kevin Rudd advised US secretary of state to welcome Beijing onto world stage but keep force as a last resort

"China's relatively strong economic position in the wake of the global financial crisis has intensified that trend. As has Chinese hubris that it can call the shots and determine the playbook under which it operates without disclosing the same to foreign firms.

"We may want to consider ways to toughen up our talking points and enhance the use – or perception of likely use – of other real 'sticks' in order to achieve market-opening, job-creating objectives. This will require some consideration of just how much disruption in our economic relations we are willing to countenance if we must carry through on threats."

The Guardian

4 Dec, 2010

Hillary Clinton revealed America's deep anxiety over China's growing economic power and hold on US finances by asking Australia's then prime minister: "How do you deal toughly with your banker?"

The question, at a lunch with Kevin Rudd last March and reported in a US Department of State cable, underscores the evolving and often difficult relationship between the world's superpower and an increasingly mighty China. It is the largest holder of US treasury bonds, with around $870bn. Tensions are also highlighted in an economic dispatch, written by the US ambassador to Beijing last January, warning of a "rough" year for relations between the two countries and accusing China of hubris.

His remarks presaged increasing tensions between the two countries over their currencies and fears of protectionism. The United States is pushing China to allow significant appreciation of the yuan, which it says is substantially undervalued, while Beijing is unhappy at the US Federal Reserve's loosening of monetary policy through quantitative easing.

Another cable from last year quotes a senior Chinese official predicting that the midterm elections in America would increase pressure for protectionism in the US and expressing fears about the Fed "printing lots of money".

According to the note of Clinton's lunch with Rudd in Washington: "The secretary affirmed the US desire for a successful China, with a rising standard of living and improving democracy at a pace Chinese leaders could tolerate… The secretary also noted the challenges posed by China's economic rise, asking: 'How do you deal toughly with your banker?'"

Rudd responded by calling himself "a brutal realist on China", arguing for a policy of "integrating China effectively into the international community and allowing it to demonstrate greater responsibility, all while also preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong". He described Chinese leaders as "subrational and deeply emotional" on Taiwan, a frequent source of tension with the US.

In the January memo, Jon Huntsman, the US ambassador to China, argued: "Whereas 2009 was a year to build the US-China relationship, 2010 will be a year that tests it.

"Ten per cent US unemployment coupled with our huge trade deficit with China, China's increasing use of industrial policies to restrict market access, and an undervalued RMB [yuan], will bring greater tension to bilateral ties. The Google case adds fuel to the fire."

Clinton made a speech about internet freedom shortly after Google announced it would no longer censor results in China, to the anger of Chinese leaders. Officials said the speech was planned before the Google case emerged.

Huntsman said: "The Chinese continue to signal intense displeasure with US positions on issues from the Dalai Lama to Taiwan arms sales and internet freedom, which they then cite as reasons why they may not co-operate with the US on other issues."

The ambassador stressed that China's economic growth offered "enormous" opportunities for the US to create growth and jobs and talked of possible options for increased co-operation.

China has overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest economy and Huntsman noted that this offered a huge potential market for US goods and services. He listed possible "carrots" to dangle in front of Beijing, including a re-examination of export controls.

Set beside that, he warned: "USG [US government] complaints about discriminatory policies – absent a credible threat of retaliatory action or other leverage – are falling on increasingly deaf Chinese ears.

"We may want to consider ways to toughen up our talking points and enhance the use – or perception of likely use – of other real 'sticks' in order to achieve market-opening, job-creating objectives. This will require some consideration of just how much disruption in our economic relations we are willing to countenance if we must carry through on threats."

Despite tit-for-tat tariff impositions, both countries have been cautious about damaging an economic relationship valuable to both sides. Huntsman suggested highlighting possible congressional action on "hot button issues" like the valuation of the yuan and carbon tariffs on Chinese imports. Last month the US House of Representatives passed by an overwhelming majority a bill calling for tariffs to be imposed on countries with artificially low currencies.

The US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, has postponed his report on whether China is a currency manipulator, due last month. Geithner has since said that he believes that Beijing is committed to allowing the yuan to increase in value.

The dispatches also show Chinese concerns that domestic politics in the US could derail the economic relationship this year.

In a meeting last November, vice-minister Liu He "described the trade conflicts as 'terrible', with the small number of disputes having huge political and social impact in both countries.

"He believed that American labour unions and the upcoming midterm [2010] US congressional elections both increase pressure for trade protectionism in the US."

Liu also told Robert Hormats, the state department's under-secretary for economics, energy and agricultural affairs, that he was "a little worried" about the US economy and the Federal Reserve "printing lots of money". The concern about quantitative easing has since returned to the forefront of economic discussions.

Another official at the meeting expressed concern that future inflation could erode the value of China's dollar holdings.

CHINA AND LATIN AMERICA - PARTNERSHIP FOR A NEW WORLD

2010-09-16T02:04:00.002-07:00

Brazil's huge new port highlights China's

drive into South America

Investments guarantee Chinese access to soy, oil and other badly

needed resources

The Guardian

Wednesday 15 September 2010

The 'super port' in Sao Joao da Barra is the largest port

investment in Brazil and will have capacity for the largest

ships in the world. Photograph: Douglas Engle/Australfoto

Blades slicing through the morning heat, the helicopter

rose from the tarmac and swept into a cobalt sky, high

above Rio's Guanabara Bay.

It powered north-east over deserted beaches, dense Atlantic

rainforest and fishing boats that bobbed lazily in the

ocean below. Then finally, 80 minutes on, the destination

came into view: a gigantic concrete pier that juts nearly

two miles out into the South Atlantic and boasts an unusual

nickname: the Highway to China.

Dotted with orange-clad construction workers and propped up

by dozens of 38-tonne pillars, this vast concrete structure

is part of the Superporto do Acu, a £1.6bn port and

industrial complex that is being erected on the Rio

coastline, on an area equivalent to 12,000 football

pitches.

Reputedly the largest industrial port complex of its type

in the world, Açu is also one of the most visible symbols

of China's rapidly accelerating drive into Brazil and South

America as it looks to guarantee access to much-needed

natural resources and bolster its support base in the

developing world.

When Acu opens for business in 2012, its 10-berth pier will

play host to a globetrotting armada of cargo ships, among

them the 380-metre wide ChinaMax – the largest vessel of

its type, capable of ferrying 400,000 tonnes of cargo.

Millions of tonnes of iron ore, grain, soy and millions of

barrels of oil are expected to pass along the "Highway"

each year on their way east, where they will alleviate

China's seemingly unquenchable thirst for natural

resources.

"This project marks a new phase in relations between Brazil

and China," Rio's economic development secretary, Julio

Bueno, said during the recent visit of about 100 Chinese

businessmen to the port complex, which is being built by

the Brazilian logistics company LLX and should receive

billions of dollars of Chinese investment.

This new phase of engagement with Brazil and South America,

is part of China's "going out strategy" – an economic and,

some say, diplomatic push for Chinese companies, many of

them state-run, to invest abroad, snapping up access to

minerals, energy and food by pouring the country's colossal

foreign reserves into overseas companies and projects.

China is expected to overtake Japan as the world's second

largest economy this year and may already be the world's

greatest energy consumer. Now it is set to become Brazil's

top foreign investor, with its companies plowing $20bn into

the country in the first six months of 2010, compared with

$83m in 2009. A recent study by Deloitte predicted that

Chinese investments in Brazil could hit an average of about

$40bn a year between now and 2014, with companies throwing

money at sectors ranging from telecommunications,

infrastructure and farming, to oil, biofuels, natural gas,

mining and steel manufacturing.

"Relations with Brazil in all areas have entered a new

era," Qiu Xiaoqi, China's ambassador in Brazil, recently

told the state news agency Xinhua.

The surge in China's South American spending is not just a

Brazilian phenomenon. Ecuador has already signed around

$5bn of bilateral deals with China this year, including

$1.7bn to help build a hydro-electric dam and $1bn

investments for oil exploration and infrastructure

projects. That compared with Chinese investment of just

$56m in 2009.

Chinese companies have sunk $1.4bn into mining operations

in Peru this year, while in April Hugo Chávez announced

that the Chinese, already major sponsors of Venezuelan oil

exploration, had agreed to open a $20bn credit-line for the

"Bolivarian revolution".

Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, a

book about the growing tussle for global resources,

described today's China as "the shopaholic of planet

Earth".

"The Chinese authorities understand that to sustain the

country's continued growth, they will have to ensure that

its industries are provided with adequate supplies of

energy, minerals, and other basic raw materials," he said.

But the "going out" strategy went far beyond business

transactions, he added.

"They seek to fashion a multipolar world in which no single

power – read the United States – plays an overwhelmingly

dominant role. To this end, they seek to bolster ties with

rising regional powers like Brazil and South Africa."

In Sao Joao da Barra, the city nearest to Acu and one of

Rio state's poorest regions, the Chinese presence is being

felt even before Brazil's Highway to China is complete.

Keen to impress, LLX staff at the Açu port lay on hot water

and Mandarin interpreters for visiting Chinese dignitaries.

Sao Joao da Barra's town hall, meanwhile, has started

offering free Mandarin lessons to locals interested in

working with the wave of Chinese guests that is

anticipated.

"You should see a 10-year-old boy saying, 'I understand …

the Chinese are coming and when the Chinese industries come

I want to work for them and if I speak Mandarin I'll have a

competitive advantage on the others'," beamed Eike Batista,

the billionaire entrepreneur behind the superport and one

of the most vocal cheerleaders for Chinese advances into

Brazil. "[It is] wonderful."

Leonardo Gadelha, LLX's CFO, said during a recent tour of

the port: "This is part of a Chinese strategy of going to

the market more and more. They are already a very

considerable presence in Africa and we are now going

through this moment in Brazil."

The Highway to China lay "in the middle" of this blossoming

relationship with China, he said, adding: "We are betting

that … this will continue growing."

Not all Brazilians, or indeed western governments, share

such enthusiasm.

"There are many in Washington who worry about China's

growing presence in Africa and Latin America and claim that

this poses a threat to America's long-term strategic

interests," said Klare, noting, however, that the US'

"fixation" with Afghanistan and the war on terror meant

there had been virtually no reaction.

In Brazil meanwhile China's arrival has prompted cries of

neo-colonialism. "The Chinese have bought Africa and now

they are trying to buy Brazil," the prominent economist

Antônio Delfim Netto complained in a recent interview with

the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, warning that it was a

"grave mistake" to allow a foreign state to buy "land,

minerals [and] natural resources" from another sovereign

power.

Batista, Brazil's richest man, rejected such criticism,

saying: "The association between Brazil and China is a

two-way highway." Chinese companies such as Wuhan Iron and

Steel had committed to helping build a $5bn steel mill at

the port complex, rather than always shipping out primary

resources to process at home, he pointed out. "You want to

get three tonnes of raw iron ore, [so] produce one tonne of

steel in Brazil," he said. "That philosophy is sinking in

and is great for both sides."

Neither would Chinese companies be allowed to flood the

complex with hordes of foreign workers as had happened in

Africa, said Gadelha, the CFO.

"If it was up to them they would bring lots of Chinese

workers as they are used to doing," he admitted. "[But]

Brazil's legislation is very strict in this sense."

Batista suggested that rather than complaining about

China's courtship of Brazil, western powers should urge

their own companies to pay more attention to the region

themselves.

"In the last 15 years or so the [American and European]

CEOs have stopped coming here and that is why they are a

little bit behind," he said. "We are pushing European

companies and saying: 'You're not really understanding what

is happening in Brazil'."

"Don't put Brazil in the same bag as our neighbours," he

added. "We are not Central America. We are not Venezuela.

We are not Argentina."

============================

Beijing's deals

Brazil In November 2009 Brazilian energy giant Petrobras

signed a $10bn loan deal with China's Development Bank. As

part of the deal Petrobras will guarantee the supply of

200,000 barrels of oil per day to China over the next 10

years. Chinese companies and state banks pumped around

$20bn into Brazil in the first half of this year

Venezuela Hugo Chávez, pictured, unveiled a $20bn credit

line from China's Development Bank to fund the "Bolivarian

revolution" in April

Ecuador The country has already signed around $5bn of

bilateral deals with China this year, including $1.7bn to

help build a hydro-electric dam and $1bn investments for

oil exploration and infrastructure projects. In 2009 direct

Chinese investment in the country was just $56m

Peru Chinese companies invested $1.4bn in mining operations

in Peru during the first four months of this year, making

China the country's second largest trade partner

CHINA AND LATIN AMERICA - PARTNERSHIP FOR A NEW WORLD

2010-09-16T02:04:00.001-07:00

Brazil's huge new port highlights China's drive

into South America

Investments guarantee Chinese access to soy, oil and other badly

needed resources

The Guardian

Wednesday 15 September 2010

The 'super port' in Sao Joao da Barra is the largest port

investment in Brazil and will have capacity for the largest

ships in the world. Photograph: Douglas Engle/Australfoto

Blades slicing through the morning heat, the helicopter

rose from the tarmac and swept into a cobalt sky, high

above Rio's Guanabara Bay.

It powered north-east over deserted beaches, dense Atlantic

rainforest and fishing boats that bobbed lazily in the

ocean below. Then finally, 80 minutes on, the destination

came into view: a gigantic concrete pier that juts nearly

two miles out into the South Atlantic and boasts an unusual

nickname: the Highway to China.

Dotted with orange-clad construction workers and propped up

by dozens of 38-tonne pillars, this vast concrete structure

is part of the Superporto do Acu, a £1.6bn port and

industrial complex that is being erected on the Rio

coastline, on an area equivalent to 12,000 football

pitches.

Reputedly the largest industrial port complex of its type

in the world, Açu is also one of the most visible symbols

of China's rapidly accelerating drive into Brazil and South

America as it looks to guarantee access to much-needed

natural resources and bolster its support base in the

developing world.

When Acu opens for business in 2012, its 10-berth pier will

play host to a globetrotting armada of cargo ships, among

them the 380-metre wide ChinaMax – the largest vessel of

its type, capable of ferrying 400,000 tonnes of cargo.

Millions of tonnes of iron ore, grain, soy and millions of

barrels of oil are expected to pass along the "Highway"

each year on their way east, where they will alleviate

China's seemingly unquenchable thirst for natural

resources.

"This project marks a new phase in relations between Brazil

and China," Rio's economic development secretary, Julio

Bueno, said during the recent visit of about 100 Chinese

businessmen to the port complex, which is being built by

the Brazilian logistics company LLX and should receive

billions of dollars of Chinese investment.

This new phase of engagement with Brazil and South America,

is part of China's "going out strategy" – an economic and,

some say, diplomatic push for Chinese companies, many of

them state-run, to invest abroad, snapping up access to

minerals, energy and food by pouring the country's colossal

foreign reserves into overseas companies and projects.

China is expected to overtake Japan as the world's second

largest economy this year and may already be the world's

greatest energy consumer. Now it is set to become Brazil's

top foreign investor, with its companies plowing $20bn into

the country in the first six months of 2010, compared with

$83m in 2009. A recent study by Deloitte predicted that

Chinese investments in Brazil could hit an average of about

$40bn a year between now and 2014, with companies throwing

money at sectors ranging from telecommunications,

infrastructure and farming, to oil, biofuels, natural gas,

mining and steel manufacturing.

"Relations with Brazil in all areas have entered a new

era," Qiu Xiaoqi, China's ambassador in Brazil, recently

told the state news agency Xinhua.

The surge in China's South American spending is not just a

Brazilian phenomenon. Ecuador has already signed around

$5bn of bilateral deals with China this year, including

$1.7bn to help build a hydro-electric dam and $1bn

investments for oil exploration and infrastructure

projects. That compared with Chinese investment of just

$56m in 2009.

Chinese companies have sunk $1.4bn into mining operations

in Peru this year, while in April Hugo Chávez announced

that the Chinese, already major sponsors of Venezuelan oil

exploration, had agreed to open a $20bn credit-line for the

"Bolivarian revolution".

Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, a

book about the growing tussle for global resources,

described today's China as "the shopaholic of planet

Earth".

"The Chinese authorities understand that to sustain the

country's continued growth, they will have to ensure that

its industries are provided with adequate supplies of

energy, minerals, and other basic raw materials," he said.

But the "going out" strategy went far beyond business

transactions, he added.

"They seek to fashion a multipolar world in which no single

power – read the United States – plays an overwhelmingly

dominant role. To this end, they seek to bolster ties with

rising regional powers like Brazil and South Africa."

In Sao Joao da Barra, the city nearest to Acu and one of

Rio state's poorest regions, the Chinese presence is being

felt even before Brazil's Highway to China is complete.

Keen to impress, LLX staff at the Açu port lay on hot water

and Mandarin interpreters for visiting Chinese dignitaries.

Sao Joao da Barra's town hall, meanwhile, has started

offering free Mandarin lessons to locals interested in

working with the wave of Chinese guests that is

anticipated.

"You should see a 10-year-old boy saying, 'I understand …

the Chinese are coming and when the Chinese industries come

I want to work for them and if I speak Mandarin I'll have a

competitive advantage on the others'," beamed Eike Batista,

the billionaire entrepreneur behind the superport and one

of the most vocal cheerleaders for Chinese advances into

Brazil. "[It is] wonderful."

Leonardo Gadelha, LLX's CFO, said during a recent tour of

the port: "This is part of a Chinese strategy of going to

the market more and more. They are already a very

considerable presence in Africa and we are now going

through this moment in Brazil."

The Highway to China lay "in the middle" of this blossoming

relationship with China, he said, adding: "We are betting

that … this will continue growing."

Not all Brazilians, or indeed western governments, share

such enthusiasm.

"There are many in Washington who worry about China's

growing presence in Africa and Latin America and claim that

this poses a threat to America's long-term strategic

interests," said Klare, noting, however, that the US'

"fixation" with Afghanistan and the war on terror meant

there had been virtually no reaction.

In Brazil meanwhile China's arrival has prompted cries of

neo-colonialism. "The Chinese have bought Africa and now

they are trying to buy Brazil," the prominent economist

Antônio Delfim Netto complained in a recent interview with

the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, warning that it was a

"grave mistake" to allow a foreign state to buy "land,

minerals [and] natural resources" from another sovereign

power.

Batista, Brazil's richest man, rejected such criticism,

saying: "The association between Brazil and China is a

two-way highway." Chinese companies such as Wuhan Iron and

Steel had committed to helping build a $5bn steel mill at

the port complex, rather than always shipping out primary

resources to process at home, he pointed out. "You want to

get three tonnes of raw iron ore, [so] produce one tonne of

steel in Brazil," he said. "That philosophy is sinking in

and is great for both sides."

Neither would Chinese companies be allowed to flood the

complex with hordes of foreign workers as had happened in

Africa, said Gadelha, the CFO.

"If it was up to them they would bring lots of Chinese

workers as they are used to doing," he admitted. "[But]

Brazil's legislation is very strict in this sense."

Batista suggested that rather than complaining about

China's courtship of Brazil, western powers should urge

their own companies to pay more attention to the region

themselves.

"In the last 15 years or so the [American and European]

CEOs have stopped coming here and that is why they are a

little bit behind," he said. "We are pushing European

companies and saying: 'You're not really understanding what

is happening in Brazil'."

"Don't put Brazil in the same bag as our neighbours," he

added. "We are not Central America. We are not Venezuela.

We are not Argentina."

============================

Beijing's deals

Brazil In November 2009 Brazilian energy giant Petrobras

signed a $10bn loan deal with China's Development Bank. As

part of the deal Petrobras will guarantee the supply of

200,000 barrels of oil per day to China over the next 10

years. Chinese companies and state banks pumped around

$20bn into Brazil in the first half of this year

Venezuela Hugo Chávez, pictured, unveiled a $20bn credit

line from China's Development Bank to fund the "Bolivarian

revolution" in April

Ecuador The country has already signed around $5bn of

bilateral deals with China this year, including $1.7bn to

help build a hydro-electric dam and $1bn investments for

oil exploration and infrastructure projects. In 2009 direct

Chinese investment in the country was just $56m

Peru Chinese companies invested $1.4bn in mining operations

in Peru during the first four months of this year, making

China the country's second largest trade partner

CHINA AND LATIN AMERICA - PARTNERSHIP FOR A NEW WORLD

2010-09-16T02:04:00.000-07:00

Brazil's huge new port highlights China's drive

into South America

Investments guarantee Chinese access to soy, oil and other badly

needed resources

The Guardian

Wednesday 15 September 2010

The 'super port' in Sao Joao da Barra is the largest port investment

in Brazil and will have capacity for the largest ships in the world.

Photograph: Douglas Engle/Australfoto Blades slicing through the

morning heat, the helicopter rose from the tarmac and swept into a

cobalt sky, high above Rio's Guanabara Bay.

It powered north-east over deserted beaches, dense Atlantic

rainforest and fishing boats that bobbed lazily in the ocean below.

Then finally, 80 minutes on, the destination came into view: a

gigantic concrete pier that juts nearly two miles out into the South

Atlantic and boasts an unusual nickname: the Highway to China.

Dotted with orange-clad construction workers and propped up by dozens

of 38-tonne pillars, this vast concrete structure is part of the

Superporto do Acu, a £1.6bn port and industrial complex that is being

erected on the Rio coastline, on an area equivalent to 12,000

football pitches.

Reputedly the largest industrial port complex of its type in the

world, Açu is also one of the most visible symbols of China's rapidly

accelerating drive into Brazil and South America as it looks to

guarantee access to much-needed natural resources and bolster its

support base in the developing world.

When Acu opens for business in 2012, its 10-berth pier will play host

to a globetrotting armada of cargo ships, among them the 380-metre

wide ChinaMax – the largest vessel of its type, capable of ferrying

400,000 tonnes of cargo.

Millions of tonnes of iron ore, grain, soy and millions of barrels of

oil are expected to pass along the "Highway" each year on their way

east, where they will alleviate China's seemingly unquenchable thirst

for natural resources.

"This project marks a new phase in relations between Brazil and

China," Rio's economic development secretary, Julio Bueno, said

during the recent visit of about 100 Chinese businessmen to the port

complex, which is being built by the Brazilian logistics company LLX

and should receive billions of dollars of Chinese investment.

This new phase of engagement with Brazil and South America, is part

of China's "going out strategy" – an economic and, some say,

diplomatic push for Chinese companies, many of them state-run, to

invest abroad, snapping up access to minerals, energy and food by

pouring the country's colossal foreign reserves into overseas

companies and projects.

China is expected to overtake Japan as the world's second largest

economy this year and may already be the world's greatest energy

consumer. Now it is set to become Brazil's top foreign investor, with

its companies plowing $20bn into the country in the first six months

of 2010, compared with $83m in 2009. A recent study by Deloitte

predicted that Chinese investments in Brazil could hit an average of

about $40bn a year between now and 2014, with companies throwing

money at sectors ranging from telecommunications, infrastructure and

farming, to oil, biofuels, natural gas, mining and steel

manufacturing.

"Relations with Brazil in all areas have entered a new era," Qiu

Xiaoqi, China's ambassador in Brazil, recently told the state news

agency Xinhua.

The surge in China's South American spending is not just a Brazilian

phenomenon. Ecuador has already signed around $5bn of bilateral deals

with China this year, including $1.7bn to help build a hydro-electric

dam and $1bn investments for oil exploration and infrastructure

projects. That compared with Chinese investment of just $56m in 2009.

Chinese companies have sunk $1.4bn into mining operations in Peru

this year, while in April Hugo Chávez announced that the Chinese,

already major sponsors of Venezuelan oil exploration, had agreed to

open a $20bn credit-line for the "Bolivarian revolution".

Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, a book

about the growing tussle for global resources, described today's

China as "the shopaholic of planet Earth".

"The Chinese authorities understand that to sustain the country's

continued growth, they will have to ensure that its industries are

provided with adequate supplies of energy, minerals, and other basic

raw materials," he said. But the "going out" strategy went far beyond

business transactions, he added.

"They seek to fashion a multipolar world in which no single power –

read the United States – plays an overwhelmingly dominant role. To

this end, they seek to bolster ties with rising regional powers like

Brazil and South Africa."

In Sao Joao da Barra, the city nearest to Acu and one of Rio state's

poorest regions, the Chinese presence is being felt even before

Brazil's Highway to China is complete.

Keen to impress, LLX staff at the Açu port lay on hot water and

Mandarin interpreters for visiting Chinese dignitaries. Sao Joao da

Barra's town hall, meanwhile, has started offering free Mandarin

lessons to locals interested in working with the wave of Chinese

guests that is anticipated.

"You should see a 10-year-old boy saying, 'I understand … the Chinese

are coming and when the Chinese industries come I want to work for

them and if I speak Mandarin I'll have a competitive advantage on the

others'," beamed Eike Batista, the billionaire entrepreneur behind

the superport and one of the most vocal cheerleaders for Chinese

advances into Brazil. "[It is] wonderful."

Leonardo Gadelha, LLX's CFO, said during a recent tour of the port:

"This is part of a Chinese strategy of going to the market more and

more. They are already a very considerable presence in Africa and we

are now going through this moment in Brazil."

The Highway to China lay "in the middle" of this blossoming

relationship with China, he said, adding: "We are betting that … this

will continue growing."

Not all Brazilians, or indeed western governments, share such

enthusiasm.

"There are many in Washington who worry about China's growing

presence in Africa and Latin America and claim that this poses a

threat to America's long-term strategic interests," said Klare,

noting, however, that the US' "fixation" with Afghanistan and the war

on terror meant there had been virtually no reaction.

In Brazil meanwhile China's arrival has prompted cries of

neo-colonialism. "The Chinese have bought Africa and now they are

trying to buy Brazil," the prominent economist Antônio Delfim Netto

complained in a recent interview with the Estado de Sao Paulo

newspaper, warning that it was a "grave mistake" to allow a foreign

state to buy "land, minerals [and] natural resources" from another

sovereign power.

Batista, Brazil's richest man, rejected such criticism, saying: "The

association between Brazil and China is a two-way highway." Chinese

companies such as Wuhan Iron and Steel had committed to helping build

a $5bn steel mill at the port complex, rather than always shipping

out primary resources to process at home, he pointed out. "You want

to get three tonnes of raw iron ore, [so] produce one tonne of steel

in Brazil," he said. "That philosophy is sinking in and is great for

both sides."

Neither would Chinese companies be allowed to flood the complex with

hordes of foreign workers as had happened in Africa, said Gadelha,

the CFO.

"If it was up to them they would bring lots of Chinese workers as

they are used to doing," he admitted. "[But] Brazil's legislation is

very strict in this sense."

Batista suggested that rather than complaining about China's

courtship of Brazil, western powers should urge their own companies

to pay more attention to the region themselves.

"In the last 15 years or so the [American and European] CEOs have

stopped coming here and that is why they are a little bit behind," he

said. "We are pushing European companies and saying: 'You're not

really understanding what is happening in Brazil'."

"Don't put Brazil in the same bag as our neighbours," he added. "We

are not Central America. We are not Venezuela. We are not Argentina."

============================

Beijing's deals

Brazil In November 2009 Brazilian energy giant Petrobras signed a

$10bn loan deal with China's Development Bank. As part of the deal

Petrobras will guarantee the supply of 200,000 barrels of oil per day

to China over the next 10 years. Chinese companies and state banks

pumped around $20bn into Brazil in the first half of this year

Venezuela Hugo Chávez, pictured, unveiled a $20bn credit line from

China's Development Bank to fund the "Bolivarian revolution" in April

Ecuador The country has already signed around $5bn of bilateral deals

with China this year, including $1.7bn to help build a hydro-electric

dam and $1bn investments for oil exploration and infrastructure

projects. In 2009 direct Chinese investment in the country was just

$56m

Peru Chinese companies invested $1.4bn in mining operations in Peru

during the first four months of this year, making China the country's

second largest trade partner

NOAM CHOMSKY SPEAKS AT PEKING UNIVERSITY

2010-08-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

Chomsky: "What is challenging the US
is not China’s development, but its independence."

Global Voices Online

On 13 August, Noam Chomsky delivered a speech at the Peking University in Beijing. Chomsky, one of the leading public intellectuals of our age, is famous for his political activism and contributions to linguistic and philosophy. The talk, titled Contours of World Order: Continuities and Changes, was mostly about two dominant threats facing humanity: nuclear wars and environmental degradation.

While Chomsky has re-emphasized his criticisms on the United States, he has also expressed his opinions on China. In Chomsky’s view, emerging countries like China and India still have a long way to go to challenge the America. Of particular concern is the environmental cost of China’s development model, and the many internal and social problems that China has to tackle. This week, the Southern Metropolitan Daily publishes an interview with Chomsky. An excerpt of the interview is translated below.

SMD: Most Chinese have accepted globalization. In the past three decades, especially after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), many Chinese have benefited tremendously. But it seems that you see globalization in poor lights.

Chomsky: China’s economic achievement has little to do with globalization. It is related to trade and export. China has gradually become an export-oriented country. No one, myself included, is opposed to exports. But this is not globalization. In fact, China has become a factory in the Northeast Asian production system. If you look at the whole region, you will find it very dynamic. China’s export volume is enormous. But there is something we have overlooked. China’s export relies heavily on the exports of Japan, Korea and the US. These countries provide China with high-tech components and technologies. China is just doing the assembly, and labelling the final products as ‘Made in China.’

China has developed rapidly by following wise policies. But while millions of people were lifted out of poverty, costs such as environmental degradation are high. They are merely transferred to the next generation. Economists will not worry about them, but these are costs that someone needs to pay for ultimately. It may be your children or grandchildren. These have nothing to do with globalization and the WTO.

SMD: Do you think the rise of China will change the world order? Will China play the role that the US is playing now?

Chomsky: I don’t think so; neither do I hope so. Do you really hope to see a China with 800 overseas military bases, invading and overthrowing other governments, or committing terrorist acts? This is what the America is doing now. I think this will not, and cannot, happen on China. I do not wish it to happen neither. China is already changing the world. China and India together account for almost half of the world’s population. They are growing and developing. But relatively speaking, their wealth is only a small part of the world. Both countries still have long ways to go and face very serious domestic problems, which I hope will gradually be solved. It is meaningless to compare their global influences with those of rich countries. My hope is that they will exert some positive influences to the world, but this has to be watched carefully.

China should ask itself what role it wishes to take in the world. Fortunately, China is not assuming the role of an aggressor with a large military budget, etc. But China does have a role to play. It is am enormous consumer of resources, and there are pros and cons. For example, Brazil will benefit economically if it exports to China. On the other hand, its economy will also be damaged. For countries with abundant resources like Brazil and Peru, one problem is their reliance on exports of primary resources, which is not a good development model. To change their mode of development, they first need to solve their domestic problems and transform themselves into producers, not just exporting primary products to other producer countries.

SMD: Is the success of China a challenge to Western democracies?

Chomsky: Let’s make a historical comparison. Was the rise of the United States a threat to democratic Britain? The United States was founded on the slaughtering of indigenous population and the slave system. Is this model suitable for other countries? Do you want China to learn from this model? It is true that the US has developed into a democratic country which is strong in many respects, but its democracy is not developed from this model, which any rational person would not want to imitate.

China is developing, but there is no evidence to prove that its internal development is causing a threat to the West. What is challenging the US is not China’s development, but its independence. That is the real challenge.

You can tell from every day’s headlines that the current focus of US foreign policy is Iran. The year 2010 is called ‘The Year of Iran.’ Iran is portrayed as a threat to US foreign policy and the world order. The US has imposed harsh, unilateral sanctions, but China has not followed suit. China has never followed the US lead. Instead, it supports UN sanctions, which are too weak to matter. A few days before I left for China, the US States Department warned China in a very interesting way. It said China has to bear international responsibilities, i.e. follow US orders. This is China’s international responsibilities.

This is standard imperialism, which is that other countries have to act according to our requests. If not, they are irresponsible. I think officials from the Chinese Foreign Ministry must laugh when they hear this. But this is the standard logic of imperialism. In fact, Iran becomes a threat because it does not follow US instructions. China is a bigger threat, as it is a big problem when a major power refuses to obey orders. This is the challenge that the US faces.

ON THE USA's CONTINUING FEARS AND HOSTILITY TO CHINA

2010-08-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

US anti-China rhetoric at danger level

By Benjamin A Shobert
Asia Time Online
22 June 2010

WASHINGTON - The US-China Congressional Committee (USCC)
this month held its most recent hearing on US-China
relations, specifically on "China’s Past and Future Role in
the World Trade Organization" (WTO). As Commissioner
Patrick Mulloy stated at the opening, "The purpose of
today’s hearing is not to second guess what Congress did 10
years ago. Its purpose is to look at the arguments made in
favor of China’s WTO entry by proponents and to consider
the results."

Considering the political environment in Washington, where
recent days have been marked by the most serious
bi-partisan efforts of the past decade to introduce
legislation that would impose new trade barriers on
Chinese-made goods, and increase pressure for

an upward revaluation of the yuan against the US dollar,
Mulloy’s comments are particularly meaningful.

The nature of politics in Washington can lull policymakers
to sleep: rhetoric over China's rise has been slowly
growing increasingly negative as a more specific set of
grievances over the past five years have coalesced. Most
advocates for economic integration with China have grown
used to (and perhaps even weary from) those who seem
fixated on the loss of opportunities related to China's
ascent.

But voices that were once easy to dismiss are now, in the
middle of an ongoing economic setback that at its best is
labeled a "jobless recovery", are becoming more politically
powerful, and insiders in Washington are beginning to sense
that this time it might actually have significant impact on
the economic relationship between the two countries.

During last week's USCC testimony, Senator Charles Schumer
(Democrat, New York) provided in written testimony a very
specific insight into the grievances of many Americans and,
as a consequence, the powerful politicians who represent
them: "China's policy of large-scale intervention in the
exchange markets and the significant undervaluation of its
currency also subsidize Chinese exports to the United
States and, at the same time, make US exports to China more
expensive. Thousands of US factories have been shuttered
and millions of jobs have been lost or displaced over the
past decade as a result."

He went on to share that, "There is no question that this
is what one might call a 'put-up or shut-up' moment for US
lawmakers. American jobs and wealth are flowing out of the
US, across the globe to China and other countries with
cheap labor, lax environmental standards, and no
compunction about flouting WTO rules to gain an unfair
competitive trade advantage. This has got to stop."

It would be a mistake to overlook the senator's comments,
or to simply mark them up to the traditional politics of
organized labor and Schumer's relationship with them. This
week, during a separate congressional hearing of the House
Ways and Means Committee, Republican Congressman Dave Camp
(Michigan), asked whether "enough was doing to push China
... on its egregious economic barriers" specific to its
currency manipulation, the country's "Indigenous
Innovation" policies, and ongoing intellectual property
compliance with WTO rules.

What both provide is, at the base of their comments, a
critical insight into the inner-workings of Washington's
political class. Whatever the heritage of those ideas,
which for several decades have knit together the two
countries, they are under strain as never before. To the
extent both sides of the aisle hold similar frustrations
about China's economic policies, DC will find a way to vent
the intensifying political pressure.

What remains to be seen is the form this political pressure
will take: on the table appears to be a handful of likely
options, most likely of which may be a set of
countervailing duties imposed on China for its currency
practices, the remedy presented by Schumer in his Currency
Exchange rate Oversight Reform Act of 2010 (S.3134). During
this week's House Ways and Means Committee hearing on
"China's Trade and Industrial Policies", chairman Sandy
Levin (Democrat, Michigan) said simply but forcefully " ...
China must change its ways". Straight-forward words
certainly, but important coming from an influential
congressman long known for his reputation of urging caution
and balance in America's relationship with China.

It would appear that, if politicians like Levin can win the
day, Washington's approach to China will incorporate more
than just a single-minded emphasis on the country's
currency policies. Specifically, Levin appears to be
working for a compromise that would take into account the
whole of Beijing's economic policy, what he and other
policy-makers understand to be a form of national
mercantilism.

As Levin stated, "There are other policies in China that
place US companies and workers at a disadvantage, often in
clear violation of China's WTO obligations. They are part
and parcel of the overall trend in China's approach to
trade ... the selective use of tax rebates to stimulate
certain exports; export restrictions on raw materials;
trade-distorting subsidies, discriminatory product
standards ... weak laws and weak enforcement of labor and
environmental laws; state-owned enterprises that
discriminate against US companies. All of these policies
have a common thread: they have the purpose or the effect
of tilting the playing field to favor Chinese companies and
against US companies, workers and farmers."

Senator Debbie Stabenow (Democrat, Michigan), provided in
testimony to the USCC panel her plan to introduce the
"China Fair Trade Act, legislation that will prevent
Federal taxpayer dollars from being used to purchase
Chinese products and services until they sign on to and
abide by the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, which
will allow American companies to export into their
government markets." This sort of move, while it remains
uncertain as to whether it will be advanced in the House,
does represent the sort of escalation between two countries
that tends to indicate a looming conflict over trade that
could, given the present economy, too easily get out of
hand.

During last week's USCC hearing, Congressman Tim Ryan
(Democrat, Ohio), a long-time critic of China's currency
policy and one of the first to propose legislation
attempting to address the matter, echoed the concerns of
his colleagues but perhaps most importantly hinted at
deeper concerns which are too often glossed over by those
who suppose such critics want to simply hit rewind on the
global economy: "Several years ago, progress toward further
market liberalization began to slow and it became clear
that some parts of the Chinese government did not yet fully
embrace key WTO principals."

Against the backdrop of a general economic frustration in
the US, it is easy to miss that much of what lies beneath
Washington's concerns is not simply Beijing's economic
policy but a more general and caustic concern that how
China was anticipated to evolve and embrace global rule
sets and overall liberalize is not happening, which begs
the political question of whether the sacrifice American
workers are perceived to have made by opening their markets
to China has, in fact, been worth it.

Understanding what Washington is currently obsessed with
talking about, and separating it from what is actually
likely to get acted upon, is not an easy task. This
realization is essential when evaluating the likelihood of
actions such as those suggested by Schumer, Stabenow, or
Ryan to be implemented. Specific to the matter of China's
presence in the WTO, Alan Wolff, chair of the Committee on
Comparative Innovation Policies at the National Academies,
provided to the USCC during last week's hearing a reminder
that "The United States believed that bringing China into
the WTO would foster domestic economic reforms within
China, which would ultimately create a functioning large
and growing market for US goods and services ... Large US
headquartered multinational businesses shared this vision.
They saw China as a major market and a major source of
supply for all other markets including the United States."

This sentiment is perhaps the most powerful counterweight
to the building political frustration in Washington;
specifically, the interest of American business remains in
many ways to maintain the status-quo with China. Changes in
Beijing's currency will have the immediate effect of
changing costs for outbound exports from their
Chinese-based subsidiaries, possibly forcing costly
production relocations, and the even more dire possibility
of the Chinese market growing additionally difficult to
access and sell into.

It has been quite literally several decades since the
interests of the working class and the ownership class have
been so front and center in Washington as they are now. The
still-powerful pro-business lobby will push back against
bills like those mentioned earlier, but unless the American
economy begins to show additional life, even organizations
like the critical Business Roundtable may be ineffective at
limiting a political retaliation against China.

During last week's testimony, this was communicated most
eloquently by James Bacchus, formerly a two-term chairman
of the Appellate Body of the WTO and a former Special
Assistant to the United States Trade Representative in the
Executive Office of the President. "I worry when I hear
other Americans describe China as a 'threat' to the United
States," he said. "I am reminded at such times of the
warning of Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian
War - that a belief in the inevitability of conflict can
become one of the main causes of conflict. Trade disputes
between the United States and China are inevitable.
Conflict is not."

The recent USCC hearing on China's WTO compliance was
ostensibly about just that, but it quickly became the
tapestry for a broader conversation that is taking place
within Washington about whether China's growth has come at
too great a cost for Americans, and whether its policies
and practices will ever embrace the rough outlines of what
the US recognizes as a politically liberal environment.

This debate is growing in intensity, and holds the
potential to redefine the contours of the two countries'
relationship in ways that may prove as foundational as
China's first timid entry into free-market reforms in the
early 1980s. The stakes, for Chinese and Americans, have
not been any higher than they are now for decades.

Benjamin A Shobert is the managing director of Teleos Inc
(www.teleos-inc.com), a consulting firm dedicated to

OBAMA AND HILARY LEAD THE EMPIRE IN UNDERHAND DIVIDE AND RULE BETWEEN ARAB WORLD, IRAN AND CHINA

2010-02-14T11:38:00.000-08:00

China feels US-Iran fallout

By Peter Lee
Asia Times Online

The question of the day in Washington is will the People's
Republic of China veto further United Nations Security
Council sanctions against Iran over Tehran's nuclear
program?

Informed opinion says "no".

China has exercised its veto only six times in 30 years on
the council. In matters core to national priorities, like
punishing countries such as Guatemala and Macedonia for
their ties to the Republic of China (Taiwan) and protecting
the interests of Pakistan, it has acted alone.

However, on broader geopolitical issues, in recent years it
has vetoed resolutions only when joined by at least one
other Security Council member.

France and the United Kingdom are lined up solidly behind
the United States on Iran's nuclear program, which some say
is geared towards making a nuclear bomb, a charge Tehran
consistently dismisses.

Russia this year is interested in improving ties with the
US and Europe and has moved toward support of sanctions. No
Russian veto, no Chinese veto, says the conventional
wisdom.

On the other hand, chances of China voting for sanctions
are slim. A press report covering Chinese Foreign Minister
Yang Jiechi's visit to Paris at the beginning of February
says it all: "China Says Iran Sanctions Hinder Diplomacy."

Abstention is, therefore, China's most likely course.

Beijing's reaction might be expected to be a dismissive and
a resigned shrug: a symbolic vote, another toothless round
of sanctions, more political kabuki, and eventually
business as usual.

However, China's expected non-vote will be accompanied by
new feelings of unease and anger, reflecting Beijing's
growing suspicion that an important motivation for the Iran
sanctions, and the escalation of Iran tensions in general,
is Washington's desire to employ the issue as a wedge
against China.

In past years, China could regard US sanctions against
authoritarian regimes with a certain amount of complacency.
The George W Bush administration's heavy-handed approach
dismayed and divided natural allies of the US and drove its
targets deeper into China's embrace.

However, the Obama administration has decided to supplement
brute power with smart power. It apparently promotes
divisive international initiatives only when the splits in
international opinion and alliances are expected to go
America's way.

China first got a taste of the smart-power approach in
December at the Copenhagen climate summit. The US linked
the release of billions of dollars of climate adaptation
aid to vulnerable developing countries with China's
acceptance of a satisfactory transparency regime. Its
delegation passed the message to smaller nations that
China's intransigence was standing between them and
billions of dollars of much-needed assistance.

Despite the treaty debacle, the geopolitical results for
the Obama administration were encouraging. The European
Union sided with the US. According to an internal Chinese
report, a good number of Group of 77 nations were, for the
large part, influenced by the American position but did not
openly confront China. China cobbled together an alliance
with the emerging economies of Brazil and India and,
despite a concerted "blame China" effort by the US and the
UK, was able to limit the political damage.

However, it was a sobering experience for Chinese
diplomats. The report concluded "A conspiracy by developed
nations to divide the camp of developing nations [was] a
success."

Now, the Obama administration is picking on the regionally
and globally unpopular government of Iran, thereby exposing
China as the regime's lone international supporter of note.

The US has worked to bring the EU and Russia to its side.
The EU, at least, is now an enthusiastic ally. Relieved to
be dealing with a judicious and consultative American
president, it no longer sees the need to accommodate a
greater role for China on the world stage.

Russia has joined the American team (with sub voce
reservations), reportedly in response to the Obama
administration's concessions on shelving plans for a
missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.

The State Department has also worked with the Gulf states
to gain their support for a policy of putting Iran in its
place.

As far as the China issue is concerned, America's direct
solicitation of China's Security Council vote involved
Obama passing the word to President Hu Jintao that China's
interests would suffer if diplomatic pressure failed,
Israel attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, and the price of
oil went up.

It is unlikely that the Israel attack card was persuasive
to the Chinese leadership, and did little more than
convince them that Washington was using it as an excuse to
justify an extension of US influence in the Middle East.

A pre-emptive attack by Israel to nip Iran's nuclear
ambitions in the bud is unlikely.

Despite Tel Aviv's brave talk of its ability and
determination to launch a raid independent of US approval,
even a resounding success would probably only slow down the
program a few years while earning the undying enmity of the
Iranian people and the Muslim world toward Israel ... and
the United States, which would have to provide Israel with
flight privileges over Iraq to stage the attack.

American assertions that the Iranian nuclear program will
spark a ruinous arms race in the Gulf no doubt elicited
similar skepticism from China, with the unspoken
observation that, since most of those arms would be
supplied by the US and EU, the onus for (and profits of) an
arms race would probably fall to the West.

American efforts to wedge the Arab states away from China
are more likely to attract Beijing's attention and concern.

James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation spun US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton's current trip to the Middle East:

Clinton will be looking to the Arabs to "act as a
counterweight [to Iran] on China and help unlock its
Security Council vote.

The US is hoping to use these discussions with the Arabs as
a way to encourage China to look at its long-term economic
interests," Phillips added. "The Arabs could let the
Chinese know that it will hurt them economically with the
Arab countries in the long run if China clings to this
pro-Iran position.

United States protestations that all this diplomatic
maneuvering directed at China is justified by the need to
exhibit international unity on Iran ring hollow.

Invocation of the Israeli attack and the Gulf states arms
race bogeymen notwithstanding, the primary justification
for the current spasm of concern over Iran's nascent
nuclear activities is the dreaded Western "impatience",
which appears very similar to the manufactured impatience
that sent the coalition of the willing charging into Iraq
in 2003.

The stated remedy for this impatience, the UN sanctions, is
unlikely to work.

Russia cares enough about its relationship with Tehran to
make sure anything that gets through the Security Council
will not be particularly catastrophic.

On February 11, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Ryabkov made
this memorable statement: "We do not think sanctions will
work, but we understand that it is impossible to get by
without them in certain circumstances."

With early reports that a massive government presence
marginalized Green Movement demonstrators on the February
11 anniversary of the Iranian revolution of 1979, regime
change in Iran is probably off the table, too.

Even if a new regime came to power, Iran's national
commitment to nuclear power - and the perceived nuclear
weapons threat to the region - would probably remain
unchanged.

By conventional geopolitical logic, China would seem to
have the right idea: more jaw-jaw and engagement or, as it
called for in a recent editorial, "patience, patience and
more patience."

But US policy seems to be moving in the opposite direction,
stoking the crisis instead of lowering the heat.

So what's China's takeaway from the Iran crisis?

Absent an immediate, credible threat of an Israeli attack
on Iran, the US is rushing the international community
toward "crushing sanctions" on Tehran that, if carried out,
would result in disruption of Iran's energy exports.

If this were to actually occur, the big loser in the Iran
crisis would be China.

As a Chinese analyst told Reuters: "Fully going with
Western expansion of sanctions on Iran so they restrict
Iran's energy exports would amount to disguised sanctions
against China, and China certainly won't agree," Wang Feng,
a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told
the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper published on
Thursday.

Reportedly, the US had advised China it would dispatch
Hillary Clinton to visit Iran's enemies in the Persian Gulf
and ensure that, if sanctions disrupted the supply of
Iranian oil, Saudi Arabia and its associates would ensure
that China's petroleum needs would continue to be met.

It is unlikely that China's vision of its energy security
involves relying on the US's good offices to deal with the
consequences of a US-imposed policy that it rejects and had
no voice in formulating.

In any case, the prospects for an oil-price Armageddon are
unlikely. Given free-market realities and the greed of oil
producers inside and outside the Gulf, the world would
suffer as much as China if Iranian crude disappeared from
the market.

For Beijing, the biggest concern is its perception that
Europe, Russia and the Gulf states are signing on to an
anti-Iran initiative that could impact China's interests in
such a major way without accommodating China's priorities.

From Beijing's point of view, China is the main superpower
stakeholder in the Iran crisis.

So it is asking why isn't it being consulted? Indeed, why
aren't its critical interests given priority, instead of
subjecting it to moonshine about an Israeli attack, an arms
race in the Gulf and lectures about its geopolitical
interests?

China is not a threat to the international order, but it is
its most independent and uncontrollable element. There are
growing signs of a shared consensus in the West that
reliance on China as a stabilizing financial, economic and
geopolitical factor must be reduced.

The past few years have been good to China's competitors
-especially India - and bad for China's allies - Pakistan
and Iran.

By accident or design, the Obama administration's decision
to heat up the Iran controversy has driven another wedge
between China and the US, the EU, the Gulf states and even
Russia.

The issue for China is whether the purpose of America's
Iran campaign is to isolate Iran ... or to isolate China?
This is a consequence of China's participation in the
security initiatives that the US chooses to organize to
protect and promote its own and loyal allies' interests.

China responded to the escalation of the Iran nuclear
crisis with a remarkable lead editorial in the Global
Times, the international affairs organ of People's Daily,
the government mouthpiece,.

The editorial, with the eye-catching title "Iran and the
West: Neither Should Think of Taking China Hostage",
painted China as the victim of the standoff. In an effort
to be even-handed, both Iran and the West are criticized
for their intransigence.

Nevertheless, both the West and Iran are unheeding at this
time. They both believe that only if they are unyielding,
then the other side will back off. This unenlightened
attitude even extends to their attitude toward China. Both
sides believe that all that's needed is to put pressure on
China, then China will, without considering its own
interests ... lower its head to them ... This thinking is
unrealistic.

The use of the loaded term, "lower its head", conjuring
images of the humiliating kowtow, instead of a more neutral
term such as "support one or the other" is an indication
that red lines are being drawn.

The fact that China's main worry is the West, and not Iran,
is unambiguously conveyed in the editorial's conclusion.

Recently in Western public opinion has been a call to use
the Iran issue to isolate China. This is extremely
superficial ... China is a big country and its interests
must be respected. China's dilemma must be sympathized
with. China's proposal opposing sanctions must be
understood. The big powers must cooperate and negotiate on
the Iran issue ...

China is a great country. If anyone seeks to compel her, to
injure her, they will certainly pay the price. Pretty
strong stuff.

The editorial is a clear indication that China considers
itself the target - or at least intended collateral damage
- in America's anti-Iran campaign. It makes the case that,
if the Obama administration sincerely cared about its
relationship with China, Washington would back off from the
sanctions campaign and allow negotiations to continue.

But that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

Sanctions will probably go ahead, with China either
abstaining or throwing in a tactical "yes" vote to postpone
an overt breach, and Washington will obtain another point
of leverage against China in the Persian Gulf.

If that happens, China will have to think about adjusting
to a new world situation in which the West seems less
interested in bargaining for its support or respecting its
interests.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

WEST WERE PLAYING DIRTY TRICKS AT COPENHAGEN, CHINESE LEAKED PAPER REVEALS

2010-02-11T10:07:00.001-08:00

China's fears of rich nation 'climate conspiracy' at Copenhagen revealed

'Conspiracy to divide developing world' will make future talks harder, says leaked government report

The Guardian

Rich nations furthered their "conspiracy to divide the
developing world" at December's UN climate summit in
Copenhagen, while Canada "connived" and the EU acted "to
please the United States", according to an internal
document from a Chinese government thinktank obtained by
the Guardian.

The document, which was written in the immediate aftermath
of Copenhagen but has only now come to light, provides the
most candid insight yet into Chinese thinking on the
fraught summit.

"It was unprecedented for a conference negotiating process
to be so complicated, for the arguments to be so intense,
for the disputes to be so wide and for progress to be so
slow," notes the special report. "There was criticism and
praise from all sides, but future negotiations will be more
difficult."

The authors - all members of a government environmental
research institute - were not part of the Chinese
negotiating team, but their paper was commissioned by the
environment ministry and circulated internally to the
minister, vice-ministers and department chiefs in the days
after the conference. The ministry currently plays only a
marginal role in climate policy making but many of the
paper's observations were echoed by China's chief climate
negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, in a recent speech given at
Beijing University.

The authors were downbeat about the prospects for
international talks and China's position within them.
"China, which was in the conference spotlight, played an
active and constructive role, but was also under huge
international pressure. It is predictable that our country
will face a tougher challenge in future climate talks," it
says.

Analysing international reaction to Copenhagen, the paper
lists a selection of responses from the UN
secretary-general, the Chinese foreign minister, the
European commissioner, prominent NGOs and major media
organisations, including the Guardian. It was written
before the publication of the most strident criticisms of
China's tactics by Mark Lynas, climate change adviser to
the Maldives, and the UK climate and energy secretary, Ed
Miliband.

Contrary to those views, the paper argues that the primary
goal of China's negotiators was not to spoil the summit,
but to resist a deal from rich nations that would put an
unacceptable burden on China and other developing
countries.

In their evaluation of the outcome, the officials' top
point is that "the overall interests of developing
countries have been defended" by resisting a rich nation
"conspiracy" to abandon the Kyoto protocol, and with it the
legal distinction between rich nations that must cut carbon
emissions and developing nations for whom action is not
compulsory.

The internal report acknowledges that unity among China's
traditional allies in the developing world became harder to
maintain in Copenhagen. "A conspiracy by developed nations
to divide the camp of developing nations [was] a success,"
it said, citing the Small Island States' demand that the
Basic group of nations - Brazil, South Africa, India, China
- impose mandatory emission reductions.

The paper is scathing about the US-led "umbrella group",
which it says adopted a position of inaction. Canada, it
says, "was devoted to conniving" to convince the world that
its pledge of a 3% emissions reduction between 1990 and
2020 is significant, while having no intention of meeting
its Kyoto protocol target of 6%.

There are no comforting words for the European Union, which
used to pride itself on playing a leadership role in
climate talks. "Copenhagen was a setback for the EU", the
authors say, in part because Europe "suggested the
abandonment of the Kyoto protocol in order to please the
US." The ministry has not responded to the Guardian's
request for a comment on the leaked paper.

The authors note that the Copenhagen accord which emerged
from the summit was not legally binding and lacked a global
target for emissions. But it says that overall the accord
was a "step forward", noting progress on a consensus to
limit global warming within 2C, progress on the funding by
rich nations of climate change adaptation measures in
poorer nations and a "last minute" compromise by developing
nations on the verification of their carbon pledges.

Lynas, who was present at many of the key negotiating
sessions, said: "It's astonishing that this document
suggests the Chinese really believes the absurd conspiracy
theory that small island states were being played like
puppets by rich countries. The truth is that the small
island states and most vulnerable countries want China and
its allies to cut their emissions because without these
cuts they will not survive. Bluntly put, China is the
world's No1 emitter, and if China does not reduce its
emissions by at least half by mid-century, then countries
like the Maldives will go under."

He added: "I think these claims of conspiracy are just a
bullying tactic, to force more progressive developing
countries back into line in case they too start demanding
more serious action by China."

Speaking last month, China's chief climate negotiator, Xie
- who also serves as vice-minister of the National
Development and Reform commission which controls China's
climate policy - also referred to the pressure from small
island nations. "The rich nations were completely trying to
make conflict among developing countries," he said.

He also described the "international fight on climate
change" as a contest for economic development space and
stressed that the way forward for China was to put more
effort into building a low-carbon economy. "Countries with
low-carbon industries will have a developmental advantage,"
said Xie. "Some people believe this is a global competition
as significant as the space race in the cold war. "

The concluding section of the leaked document proposes a
series of constructive initiatives. In what appears to be a
bid by the environment ministry to play a greater role in
carrying out climate-related policy, the report suggests
amending air pollution control laws to include greenhouse
gas emissions.

The official US version about what happened at Copenhagen
is also harsh. Todd Stern, the state department climate
change envoy, said this week that the summit "a snarling,
aggravated, chaotic event." But America attributes the
difficulties to a central divide between those countries -
led by China - insisting rich countries bear the entire
burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the
position held by the US that rapidly emerging countries
must also take action. Stern suggested the divide had not
been bridged. China, along with India, South Africa and
Brazil, had been "ambiguous" in its follow-up commitments
to the accord.

Tom Burke, the influential environmentalist and a founder
of E3G consultants, said: "There was indeed a lot of work
done to get developing nations to put pressure on China.
[But] it was not a conspiracy of any kind unfortunately as
Britain was acting entirely alone on this front. Neither
our EU allies nor the US mounted any kind of diplomatic
effort. Pretty well everyone in Copenhagen, not just the
developed countries, complained about China's blocking
tactics."

CHINA CONTINUES TO RENATIONALISE; 'THE SECOND-COMING OF STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES'

2010-01-30T12:52:00.000-08:00

What's yours is mine in China's coalfields

The Australian
January 25, 2010

NOWHERE is renationalisation more blatant than in the rich
coalfields of Shanxi.

Yet there's money lying beneath this unalluring mix. Loads
of it. Taiyuan is scattered with Bentley showrooms, Rolex
boutiques -- in fact, all the luxury brand names from New
York, London, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai. And the locals
like to talk about money.

"When a Shanxi businessman goes to Beijing to look for
houses, he doesn't just look at one apartment -- he looks
at the entire side of the building," a Shanxi executive
said in Taiyuan last week.

Most of the money has come from coal, the black gold that
fuels China's power stations and its steelmaking blast
furnaces, processing Australia's iron ore. Fortunes have
been built on the back of the province's mine workers, and
with their blood: there were 2631 deaths in China's coal
mining sector as a result of mine accidents last year, but
the figure was down by 20 per cent on 2008.

Shanxi is changing. Once home to thousands of small and
mid-sized mines and mining companies, now the government is
taking over again. Shanxi's coal sector is a high-profile
symbol of renationalisation: the second coming of
state-owned enterprises.

Tens of thousands of state-owned enterprises were pulled
apart in the 1980s to allow capitalism to develop. But now
the country's leadership is becalmed as it heads into its
last two years in power after years of only incremental
economic reform.

China's ruling politico-corporate complex has also been
emboldened by the opportunities of the global financial
crisis, which saw more than $US1.5 trillion pumped into the
economy, most into state-run companies.

The crisis has also been used to step up plans for
consolidation in eight key industries: the aim of this is
to have a smaller number of large companies which China
wants to be able to compete with large foreign
multinationals as well as expanding globally.

It's not just on a national level. In Shanxi, home to 30
million people, seven provincial coal miners have been
allocated a slice of the private sector at a bargain price.

In Shanxi close to 2000 small mines have been forceably
reclaimed, officially for efficiency, health and safety and
environmental concerns. These are real concerns: the
government attributes the fall in deaths to small mine
closures and says 70 per cent of fatalities are at small
mines. But one miner owner says he instituted the extra
safety and environmental controls but was still forced to
sell to the government at a loss of 5 million yuan
($833,000).

Businesses from the wealthy province of Zhejiang and its
famously rich capital Wenzhou are the biggest single source
of investment in Shanxi's coal sector.

"Wenzhou, one of the regions with the most active private
economy, has only 4.5 per cent GDP growth in the first half
of last year, far below national level," Xia Yeliang, a
professor at Beijing University, says.

"One of the reasons is Wenzhou's private entrepreneurs have
invested in about 600 coal mines in Shanxi with 200 billion
yuan, which face mergers now.

"It has severely hit Wenzhou's economy. The
renationalisation will have irrevocable impacts on China's
economy. It will have a profound negative effect on wealth
distribution and future development of China, and it must
be stopped now."

Lawyers claim their clients are getting only about 30 per
cent of the real value of the business in the forced sale
of coal mines. The provincial government has appointed its
own valuer, but lawyers have claimed this is against the
law. Mines are effectively being bought back for the price
of exploration licences handed out during the first decade
of the century and this does not take into account capital
spending and commercial contracts, says Zhang Yucheng, a
lawyer at national Chinese law firm Dacheng Law Office.

Last year China depended entirely on government funding to
achieve its 8.7 per cent growth. It was a tough year for
businesses in China -- recent government figures showed 20
per cent of small businesses went broke between November
and May and a further 20 per cent went close to collapse --
but China's state-owned enterprises got richer.

Last week the state press reported that China's SOEs were
expected to generate 750 billion yuan in profits and
achieve sales revenue of 12 trillion yuan in 2009.

In the first 11 months of 2009, the 131 SOEs under the
direct supervision of the State Assets Supervision and
Administration Commission (SASAC) posted 3.4 per cent
year-on-year growth in profits to 710.9 billion yuan on
revenues of 11.1 trillion yuan. "China will continue to
push ahead with the restructuring of its SOEs next year and
will encourage state-owned companies to pursue mergers and
acquisitions across different regions and countries," SASAC
director Lo Rongrong says. "We will also back private
enterprise investments in state-owned entities."

Initially, aggrieved mine owners, unaware of their legal
rights, were loath to take on the government. But now
China's biggest law firm, Dacheng, has taken on the case
for a group of mine owners.

"The Shanxi government has no right to handle the ownership
of private coal mines. It violates the Chinese
constitution, contract law and mineral resource law," Zhang
says.

"The transfer deal price should be assessed according to
market value."

The law firm is pushing for the appointment of an
independent arbiter to reassess the valuation of the mines
and says the Shanxi government has breached a number of
laws and regulations.

This is an interesting case in a country with no private
property rights.

sainsburychina@gmail.com - Michael Sainsbury

CHINESE GOVERNMENT CRACKS DOWN ON PROPERTY SPECULATION

2010-01-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

China rolls out fresh measures for property market amid rising house prices

BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The General Office of the State Council, China's cabinet, Sunday issued a notice that required central governmental departments and local governments to strengthen management, stabilize market expectations and facilitate stable and sound development of the real estate market.

"With the recovery of the real estate market, such problems as excessively rising house prices have recently emerged in some cities, which call for great attention," said the notice.

It listed 11 specific measures which should be taken in five aspects -- increasing supply of low-cost houses for low-income families and common residential houses, encouraging reasonable house buying while restraining purchases for speculation and investment, strengthening real estate project loan risk management and market supervision, speeding up construction of housing projects for low-income households, and specifying responsibilities of local governments.

On increasing supply of low-cost houses for low-income families and increasing supply of common residential houses, the notice said efforts should be made to construct more smaller-sized low- and medium-pricing apartments while increasing land supply for residential housing projects.

According to the notice, governments at all levels should act to push property developers to quicken project development and sales of finished projects.

The notice also said cities nationwide, especially those with high house prices and excessively rising house prices, should step up efforts to build more affordable or low-rent housing projects for low and medium income families.

To increase land supply for residential housing projects, the notice required city governments nationwide to lay out as soon as possible the residential housing construction plan for 2010-2012, which should be specific on each year's construction scale of smaller-sized low- and medium-pricing houses, low-rent houses and affordable houses for low and medium income families.

On encouraging reasonable house buying while restraining purchases for speculation and investment, the notice said financial institutions should continue encouraging first-time ordinary home buying while strictly carrying out mortgage loan policies on second-time home purchasing.

It said the down payment requirement for those families applying to buy a second or more houses backed with loans should be no less than 40 percent, and the mortgage rates should be strictly settled on the basis of loan risks.

On strengthening property project loan risk management and market supervision, the notice said financial institutions should not grant loans to any developers failing to meet the minimum amount of capital needed to jumpstart a new commercial property.

It also asked the People's Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission to enhance supervision on property credit among commercial financial institutions.

Efforts should also be made to strengthen monitoring of capital flow and trans-boundary investment and financing activities so as to prevent credit from entering the real estate sector illegally and stop overseas speculative funds from jeopardizing China's property market, it said.

The notice also asked the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and other departments to take more measures to crack down on property developers that hoarded land or houses for more profits, and on real estate brokerage which conducted price deception or spread rumors to jack up house prices.

The taxation authority should thoroughly investigate tax fraud cases by property developers and severely punish those violators, while the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission should further regulate investment activities by major state-owned enterprises in the property market, according to the notice.

On speeding up construction of residential housing projects for low-income households, the notice said governments at all levels should strive to help solve the housing problem of 15.4 million low-income urban households by the end of 2012.

It urged local governments to make more efforts on the renovation of "shanty towns" and increase low-rent houses and affordable houses to low-income families.

On the fifth and final aspect, the notice said more work needed to be done to improve the working mechanism in which provincial governments should assume general responsibility in stabilizing property market and solving the housing problem for low-income families while city-level governments should take the responsibility of implementing specific measures.

Local governments should annul any rules in the property market that were in conflict with the macro-control policies adopted by the central government, it said.

The lengthy notice came after house prices in 70 large and medium-sized Chinese cities rose 5.7 percent year-on-year in November 2009, continuing an escalation which has triggered fresh concerns over property speculation and property bubble in the country.

The November rise, which was 1.8 percentage points higher than the jump in October, was the ninth straight monthly increase of house prices in the survey of real estate across major Chinese cities.

China's property market received a blow and began to fall in late 2008 after the global financial crisis crippled China's once-essential exports and the economy as a whole.

But a series of favorable measures, a credit boom and speculative investment in 2009 had led to a quick recovery of China's property market and price hikes, which started around March 2009.

Statistics from Goldman Sachs showed that over the past six years, housing price hikes had outpaced income rises by 30 percentage points in Shanghai and 80 percentage points in Beijing.

In Beijing, the housing price of per square meter is as much as a resident's seven months' salary on average.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told Xinhua in an interview on Dec. 27 that the government would use taxes and mortgage rates to stabilize house prices and take measures to clamp down on house speculation.

Starting Jan. 1 this year, the government started to reimpose a sales tax on homes sold within five years of their purchase, after cutting the period to two years in January of 2009 to boost the then falling property market.

ARTICLE ARGUES: 'US CANNOT FIGHT CHINA WITHOUT OCCUPYING YEMEN'

2010-01-10T14:33:00.000-08:00

Obama's Yemeni odyssey targets China
By M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

A year ago, Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh made the
startling revelation that his country's security forces
apprehended a group of Islamists linked to the Israeli
intelligence forces. "A terrorist cell was apprehended and
will be referred to the courts for its links with the
Israeli intelligence services," he promised.

Saleh added, "You will hear about the trial proceedings."
Nothing was ever heard and the trail went cold. Welcome to
the magical land of Yemen, where in the womb of time the
Arabian Nights were played out.

Combine Yemen with the mystique of Islam, Osama bin Laden,
al-Qaeda and the Israeli intelligence and you get a heady
mix. The head of the US Central Command, General David
Petraeus, dropped in at the capital, Sana'a, on Saturday
and vowed to Saleh increased American aid to fight
al-Qaeda. United States President Barack Obama promptly
echoed Petraeus' promise, assuring that the US would step
up intelligence-sharing and training of Yemeni forces and
perhaps carry out joint attacks against militants in the
region.

Another Afghanistan?

Many accounts say that Obama, who is
widely regarded as a gifted and intelligent politician, is
blundering into a catastrophic mistake by starting another
war that could turn out to be as bloody and chaotic and
unwinnable as Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, on the face of it,
Obama does seem erratic. The parallels with Afghanistan are
striking. There has been an attempt to destroy a US plane
by a Nigerian student who says he received training in
Yemen. And America wants to go to war.

Yemen, too, is a land of wonderfully beautiful rugged
mountains that could be a guerilla paradise. Yemenis are a
hospitable lot, like Afghan tribesmen, but as Irish
journalist Patrick Cockurn recollects, while they are
generous to passing strangers, they "deem the laws of
hospitality to lapse when the stranger leaves their tribal
territory, at which time he becomes 'a good back to shoot
at'." Surely, there is romance in the air - almost like in
the Hindu Kush. Fiercely nationalistic, almost every Yemeni
has a gun. Yemen is also, like Afghanistan, a land of
conflicting authorities, and with foreign intervention, a
little civil war is waiting to flare up.

Is Obama so incredibly forgetful of his own December 1
speech outlining his Afghan strategy that he violated his
own canons? Certainly not. Obama is a smart man. The
intervention in Yemen will go down as one of the smartest
moves that he ever made for perpetuating the US's global
hegemony. It is America's answer to China's surge.

A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is
one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the
Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi
Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In
effect, Uncle Sam is "marking territory" - like a dog on a
lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening
its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow
in the race.

The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn't end with
Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that,
the US establishes its military presence in an entire
unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian
Ocean's western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken
of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The
US has now foreclosed China's options. The only country
with a coastline that is available for China to set up a
naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries
have a Western military presence.

The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on
the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he
doesn't receive any body bags of American servicemen
serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects
from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special
forces and "focus on providing intelligence and training to
help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants", according to the US
military. Obama's main core objective will be to establish
an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many
purposes.

A new great game begins First, the US move has to be viewed
against the historic backdrop of the Shi'ite awakening in
the region. The Shi'ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have
been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi'ite uprisings
have been a recurring theme in Yemen's history. There has
been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of
Shi'ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.

More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they
constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate
Sunni Arab states - and Israel - is that the Believing
Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is
entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in
Lebanon in all respects - politically, economically,
socially and culturally.

Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the
Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The
Yemeni Shi'ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have
far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which
is a key American base, is predominantly Shi'ite. Even more
sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of
Shi'ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia's highly
restive Shi'ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it
all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country's
fabulous oil wealth.

Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of
political transition as a new generation is set to take
over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and
fault lines within the royal family are likely to get
exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of
institutionalized Shi'ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by
the Wahhabi establishment, Shi'ite empowerment is a
veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this
juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the
recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against
the north Yemeni Shi'ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia
testifies.

The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama
to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies - as he
did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But
democratization in the Yemeni context - ironically, in the
Arab context - would involve Shi'ite empowerment. After the
searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched
like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be
aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh
than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil
rich-region in which it has profound interests.

Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what
Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn't
want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with
all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only
"democratic" system operating in that entire region.

Iran's shadow over the Yemeni Shi'ite consciousness worries
the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle
going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the
ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that
constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he
isn't finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be
believed, there could be times when the vague recollections
of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of
his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling
intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the
White House corridors.

Israel moves in But Obama is first and foremost a realist.
Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic
considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval
Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has
tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a
military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a
springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty
considerations for Obama.

The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni
authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli
intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen - just as it did
in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.

Islamism doesn't deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn't have
been far off the mark when he alleged last year that
Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links
with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a
highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort
of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates
marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is
lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.

Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift
insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian
Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose
effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously
handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf
region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel
politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without
doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel
(and Britain). But the "pro-West" Arab states with their
rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute
spectators on the sidelines.

Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli
security presence in the region as a safer bet than the
spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi'ite empowerment
emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some
stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the
extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known
as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn't done that
already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for
the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite
possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in
the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.

It's all about China

Most important, however, for US global
strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port
of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the
gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait
will put the US in an unassailable position in the "great
game" of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian
Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China's economy.
By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to
Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a
declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an
extravagant indulgence in fantasy.

In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming
under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the
Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese
naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between
Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese
influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its
Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the
primary intent of eroding China's influence with the
military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at
strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to
open a new transportation route towards the Middle East,
the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting
traditional Western economic dominance.

China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca
Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US,
on the contrary, is determined that China remains
vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and
Malaysia.

An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy
with China's efforts to reach the warm waters of the
Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan.
Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose
around the neck of the Pakistani elites - civilian and
military - and forcing them to make a strategic choice
between the US and China. This will put those elites in an
unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they
are inherently "pro-Western" (even when they are
"anti-American") and if the Chinese connection is important
for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances
perceived Indian hegemony.

The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites
are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from
Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis
Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George
W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent
power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will
have to learn to live?

US-India-Israel axis

On the other hand, the Indian elites
are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the
Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama's
political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all
but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the
broad contours of the US's global strategy - of which
containment of China is a core template.

The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard
to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the
Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the
Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish
lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in
the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers
as well as successive administrations. And all this is
happening at a time when the India-Israel security
relationship is gaining greater momentum.

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to
visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is
reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude
toward India's longstanding quest for "dual-use" technology
from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military
cooperation is about to open between the two countries,
which will make India a serious challenger to China's
growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the
great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business
for American companies.

Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides
the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on.
It will have significance for the security of the Indian
Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last
year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.

All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and
missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen
in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard
reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be
"change", has careened away and increasingly defaults to
the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the
Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the "revisionism" in
his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We
can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the
Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia
and towards China and Russia.

Arguably, this sort of "return of the native" by Obama was
inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his
circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama's
presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a
train cannot be "steered", the driver can at best set its
speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.

Besides, history has no instances of a declining world
power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the
sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance
without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all
such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought
piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet
Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

VOICE OF BRITISH FINANCIAL ELITE: US ARE LOSING THE FREE WORLD

2010-01-07T13:08:00.000-08:00

America is losing the free world

By Gideon Rachman

4 Jan, 2010, FT

Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the “free world”. But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world – Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran.

The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs. During the last presidential election campaign, John McCain, the Republican candidate, called for the formation of a global alliance of democracies to push back against authoritarian powers. Some of President Barack Obama’s senior advisers have also written enthusiastically about an international league of democracies.

But the assumption that the world’s democracies will naturally stick together is proving unfounded. The latest example came during the Copenhagen climate summit. On the last day of the talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India – but failed each time. The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport.

So Mr Obama must have felt something of a chump when he arrived for a last-minute meeting with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, only to find him already deep in negotiations with the leaders of none other than Brazil, South Africa and India. Symbolically, the leaders had to squeeze up to make space for the American president around the table.

There was more than symbolism at work. In Copenhagen, Brazil, South Africa and India decided that their status as developing nations was more important than their status as democracies. Like the Chinese, they argued that it is fundamentally unjust to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of poor countries at a lower level than the emissions of the US or the European Union; all the more so since the industrialised west is responsible for the great bulk of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

Revealingly, both Brazilian and Chinese leaders have made the same pointed joke – likening the US to a rich man who, after gorging himself at a banquet, then invites the neighbours in for coffee and asks them to split the bill.

If climate change were an isolated example, it might be dismissed as an important but anomalous issue that is almost designed to split countries along rich-poor lines. But, in fact, if you look at Brazil, South Africa, India and Turkey – the four most important democracies in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the greater Middle East – it is clear that none of them can be counted as a reliable ally of the US, or of a broader “community of democracies”.

In the past year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has cut a lucrative oil deal with China, spoken warmly of Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, and congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on his “victory” in the Iranian presidential election, while welcoming him on a state visit to Brazil.

During a two-year stint on the United Nations Security Council from 2006, the South Africans routinely joined China and Russia in blocking resolutions on human rights and protecting authoritarian regimes such as Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan and Iran.

Turkey, once regarded as a crucial American ally in the cold war and then trumpeted as the only example of a secular, pro-western, Muslim democracy, is also no longer a reliable partner for the west. Ever since the US-led invasion of Iraq, opinion polls there have shown very high levels of anti-Americanism. The mildly Islamist AKP government has engaged with America’s regional enemies – including Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran – and alarmed the Americans by taking an increasingly hostile attitude to Israel.

India’s leaders do seem to cherish the idea that they have a “special relationship” with the US. But even the Indians regularly line up against the Americans on a range of international issues, from climate change to the Doha round of trade negotiations and the pursuit of sanctions against Iran or Burma.

So what is going on? The answer is that Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and India are all countries whose identities as democracies are now being balanced – or even trumped – by their identities as developing nations that are not part of the white, rich, western world. All four countries have ruling parties that see themselves as champions of social justice at home and a more equitable global order overseas. Brazil’s Workers’ party, India’s Congress party, Turkey’s AKP and South Africa’s African National Congress have all adapted to globalisation – but they all retain traces of the old suspicions of global capitalism and of the US.

Mr Obama is seen as a huge improvement on George W. Bush – but he is still an American president. As emerging global powers and developing nations, Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey may often feel they have more in common with a rising China than with the democratic US.

CHINESE MILITIAWOMEN AT 60th ANNIVERSARY PARADE: 'WOMEN HOLD UP HALF OF THE SKY'

2010-01-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

INTERVIEW WITH PROGRESSIVE SOUTH ASIAN ANALYST ON US-CHINA RELATIONS

2010-01-06T15:32:00.000-08:00

WHAT ROLE CHINA PLAYS FOR SOUTH-EAST ASIA AND ASEAN

2010-01-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

China-ASEAN pact offers more than win-win

By Brantly Womack
Asia Times Online

"Every country in Southeast Asia has benefited from broader and deeper relations with China, and ASEAN as a regional organization has been strengthened by China's involvement"

The formal inauguration of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area
(ACFTA) on January 1 marks the culmination of arguably the
most successful big-power diplomacy of the post-Cold War
era.

Since 1991, China's relations with Southeast Asia have
moved from an alliance of convenience with the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) against Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos to close and multi-dimensional
interaction with an expanded 10-member ASEAN and with each
of the association's member states (in addition to the
above-mentioned trio, the group now includes Myanmar
alongside founding members Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore and Thailand).

A similar pattern of China's successful engagement with
neighbors can be seen in the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization with Russia and Central Asia and, less
successfully, in the six-party talks in northeast Asia over
North Korea's nuclear program. With the exception of
China's trans-Himalayan border, promotion of regional
multilateral institutions has progressed hand-in-hand with
strengthening bilateral relationships.

The formula for China's successful good neighbor policy has
many labels, but the simplest is "win-win". Every country
in Southeast Asia has benefited from broader and deeper
relations with China, and ASEAN as a regional organization
has been strengthened by China's involvement.

Trade, investment and tourism have blossomed. China's
willingness to sign the Framework Agreement on
Comprehensive Economic Cooperation in 2002 and the Treaty
of Amity and Cooperation in 2003 encouraged other nations
to follow suit. Despite global economic uncertainty
displacing US-centered globalization, China and ASEAN are
off on the right foot in a new era. But the path ahead is
not simply a yellow brick road of win-win policies.

Why not? What could possibly be wrong with win-win? A
cynical power theorist would say that if one side wins more
than the other, the one who wins less may end up being
dominated by the one who wins more. But this hardly applies
to Southeast Asia. No individual state in Southeast Asia
has ever considered itself the equal of China. Moreover,
China's military budget surpassed the aggregate military
budgets of Southeast Asia in the 1990s. And ASEAN is no
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rather than being a
security umbrella for coordinating action in crisis
situations, ASEAN is more of a consensual parasol that
works best in sunny weather. If losing parity with China
were the tipping point for subjugation, Southeast Asia lost
long ago.

Win-win is too simple a formula precisely because of the
disparities between China and Southeast Asia. Individually
and collectively, Southeast Asian nations are more exposed
in their relationship with China than vice versa. According
to estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency in the
United States, all of ASEAN together in 2008 had only
one-third of China's gross domestic product (GDP) in terms
of purchasing power parity (PPP). The economy of Shanghai
is one-and-a-half times that of Singapore. Guangdong's GDP
exceeds that of Indonesia, while the combined economies of
Guangxi and Yunnan, middling provinces by Chinese
standards, exceed those of their neighbors Vietnam, Laos
and Myanmar.

Therefore, Southeast Asia is necessarily more alert to the
risks as well as the opportunities of its relationship to
China. Proportionally, it has more at stake, and the sense
of risk as well as opportunity is all the more vivid to
individual states in Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia's dilemmas in dealing with China can be
illustrated by the recent controversy in Vietnam over
Chinese investments in bauxite mining and processing. It is
certainly a win-win situation. The Chinese company
involved, Chinalco, is a major global investor in bauxite
mining and alumina processing. Bauxite occurs in limestone
areas with poor agricultural prospects. Vietnam has the
world's third-largest bauxite reserves, and hopes to
attract US$15 billion in investment in this area by 2025.
It needs the investment in the current global economic
climate, and it also needs to offset its severe balance of
payments deficit with China.

But the Vietnamese people have been very concerned about
Chinese bauxite development. They are concerned about the
ecological effects of mining; about the major stake that a
powerful Chinese company would have in central Vietnam; and
about losing jobs to imported Chinese workers. They do not
want to have the future of a major national resource in the
hands of an outside power. Win-win is not enough. Vietnam
wants reassurance about its long-term interests because it
is dealing with a much larger neighbor.

Similarly, the proposal of two corridors, rail and highway,
from Nanning, the capital of the coastal Guangxi autonomous
region, bordering Vietnam, to Singapore would undoubtedly
benefit Vietnam. The corridors would run most of the length
of Vietnam, thereby improving domestic transportation as
well as connections to China and to the rest of mainland
Southeast Asia. However, given current patterns of trade,
far more goods will be coming down the corridors from China
than going up from Vietnam, and much of Vietnam's exports
would continue to be raw materials and resources.

This is still win-win for China's producers and Vietnam's
consumers, but consumers also need to produce, and
Vietnam's economy must continue to modernize and become
more sophisticated. It is therefore hardly a surprise that
on such win-win projects China pushes forward while Vietnam
hesitates. A change at the periphery of China's economy
could affect the heartland of Vietnam's.

Vietnam is the most sensitive country in Southeast Asia to
China, but the entire region is aware that its interests
and China's interests are not identical, even if many are
compatible. The problem of asymmetric relationships cannot
be solved, it can only be managed.

Take for example China's single most successful gesture in
its regional relations. In 1997, China held the value of
the yuan steady against the dollar while the Southeast
Asian currencies were falling. Its neighbors were impressed
that China could succeed where they failed, and they were
grateful that China prevented a race to the bottom in
currency devaluations.

Since August 2008, China has pursued exactly the same
policy, but its effects on Southeast Asia are the opposite
of a decade earlier. Now the yuan's peg to a declining US
dollar is forcing neighbors to compress their currency
values in order to maintain market share. China's neighbors
wonder how long currency compression will last and what
will happen when the yuan finally does revalue. There is
little reassurance from China, and no claim that it is
helping the neighborhood.

The tension between China and Southeast Asian states over
conflicting claims in the South China Sea has become the
symbol of the region's collective uneasiness concerning
China's commitment to cooperation. The "Declaration on the
Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea" signed in 2002
was a watershed event in regional confidence-building, but
there has been little further progress.

Moreover, China's expansion of naval facilities on Hainan
raises concerns throughout the region regarding China's
military transparency and intentions. In fact, however,
multilateral cooperation is the only feasible way for any
country, China included, to profit from the disputed area.
It would be difficult to extract oil at gunpoint, and the
costs to China's regional and even global relations would
outweigh any possible gains. The only winning path in the
South China is one of more serious cooperation and
reassurance.

While win-win is the slogan of the day, deeper principles
have lain behind China's successes of the past two decades.
China's willingness to work with multilateral regional
institutions has been a big part of the winning formula.
Participation in ASEAN's general relationship with China
buffers the exposure of each individual state. This
benefits China as well as ASEAN.

Vulnerability causes smaller states to hesitate in
asymmetric relationships, while collective agreements
reduce individual vulnerability. Within each bilateral
relationship, sensitivity to the dilemmas faced by the
smaller side even in a win-win situation is essential for
continued development.

For example, not only does Vietnam have reason to expand
its merchandise market in China, but China has an interest
in Vietnam's marketing success. Currently, Vietnam's weak
sales to China are a major trade bottleneck; a more
balanced relationship would enable trade volume to expand
on a solid basis.

Finally and most importantly, China's traditional respect
for the sovereignty and autonomy of all states becomes ever
more important with the growth of China's relative power.
As Sophie Richardson's recent book on China-Cambodia
relations demonstrates, the "Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence" have been an especially important foundation
of China's relations with smaller states. [1] The time has
come to multilateralize the five principles into a general
respect for regional consensus and international agreements
and institutions.

In the new era of global economic uncertainty, the risks
that smaller countries face are more vivid than their
opportunities. The special task faced by regional powers,
whether China, or South Africa, or Brazil, or India, or
Russia, is to earn regional leadership by reassuring
neighbors that their interests and voices will be
respected.

Moreover, they need to take the lead in regional projects
that address common problems. But to do so effectively they
must act in a spirit of multilateral respect. For the past
two decades, China has led the cohort of regional powers in
developing cooperative relationships with neighbors, and
one of the fruits of success is the successful beginning of
ACFTA. But it is only a successful beginning, it is not the
end of the road.

Note 1. China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence, by Sophie Richardson. Columbia
University Press, 2009.

Brantly Womack is the Cumming Memorial Professor of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. His recent books include China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and China among Unequals: Asymmetric Foreign Relations in Asia (World Scientific, forthcoming).

SCOTTISH NEWSPAPER POINTS OUT BRITISH COLONIAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHINA

2010-01-03T06:09:00.001-08:00

Britain stands on shaky ground when
attacking Chinese justice

From 1839 to 1842 Britain went to war with China to force it to
accept the opium which Britain was pumping into the country

The Scotsman
Dec 31 2009
George Kerevan

IN ITS imperial heyday, the sun never set on the British
Empire. Of course, as the Irish were wont to point out,
that was only because God did not trust the British in the
dark. These days, most Britons have forgotten the empire,
except as a backdrop for BBC costume dramas. The rest of
the world is not so accommodating, having borne the brunt
of our uninvited foreign adventures.

A case in point is Chinese anger at Britain's outspoken
public criticism of the execution on Tuesday of a UK
citizen, Akmal Shaikh, who was convicted of drug smuggling,
despite claims he was suffering from bipolar disorder, a
form of manic depression. Shaikh's execution went ahead
despite voluble calls from the British government for
clemency. The Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis lectured
the Chinese ambassador to her face that "China had failed
in its basic human rights responsibilities".

I have no personal knowledge of Shaikh, though there seems
to be no opposition to the fact that he was caught
red-handed smuggling four kilos of heroin into Urumqi, the
largest city in China's western interior. Urumqi is the
centre of the heroin trade in China, owing to its proximity
to Afghanistan and Pakistan - a dangerous place to be.

Shaikh's family say he was duped into transporting the
drugs as a direct result of his illness - they claim he was
prone to violent mood swings and delusions that diminished
his sense of responsibility. However, while it could be a
result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, there are no
medical tests for the condition. Diagnosis is made solely
on the basis of symptoms - mild or serious. Diagnosis can
be problematic, especially if episodes are intermittent.

Yet there is a strong association between bipolar disorder
and what society deems to be criminal behaviour. The US
department of justice reports that 16 per cent of all
inmates in state and federal jails have a severe mental
illness, particularly bipolar disorder. On the other hand,
the link between manic depression and "wrongdoing" tends to
be through self-harm or violent, psychotic episodes rather
than organised crime. I am not in a position to judge the
rights and wrongs of Shaikh's case. He does seem to have a
history of delusional behaviour. However, I do worry that
British politicians and the media are sometimes too ready
to accuse foreign governments of incompetence, bias or lack
of elementary human rights when dealing with UK citizens
who have broken local laws.

There was the case of the three NatWest bankers extradited
to the US in 2006 on fraud charges linked to the Enron
scandal. A huge media campaign was mounted against this
"fast-track" extradition and many crocodile tears were shed
regarding the fate of the bankers in a "politicised" US
court system. Strangely enough, once in the US the trio
admitted their guilt and accepted a modest 37-month jail
sentence, which they actually served in Britain.

Attacking foreign jurisdictions for being legally
incompetent when dealing with British citizens makes for
good headlines in the UK. But it can make matters a lot
worse for the accused, especially if those foreign nations
feel they are being patronised by British politicians who
have short memories about what Britain got up to in its
imperial past.

Look at the case of Akmal Shaikh through Chinese eyes. The
execution and the British reaction are big news in the
local media. Ever polite, the Chinese have refrained from
mentioning the two wars we fought in the 19th century in
order to force China to let British (and Scottish)
merchants export opium to that country - an intervention
that plunged China into anarchy. Only now, 140 years later,
has China returned to its rightful place in the global
community, but the psychological scars run deep. It is no
surprise, then, that the Chinese will not take lectures
from Ivan Lewis.

The Chinese foreign ministry makes the obvious point that,
for years, Britain has accused China of lacking the rule of
law and an independent judiciary. But now the Chinese are
trying to establish the independence of their courts, we
suddenly want the Chinese government to set aside their
verdict for a foreign national.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Shaikh execution, the
strident form of the British protest comes across to
ordinary Chinese as both hypocritical and racist. We can
disagree with their reaction, but we should not ignore it.

The Chinese maintain that Shaikh enjoyed due process,
including two appeal trials after his original conviction.
They argue that, while the British authorities demanded a
psychiatric evaluation of Shaikh, they did not provide
sufficient detailed medical evidence (other than hearsay)
to convince the Chinese Supreme Court that it should take
such a step.

Had it been up to me, I would not have executed Shaikh. My
point is different: I am worried that he has been turned
into a pawn in a domestic power game designed to "prove"
British politicians are more important in the world than
they really are.

Yet when Gordon Brown lectures Hamid Karzai about
corruption in Afghanistan, ordinary Afghanis think about
British MPs and duck ponds. When we denounce miscarriages
of justice abroad, we should remember with shame the
Guilford Four, the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six -
proof of racism towards the Irish that infected the British
justice system throughout the 1970s.

In 1952, Derek Bentley, a 19-year-old petty thief, was
under arrest when his accomplice, Chris Craig, shot a
police officer. Craig escaped the gallows because he was a
minor, but Bentley was hanged. It took just 88 days from
the shots being fired till Bentley was executed. In 1998,
the Court of Appeal cleared his name, declaring he had been
denied "the fair trial which is the birthright of every
British citizen". Bentley had a mental age of 11. Let him
without sin cast the first stone. Or, in modern terms: the
successful diplomat is not necessarily the one who shouts
loudest.

AN EDITOR OF BRITAIN'S GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER MAKES SOME OBVIOUS POINTS

2009-12-29T13:16:00.000-08:00

Why denouncing China is hypocritical

There are good reasons why China is likely to be impervious
to lectures from Europeans on the morality of the drugs
trade

Michael White
The Guardian

I'm sorry too that the Chinese have just executed Akmal
Shaikh, an apparently mentally ill Briton. He was clearly
an expendable drugs mule, cynically exploited by
traffickers who are still alive and well today.

But I'm also sorry about the international clamour to
denounce China, which sounds at least as hypocritical and
insensitive as the act itself. Can Gordon Brown and David
Cameron – to name but two – hear what they sound like?

Let's start with the basics. Most of us (not all) deplore
the drugs trade – from cultivation to distribution and sale
– which is illegal in most countries (not all) and has
spawned a huge and lucrative global industry.

Some think the "cure'' – the worldwide campaign against the
trade – worse than the disease since it underpins major
criminal enterprises on all continents. It has long been
the case, though I would personally hesitate to risk
legalising it and hoping for the best.

Different countries tackle the problem in different ways.
China, which has a rising drugs problem as it enters the
modern consumer era, is one of those which takes a tough
line. As the Guardian's Q&A points out today it is one of
the few crimes to attract a mandatory death sentence.

Enter poor Akmal Shaikh, who seems to have gone off the
rails in middle age after leading a quiet family life as a
north London taxi driver. Someone who struck acquaintances
as very odd after he emigrated to Poland with grandiose
ideas, he falls into bad company which exploits his
gullibility.

So he ends up landing in Urumqi, northern China, in 2007
and being caught at the airport with 4kg of heroin in his
luggage. He told police he knew nothing about it. It's a
tragically familiar story and, in his case, it's probably
true.

In the wake of his execution the Chinese authorities sound
quite angry at criticism of their judicial system. Shaikh
had a fair trial, complete with interpreter, they say. He
was deemed fit to plead.

Mental illness? Ah, that's a tricky one. But it's easy to
see how the Chinese might take a very different view of how
it is defined. So do many jurisdictions – as we all know –
on this and many other legal issues: "self defence",
"crimes of passion", "third degree homicide", "honour
killings", lots of scope for moral relativism in all of
them.

Reprieve and other admirable campaigns which fight for the
rights of prisoners in foreign jurisdictions have the
virtue of consistency. Thus they oppose the death penalty
wherever it exists, including the US, where it was
abolished as a "cruel and unnatural punishment'' in 1972 –
and restored in 1976 when the supreme court changed its
mind.

Though they are pretty half-hearted about it compared with
China's 1,700 or so known executions (they are reported to
sell body parts for medical use) a year, southern US states
are keenest.

As governors both George W Bush and Bill Clinton – whom so
many of us admire – signed off on questionable executions
of vulnerable, marginalised people like Akmal Shaikh. A
high proportion of the 3,000 or so Americans on Death Row –
few actually executed – are black. Britain? We last
executed a man called Peter Allen at Walton jail on 13
August 1964 for murder – three years before the final
abolition of the death penalty.

Not so long ago really (our last Etonian PM, Sir Alec
Douglas-Home, was in No 10) and, as China's very smart UK
ambassador has probably told Beijing, capital punishment
still commands as much enthusiasm here 40 years later as it
does in China, ie lots.

So there's a sovereignty issue. China – like the US – has
the right to pass and implement its own laws and
governments, governments-in-waiting in Cameron's case,
should pause before getting too mouthy. Apparently 27
representations were made to China by Britain over the past
two years – mostly quietly, I assume, which is always the
best way.

But the execution took place during the Christmas news
lull: hence the sudden high profile. Thank goodness Ivan
Lewis, the junior foreign office minister put up to talk
about it today, saidL "I'm not going to make idle threats"
– or we might be starting 2010 going to war with China.

Talking of which, the really toe-curling fact, of which
neither Dr Gordon Brown with his PhD in history, nor David
Cameron with his 1st in PPE should be ignorant, is
Anglo-Chinese history.

When Europeans started forcing the reclusive China of the
late Ming and Qing dynasty to open its doors to trade in
the 16th and 17th century the visitors wanted more Chinese
goods – all that tea, silk and lovely porcelain – than the
Chinese wanted of ours.

Sounds familiar? What the Chinese would accept was silver,
a better bet than the US dollars they now hold in such vast
quantities. This was unsustainable and in the 19th century
the British East India Company hit on the idea of importing
Indian opium to China – though it was banned by imperial
Chinese law.

I hope you've spotted where I'm heading. If not here's
Wiki's starter kit on the Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60
which culminated in the so-called "unequal treaties" and
the eventual overthrow of the Qing in 1912.

Result: China was forced to accept the trade with
devastating social consequences. In fairness I should add
that the stuff was legal in Britain at the time – as
readers of Victorian novels can confirm. The Chinese
governor Lin Zexu became a hero for opposing the trade – as
did young William Gladstone at Westminster.

All the same, it is a pretty shameful story. Perhaps it
slipped your memory? It certainly hasn't slipped theirs and
is still unravelling: they only got Hong Kong back in 1997
and have never rebuilt the burned Summer Palace at Beijing
– their Windsor.

So, one way or another, poor Akmal Shaikh was the wrong man
in the wrong place. But China is likely to be impervious to
lectures from Europeans on the morality of the drugs trade.

As the world's rising power it's unlikely to be lectured
anyway, but that's another story – one we'll rapidly have
to get used to. No declaration of war this week, please
Ivan.

VENEZUELA & CHINA CONTINUE TO DEEPEN THEIR ALLIANCE

2009-12-28T08:30:00.000-08:00

Venezuela and China Consolidate
“Strategic Alliance,” Expand Bilateral Trade

Public accords signing ceremony in Caracas, taken from Venezuelan TV

Published on December 25th 2009
by James Suggett -
Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, December 24th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) –
Venezuelan and Chinese government officials and business
leaders met in Caracas this week to discuss bilateral
relations. As a result of the accords signed at the
meeting, Venezuela will increase its supply of oil to China
to more than 600,000 barrels per day next year, and China
will increase its investments in Venezuelan agriculture,
infrastructure, mining, and energy production.

In a press conference, Venezuelan Planning and Development
Minister Jorge Giordani called Venezuela’s growing economic
relationship with China “a consolidated strategic alliance
based on the premise of equality and mutual respect that
will be consolidated even more by two countries that have a
shared vision of a multi-polar world.”

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez vowed to supply China with
“all the oil it needs for its development and advancement”
and said Venezuela hopes to eventually supply a million
barrels of oil per day to China. According to Telesur,
Venezuela is currently China’s fourth largest oil supplier.

In addition, China’s Sinohydro Corporation and Venezuela’s
state electricity company CORPOELEC agreed to cooperate to
increase Venezuela’s hydroelectricity production. Venezuela
has experienced rolling power outages over the past three
months as a result of drastically increased demand and a
drought that caused a drop in the water level at a
principal dam.

The Chinese Development Bank Corporation also pledged a $1
billion credit for Venezuela’s state-owned mining company,
CVG, and Chinese state-owned and private companies agreed
to invest in Venezuelan railways, fish and shrimp
production.

Venezuelan Trade Minister Eduardo Saman said he expects an
increase in Venezuela’s imports of Chinese cars, electric
appliances, pharmaceuticals, and other goods over the
coming years, and that this will help to combat domestic
price speculation.

In recent years, China and Venezuela have created mixed
enterprises, in which Venezuela maintains a 60% controlling
share, to explore for, extract, refine, and transport oil
from Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt, as well as to explore
for natural gas off the Venezuelan coast.

Last year, China built and launched Venezuela’s first
telecommunications satellite, and Venezuelan students are
studying aerospace engineering in Chinese universities.

Since 2003, annual trade between the two countries has
increased from less than a half a million dollars to
approximately $5 billion in 2008. In addition to this,
China and Venezuela have signed $5 billion worth of planned
Orinoco oil accords, and created a $12 billion bilateral
investment fund for future projects.

President Chavez said the unprecedented growth in bilateral
relations between Venezuela and China has the goal of
creating a “balance in the world, a pluri-polar world,” in
which there is no single dominant super power such as the
United States. He said China “has demonstrated that it is
not necessary to attack those who are weakest in order to
be a great power.”

Since Chavez’s election in 1998, Venezuela has increased
its economic relations with countries in almost every
region of the world, including Africa, Southeast Asia, the
Middle East, and Eastern and Western Europe, and Latin
America.

CHINESE STATE MEDIA RESPONDS TO WESTERN CRITICISM OF CHINA AT COPENHAGEN

2009-12-24T15:37:00.000-08:00

Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao and Brazilian President Lula Da Silva at Copenhagen

Unreasonable to rebuke China over climate talks

2009-12-24
by Xinhua writer Yu Zhixiao

BEIJING, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- It is some certain European
politicians that are being irresponsible and uncooperative
when they unfairly reproach China for so-called
irresponsibility and non-cooperation in combating climate
change, especially during the Copenhagen climate talks.

Just after the conference ended earlier this month, a
handful of European politicians charged China with not
voluntarily and actively cutting emissions. They also
claimed China adopted unilateralism at the conference and
disregarded the interests of other countries.

Among the chorus, British Energy and Climate Change
Secretary Ed Miliband Monday alleged the Copenhagen
conference was "hijacked" by China and several other
developing countries, displayed "a farcical picture to the
public," and fell flat.

Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren claimed
Tuesday that the Copenhagen talks failed to make
breakthrough due to inertia of a few countries "especially
the United States and China."

As a matter of fact, China, in sharp contrast with the
claims, has exerted great effort to push forward the
Copenhagen negotiations with an eye to reaching a widely
accepted accord.

Premier Wen Jiabao flew to Copenhagen and delivered a key
speech at the talks to detail China's achievements and
future plans for fighting climate change. Wen's speech
showed China's sincerity and determination to move forward
the talks on climate change.

China, in the spirit of mutual respect and pragmatic
cooperation, maintained close contact and coordination with
all parties to help reach the hard-won Copenhagen Accord.

Over the past years, China has implemented a variety of
effective measures, including the promotion of renewable
energy, new laws, and reductions in pollution, to cut its
emissions.

Between 1990 and 2005, China's carbon dioxide emissions per
unit of the GDP fell 46 percent due to its unremitting
efforts.

Building on that, China also has set a fresh target of
cutting emissions per unit of the GDP by 40 percent to 45
percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. To reduce emissions on
such a large scale and over such an extended period of time
will require tremendous efforts by China, still a
developing country.

The target will be made mandatory and incorporated into
China's mid- and long-term plan for national economic and
social development to ensure its implementation will be
subject to the supervision of the law and public opinion.

Officials from some countries have highly praised China's
role at the conference. For example, Nolana Ta Ama, Dean of
the Diplomatic Corps and Togo's ambassador to China, said
Sunday that China played a leading role and made positive
contributions to the conference.

Distinctly and undeniably, China has acted as a responsible
and cooperative player at the Copenhagen talks and in
combating climate change.

CHINESE AMBASSADOR TO BRITAIN's SPEECH ON CLIMATE CHANGE

2009-12-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

Climate Change and China

London School of Economics
Ambassador Fu Ying
12 December, 2009

Professor Corbridge, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am honoured to talk to you on such an important subject
as climate change.

It's a special honour, because the LSE is well-known for
its scholarship on climate change and its crucial
contribution to this global debate.

China is a huge country with a population of 1.3 billion.
It has diverse climatic conditions and a fragile
environment. The effect of climate change is a very real
threat which we face everyday.

According to Chinese scientists, the average temperature in
China has risen by 1.1 degrees centigrade in the last 5
decades.

It is higher than the reported global average. We are
seeing more frequent bouts of extreme weather in many parts
of the country. Last spring, for example, the most severe
drought in 50 years hit northern China affecting the
livelihood of 4 million people.

Environmental damage and climate change is a reality for
us. Out of the world's most polluted 20 cities, half are in
China.

70% of Chinese rivers are polluted to some degree. China
has become the largest carbon emitter of the world.
How have we got here? China has reached this stage when it
is making great endeavours to lift people out of poverty.
Unlike you here, we have condensed 2 centuries of
industrialization into only 30 years.

Now, the Chinese people have woken to the threat and, with
the same zeal that we have embraced industrialization, we
are embracing cleaner development.

In China, climate change is not just a topic for
discussion; It's backed up with policy and action
throughout the country. Let me share some examples with
you.

First, on the legal and policy front. China set forward a
voluntary reduction program for 2006 to 2010 period,
including 20% reduction in energy intensity per unit of
GDP.

To achieve this, we amended the Law on Energy Saving and
the Law on Renewable Energy. We've also set up a strict
evaluation system for energy efficiency. This enables the
central government to hold provincial leaders accountable
for meeting energy efficiency targets.

Last month, the evaluation result for 2008 was released on
the web for all to access. Out of 31 provinces and regions,
26 fulfilled emission reduction targets. One can't
underscore enough the importance of having such
transparency as it places great pressure on those who are
not meeting the target.

Beijing is doing better, over-fulfilling its target for
2008, with over 7%. I am sure the Olympics helped. It has
already achieved over 17% for the 20% target of 2010. At
the bottom, you can see Xinjiang. It is lagging far behind
and looks unlikely to meet the target and would need a lot
of help.

Secondly, now the industries have to take very tough
decisions to achieve clean development. Projects with high
emission can no longer go ahead and some existing high
emitters are being phased out.

It is understandably difficult to push through such reforms
and there is, inevitably, resistance. Being a developing
country, shutting down factories means job losses for many
who need them.

For example, we have achieved cutting down the average
consumption of coal per unit of power by 20%, by
demolishing the high-polluting and inefficient power
plants. But it led to the loss of 400,000 jobs.

So the third point is that we have increased and will
continue to increase the percentage of cleaner alternative
energy sources. Low-carbon and energy conservation have
become new growth sectors in China. Many British companies
are actively involved in clean development projects in
China.

In the first 9 months of this year, clean energy
contributed a third of China's newly added power capacity.
China now ranks as first in the world for solar heating and
photovoltaic generation, as well as installed hydro power
capacity. You may be surprised to know, 1 in 10 families in
China already use solar energy. That includes my family.

Many new buildings in Chinese cities are equipped with
solar energy. The fact that the Chinese people are so keen
to adopt clean energy is an excellent indicator of our
dedication to a better future.

Next, let's talk about trees and reforestation. We all know
how trees can absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Chinese
people have really taken tree-planting to heart. It has
even become fashionable for young couples to plant trees to
mark their wedding. China has planted more trees than any
other country in the world, with 2.6 billion trees planted.
That is 2 trees per individual, an incredible number.

Last but not least, the only means for China to really
achieve its ambitious plan is through science and
technology. This is why China is investing heavily in
research and development. The country has become a giant
laboratory for testing all kinds of clean energy
technologies.

In the latest stimulus package worth 400 billion pound, 15%
was invested in addressing climate change. I am sure you
will agree that it is a huge amount by any standard,
especially during the financial crisis.

Thanks to all these efforts, China is well on track to
reach our targets set for 2010. That would mean a reduction
in CO2 emissions of 1.5 billion tons in five years by 2010.

This is an achievement that compares well with the efforts
of other countries.

At the UN climate change summit last September, President
Hu Jintao stated that China would take even further steps
to counter climate change. To follow up, the Chinese
government has announced its targets for 2020 based on 2005
levels.

They include:

- bringing down CO2 per unit of GDP by 40-45%,

- increasing the ratio of non-fossil energy to 15%,

- expanding forest coverage by 40 million hectares, that is
bigger than one and half times the size of United Kingdom.

We will make all these into compulsory and verifiable
targets, within the framework of our domestic development
program. I hope you will appreciate that achieving these
targets and further reducing emission will get increasingly
harder.

Let me elaborate on that point. We have already closed down
many of the old and high energy consuming factories, That
is to say, the easier part is done.

Between 1990 to 2005, the per unit GDP energy consumption
came down by 47% and between 2005 to 2010 it will again
come down by 20%. The next will be raising the energy
efficiency of the remaining plants. It's going to cost more
and involve more sacrifice to reduce further.

This is why investing in research and development is so
critical for us, as only innovation can help China to make
that leap. And this is why we are looking to developed
countries for technology transfer and capacity building.
According to the International Energy Agency, if China
fulfils its target for 2020, it will have reduced its
emissions of CO2 by 1 billion tons. That will be a great
achievement, given that we are a developing country and we
have equally pressing survival priorities.

If you would allow me, I'd like to expand on this point;
China may soon become the 2nd largest economy in the world.

Yet it remains a developing country. This is something that
many people often forget. China's per capita GDP has just
passed 3,000 US dollars. UK and US are 13 to 15 times that
of China. China is behind Jamaica and Namibia.

Now, let me ask you all a question: In which year in
history do you think Britain was at the same income level
China now is at? According to British economist Angus
Maddison, the answer is the year 1913.

In per capita GDP terms, China only ranks at 104th place in
the world. It might be a surprise to some of you that China
has 135 million people living under one dollar a day.

Sometimes even the most basic things that we take for
granted, like water, are beyond the reach of some Chinese
people.

Take for example, in China's northwest, water is so scarce
that farmers in a village in Gansu province only take three
baths in their entire life, at birth, at marriage and at
death.

When discussing climate change, we tend to talk mostly
about facts and figures, but we should not forget that,
there is also the human dimension. Imagine when electricity
reaches this Gansu village, which is what China has been
doing, bringing electricity to every village, not only are
the farmers able to drill deeper for water, but also their
children would be able to watch TV for the first time and
see the wonderful outside world. They of course will dream
about a better life and all the things that come with it.
Who are we to tell them, that they have no right to have
what we have? Who are we to tell them that they can't live
like the people in Shanghai or London they see on TV? Why
can't they have ipods, laptops and refrigerators, or even
cars?

This is the human dimension, and this is the challenge.
China's difficult mission is to enable all of its 1.3
billion people to have the opportunity to realize their
dreams, but to achieve it in an environmentally responsible
way.

Now let's come back to the point about China being the
world's biggest CO2 emitter. If you look at the figures in
per capita terms, an average Chinese person's emission is
4.6 tons. An average American emits 20 tons and Britain 8.7
tons. You can hardly call China energy greedy, can you?

Yet, according to an FT survey, 63% of Americans believe
that China is not doing enough and that it should undertake
more emission reduction. It feels like a person taking 4
pieces of bread asking the person who got the first piece
of bread to go on diet.

Between 1750 and 2005, developed countries accounted for
80% of the world's CO2 emissions. Even today, with only 20%
of the world's population, developed countries pump more
than 55% of the total emissions into the atmosphere. So
when it comes to emissions, developed and developing
countries can't be compared like for like, not to be
painted in the same brush. This is why we attach so much
importance to the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change, which set out the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities.

This is ultimately about fairness and equal right to
development.

The Copenhagen conference will commence in 5 days' time. It
will be a major milestone in the global effort to tackle
climate change and the people of the world have high hopes
on its outcome. For Copenhagen to be successful, China
believes several things need to happen.

First, developed countries should undertake to achieve
substantial emission reduction targets for the second
commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. Countries that
have not signed up to the Kyoto Protocol should formulate
similar reduction targets.

Second, effective mechanisms should be set up to ensure
that developed countries provide financial and
technological support to developing countries.

Third, developing country should also adopt mitigation
measures according to their national conditions, within the
framework of sustainable development and with financial and
technological support from the developed countries.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the conference.

China is willing to play a constructive role in bringing
the negotiations to a successful conclusion. We look
forward to close cooperation with the UK and the rest of
the world in this process.

All in all, climate change is a global challenge, which can
only be resolved through global cooperation. As a mother, I
do hope my daughter and the future generations will breathe
clean air and live in a good environment. So countries
should work together as partners to make sure that our
children inherit a better world.

Thank you.

FINANCIAL TIME's ASIA EDITOR EXPLAINS CHINA IS NOT FOLLOWING COLONIALISM's EXAMPLE IN AFRICA

2009-12-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

Africa is getting a better deal from Beijing

By David Pilling
Financial Times

A few years ago, Lukas Lundin, a mining executive, rode his
motorbike 8,000 miles from Cairo to Cape Town. His journey,
which took just five weeks, meandered through 10 countries,
including Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana. He
was amazed to discover that 85 per cent of the roads he
travelled were tarred and of high quality. Many had been
built by Chinese companies.

That was 2005. Since then, China’s interest in Africa has
intensified. In November 2006, Beijing hosted a lavish
Sino-African summit at which it promised more than 40 of
the continent’s leaders a new era of co-operation. Giant
elephants and giraffes appeared on hoardings across the
capital to mark the occasion.

Beijing has offered more than long-necked symbolism. In
2006 alone, it signed trade deals with African countries
worth $60bn. Investments, which often include a
resources-for-infrastructure element, have poured in thick
and fast. China’s stock of foreign direct investment has
shot well past $120bn (€81bn, £74bn). In 2006, Angola
temporarily overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s main supplier
of oil, and Africa now accounts for nearly 30 per cent of
China’s oil imports.

Nor is China’s interest limited to oil and minerals. In
2007, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the biggest
bank in the world by deposits, paid $5.6bn for a fifth of
South Africa’s Standard Bank. Only last month, at yet
another Sino-African jamboree, this one in Egypt, Beijing
pledged $10bn of new low-cost loans to Africa. It also
promised to eliminate tariffs on 60 per cent of exports and
to forgive the debt of several countries. Trade between
Africa and China has already risen spectacularly: last
year, it jumped 45 per cent to $107bn, a tenfold increase
over 2000.

Beijing’s engagement with Africa has caused much
hand-wringing. Western donors decry Beijing’s supposedly
scruples-free approach to investing in countries such as
Sudan. In some African countries, too, China’s growing
shadow has provoked anger. Nigerian radicals likened an
attempt by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation
(CNOOC) to secure 6bn barrels of oil to being attacked by
locusts.

Such objections are overdone. They are often disingenuous.
China is no philanthropist, but its rise may still
represent Africa’s best hope of escaping poverty. In the
eight years to 2007, before the financial crisis, African
countries were growing, on average, by more than 4 per cent
a year, far higher than previously. That was thanks partly
to better economic management, debt relief and increased
capital flows (some from China), but also to the higher
commodity prices driven by Chinese demand. Dambisa Moyo,
the Zambian economist who riled western donors with her
book Dead Aid, says: “China’s African role is wider, more
sophisticated and more businesslike than any other
country’s at any time in the postwar period.”

Much of the criticism of China’s influence rings hollow. As
Chinese – and Japanese – officials point out, the west’s
record is less than exemplary. European contact with Africa
can best be summed up as decades of naked rapaciousness
followed by a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to make
amends. During the cold war western governments supported
dictators and kleptomaniacs across the continent, from
President Mobutu Sese Seko of what was then Zaire to
Uganda’s murderous British-trained Idi Amin. More recently,
in the name of conditionality, benefactors have rammed
frequently disastrous economic fads down the throats of
hapless recipients. With donors like that, who needs
enemies?

China’s pragmatism may produce better results. First, an
emphasis on infrastructure means that, even if deals are
corroded by corruption, at least the recipient country ends
up with a road, port or hospital. (OK, or perhaps a soccer
stadium.) Much Asian growth, including that of China
itself, was predicated on infrastructure. Officials in
Tokyo often contrast Japan’s own business-oriented approach
to south-east Asia – where countries such as Thailand,
Malaysia and Indonesia benefited greatly from Japanese
trade and investment – with dubious development strategies
pushed by the west in Africa.

Second, China’s approach is built on trade. Ms Moyo argues
that genuine business opportunity is more likely to
catalyse development than government-to-government aid that
is prone to being siphoned off. Robert Zoellick, president
of the World Bank, told the FT there was Chinese interest
in helping to create low-cost manufacturing bases in
Africa.

Third, and crucially, China is not alone in seeking
opportunities on the continent. As well as the west, India,
Brazil and Russia are also vying for business. That ought
to give resource-rich African countries the ability to
haggle for better terms, though of course there is no
guarantee that increased funds will not simply line bigger
pockets.

It would be wrong to be wide-eyed about China’s
investments. Some Chinese businesses are rightly condemned
for lax safety standards and for shunning African labour.
Critics are doubtless right that Chinese money has helped
prop up unscrupulous regimes in Khartoum and Harare. Yet
China is hardly alone in dealing with thieves and villains.
Whatever its side-effects, a scramble to invest in Africa
has got to be better than the European precedent; a
scramble to carve it up.

david.pilling@ft.com

DESPITE ARTICLE'S TITLE, IT SHOWS BEIJING IS STRATEGICALLY ON-SIDE WITH THE DEVELOPING NATIONS AT COPENHAGEN

2009-12-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

China reels under a barrage of criticism

By Antoaneta Bezlova
Asia Times Online

BEIJING - China is not happy. This is how one of the
Chinese state-sanctioned newspapers summed up Beijing's
feelings about the week spent negotiating on climate change
in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

After a very public showdown with the United States in the
early days of the global climate talks, China found itself
attacked by smaller developing countries for benefiting
more than anyone else from carbon credit funding. And as
the Friday deadline for a deal approaches, Beijing has been
seen deflecting the accusation that it was the stumbling
block to reaching a deal.

Describing the fighting camps in Copenhagen in terms
borrowed from the famous Art of War by ancient Chinese
philosopher Sun Tzu, the China Times newspaper said
Beijing's gloom about the talks was growing and there was
no sign of any "ceasefire" in sight.

The ongoing United Nations climate change conference, which
began on December 7, is now in its final phase. Within
government circles and environmental lobbies alike, there
is clear awareness of the importance of China's role in
reaching an agreement.

"This is the first time for China to work on green
cooperation internationally," says Hu Angang, prominent
economist and campaigner for low-carbon future. "Beijing
knows that if we succeed, then the world succeeds; if China
fails, then the world fails."

The talks have reached an impasse due to long-standing
rifts between rich and poor countries, and a fresh division
that has emerged among developing countries. China has
featured prominently in both standoffs and Beijing appears
worried that it is becoming a target of criticism over the
deadlock.

"People will say 'if there is no deal, China is to blame',"
Deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei said in an interview with
the Financial Times published this week. "This is a trick
played by developed countries. They have to look at their
own position and can't use China as an excuse. China will
not be an obstacle [to a deal]."

On Tuesday, China accused developed countries of
backsliding on what it said were their obligations to fight
climate change and warned that climate negotiations had
entered a critical stage.

In sharp comments made at a press briefing in Beijing, a
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said there had been
"some regression" on the part of developed countries on
their position regarding financial support. The change in
their position "will hamper the Copenhagen conference", she
said.

China and the US - the world's two largest carbon polluters
- have waged a war of words at Copenhagen. They have
clashed on key issues such as how to share out the burden
of slashing greenhouse gases (GHGs) and whether the United
States owes developing countries a "climate debt".

Beijing says Western nations have built their prosperity on
fossil fuels and need to shoulder the responsibility for
reducing the growth of global GHG emissions. The
International Atomic Agency - an intergovernmental forum on
nuclear energy - however, projects that nearly all the
growth in those gases over the next two decades will come
from emerging economies and half of it from China.

The US has rejected the idea of "climate reparations" and
questioned the need for China - now the fastest-growing
economy in the world - to receive a portion of the rich
nations' funding to help developing countries mitigate
climate change.

"I don't envision public funds - certainly not from the
United States - going to China," Todd Stern, the chief US
climate negotiator, told a press briefing in Copenhagen
last week. While poorer developing countries still needed
Western help to nurture clean-energy technologies, this was
no longer the case with China, he argued.

China has vowed to reduce carbon emissions per unit of
gross domestic product by 40% to 45% by 2020, but experts
say, given economic growth projections, its emissions could
still double compared to 2005 levels.

The country has appeared in Copenhagen championing the
interests of the developing nations but it has faced rows
among its own lobby. Dozens of the poorest countries led by
the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu have called for mandatory
caps on greenhouse gases for major emerging economies such
as China starting in 2013.

China has been consistently refusing binding emissions caps
for fears it would hurt its spectacular economic rise. It
reiterated this position in Copenhagen. But in a gesture
aimed at mending relations with its underdeveloped allies,
Beijing hinted it was willing to give up its share of
funding provided by rich nations to help poorer countries
tackle climate change.

"Financial resources for the efforts of developing
countries [to combat climate change are] a legal
obligation. That does not mean China will take a share
-probably not. We do not expect money will flow from the
US, Britain and others to China," He Yafei told the
Financial Times.

Analysts believe the statement was a sign of Beijing's
unease over the fragile unity of developing countries and
the implications of the row for the progress of the talks.

"The climate talks will display China's new world view,"
insists Qing Hong, researcher with the Center for China and
Globalization, a Beijing-based think-tank.

"Contrary to some arguments, China is not always adhering
only to its own national interests. Quite the opposite,
China will show the international community that in the
case of climate change its considerations transcend its
national boundaries," he says.

(Inter Press Service)

CHINA'S PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY STEPS UP ON-LINE PRESENCE

2009-08-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

China's military machine launches website

The Times
July 31, 2009

Eighty-two years ago tomorrow, the world's largest army was founded in a country whose then-ascendant Communist leaders, once in power, kept the doors tight shut against outsiders until the late 1970s.

Now, 60 years after the founding of the People's Republic and 30 after the country opened up, China's Ministry of National Defence has launched its first website in Beijing's latest effort to draw back the curtain of the secrecy shrouding the 2.3 million-strong People's Liberation Army.

The site (http://www.chinamil.com.cn/) - like its PLA predecessor at the same address - is in both Chinese and English (http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/). A ministry spokesman, Hu Changming, said recently that the site was "a way to increase understanding between countries and raise trust between militaries".

As China's military budget has grown by double digits in recent years, so too have concerns among its neighbours and potential rivals. China's spending of $70 billion, though dwarfed by the Pentagon's $500 billion annual allocation, is on a par with spending by Britain, Japan and Russia.

A military analyst, Song Xiaojun, says the site will offer more detail on that spending and on general defence policy.

"The Defence Ministry is a special organisation. In principle it should be in the system of the State Council," said Song, referring to China's cabinet. "In fact, it is more like a window of the army toward the outside world. The current chinamil site is mainly about life in the army. It doesn't have much on the policy level."

Song explains that for centuries China was inward-facing. Now, as the world's third-largest economy, the country is playing catch-up as it grows more dependent on imported resources such as oil and the iron ore needed to fuel its steel industry, the biggest in the world.

Last winter, China's navy, officially part of the PLA, sent a rare force to protect Chinese merchant vessels against Somali pirates in the Red Sea.

"China only became an oil-import country in 1992. Large amounts of raw material imports happened after 2002. By then, China's interest in development was far ahead of China's interest in security," Song said. "China is now recuperating its debts on the state's basic security. As China does so, other countries start feeling that China is developing its army too fast."

Ever since the military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing in June 1989, green uniformed soldiers have been omnipresent in China, from Beijing's crowded streets to the dirt roads of the provinces.

With no wars to fight, the PLA has devoted itself to rescue efforts after natural disasters, such as the Sichuan earthquake last May, which killed 80,000 people. Soldiers helping quake victims were lionized in the state-controlled media.

But recent ethnic unrest in west China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and ongoing tensions between Beijing and self-ruled Taiwan mean China's military also remains on high-alert at home.

In keeping with Beijing's desire to control all information--both internal and international--about the image of the Communist Party, the new military web site already presents one face in Chinese and another one in English.

Chinese site headlines are uniformly mundane, such as "Jiaoliu Train Line Derailed, Soldiers Perform Urgent Rescue," whereas the site's English avatar features items such as "U.S. May OK High-tech Exports to China."

http://www.chinamil.com.cn/
http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/

UGLY SIDE EFFECTS OF CAPITALISM DEBATED

2009-07-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

'Violence of capitalism' under fire

Global Times
July 23 2009
By Qiu Wei

In the ruthless enterprise culture typical of Chinese business, workers' rights are at the center of heated debate across the country after an employee at an iPhone factory killed himself because a prototype phone went missing.

Apple Inc responded to the death yesterday by saying its suppliers are supposed to treat employees properly, but the US-based company declined to respond to a Global Times inquiry on whether Apple would suspend its cooperation with Foxconn Technology Group, where the man who committed suicide worked, if the latter is found to have adopted illegal practices that led to the worker’s death on July 16.

Jill Tan, an Apple spokeswoman in Hong Kong, issued only a brief statement about the incident.

“We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death,” Tan said. “We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect.”

The man who killed himself, Sun Danyong, 25, worked in product communications at Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese firm that makes many Apple products at a massive factory in the southern city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.

Sun was responsible for shipping 16 iPhone prototypes to Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters for further testing. But he later discovered one of the phones was missing. Sun alerted Foxconn and watched the subsequent investigation unfold, including a search of his apartment.

He killed himself shortly thereafter.

Sun’s death has aroused public anger against Foxconn. Gu Qinming, an officer with Foxconn in charge of security, claimed that he fell victim to finger-pointing, as many online postings speculated that he should have been held accountable for the suicide, a charge Gu dismissed.

Gu, fearing harassment, said his family had been put in danger from the accusations, as many people believed his actions in some way prompted Sun’s death.

Dozens of Chinese media outlets have carried opinion pieces questioning the ruthless enterprise culture of local business, saying Sun’s death wasn’t just a random occurrence. “The violence of capitalism” and “the wolfish nature of Chinese companies” have been cited by newspapers such as Hangzhou-based Today’s Morning as contributing to Sun’s suicide.

“The death of the young man due to the loss of a phone reflects the dark side of the corporate profit-seeking process. Employees, who are in disadvantageous positions, can hardly stand against management, or protect their dignity, in such a profit-oriented corporate culture,” read an opinion piece titled Workers’ Rights Lost in the World’s Factory published in Xi’an-based Chinese Business View.

A commentary on china.com.cn noted that aggressiveness could well maintain the competitiveness and efficiency of companies in their initial stages.

“However, it cannot function as the sole theme of management’s strategy when market share increases and enterprises grow,” the post said. “Employees can hardly develop a sense of belonging and share the values coming from this corporate culture.”

Some, however, have called for calm amid the uproar led by newspapers and online users. News portal cnhubei.com in Hubei province accused the “Web mob” of using the incident as a springboard to vent irrational sentiments. It noted that there hadn’t been any evidence supporting many allegations, including that Sun had been beaten by Foxconn security personnel.

Gu was quoted by the Southern Metropolis Daily as saying he never hit Sun. Gu reportedly said that after three security personnel searched Sun’s apartment and didn’t find the phone.

Gu said he didn’t think Sun was being truthful about what happened to the phone, the paper reported.

“I got a bit agitated,” Gu was quoted as saying. “I pointed my finger at him and said he was trying to shift the blame.”

The reaction by the media and the public over Sun’s death demonstrates mistrust toward management of Chinese businesses. When it comes to corporate management, modern enterprises have to adjust their instrument of management, Jean Lee, a professor of management at the China Europe International Business School, told the Global Times.

“There must be a deficiency in management behind the death of this employee,” she speculated. “A caring enterprise and boss would help placate their employees.”

Kang Juan and Guo Qiang contributed to this story

CHINESE WORKERS WILL ENSURE THEIR RIGHTS UNDER CHINESE SOCIALISM

2009-07-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

Chinese state steel workers beat
private firm boss to death

• Staff rioted over planned buyout of company

• Violence said to be biggest disturbance for a year

guardian.co.uk,
Sunday 26, July 2009

Thousands of angry Chinese steel workers clashed with
police and beat to death an executive of the firm trying to
take over their company, a Hong Kong-based human rights
organisation has said.

Rioters killed Chen Guojun, the general manager of Jianlong
Steel Holding Company, after learning that the privatised
firm was to buy a majority stake in state-owned Tonghua
Iron and Steel Group. The deal now appears to be scrapped.

The violence in Tonghua city, Jilin province, north-eastern
China, on Friday is believed to be the country's biggest
civil disturbance since last summer. It comes weeks after
inter-ethnic conflict between Han Chinese and the Muslim
Uighur minority in China's north-west region of Xinjiang
left 197 people dead and 1,700 injured.

The Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said
30,000 people were involved in the latest incident,
although some internet postings put the figure at closer to
10,000.

China is the world's largest consumer and producer of
steel, but its industry is regarded as inefficient.

The workers are thought to have been fearful of further
large-scale redundancies at a company that reportedly axed
many jobs only a few years ago. Reports suggest Tonghua has
between 20,000 and 50,000 employees.

Millions of people were laid off by state enterprises in
the 1990s and workers often complain that they receive
little compensation.

The human rights centre said workers were angry that Chen
earned about 3m yuan (£267,000) last year while Tonghua's
retirees were given as little as 200 yuan a month.

They blocked roads and smashed police vehicles, the centre
said, adding that 100 people were injured in the violence.
Authorities in the area have made no formal comment on
events and phone calls to the companies went unanswered.

But the South China Morning Post quoted a police officer
from the public security bureau as telling them: "Yes, it
did take place … Workers from Tonghua would not allow
ambulance and medical practitioners to enter the building
to rescue Mr Chen and he died."

Local television said on Friday night that the takeover
would be scrapped, the newspaper added.

Beijing-based Jianlong – one of the largest private
steelmakers – is thought to have invested in Tonghua as
early as 2005 and to have attempted to take a controlling
stake last year, only to back out after it failed to
improve the company's fortunes.

But as the steel market rebounded, thanks in part to a
government stimulus package, Jianlong made another attempt
to take over.

One account posted on the internet suggested that several
hundred workers had begun a demonstration on Friday morning
and closed down production at much of the site. When they
learned that Chen was briefing senior staff, they rushed
into the meeting. An argument ensued and they assaulted
him.

The incident is thought to be the largest civil disturbance
since up to 30,000 people took to the streets in Weng'an,
Guizhou, last summer, trashing police and government
headquarters over rumours of corruption and official
abuses.

China has seen a rising number of "mass incidents" in
recent years. According to the ministry of public security,
the tally rose from 10,000 in 1994 to 87,000 in 2005.
Figures have not been published since then but experts
believe they may well have increased further. The
government is particularly sensitive to such unrest this
year ahead of the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule
this October. In China, six decades is considered a
complete life cycle.

JIHADIS DISCUSS ATTITUDES TOWARDS CHINA & IT'S ANTI-IMPERIALIST INTERNATIONAL ROLE

2009-07-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Jihadis Identify U.S. Plots against China
in Xinjiang and Africa

Abdul Hameed Bakier
JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION - TERRORISM MONITOR

In light of the ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang province, various jihadi internet forums focused on the handling of the turmoil by China's security forces. A vast region comprising nearly a sixth of China's total land mass, Xinjiang is home to a number of Central Asian ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Turkic-speaking Uyghur people, until recently the dominant group in the region. Massive government-encouraged post-war migration by Han Chinese has made the Uyghurs a minority in their traditional home, known to Muslims as East Turkistan.

The first response of Salafi-Jihadi forums to any perceived injustice inflicted on Muslims anywhere typically involves citing a conspiracy theory regarding the manipulation of Muslims by the United States. One forum debated China's "brutal" handling of East Turkistan Muslims in a post entitled; "China, the United States.and al-Qaeda Organization" (muslm.net, July 7, 2009).

On the trouble in the oil-rich Xinjiang region, a jihadi forum member, nicknamed Ibn Khaldoon al-Jaza'iri, accused the United States of interfering in Chinese affairs by instigating the Uyghur Muslims in East Turkistan to rebel against the government. The prospect of China taking a leading role in the world as the next superpower is disturbing to the United States. Therefore, wherever there are Chinese investments, especially in oil and gas, there are troubles caused by the United States, alleges al-Jaza'iri. The United States tries to impede China's quest for alternative sources of energy badly needed for its rapidly growing economy. For example, China has made big strides in Africa by building strong relations with oil-rich nations based on mutual interests. According to al-Jaza'iri, China exchanges its know-how in infrastructure projects in return for oil from African countries such as Nigeria and Algeria, but the United States uses the Islamic jihadi factions to hinder Chinese efforts to establish a presence in Africa. As an example, al-Jaza'iri gives the terrorist operation in Algeria's Borj Bouaririj district, where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for killing 18 Algerian gendarmerie escorting Chinese workers building the highway between Algerian capital and Borj Bouaririj. In this case, al-Jaza'iri does not appear to have done his homework - the AQIM attack was carried out when the gendarmerie was returning to barracks after having escorted the Chinese workers to their site. The attack was clearly directed at government security forces and not the Chinese workers (Echerouk [Algiers], June 18; Middle East Online, June 21).

Al-Jaza'iri says the constant harassment of Chinese workers by jihadi factions manipulated by the United States raises Chinese investment costs, but adds that jihadis should be careful not to fall for U.S. exploitation and should refrain from attacking Chinese technicians and workers building roads, communication networks and oil facilities for the benefit of Muslims in Islamic countries. It's likely that the United States will attempt to set fire to Eastern Turkistan by directly or indirectly supporting jihadi operations there, similar to what they did in Afghanistan, backed by religious fatwas (religious rulings) from Saudi Arabia's Salafist shaykhs. The "stupid Chinese communist regime," blinded by its hatred for Islam, is expected to fall for the U.S. plan and commit massacres in Eastern Turkistan. Finally, al-Jaza'iri concludes his posting by calling on al-Qaeda leaders to be smart enough not to plunge into the U.S. trap to weaken China.

The majority of forum members disagreed with al-Jaza'iri. "Abu Hamza al-Alawi" rejected the notion that the mujahideen could be manipulated by the United States, adding the mujahideen follow their own agenda regardless of who benefits from their terrorist actions, so long as jihadi objectives are met. The era of U.S. weapons supplies for Muslims to fight communists is over, says al-Alawi, adding that the Western experience with jihadi factions has taught them that Muslims can't be manipulated.

In response to al-Alawi's rebuke, al-Jaza'iri insists the Mujahideen are supported by the West in cases that serve their interests. He contends the West doesn't categorize the Chechen Mujahideen as a terrorist group because they serve the Western objective of weakening the Russian Federation. [1] The Chechen mujahedeen are considered a legitimate resistance group by the West, which supplies them with weapons through pro-Western Georgia. Al-Jaza'iri claims the West doesn't perceive the Chechen fighters to be powerful enough to declare an Islamic state that would pose a threat to the West.

Other jihadi forums also focused on the turmoil in Xinjiang. "Abu Hassim al-Ghareeb" urged Muslims not to forget the Turkistan Muslims suppressed by China and to help prevent the Chinese from liquidating their Islamic identity (hanein.info, July 8). Regarding ways of supporting Turkistan, some forum members suggested boycotting Chinese products and investments in Muslim countries, but other, more extreme members called for jihad against China to return the favor of the Turkistan jihadis who they claim poured into Afghanistan in the 1990s, pledged alliance to the Afghan Islamic Emirate, trained in al-Qaeda camps and fought alongside the mujahideen. In the words of one forum member who urges jihad in China; "Neither boycott nor protests will stop the slaying of our brothers. The solution, known to everyone, is jihad. Who will sell himself to God and rush to the battlefield?" A third forum member called upon global jihad leaders Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to pay more attention to the revolution in Turkistan and to extend financial and moral support to the Turkistan Mujahideen to make sure they remain adherents of the Salafi creed and part of the global jihadi movement. "Take the initiative. Choose from among them whom you think suitable to lead an Islamic Emirate" said a posting from an Iraqi jihadi forum (faloja1.info, July 8). Again, the jihadi forum members betray their lack of knowledge about East Turkistan - Salafists are extremely rare in the region, where Sufism remains the dominant creed of Xinjiang's Sunni Muslims.

Members of more moderate forums expressed concern over conducting terrorist attacks in China. Any terrorist attacks there would give the Chinese government a legitimate reason to crush Turkistan's Muslims, says "First Lieutenant Ata" - "Muslims should only boycott Chinese products and organize protests in front of Chinese embassies. Any direct external military Muslim interference in Turkistan would only exacerbate the problem" (4flying.com, July 10).

The jihadi forum members' hypothesis of U.S. manipulation of jihadi factions to prevent China from becoming a superpower seems far fetched. China is not powerful enough to threaten Western powers militarily or confront the United States. At best, China could stir up problems for the purpose of making economic gains from the Western world in a way similar to Russia. It is also unrealistic to assume that al-Qaeda and other jihadi factions would play a significant role in a Chinese-Western struggle over Africa or elsewhere. Al-Qaeda terrorist activities in Algeria, for example, are due to an internal Algerian struggle and not to U.S. manipulation of jihadi factions against China's newly established interests in the region.

Abdul Hameed Bakier is an intelligence expert on counter-terrorism, crisis management and terrorist-hostage negotiations. He is based in Jordan.

OBAMA, CHINA AND AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT AND INDEPENDENCE

2009-07-15T03:34:00.000-07:00

China doubles down in Africa

By Peter Lee
Asia Times Online

"Obama to Africa: Drop Dead," echoing the famous admonition
of president Gerald Ford to a cash-strapped New York City
in the 1970s, was, for all practical purposes, the message
the American president delivered to the African continent
in Ghana on Saturday. Barack Obama, mindful of the shaky
United States domestic constituency even for the bailout of
the American economy, and loath to display favoritism to
his father's home continent, decided against investing any
political capital in a call to provide significant amounts
of assistance to sub-Saharan Africa during the current
global recession.

His rather empty declaration, "We must start from the
simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans,"
provided little consolation or inspiration for the poorer
nations of Africa, which are reeling from the balance-of-
payments, aid, investment and developmental consequences
of the West's catastrophic exploration of the extremes of
sophisticated financial leverage.

Obama's speech was also a remarkably cynical piece of
diplomatic triage, given what is widely recognized to be
the genuine state of economic affairs on the African
continent.

However, China appears to have made a strategic decision to
funnel in more aid and investment, as the West struggles
with the consequences of the global recession and fights a
losing battle to focus on Africa's needs for aid, trade and
investment.

For Africa, it couldn't come at a better time.

Even before the current crisis, with optimistic pre-crash
assumptions about exports, inward remittances, financial
reform and reduced capital flight, the United Nations
estimated that sub-Saharan Africa would need tens of
billions of dollars per annum in external funding if it
were to make any headway in its struggle to alleviate
widespread poverty.

Post-crisis, the African Development Bank projects that the
continent's exports will drop a staggering 40% by 2010
compared to pre-crisis projections. This shortfall, a loss
of a quarter trillion dollars in revenues, will throw the
aggregate current account into deficit, create a dire food
and fuel import crisis for cash-strapped countries and put
paid to the idea of servicing any normal external debt for
infrastructure construction.

Therefore, much of the perhaps US$50 billion in
infrastructure investment needed per annum to sustain
Africa's economic growth will have to come from outside in
the form of investment or aid.

However, the message in the alphabet soup of international
finance is not encouraging: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
and Official Development Aid (ODA), at least from the
Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for
Economic Co-Operation and Development, will not be
forthcoming in significant amounts.

ODA to SSA (sub-Saharan Africa) peaked at $22.5 billion in
2008 and is expected to drop by 15-20% in 2009; forget
about achieving the growth targets announced at the Group
of Eight summit at Gleneagles in 2005.

FDI to SSA looks like it's DOA; it reached $30.6 billion in
2008 but is going way down and nobody knows how far; a
recent estimate pegs the decline in FDI to all emerging
markets at a colossal 60% as commercial banks pull in their
horns.

Foreign remittances to the continent - a staple of many
African economies - are expected to drop by a third from
pre-crisis levels of roughly $10 billion per annum.

If billions in desperately needed investment and aid for
Africa is going to materialize in the next two years, it
looks like it will have to come from the BRIC countries
(Brazil, Russia, India and China).

And China is ready to step up.

Since the crisis began, China has announced its intentions
to maintain its existing levels of aid to Africa, promoted
its $1 billion mini development bank, the China-Africa
Development Fund, and sent the Industrial and Commercial
Bank of China - its designated investment bank for Africa
and the 20% partner (at the tune of US$6 billion) in South
Africa's Standard Bank - on the road to look for investable
projects.

More notable, China has undertaken significant
post-recession initiatives to advance its interests on the
continent through government-to-government resources,
infrastructure and financial mega-deals.

In recent months, Beijing has taken major steps to secure
its relationships with Zimbabwe, Uganda, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Zambia, Angola and Botswana.

Its only conspicuous setback to date appears to be a train
wreck of a deal in Nigeria - a $3 billion modernization of
the Lagos-Kano railroad line that mysteriously acquired a
price tag of $8.5 billion under the presidency of Olusegun
Obasanjo and attracted the unfavorable scrutiny of the
incoming administration this year ... and that deal may
even go ahead in a truncated form.

China's willingness to finance resource and infrastructure
projects without the nagging conditions demanded by the
West is well known - and often derided as a willingness to
"deal with dictators". The German government decided to
make that point to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni during
his recent state visit.

In what might be a sign of changing times, Museveni decided
not only to make his disagreement known during the visit;
he publicized his views in a press release on June 17.

In the follow-up entitled "China is not a threat to Africa
- Museveni", the Ugandan media painted an amusing picture
of the Chinese bankers doing everything short of joining
the Ugandan president on the plane to Berlin to demonstrate
their eagerness to cooperate:

[Germany's President Horst] Kohler observed that Africa had
opened its doors wide for Chinese investments because the
Beijing authorities do not put conditions in terms of
democracy or human rights.

Museveni, accompanied by the First Lady, Janet, said unlike
in colonial times, African leaders have identified their
priorities and are capable of protecting the continent's
interests.

"Therefore, no power can exploit Africa," a press release
from the State House quoted him.

Kohler's remarks come two days after the Industrial and
Commercial Bank of China expressed interest in building an
oil refinery and pipeline in Uganda. Meeting Museveni at
Entebbe Airport just before his departure for Germany, the
Chinese bank's chairperson also said they were keen on
constructing hydro-power stations and transmission lines.

On July 6, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the target
of Western outrage for his inflationary, power-grabbing
ways, was gratified by China's unconditional extension of a
$950 million credit tranche, even as the United States was
seeking to embarrass and isolate his regime and channel
economic aid directly to [non-governmental organizations]
NGOs:

The Chinese package, the president said, was well meant as
it was coming to the government not NGOs, to assist in
national development and economic revival.

"That is the kind of help we would want to get, and not the
Western dictates," he said.

The president said Western countries never give the
developing world development funds that promote economic
growth and prosperity as that would put them at par with
the West and negate grounds for dominance.

"There is no funding with an investment capacity from the
West that will enable us to move from primary agriculture
to secondary stages of development. They do not want us,
the West, to be that. They do not want us to be their
equals, they enjoy being masters over us and this is what
Zimbabwe rejects," he added.

What is striking about the Chinese experience in Africa is
that it is beginning to look like engagement, and not
simply exploitation. To a significant extent, it is driven
by Beijing's need to deal both with the fallout of the
global recession, and the political and economic
consequences of its push into Africa.

With the collapse in commodity prices, many Chinese
investors who are either fly-by-night or profit-driven,
depending on your point of view - and helped power the
Chinese investment push into Africa in flush times - have
literally disappeared, as the Financial Times reported in
February 2009:

More than 40 Chinese-run copper smelters are standing idle
in the Democratic Republic of Congo after their owners fled
the country without paying taxes or compensating staff at
the end of the commodity boom…

The abrupt downturn has released resentment over the
conduct of some Chinese businesses in Africa, where hard
bargaining and a lack of warmth towards local people won
them few friends.

"Some serious companies remain with metallurgical plants. I
don't have any problem with them. But they are 10% of the
Chinese who were here. Ninety percent have gone," [Governor
of Katanga Province] Mr Katumbi said, dismissing them as
"speculators".

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (previously Zaire), the
Chinese government is not counting on Chinese speculators
to manage its relationship with the DRC's copper industry.

Instead it has pinned its hopes on perhaps its biggest
strategic investment on the continent: a $9 billion project
designed both to produce copper and rebuild the DRC's
war-shattered infrastructure.

The International Monetary Fund, egged on by the United
States, is demanding a renegotiation of the project on the
grounds (which the Chinese deny) that the financing
increases the DRC's sovereign debt.

Fortunately for China, the DRC - which currently has only
enough foreign exchange on hand for a few weeks of import
cover - is maintaining its enthusiasm for the proposed
megadeal.

However, neighboring Zambia, which shares in the immense
bounty of copper ore crossing the southern Congo, presents
a greater challenge for the traditional Chinese way of
doing things in Africa.

The wake-up call for China probably came in 2007, during
the flush years of the commodity boom, when China's
President Hu Jintao was met by protesters in Zambia's
capital of Lusaka, and the government cancelled a trip to a
China-run copper mine at

Chambeshi to spare him the embarrassment of further
protests.

For several years, anti-Chinese sentiment has been central
to Zambian opposition leader Michael Sata's electoral
platform.

A July 2008 report quoted Sata as follows:

"It is not only Zambia - it's all Cape to Cairo where the
Chinaman is," Sata says. "That's the way they look at us.
They have no regard for us. They have no regard for our
independence. They have no regard for any black person as a
human being. Those are very abnormal conditions, very
abnormal conditions. Very abnormal conditions, which a
civilized society, in this century, cannot accept."

Sata came to the United States to play the human-rights and
democracy card at Harvard, and also threatened to play the
nearly-defunct Taiwan card:

"…the Patriotic Front in Zambia finds it more prudent to
cultivate relations with Taiwan, a democracy and a more
advanced country than China, which can provide high quality
investment and more equitable trading opportunities."

Sata's provocative stance on Taiwan prompted China to make
an exception to its principle of non-interference in local
politics and state. In 2006 there was a chance of severing
relations if Sata was elected.

China is acutely aware that Sata may gain the presidency in
his fourth try, in 2011, and that his defeat in 2006
occasioned anti-Chinese looting and rioting in one of
Sata's electoral strongholds, the capital of Lusaka.

In the midst of the recession - and undoubtedly at the
prodding of President Hu, who is accustomed to very
friendly and deferential welcomes in African capitals -
China has stepped up its efforts to repair the damage and
ingratiate itself with public opinion in Zambia.

Beijing is confronting two hot-button issues for Sata's
base: domination of the domestic textile and garment trade
by Chinese traders and imports, and Chinese abuses in the
Copperbelt, where a combination of generally miserable
working conditions, violent and at times deadly
union-busting at the China-run Chambeshi mine and Sata's
demagoguery have created a toxic atmosphere of resentment
and labor unrest.

A conspicuous political albatross for the pro-Chinese
ruling party has been the closure of the Zambia-China
Mulungushi Textiles enterprise. Originally a symbol of
state-run benevolence, the Chinese interest was turned over
to the Qingdao Textile Corporation in 1997 and run along
time-tested sweatshop principles, including demanding,
abusive managers who locked the employees into the plant at
night.

The plant closed in 2006 amid intense rancor and resentment
against the Chinese management and turned into a symbol of
the Zambian government's unwillingness to protect Zambians
against Chinese exploitation.

In March 2009, Zambia's defense minister (the Ministry of
Defense holds Zambia's interest in the plant) announced
that China and Zambia were jointly studying the re-opening
of the plant and the expected creation of 2,500 presumably
desirable jobs:

"The team of experts have so far captured a comprehensive
factor of what we need to ensure the company is back into
serious business and further strengthened. For us as
government this is a significant development," said Mr
[George] Mpombo.

The defense minister pointed out that Zambia and China
would like to ensure the company is utilized to its full
capacity.

"For the last two years there have been serious hiccups in
operations and a yawning capacity of that company. That
company has the capacity to export and do miracles for the
country," said Mr Mpombo.

Furthermore, on June 25, it was announced that China
Non-Ferrous Metal Corporation would take over operation of
the Luanshya Copper Mine, which had been shuttered due to
low global copper prices.

The Zambian government was quite frank about the political
background to the transaction:

Minister of Mines and Minerals Development Maxwell Mwale
said at the official handover in Zambia's Luanshya District
on the Copperbelt province that the coming of a new
investor was an indication that the government was
committed to bringing development to the district because
the closure of the mine was turned into a political
platform.

China bid $50 million for the controlling foreign interest
in the mine, and promised $400 million in investment,
including the seemingly mandatory hospital, school and
sports facilities infrastructure outlays.

It appears that China's posture in Zambia has quickly
evolved from old-style socialist solidarity to unfettered
Wild West capitalism run by entrepreneurial Chinese
enterprises to adult supervision - strategic engagement
directed by the Chinese government.

It remains to be seen if Beijing's public relations and
financial efforts are enough to stem the Sata tide in 2011.

China also displayed its commitment to strategic engagement
in Angola, site of its most conspicuous triumph in its post
9/11 drive into Africa.

The basic objective of the $6 billion
oil-for-infrastructure deal has been met; as Angola has
joined Saudi Arabia and Iran as one of China's three
biggest suppliers of crude.

The notoriously independent and prickly Angolan government
is determined to keep channels to the West open, and
recently denied China's Sinopec petrochemical corporation
the opportunity to invest in an $8 billion new refinery at
Lobito; instead Angola decided to come up with the money
itself and give the design and build contracts to former US
vice president Dick Cheney's old outfit, KBR.

Nevertheless, since the global recession and the drop in
international oil prices has punched a hole in Angola's
balance sheet, China has stepped forward with new credits:
$1 billion from its Export-Import Bank in December 2008,
and another $1 billion from the China Development Bank in
March of this year.

Additionally, China purchased almost one million barrels of
oil from Angola for its strategic petroleum reserve, which
can be interpreted simultaneously as an opportunistic move
to take advantage of low prices, an attempt to find a
better home for its bloated forex reserves than US T-bills,
and an expansion of oil imports in tough times that Angola
would appreciate.

Nancy Corkin of South Africa's Center for Chinese Studies
at Stellenbosch University writes in the March 2009 China
Monitor that the new credit appears to illustrate Beijing's
efforts to develop policy-driven engagement with Angola
beyond the narrower self-interest that drove the original
oil-backed loans:

"The size of the loans and the eagerness of several Chinese
financial institutions to lend to Angola signify the
strategic importance with which Beijing views Luanda as
Chinese banks vie to engage with Angola to curry favor with
the Chinese State Council."

In a sign that China is interested in promoting indigenous
financial development and integration, and not just writing
checks to interested governments, on June 16 the
ICBC/Standard Bank joint venture concluded the largest
Chinese investment banking transaction to date in Africa -
an $825 million loan (plus $140 million in bridge
financing) to finance the expansion of Botswana's Marupule
power station.

Not unsurprisingly, supply and build for the project will
be handled by China National Electric Equipment
Corporation.

Jiang Jianqing, the president of ICBC - which now bills
itself as the largest bank in the world in terms of market
capitalization - flew out from Beijing for the signing
ceremony to emphasize that China was open for business to
Africa in these tough times:

"Africa is a huge market with massive potential," Jianqing
said. "Africa needs urgent foreign investment, especially
after the impact of the global crisis, so we will look at
more projects to invest [in]."

"The financing of the Morupule B Power Station is just one
of 65 projects that the ICBC is currently funding on the
African continent and is evidence of China's strong
appetite for African investment opportunities," said Jiang.

Hu Jintao's 2009 tour of Africa - which covered the
distinctly non-strategic states of Senegal, Mali, Tanzania
and Mauritius - was apparently designed to demonstrate that
China was not just in Africa for the oil, cobalt and
copper, as Peking University's Zha Daojiang told Reuters:

"The itinerary appears intended to show that we treat all
the African countries, big and small, equally," said Zha.
"There's also the implicit message that China's
relationship with Africa isn't solely defined by resource
and energy investments."

It appears that China hopes to emerge from the global
recession not only with its economic standing intact; it
intends to enhance its position and present itself in
Africa as the responsible, perhaps indispensable
stakeholder that the West has claimed to yearn for but is
perhaps not anxious to see materialize.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

ON THE RECENT ETHNIC PROBLEMS IN XINJIANG

2009-07-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

CHINA’S BATTLE AGAINST TERRORISM

by Andy Newman

I am currently reading Jenny Clegg’s brilliant new book “China’s Global Strategy – Towards a Multi-Polar world”, and I will write a review shortly.

One of the excellent points that Jenny makes is that the absence of substantive discussion in the West about China’s historical background, its actual level of development, and the difficulties of ruling such a vast country, then Sinophobic mythology has built up that draws more heavily on “Yellow Peril” images from the colonial era than it does on the reality of modern China. What is more, many from the Western left either do not counter this Sinophobia, or actually collude in it.

Louis Proyect’s recent article is a frankly disgraceful example, but rather than exchange a polemic with Louis, let us refute his arguments by looking at the concrete situation today in Xinjiang province.

The Sinophobic reading of the situation there seems to be that the Chinese government are Han chauvinists, suppressing national minorities, persecuting the Islamic religion, and seeking to swamp Xinjiang with Han settlers. But this analysis simply doesn’t accord with the facts.

Firstly, historically the Chinese state has not been built on ethnicity, but on a Mandarin speaking civil bureaucracy, where Mandarin provided a lingua franca for an ethnically, socially, religiously and linguistically diverse society. Secondly, since the Communist party of China coming to power in 1949, they introduced a nationalities policy that created certain rights and privileges for minorities that met the criteria – for example the right to promote their own language, and in modern China, the very significant complete exemption from the one child policy.

Islam is not in any way persecuted or repressed in modern China. Nowadays in China there are ten national minorities, including the Hui and Uyghur, with a total population of 18 million, whose faith is Islam. There are some 30,000 mosques served by 40,000 Imams and Akhunds. Islamic Association of China is an independent organisation promoting the interests of Muslims. Islamic organisations in China run their own affairs independently and can set up religious schools, publish religious texts and periodicals, and run social and welfare services.

Article 36 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China protects freedom of religious belief as a basic right enjoyed by all citizens, and religious institutions enjoy the rights to own and dispose of property, and to proselytise. Currently Buddhism is enjoying a major revival across China, without any government interference.

It is true that during the Cultural Revolution, there was repression and oppression of all religious faiths – but this has been consciously reversed for thirty years now – and most significantly, the campaign against religious institutions was much more moderate in the Autonomous Regions, like Xinjiang and Tibet than in the main urban centres.

The Hui national minority, who are Muslim, often Turkic peoples, but who speak Mandarin, are integrated into every aspect of life in the People’s republic, and have often played prominent roles, for example Hui Liangyu was Vice President. It is interesting that systematic racist attacks against Hui have characterised both the riots in Tibet last year, and the recent violence by Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Xinjiang has been part of China since the mid eighteenth century, when its main significance as a poorly populated mainly nomadic region was as part of the land-route between the Middle Kingdom and Europe. The urban centres were built by the Chinese, while the indigenous population were rural, ethnically diverse and often nomadic.

During the early part of the twentieth century, when China was dismembered by colonialists, and invaded by the Japanese Empire, Xinjiang fell under the sway of the warlord Sheng Shicai, (who really was a Han chauvinist, suppressing the Uyghur and Kazakh peoples).

There was a short lived Soviet republic between 1944 and 1949, also known as the Three Districts Rebellion, that reacted to the chauvinism of Sheng’s warlord regime by seeking to drive the Chinese out altogether, but this republic was concentrated in the Kazakh parts of Xinjiang, while the Uyghurs were predominatently under the rule of the Chinese nationalist KMT. The existence of this mini-state was also only possible as the USSR supported it as a buffer between themselves and the Japanese.

In 1949 the East Turkestan Republic agreed to join the People’s republic – somewhat pressurised by Stalin who is believed to have assassinated their government leaders, and the KMT ruled parts of Xinjiang surrendered to the People’s Liberation Army.

The importance of this background is to understand that there is no modern history of a Uyghur nation state, the relative autonomy of Xinjiang can only be understood as the unravelling of stable government under the colonialist onslaught of China, and the rise of warlordism. Xinjiang has always been linguistically and culturally diverse, and the modernisation and urbanisation of the region has occurred entirely within the context of Chinese rule, and Han and Hui have always formed a large part of the urban population. It is not at all uncommon in pre-industrial societies to find the urban centres and the surrounding countryside having different languages and cultures, and in the case of the Chinese Empire the two were united under a Mandarin speaking bureaucratic class.

We need to be very cautious of Uyghur nationalist organisations mythologizing a fictitious pseudo-history of themselves as an oppressed nation. Most obviously, if there was any real intention to swamp the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, then the PRC would not exempt them from the one child policy while enforcing it for the Han.

The biggest area of misunderstanding relates to the “Go West” policy, formally launched in year 2000 as part of the tenth Five Year plan. This was a victory for the left within the Communist Party, to seek to overcome the growing regional inequality, and direct US$200 billion of capital investment into the underdeveloped Western provinces, including the Autonomous Republics of Xinjiang and Tibet. So for example, the previously very poor region of Tibet has achieved economic growth of 13.4%, and the oil and gas fields of Xinyiang have been opened up by improvements of transport infrastructure, But far from being a “colonialist” asset grab, these have involved a massive transfer of wealth and technology to the poorest regions from the Eastern coastal region.

Han migration has increased in Xinjiang, but whereas the Uyghur peoples mainly live south of the mountains of the Tarim basin, the Han migration has been into the previously largely unpopulated region north of the mountains. For example the Karamay region is almost 80% Han.

A further area of ethnic tension has been experience of those involved in the inward migration of Uyghur peoples to the Eastern coastal region, along with the 150 million other rural migrants, who have been sucked into the black economy, but where linguistic and cultural obstacles, as well as their semi-illegal status, severely disadvantage them. The recent violence seems to have been preceded by rapes and murders, and ethnic tensions in Guangdong.

There has been a longstanding Uyghur nationalist movement, that partly expresses legitimate grievances in ethnic rather than economic terms, for example over rural impoverishment, and the relative disadvantage of rural people as opposed to urban dwellers; the relative disadvantage of Uyghar speakers compared to Mandarin speakers in the job market and for social advancement is also a pressing grievance. But Uyghar nationalism has also been clearly linked with Islamist terrorism, and the desire to separate Xinjiang as an Islamic republic away from the PRC, despite the fact that the Uyghur represent only half the population of Xinjiang.

There have been a series of terrorist incidents, including the racist murders of Han and Hui, attempted suicide bombings on an airliner last year, and riots during the Olympics that left 16 members of the People’s Armed Police dead. Both the Chinese and US governments accuse Uyghur separatists of links with Al Qaeda.

The security crackdown by China in Xinjiang is therefore a decisive attempt to restore order, and prevent racial tensions from further developing. It is necessary to understand the imperative drive for China to achieve economic growth in what is still a developing country, where many people still live on a $1 per day. It is also necessary to understand the great historic achievement of defeating the Japanese, throwing out the colonialists and reuniting China as one country.

The division of China is simply non-negotiable for the government in Beijing, and they are correct in seeing the unity of the republic as an important precondition for their economic and political independence, which is itself necessary for developing and improving the living standards of their 1.3 billion population. But they clearly do need to rethink how the “Go West” policy is in practice impacting on the autonomous regions, where an understandable and commendable desire to pull these Western provinces out of extreme poverty has created the unintended side effect of increasing wealth differentials, and ethnic tensions.

-----------------------------

One of the comments arising from this article:

Excellent article Andy.

Much of the negative comments in reponse are not at all surprising. The Sinophobia of the Left in the UK (and the west) frankly reeks of yellow peril racism, but when has the British Left ever done anymore than represnt the ‘revolutionary’ wing of the Foreign Office, when it comes to either the socialist countries or former British colonial subjects - for which China qualifies on both counts.

My partner is a Muslim Hui Chinese woman, deeply patriotic, highly educated and generally supportive of the Communist Party leadership (especially the very popular Wen Jiaboa and Hu Jintao - as you will generally find young Chinese in the UK to be) without considering herself to be at all political.

She comes from a family of practising Muslims (although she herself doesnt practise it), so if it were true that Islam is persecuted in China, you would expect her to have some experience of it. The contrary is the case.

Within her family, most are involved in Higer Education, several family members are professors, others are High School teachers. Two are ranking members of the Ministry for State Security. Another works for the Saudi Embassy (a devout Muslim, he studied in Saudi, his wife is a muslim convert who wears the hijab).
Around half her extended family are members of the Communist Party (bear in mind only around 5-10% of applicants for CP membership are accepted).

Were Muslims and ethnic miinorities discrimiated against by the state, it surely would not be likely that this extended (and not untypical) family of ethnic minority Muslim’s would either want to, or be allowed to have such positions within Higher education and the state security? Or want to or be allowed memberahip in the Communist Party?

They go to Mosque, they eat Halal meat from a Muslim butcher, they celebrate Islamic holidays (for which they get extra time off from work), they get guidance from their Imam, hold family funerals in a Muslim a cemetary and they practise their religion without any intereference from the state whatsoever.

In actual fact, ethnic minorites have special priviliges over the majority Han population. For example, along with the aforementioned extra holidays for religious events, they are not subject to the same rules regarding the one-child policy and get extra points in school leavers exams to help ehtnic minorities get better representation in University.

Whether or not you agree with such ‘positive discrimination’ (which does lead to some resentment amongst some Han), it can hardly be said to be representative of some sort of ethnic oppression, or worse, ‘geneocide’ by the State now can it?

For the Left to be, as usual, tailing after the most reactionary, pro-western elements in a developing socialist country isnt unusual. For them to be championing the lumpen, anti-social perpetuators of muderous racist pogroms is a new level of disgrace though.

That street level racism and prejudice exists in China, as in every society, is without doubt. But to suggest against all the facts that it is encouraged by the central government is just an out and out lie.

I would suggest that perhaps some of those people spouting CWI/SWP or whatever bullshit about China actually try and discuss it with Chinese students and workers in the UK (or whom there are several tens of thousand from many ethnic and cultural/religion backgrounds) and see what they think. I think you will substantially find more often than not, that your patronising and ill-informed attempts to ‘educate’ and ‘liberate’ them from their ‘oppression’ will be about as appreciated as a British gun-boat on the Yanstze.

ON CHINA'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS US POLICY TOWARDS IRAN

2009-06-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

Beijing cautions US over Iran

Asia Times Online
By M K Bhadrakumar

China has broken silence on the developing situation in
Iran. This comes against the backdrop of a discernible
shift in Washington's posturing toward political
developments in Iran.

The government-owned China Daily featured its main
editorial comment on Thursday titled "For Peace in Iran".
It comes amid reports in the Western media that the former
president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is rallying the Qom
clergy to put pressure on the Guardians Council - and, in
turn, on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - to annul last
Friday's presidential election that gave Mahmud Ahmadinejad
another four-year term.

Beijing fears a confrontation looming and counsels Obama to
keep the pledge in his Cairo speech not to repeat such
errors in the US's Middle East policy as the overthrow of
the elected government of Mohammed Mosaddeq in Iran in
1953. Beijing also warns about letting the genie of popular
unrest get out of the bottle in a highly volatile region
that is waiting to explode. Tehran on Friday saw its sixth
day of massive protests by supporters of Mir Hossein
Mousavi, whom they say was cheated out of victory.

A parallel with Thailand Meanwhile, China's special envoy
on Middle East, Wu Sike, is setting out on an extensive
fortnight-long regional tour on Saturday (which,
significantly, will be rounded off with consultations in
Moscow) to fathom the political temperature in capitals as
varied as Cairo and Tel Aviv, Amman and Damascus, and
Beirut and Ramallah.

Beijing also made a political statement when a substantive
bilateral was scheduled between President Hu Jintao and
Ahmadinejad on Tuesday on the sidelines of the summit
meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in
Yekaterinburg, Russia.

Conceivably, Hu would have discussed the Iran situation
with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev during his
official visit to Moscow that followed the SCO summit.
Earlier, Moscow welcomed Ahmadinejad's re-election. Both
China and Russia abhor "color" revolutions, especially
something as intriguing as Twitter, which Moscow came
across a few months ago in Moldova and raises hackles about
the US's interventionist global strategy.

China anticipated the backlash against Ahmadinejad's
victory. On Monday, The Global Times newspaper quoted the
former Chinese ambassador to Iran, Hua Liming, that the
Iranian situation would get back to normalcy only if a
negotiated agreement was reached among the "major centers
of political power ... But, if not, the recent turmoil in
Thailand will possibly be repeated". It is quite revealing
that the veteran Chinese diplomat drew a parallel with
Thailand.

However, Hua underscored that Ahmadinejad does enjoy
popularity and has "lots of support in this nationalist
country because he has the courage to state his own opinion
and dares to carry out his policies". The consensus opinion
of Chinese academic community is also that Ahmadinejad's
re-election will "test" Obama.

Thus, Thursday's China Daily editorial is broadly in the
nature of an appeal to the Obama administration not to
spoil its new Middle East policy, which is shaping well,
through impetuous actions. Significantly, the editorial
upheld the authenticity of Ahmadinejad's election victory:
"Win and loss are two sides of an election coin. Some
candidates are less inclined to accept defeat."

The daily pointed out that a pre-election public opinion
poll conducted by the Washington Post newspaper showed
Ahmadinejad having a 2-1 lead over his nearest rival and
some opinion polls in Iran also indicated more or less the
same, whereas, actually, "he won the election on a lower
margin. Thus, the opposition's allegations against
Ahmadinejad come as a trifle surprising".

The editorial warns: "Attempts to push the so-called color
revolution toward chaos will prove very dangerous. A
destabilized Iran is in nobody's interest if we want to
maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, and the
world beyond." It pointedly recalled that the US's "Cold
War intervention in Iran" made US-Iran relationship a
troubled one, "with US presidents trying to stick their
nose into Iran's internal business".

Theocracy versus republicanism Beijing understands Iran's
revolutionary politics very well. China was one of the few
countries that warmly hosted Ruhollah Khomeini as president
(in 1981 and 1989). In contrast, India, which professes
"civilizational" ties with Iran, was much too confused
about Iran's revolutionary legacy to be able to correctly
estimate Khamenei's political instincts favoring
republicanism. Most of the Indian elites aren't even aware
that Khamenei studied as a youth in Moscow's Patrice
Lumumba University.

Be that as it may, the Hu-Ahmadinejad meeting in
Yekaterinburg on Tuesday once again shows Beijing has a
very clear idea about the ebb and flow of Iran's politics.
Hu demonstrably accorded to Ahmadinejad the full honor as
Beijing's valued interlocutor.

Chinese media have closely followed the trajectory of the
US reaction to the situation in Iran, especially the
"Twitter revolution", which puts Beijing on guard about US
intentions. Indications are that the US establishment has
begun meddling in Iranian politics. Rafsanjani's camp
always keeps lines open to the West. All-in-all, a degree
of synchronization is visible involving the US's "Twitter
revolution" route, Rafsanjani's parleys with the
conservative clergy in Qom and Mousavi's
uncharacteristically defiant stance.

Obama faces multiple challenges. On the one hand, as Helene
Cooper of The New York Times reported on Thursday, the
continuing street protests in Tehran are emboldening a
corpus of (pro-Israel) conservatives in Washington to
demand that Obama should take a "more visible stance in
support of the protesters". But then, a regime change would
inevitably delay the expected US-Iran direct engagement and
upset Obama's tight calendar to ensure the negotiations
gained traction by year's end, while Iran's centrifuges in
its nuclear establishments keep spinning.

Also, a fragmented power structure in Tehran will prove
ineffectual in helping the US stabilize Afghanistan.
However, top administration officials like Vice President
Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would
like the US to "strike a stronger tone" on Iran's turmoil.
Cooper reported they are piling pressure on Obama that he
might run the risk of "coming across the wrong side of
history at a potentially transformative moment in Iran".

A Thermidorian reaction No doubt, the turmoil has an
intellectual side to it. Obama being a rare politician
gifted with intellectuality and a keen sense of history
would know that what is at stake is a well-orchestrated
attempt by the hardcore conservative clerical establishment
to roll back the four-year-old painful, zig-zag process
toward republicanism in Iran.

Mousavi is the affable front man for the mullahs, who fear
that another four years of Ahmadinejad would hurt their
vested interests. Ahmadinejad has already begun
marginalizing the clergy from the sinecures of power and
the honey pots of the Iranian economy, especially the oil
industry.

The struggle between the worldly mullahs (in alliance with
the bazaar) and the republicans is as old as the 1979
Iranian revolution, where the fedayeen of the proscribed
Tudeh party (communist cadres) were the original foot
soldiers of the revolution, but the clerics usurped the
leadership. The highly contrived political passions let
loose by the 444-day hostage crisis with the US helped the
wily Shi'ite clerics to stage the Thermidorian reaction and
isolate the progressive revolutionary leadership.
Ironically, the US once again figures as a key protagonist
in Iran's dialectics - not as a hostage, though.

Imam Khomeini was wary of the Iranian mullahs and he
created the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as an
independent force to ensure the mullahs didn't hijack the
revolution. Equally, his preference was that the government
should be headed by non-clerics. In the early years of the
revolution, the conspiracies hatched by the triumvirate of
Beheshti-Rafsanjani-Rajai who engineered the ouster of the
secularist leftist president Bani Sadr (who was Khomeini's
protege), had the agenda to establish a one-party
theocratic state. These are vignettes of Iran's
revolutionary history that might have eluded the
intellectual grasp of George W Bush, but Obama must be au
fait with the deviousness of Rafsanjani's politics.

If Rafsanjani's putsch succeeds, Iran would at best bear
resemblance to a decadent outpost of the "pro-West" Persian
Gulf. Would a dubious regime be durable? More important, is
it what Obama wishes to see as the destiny of the Iranian
people? The Arab street is also watching. Iran is an
exception in the Muslim world where people have been
empowered. Iran's multitudes of poor, who form
Ahmadinejad's support base, detest the corrupt, venal
clerical establishment. They don't even hide their visceral
hatred of the Rafsanjani family.

Alas, the political class in Washington is clueless about
the Byzantine world of Iranian clergy. Egged on by the
Israeli lobby, it is obsessed with "regime change". The
temptation will be to engineer a "color revolution". But
the consequence will be far worse than what obtains in
Ukraine. Iran is a regional power and the debris will fall
all over. The US today has neither the clout nor the
stamina to stem the lava flow of a volcanic eruption
triggered by a color revolution that may spill over Iran's
borders.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

NATO IN CENTRAL ASIA; CHINESE & RUSSIAN COUNTER-STRATEGIES

2009-06-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

Sino-Russian baby comes of age

Asia Times Online
By M K Bhadrakumar

By the yardstick of Jacques, the melancholy
philosopher-clown in William Shakespeare's play As You Like
It, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has
indisputably passed the stage of "Mewling and puking in the
nurse's arms".

Nor is SCO anymore the "whining schoolboy, with his
satchel/And shining morning face, creeping like
snail/Unwillingly to school". The SCO more and more
resembles Jacques' lover, "Sighing like a furnace, with a
woeful ballad/Made to his mistress' brow." Indeed, if all
the world's a stage and the regional organizations are
players who make their exits and entrances, the SCO is
doing remarkably well playing many parts. That it has
finally reached adulthood is beyond dispute.

But growing up is never easy, especially adolescence, and
the past year since the SCO summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan,
has been particularly transformational. What stands out
when the SCO's ninth summit meeting begins in the Urals
city of Yekaterinburg in Russia on Monday is that the
setting in which the regional organization - comprising
China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan - is called on to perform has itself
unrecognizably shifted since last August's gathering of
leaders in Dushanbe. First, the big picture.

The locus shifts east

The world economic crisis has descended on the SCO space
like a Siberian blast that brings frost and ice and leaves
behind a white winter, sparking mild hysteria. The
landscape seems uniformly attired, but that can be a highly
deceptive appearance. Russia and China, which make up the
sum total of the SCO experience, are responding to the
economic crisis in vastly different terms.

For Russia, as former prime minister and well-known scholar
academician Yevgeniy Primakov observed ruefully in a recent
Izvestia interview, "Russia will not come out of the crisis
anytime soon ... Russia will most likely come out of the
recession in the second echelon - after the developed
countries ... The trap of the present crisis is that it is
not localized but is worldwide. Russia is dependent on
other countries. That lessens the opportunity to get out of
the recession in a short period of time." [1]

Primakov should know. It was he as president Boris
Yeltsin's prime minister who steered Russia out of its
near-terminal financial crisis 10 years ago that brought
the whole post-Soviet edifice in Moscow all but tumbling
down.

Russia's economic structure is such that 40% of its gross
domestic product (GDP) is created through raw material
exports, which engenders a highly vulnerable threshold when
the world economy as a whole gets caught up in the grip of
recession. But what about China?

This was how Primakov compared the Chinese and Russian
economic scenario:

"In China too, as in Russia, exports make up a significant
part of the GDP. The crisis smacked them and us. The
difference is that China exports ready-made products, while
on our country [Russia] a strong raw material flow was
traditional. What are the Chinese doing?

"They are moving a large part of the ready-made goods to the
domestic market. At the same time, they are trying to raise
the population's solvent demand. On this basis, the plants
and factories will continue to operate and the economy will
work.

"We [Russia] cannot do that. If raw materials are moved to
the domestic market, consumers of such vast volumes will
not be found. Raise the population's solvent demand? That
merely steps up imports."

This is only one part of a complex story, but the short
point concerns the vastly different prospects of economic
stabilization in the current crisis that China and Russia
face. To be sure, its impact on the geopolitics of the SCO
space cannot be overlooked. Simply put, China's profile as
the "donor" country in the SCO space is shining brighter
than ever before. China has given US$25 billion as a loan
to Russia and $15 billion as a loan to Kazakhstan, the two
big-time players in the SCO, during the April-May period.

Last week, in yet another breathtaking move, China offered
a loan of $3 billion to Turkmenistan. The loan for Russia
is a vital lifeline for its number one oil major Rosneft
and its monopoly pipeline builder Transneft. The loan for
Kazakhstan, which goes partly towards acquiring a 50% stake
in MangistauMunaiGaz, increases China's share of oil
production in Kazakhstan to 22%. Again, the loan for
Turkmenistan ensures that China has the inside track on the
fabulous Yolotan-Osman, which is reputed to be one of the
biggest gas fields in the world.

No heartburn in Moscow

In short, if the law of nature is such that gravitation in
life is inevitably towards where the money comes from, the
locus of the SCO has shifted to Beijing more than ever
before. In any other context, this would have straightaway
introduced a high state of disequilibrium within the SCO.
It took decades for France and Germany to figure out
cohabitation within the European Economic Community. The
China-Russia equilibrium within the SCO has always been
delicate, but it may have prima facie become more so than
ever before. But in actuality, it isn't so.

It goes to the credit of the leaderships in Moscow and
Beijing that they have steered their relationship in a
positive direction by rationally analyzing the imperatives
of their strategic partnership in the overall international
situation rather than in a limited sphere of who gains
access to which gas fields first in the Caspian or who is a
lender and who is a borrower in these extraordinary times.

Thus, the frequent tempo of Russia-China high-level
exchanges has been kept up. Both sides are sensitive to
each other's core concerns and vital interests. Russia's
conflict in the Caucasus last August was a litmus test and
Beijing passed the test. The Russia-China mutual
understanding survived intact without bruises.

Despite China's highly principled position on the issue of
political separatism and secessionism, and despite all
efforts by Western propaganda, China kept a watchful
position on Georgia's breakaway republics of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia and silently took note of Moscow's
recognition of their unilateral declaration of
independence, but on balance remained broadly sympathetic
to Russia's concerns and predicaments, which Moscow duly
appreciated.

Again, belying all Western expectations that Russian and
Chinese priorities in energy security diverge, the two
countries have finally begun taking big strides on the
ground in energy cooperation. A variety of factors went
into it - the fall in demand for energy in the
recession-struck European markets; strains in
Russia-European Union energy relations; Russia's own search
for diversification of its Asian market; Russia's energy
rivalries with the European Union and the United States in
the Caspian and so on - but the fact remains that Moscow is
increasingly overcoming its hesitancy that it might get
hooked to the massive Chinese energy market as an
"appendage", as a mere provider of raw materials for
China's economy.

The 25-year $25 billion China-Russia "loan-for-oil" deal
signed in April alone amounts to Russian oil supplies
equivalent of 4% of China's current daily needs. Not bad at
all. But it is in the sphere of natural gas that we may
expect big news in the coming period. This is virgin soil.
Russia at present does not figure as a gas exporter to the
Chinese market. And natural gas is where the world's - and
especially China's - focus is turning in the coming
decades.

Powerful Kremlin politician Deputy Prime Minister Igor
Sechin is on record that the Russian leadership will be
making some major proposals to Chinese President Hu Jintao
during his visit to Russia to attend the SCO summit.
("Whatever amount they [China] ask for, we [Russia] have
the gas," Sechin reportedly said.) It cannot be lost on
observers that the Kremlin has earmarked the SCO summit
event for taking such a strategic step in energy
cooperation with China.

Thus, it has become a moot point whether Moscow has or has
not yet realized the then president Vladimir Putin's
four-year-old idea of forming an "energy club" within the
SCO framework. Effectively, a matrix is developing among
the SCO countries (involving member countries as well as
"observers") in the field of energy cooperation. It has
several templates - China on the one hand and Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan on the other; Russia-China;
China-Iran; Russia-Iran; Iran-Pakistan; and, of course
Russia's traditional ties with the Central Asian states.
(If the current Iranian plan for an oil pipeline linking
the Caspian Sea and the Gulf of Oman materializes soon, yet
another template may be formed involving Iran, Russia,
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.)

Arguably, so far these vectors have not collided with each
other, despite the prognosis of Western experts that
Russian and Chinese interests in the Central Asian and the
Caspian region will inevitably collide [2]. Moscow seems to
be quite comfortable with the idea that the Chinese are
accessing the region's surplus energy reserves rather than
the US or EU countries. As a commentator put it, "Russia is
also doing its damnedest to keep Europe out of Central Asia
... In Central Asia, it's starting to look as if Moscow
and, to a lesser extent, Beijing ... may have already
outmaneuvered Europe." [3]

SCO gatecrashes the Hindu Kush

Less than three years ago, a leading American expert on the
Central Asian region, Dr Martha Brill Olcott of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described the
SCO as "little more than a discussion forum". Olcott said,
"Today, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization does not pose
any direct threat to US interests in Central Asia or in the
region more generally." [4]

That was a debatable point even three years ago, more so
now. What seems to have happened is that the US simply has
had no choice but to learn to live with a unique regional
organization that insists on keeping it excluded. Any
regional body that includes Russia and China cannot but be
of interest to Washington. No doubt, SCO has been an object
of intense curiosity for US regional policies through the
past decade. American diplomats did all they could to
debunk it in its formative years. Finally, Washington
reconciled. This was evident from the fact that eventually
the US began making efforts of its own, vainly though, to
gain observer status in the SCO.

The list of participants at the SCO summit in Yekaterinburg
testifies to the SCO's steady evolution as an influential
regional and international body. Curiously, the list of
participants includes Mahinda Rajapaksa, president of Sri
Lanka, as a "dialogue partner". In terms of realpolitik,
SCO has broadened its reach to the Indian Ocean region.
Clearly, it is a matter of time before Nepal, Myanmar
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are associated with the SCO
processes one way or another. The SCO already has
institutionalized links with the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations.

A stage has come when the SCO's common stances on regional
and international issues are widely noted by the
international community and discussed threadbare by
regional experts. Quite likely, this year's statement will
reflect a common SCO position strongly endorsing the Sri
Lankan government's policy of rebuffing the Western
intrusive approach in terms of humanitarian intervention in
the island's current problem affecting displaced Tamils.

For Colombo, the SCO support will come as a much-needed
shot in the arm in warding off Western pressure in the
period ahead. Already in the United Nations Security
Council, Colombo depends on the robust support of Russia
and China, both veto-holding powers from the SCO.

Again, the SCO's formulations this year on the North Korean
and Iran nuclear problems will be read with interest. Last
year's statement on the conflict in the Caucasus was widely
discussed by regional experts.

During the past year, the SCO has virtually gatecrashed
into the Afghanistan problem, so much so that it is going
to be counter-productive for Washington to shut out the
regional body altogether from the Hindu Kush. The SCO has
rapidly built on its nascent idea of a "contact group" with
Kabul. It has maintained a smooth working relationship
with the government led by President Hamid Karzai. If
anything, Karzai's recent difficulties with North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) capitals have prompted him
to reach out to Moscow.

United States pressure on Karzai to keep him away from the
SCO is unlikely to work again. Karzai will be present at
the Yekaterinburg summit meeting. His vice presidential
running mate, Karim Khalili, recently visited Moscow.
Karzai's other running mate, Mohammed Fahim, has old links
with Russia's security agencies.

The SCO conference on Afghanistan held in Moscow on March
27 was primarily intended to challenge the US's monopoly
over conflict resolution in Afghanistan, though its focus
was on the problem of drug trafficking. It followed three
years of futile efforts by the SCO to forge a partnership
with NATO for the stabilization of the Afghan situation,
which Washington kept frustrating.

Finally, the US was compelled to attend the Moscow
conference lest Russia and China dissociate from similar
American-sponsored forums on Afghanistan. The conference
has opened a window of opportunity for regional powers to
get involved with Afghanistan's stabilization, independent
of US strategy. Countries like India, which are being left
out of the loop, will find the SCO as a useful framework to
work with. (India will be represented at the SCO summit for
the first time ever at the level of the prime minister.)

The SCO conference also assumes significance in the context
of the Barack Obama administration's AfPak strategy, which
envisages "grand bargains" with regional powers. The SCO
sized up that Washington's game plan would be to strike
"grand bargains" individually and separately with each of
the countries in the region, which would effectively ensure
that the US retained the monopoly of conflict resolution
and enabled the US to give new underpinnings to its
regional policies aimed at broadening and deepening its
influence in Central Asian and Southwest Asian geopolitics.

Bush's policies continue

NATO has officially invited Kazakhstan, a major SCO member
country, to take part in its Afghan operations. [5] This is
despite Kazakhstan being an active promoter and a prominent
member of the Collective Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the
SCO, both of which have repeatedly offered partnerships to
the Western alliance for its Afghan mission. [6]

Robert Simmons, the NATO secretary general's special
representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, is on
record as saying that the Kazakh army has already achieved
"interoperability" with NATO forces and could make a good
showing in the Afghan mission. Clearly, NATO is
sidestepping the CSTO and the SCO and would prefer to deal
with Central Asian capitals individually. The US is
striking similar "grand bargains" with other Central Asian
capitals in terms of gaining access to new military base
facilities.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated in April that
Russia and China would strengthen their military
cooperation through the SCO and engage in several joint
military maneuvers. He implied that these plans were aimed
at limiting the US's presence in Central Asia. From the
Russian and Chinese point of view, it is obvious that the
erosion of the US's economic foundations is not preventing
Washington from pursuing with renewed vigor its project
aimed at regaining lost influence in Central Asia.

The Obama administration's proposed budget for the State
Department allocates aid of $41.5 million for Kyrgyzstan
and $46.5 million for Tajikistan, whereas the corresponding
figures for the current fiscal year are $24.4 million and
$25.2 million, respectively. US military aid to the two
countries will also similarly be increased under the new
budget.

The justification given is that Central Asia's strategic
importance has risen of late for US regional policies.
According to budget justification documents released by the
State Department in Washington on May 7:

"Central Asia remains alarmingly fragile: a lack of
economic opportunity and weak democratic institutions
foster conditions where corruption is endemic and Islamic
extremism and drug trafficking can thrive. For this region,
where good relations play an important role in supporting
our [US] military and civilian efforts to stabilize
Afghanistan, the [budget] request prioritizes assistance
for the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan."

The political rationale of the aid request makes no bones
about the fact that geopolitics is a factor in Washington's
decision to step up aid to Central Asia at a time when the
Russian capacity to bankroll Central Asian economies is in
serious doubt. "The United States rejects the notion that
any country has special privileges or a 'sphere of
influence' in this region; instead the United States is
open to cooperating with all countries in the region and
where appropriate providing assistance that helps develop
democratic and market institutions and practices."

Curiously, Washington has lately made it clear that it has
no intentions of vacating the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan
in August without a last-ditch effort to get Bishkek to
reconsider its decision. Apart from sustained US diplomatic
efforts to persuade a rethink in Bishkek, Washington has
also sought the good offices of Karzai to raise the issue
with his Kyrgyz counterpart President Kurmanbek Bakiyev -
interestingly enough, on the sidelines of the SCO summit in
Yekaterinburg.

Therefore, it is against the backdrop of the deteriorating
security situation in Afghanistan, which causes concern
among the SCO member countries, as well as the robust US
diplomacy in the Central Asian region to expand American
influence that the Chinese and Russian decision to step up
SCO military cooperation will be viewed. The SCO defense
ministers' meeting held on April 29 in Moscow confirmed
reports that China and Russia would hold 25 joint maneuvers
this year. (In the entire period since 2002, China has held
only 21 military exercises with foreign countries.)

Interestingly, all these proposed maneuvers will be focused
on the "war on terror". The SCO war games for 2009 began
with a joint "anti-terror" exercise in Tajikistan near the
Afghan border. The main exercise, codenamed Peace Mission
2009, is planned for July-August. This year's exercises
assume the nature of a conventional drill operation insofar
as they will involve more than 2,000 Russian and Chinese
troops with heavy weapons such as tanks, transport planes,
self-propelled artillery and possibly including strategic
bombers.

The exercises will be held in three stages inside Russia
and in northeastern China. Unmistakably, closer
Chinese-Russian military cooperation within the SCO
framework has been prompted by their perception that the US
is pressing ahead with its strategic plans to bring the
energy-rich Eurasian region under its influence.

Can Obama become a heretic?

In a remarkably candid interview recently, well-known
Russia scholar Professor Stephen Cohen at New York
University said he didn't believe "anything substantially
or enduringly good" is about to happen in US-Russia
relations in the foreseeable future. Nor is a "real
partnership" possible between the two countries.

More ominously, he warned that the US-Russia relationship
was fast getting "militarized", as it used to be during the
Cold War. He said, "NATO expansion has militarized the
relationship between the US and Russia, between the United
States and the former Soviet republics, and between Russia
and the former Soviet republics. Remove NATO expansion,
remove the military aspect, and let them compete
otherwise." [7]

More startlingly, Cohen assesses that despite the Obama
administration's call to "reset" ties with Russia, the "old
thinking" prevails in Washington - "that Russia is a
defeated power, it's not a legitimate great power with
equal rights to the US, that Russia should make concessions
... that the US can go back on its promises because Russia
is imperialistic and evil."

Cohen said Russia hands in the Obama administration - Vice
President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
National Security Advisor General James Jones, National
Security Council member Michael McFaul - are all in one way
or another associated with the "old thinking" toward
Russia. "So there are no new thinkers in Obama's foreign
policy okruzhenie [circles]. There is enormous support in
the US for the old thinking. It's the majority view. The
American media, the political class, the American
bureaucracy - they all support it. Therefore, all hope
rides with Obama himself, who is not tied to these old
policies. He has to become a heretic and break with
orthodoxy."

Cohen added:

"Now you and I might say that's impossible, but there is a
precedent. Just over twenty years ago, out of the Soviet
orthodoxy, the much more rigid Communist Party
nomenklatura, came a heretic, Mikhail Sergeyevich
Gorbachev. It's not a question of whether we like
Gorbachev's leadership or we don't. The point is that he
came forward with something he called "new thinking",
breaking with the old Soviet thinking, and the result was
that he and [president Ronald] Reagan ended the Cold War,
or came very close to doing so. So the question is whether
Obama can break with the old thinking."

Thus, the extraordinarily high degree of mutual
understanding that the Russian and Chinese leaderships have
been able to work out in the recent period within the SCO
has a much broader framework than appears at first sight.
US policies towards Russia have significantly contributed
to these regional compulsions felt by Moscow and Beijing.
Chinese commentaries are consistently sympathetic towards
Russia apropos the range of issues affecting US-Russia
relations in Eurasia.

In an extremely meaningful political gesture on April 28,
Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guangalle, heading a
military delegation and visiting Moscow in connection with
the SCO defense ministers' meeting, traveled to Russia's
North Caucasus Military District to discuss regional
security with Medvedev. This happened just two days ahead
of the formalization of the Russian decision to deploy
troops for the defense of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

What emerges is that both Russia and China remain skeptical
ZAfghanistan. Izvestia wrote recently, "Today, despite
their hypocritical talk of 'cooperation' (by which they
mean the shipment of NATO military freight across Russia),
the [US-led] coalition is keeping Russia away from
Afghanistan as much aspossible, even though their own policies in Afghanistan are
the worst possible example of a murderous neo-colonial
regime." [8]

Izvestia continued the tirade:

"Mass killings of the civilian population by the American
army such as bombing wedding and funeral processions,
extending the fighting to Pakistan and dragging it into
Afghanistan's internal ethnic and political feud - all
these and similar actions, which have been without any
social or commercial investment in Afghanistan, threaten
the whole world, Russia included.

The Afghans, sick and tired of the pointless presence of
foreign military forces, have asked Russia to restore its
clear-cut peaceful Afghan policy. A delegation of
influential Afghan politicians will arrive in Moscow to
attend the May 14 Russian-Afghan forum. The group mainly
includes Pashtun leaders, who have shaped the country's
political and state backbone for centuries. They are
convinced that the way to peace and settlement in
Afghanistan will depend on Russia's policy."

CSTO to counter NATO

Does all this add up to the SCO becoming a military
alliance?

This is a question that has come up frequently during the
past decade. It still refuses to go away. There has been
even some degree of characterization of the SCO at times as
an "Asian NATO". But the answer is a firm "no'. The plain
truth is that neither China nor Russia would be comfortable
for the foreseeable future with the idea of a military
alliance between them, although both have shared concerns
over the US agenda for NATO's eastward expansion.

Besides, we should not overlook that Central Asian
countries also have their own so-called "multi-vector"
foreign policy, which places primacy on national autonomy
and independence that precludes the possibility of their
becoming part of a military bloc as such.

At any rate, Uzbekistan, the maverick of them all but a key
country all the same in regional security, will forever
keep everyone guessing whether its mind is on the same
thing that it speaks about at any given time, or whether
its actions are going to be in conformity with its own
words. Tashkent stayed out of the SCO exercises in April in
Tajikistan. It is right now having a slinging match with
Kyrgyz border guards about recent incidents of violence in
the Ferghana Valley.

However, Moscow has been steadily working on another
option. The CSTO - Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - is
transforming into a full-blooded military alliance. "The
National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation Until
2020", which was recently approved by Medvedev, says that
Moscow views the CSTO as the key instrument to counter
regional challenges, and political and military threats.
The document says pointedly that the struggle for energy
resources in the Caspian and Central Asia may conceivably
lead to armed conflicts.

The special summit meeting of the CSTO held in February in
Moscow decided to set up a collective rapid-response force
to help bloc members to repulse aggression or to meet any
emergency. Moscow has been focusing for some time on the
strengthening of the CSTO and recent strides in this
direction are a major foreign-policy success for the
Kremlin. No doubt, the impetus is to keep "third countries"
out of Central Asia. Medvedev has said that the
rapid-reaction force "will be just as good or comparable to
NATO forces". The CSTO's joint rapid-reaction force will
hold military exercises in August-September in Kazakhstan,
Russia and Belarus.

The force will comprise an airborne division and an air
assault brigade from Russia, and an air assault brigade
from Kazakhstan. The other CSTO members (except Uzbekistan)
will contribute a battalion-size force each. To quote a
Russian expert, "A collective rapid-reaction force will
give CSTO a quick tool, leaving no time for third parties
to intervene." [9]

"The rapid-response force is a major but so far only one of
the first steps toward creating a powerful military
political organization," he added. Indeed, Kommersant
newspaper broke the news on May 29 that Russia was planning
to build a strong military contingent in Central Asia
within the framework of the CSTO, which will be comparable
to NATO forces in Europe. "Work is being conducted in all
areas, and a number of documents have been adopted," the
report said, quoting Russian Foreign Ministry sources.

The unnamed Russian official said, "It will be a purely
military structure, built to ensure security in Central
Asia in case of an act of aggression." It will include
armored and artillery units and a naval flotilla in the
Caspian Sea, according to the CSTO spokesman. The Russian
news agency Novosti reported that the new force would
comprise large military units from five countries
-Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
It commented, "The creation of a powerful military
contingent in Central Asia reflects Moscow's drive to make
the CSTO a pro-Russian military bloc, rivaling NATO forces
in Europe."

Interestingly, a summit meeting of the CSTO is scheduled
for Moscow on Sunday on the eve of the SCO summit in
Yekaterinburg. The million-dollar question is the
co-relation, if any, between the CSTO and the SCO summits
in the scheme of things in Moscow and Beijing. The
political and diplomatic symbolism in the timing of the two
summits on successive days cannot be lost on observers.
There has been some talk that the CSTO and the SCO would
eventually have an institutionalized back-to-back
relationship of sorts. (All the SCO member countries except
China are also CSTO members.)

Conceivably, Moscow and Beijing have been exchanging views
on the CSTO's emergence as a coherent military bloc in
Central Asia, with which China shares thousands of
kilometers of border. What seems to be happening is that
China tacitly welcomes the Russian initiative to build up
the CSTO's capabilities as a military setup. At the very
least, Beijing isn't doing anything to dampen Russia's
enthusiasm, let alone counter the Russian move through
countervailing steps. There could be several factors at
work here.

One, any strengthening of security in Central Asia also
benefits China. Two, to the extent that the CSTO becomes a
bulwark against any NATO expansion into Central Asia, it
also works to China's advantage. Three, Moscow's
determination to stand up to the US's containment strategy
serves Beijing's purpose. Four, the CSTO's build-up means
the consolidation of Central Asian countries, which
precludes opportunities for the US to expand its influence
in the region, let alone roll back Russian and Chinese
influence.

Five, the emergence of the CSTO in Central Asia virtually
forecloses any future US attempts to place elements of its
missile defense system in the border regions of China close
to the Xinjiang autonomous region, where China has located
important missile sites. Finally, the CSTO harbors no
animus against China insofar as all the CSTO members except
Armenia and Belarus are in any case SCO members. China's
rapidly expanding influence in Central Asia ensures that
the bulk of the CSTO countries will have high stakes in
friendly relations with Beijing.

Thus, an intriguing security paradigm is developing in
Central Asia. Quintessentially, the SCO will keep shying
away from becoming a military bloc. This is not feigned
posturing. It is real. At the same time, in political
terms, the SCO is the facilitator of a regional security
understanding that is leading to the full-blooded evolution
of the CSTO as an anti-NATO military bloc.

Arguably, in the absence of the SCO, Moscow and Beijing
would have to invent such a body. For, without the SCO, any
such formation under Moscow's leadership of a NATO-like
military bloc shaping up right on China's sensitive border
regions would have been simply unthinkable.

Notes 1. Marina Zavada and Yuriy Kulikov, "Yevgeniy
Primakov", Autopilot Does Not Work in a Crisis, Izvestia,
May, 8, 2009.

2. According to the data from the US Energy Information
Administration, the three “Stans” of Central Asia -
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - have more than 7
trillion cbm of proven gas reserves, or around 4% of the
global share, and much of the has hasn’t yet been
harvested. The "Stans" have committed much of their
harvestable gas to Russia and China through the next
decade.

3. S Adam Cardais, "Central Asian Gas Not a Panacea for
Europe", Business Week, February 3, 2009.

4. Dr Martha Brill Olcott, "The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization: Changing the Playing Field in Central Asia",
testimony before the Helsinki Commission, September 26,
2006.

5. "NATO invites Kazakhstan to join Afghan peacekeeping
operation", Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May, 14, 2009.

6. Significantly, the next round of the SCO joint military
exercises will be held in 2010 in southern Kazakhstan.

7. "Interview with Stephen F Cohen on US-Russia Relations",
Washington Profile, April 2009.

8. "Afghanistan: Russia’s chance to influence global
politics again", Izvestia, May 13, 2009. 9. Ilya Kramnik,
"CSTO: joining forces in a crisis", RIA Novosti, February
5, 2009.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service.

CHINA AND NATIONAL PLANS FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

2009-06-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

China launches green power revolution to catch up on west

• Plan to hit 20% renewable target by 2020
• $30bn for low-carbon projects

阅读中文 | Read this in Chinese

Julian Borger and Jonathan Watts in Beijing
The Guardian, Wednesday 10 June 2009
Article history

China’s ambitious wind and solar plans represent a direct challenge to Europe’s claims of world leadership on cutting carbon emissions. Photograph: Keren Su/Getty

China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.

In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

"Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW]," Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.

"We are now formulating a plan for development of renewable energy. We can be sure we will exceed the 15% target. We will at least reach 18%. Personally I think we could reach the target of having renewables provide 20% of total energy consumption."

That matches the European goal, and would represent a direct challenge to Europe's claims to world leadership in the field, despite China's relative poverty. Some experts have cast doubt on whether Britain will be able to reach 20%. On another front, China has the ambitious plan of installing 100m energy-efficient lightbulbs this year alone.

Beijing seeks to achieve these goals by directing a significant share of China's $590bn economic stimulus package to low-carbon investment. Of that total, more than $30bn will be spent directly on environmental projects and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the indirect green share in the stimulus, in the form of investment in carbon-efficient transport and electricity transmission systems, would be far larger.

HSBC Global Research estimated the total green share could be over a third of the total package.

China also believes the price reforms that will take place in its economic recovery programme will lead to more efficient use of resources and an increased demand for renewable energy.

"Due to the impact of global financial crisis, people are all talking about green and sustainable development," Zhang added. "Enterprises and government at all levels are showing more enthusiasm for the development of solar for power generation, and the Chinese government is now considering rolling out more stimulus policies for the development of solar power."

He said the government would also plough money into the expansion of solar heating systems. He said the country was already a world leader, with 130m square metres of solar heating arrays already installed, and was planning to invest more. The US goal for solar heating by 2020 is 200m square metres.

Zhang was speaking in London on a day China came under increased pressure from Washington to do more cut its emissions.

David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in temperatures even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.

"China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change," said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a senior negotiating team aiming to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.

"No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet's carbon emissions."

Zhang said China was pursuing "a constructive and a positive role" in negotiations aimed at agreeing a deal in Copenhagen. As part of that agreement, he said developing countries would have to pursue "a sustainable development path", and said Beijing was open to the idea of limits on the carbon intensity of its economy (the emissions per unit of output).

"We have taken note of some expert suggestions on carbon intensity with a view to have some quantified targets in this regard. We are carrying out a serious study of those suggestions," Zhang said.

Zhang told the all-party parliamentary China group in Westminster yesterday that Beijing's stimulus package was already showing signs of re-energising the Chinese economy. He said it grew by 6.1% in the first quarter of this year, and growth in the second quarter would be stronger than the first. He predicted that China would meet its target of 8% growth this year.