India - China: Relations And Developments-2

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->  China’s unprincipled principles     

Brahma Chellaney


One passion of Chinese diplomacy is to go in for numbered policy pronouncements, like the "ten-pronged strategy" unveiled in the joint declaration with India during President Hu Jintao’s visit last November. Another fetish is to enunciate diplomatic principles with another state and later, at an opportune time, reinterpret them unilaterally to add force to Chinese claims and ambitions.

Defining high-sounding principles to advance bilateral relations or dispute resolution helps Beijing to hold the other side to basic parameters, including a one-China policy, and foster a belief that the enunciation of cadenced concepts is progress by itself. Yet the idea behind formulating such principles is to bind the other party to them more than oneself. The principles devised are invariably so general and nebulous that Beijing, in any event, has ample room to reinterpret them or emphasise a single principle over the rest.

At times, the Chinese reinterpretation is nuanced, intended to bring the other state under transient pressure, with a particular aim in mind, such as to "correct" its behaviour. At other times, it is designed to be less subtle by signalling a diplomatic breakdown, as happened in the run-up to the 1962 Chinese invasion of India. Beijing has proven an international past master in such diplomatic play. A fresh reminder of that was the message the new Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, conveyed to his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee in Hamburg recently, that the "mere presence" of settled populations does not affect Chinese claims on Indian territories.

Contrast that with what Premier Wen Jiabao had signed on to just two years ago in New Delhi. One of the six main principles defined in the much-touted "Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question" mandates that the two sides "safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas."

While the message signals that Beijing is hardening its stance over the territorial disputes, should India be surprised by the development? The history of Sino-Indian relations, in fact, is largely a cyclic narrative of noble principles being framed, only to lull India into a false sense of complacency.

Consider the famed 1954 Panchsheel Agreement that defined the five principles of peaceful coexistence. Officially titled as the agreement on "trade and intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India," the accord simplistically identified the following principles, without elaboration: (i) "mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty;" (ii) "mutual non-aggression;" (iii) "mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs;" (iv) "equality and mutual benefit;" and (v) "peaceful coexistence."

No sooner had the accord been signed than China began finding new and different meanings in the Panchsheel principles. It laid claim to Indian border areas like Barahoti (located at the Uttarakhand-Tibet-Nepal tri-junction) and then stealthily intruded south of Niti and Shipki mountain passes — all specified border points in that accord. Before long, China began building a highway through India’s Ladakh region to link rebellious Tibet with another vast, occupied region, Xinjiang, home to Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic groups.

Indeed, even as it started furtively encroaching on Indian territories, Beijing kept asking New Delhi to honour the principles of "mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty" and "mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs." That call only reflected the fact that everything about the Panchsheel Agreement was one-sided.

First, the Panchsheel was the first accord signed by any third party with China recognising Tibet to be a "region of China."

Second, the accord involved no give-and-take, only give from India’s side. It incorporated a formal Indian recognition of Chinese control over Tibet, without securing Beijing’s acceptance of the then-existing Indo-Tibetan frontier. When asked about the border having been left undefined, Jawaharlal Nehru blithely said, "All these are high mountains. Nobody lives there. It is not very necessary to define these things."

Third, India forfeited all its extra-territorial rights and privileges in Tibet. The accord’s operative parts read as if victor China was imposing its will on vanquished India. Consider the following language: India "will be pleased to withdraw completely within six months from date of exchange of the present notes the military escorts now stationed at Yatung and Gyantse in Tibet Region of China;" "will be pleased to hand over to the Government of China at a reasonable price the postal, telegraph and public telephone services together with their equipment operated by the Government of India in Tibet Region of China;" "will be pleased to hand over to the Government of China at a reasonable price the 12 rest houses of the Government of India in Tibet Region of China;" and "will be pleased to return to the Government of China all lands used or occupied by the Government of India…"

Just eight years later, the Panchsheel principles went up in smoke when China invaded India.

Now fast-forward to the 2005 "guiding principles" for a border settlement. In substance, they are a tad less simplistic than the Panchsheel principles. But these six broad principles hardly lay the basis for a frontier settlement:

(i) "a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution through consultations on an equal footing;"

(ii) "meaningful and mutually acceptable adjustments to their respective positions;" (iii) "due consideration to each other’s strategic and reasonable interests;" (iv) "take into account, inter alia, historical evidence, national sentiments, practical difficulties and reasonable concerns and sensitivities of both sides, and the actual state of border areas;" (v) the "boundary should be along well-defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features to be mutually agreed upon;" and

(vi) "safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas."

Amazingly, it took several rounds of negotiations between the "special representatives" of the two countries to arrive at principles that are actually grist for the Chinese mill. A succession of three Indian national security advisers participated in this exercise in which, as is evident now, India struck a dry well. After 26 years of continuous border-related negotiations, a settlement is still no closer.

After every hardline action, be it the denial of a visa to any Arunachal Pradesh official or a provocative statement in public, like by Chinese ambassador Sun Yuxi, Beijing repeats a platitudinous line borrowed from the so-called guiding principles: "We hold that the boundary issue be settled fairly and reasonably at an early date through friendly consultations." When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged in his meeting with Hu Jintao in Berlin last week that the two sides adhere to the full set of guiding principles, the Chinese President merely repeated the "fair and reasonable" line.

The mechanical recitation of such bromides highlights that China neither wishes to settle issues with India fairly and reasonably nor seeks result-oriented consultations.

From Panchsheel to the border-related guiding principles, the road is littered with shattered principles. Yet the 1993 agreement to maintain "peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control" — a line that has not been mutually defined up till now — repeated the defiled Panchsheel principles. How can peace and tranquillity be ensured if the frontline remains unclear and Chinese forces aggressively patrol certain sectors to sustain military pressure on India, not hesitating to carry out forays into, for instance, the Sumdorong Chu Valley?

Just as India tried unsuccessfully to persuade China between 1954 and 1962 to live up to the Panchsheel principles, it now seeks to promote the guiding principles. Yet China’s increasingly blunt assertion of claims to Arunachal Pradesh — a state more than twice the size of Taiwan — shows that those principles are already of little guidance.

All this begs a question: Why expend political capital, in the first place, to put together a set of principles, knowing that the strength of Chinese diplomacy is to design vain principles and then translate them in a way to suit Beijing’s convenience? What makes this question more troubling is that India, under Atal Behari Vajpayee, agreed in 2003 to the diversionary Chinese proposal to shift the focus of the negotiations from the much-needed frontline clarification to the enunciation of principles for a border settlement.

Similarly, Beijing’s partiality for numbered declarations doesn’t mean it respects what it commits to. It continues to drag its feet on setting up what the "ten-pronged" joint declaration of last November called for: "an expert-level mechanism to discuss interaction and cooperation on the provision of flood-season hydrological data, emergency management and other issues regarding trans-border rivers." With China seeking to divert the waters of rivers flowing southward from the Tibetan plateau, a future conflict over the sharing of interstate water resources can no longer be ruled out.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the first Indian leader to grasp the enormity of the challenge from China. What he wrote 57 years ago still resonates today: "We have to take note of a thoroughly unscrupulous, unreliable and determined power practically at our doors… Any friendly or appeasing approaches from us would either be mistaken for weakness or be exploited in furtherance of their ultimate aim." <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

bangali regionalist and chinese crony communist Indrani Bagchi of post 33, strikes again.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
<span style='color:red'>Buddhism new obstacle between India, China </span>

NEW DELHI: India and China are engaged in a competition for soft power supremacy in Asia - the battlefield is ownership of one of the world's oldest religions, Buddhism.

At stake is not only India's civilisational space but, on a more temporal note, it will determine how Asia is defined - with China or India is the mother civilisation.

It's no coincidence that India built a Buddhist temple - in the Indian style - in Luoyang in China in 2006. The message, said senior MEA sources, was simple: Buddhism travelled from India to China over 2,000 years ago and made its first landing in Luoyang.

The Baima temple complex, which is generally regarded as the cradle of Chinese Buddhism, was built after a Chinese emperor of the Eastern Han dynasty welcomed the first Buddhist monks from India - She Moteng and Zhu Falan - and a white horse which carried the sutra and the figure of Buddha.

This week, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee followed up on the Nalanda University initiative by setting up a Nalanda Mentor Group in Singapore, headed by Nobel laureate <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Amartya Sen and Singapore foreign minister George Yeo.</span>

Nalanda is at the heart of the Indian soft power push. It's where China's greatest Buddhist traveller, Hiuen Tsang, came to study Buddhism under <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>a Bengali teacher called Shilabhadra in the 7th century BC.</span>

{There she lets lose her bangali-ism.  So shall we now call Adi Sankar 'malayali teacher', Madhvacharya 'kannadiga teacher', and Nagarjuna telugu teacher?}

It's the ancient fountainhead of Buddhist teaching and India's reclamation of its past is the new story. The significance of the Indian initiative is not lost on the Chinese or on any of the Asian countries who practise Buddhism.

China has been the entrenched Buddhist power in Asia, and even the Communist revolution failed to dislodge it from its perch of being the arbiter of Buddhism.

Beijing hoped the physical control of Tibet would enhance its stature, which is why the Dalai Lama's presence in India is such a sore point.

In fact, it is Beijing's unfinished Buddhist agenda that is behind its loud claims to Arunachal Pradesh. Needless to add, it's for exactly the same reason that India cannot give up its claim on the state.
{Is TOI really so bankrupt in talent as to let such idiots write for them?}

In East Asia, China's Buddhist pre-eminence resulted in India being regarded as an interloper. India was anyway a latecomer to the south-east Asian region, and burdened with the legacy of British imperialism, the reigning impression of Indians was of "coolies", quite apart from the Chinese elite.

Therefore, when the issue of the east Asian community came up, there were many takers for the Chinese contention that the Indians were "outsiders" and the community could only be ASEAN+3, not ASEAN+6 as India was trying to push. China is trying hard to keep India out of this grouping claiming it was the "periphery" of Asia.

In the past five years, India has fought back, to reclaim what the government believes is India's by right - that it is India which is at the heart of the Asian civilisation, that in many ways, India has been the cultural trendsetter.

The Indian contention is that the cultures of Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar are all derivatives of Indian culture and history. Many freedom movements in south-east Asia were inspired by Indian leaders like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Buddhis...how/2137491.cms
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> Tawang rebuffs China, says 'we are Indians'
25 Jun, 2007 l 0202 hrs ISTlKeshav Pradhan/TIMES NEWS NETWORK
TAWANG (ARUNACHAL PRADESH): India and China have been locked in endless border talks for 22 years and yet Chinese claims to Tawang have popped up repeatedly.

While Chinese officials recently refused visa to an Arunachal Pradesh official to reiterate Beijing’s claim, there have been reports of alleged incursions by the People’s Liberation Army into the state’s higher reaches. Even the Chinese ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, has claimed that the whole of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China.

Inside Tawang, however, such a debate appears irrelevant and unnecessary. The people of this picturesque north-western Arunachal Pradesh district regard themselves as "Indian" — in body and soul.

"Not a soul in Tawang will ever support China. We are an inalienable part of India and the Indian society," says Sangay Jampi, secretary of Tawang’s famed Galden Namgyal Lhatse monastery. "Neither Tibet nor Tawang ever belonged to China," the 35-year-old monk adds.

The 400-year-old shrine wields tremendous influence on the lives of the local people, who pay taxes for its upkeep.

[shamu]

<!--QuoteBegin-Capt Manmohan Kumar+Jun 25 2007, 07:59 AM-->QUOTE(Capt Manmohan Kumar @ Jun 25 2007, 07:59 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> Tawang rebuffs China, says 'we are Indians'
Even the Chinese ambassador to India, <b>Sun Yuxi</b>, has claimed that the whole of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Why didn't we kick out this ambassador saying that he is an obstacle for good relation between India and China.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Nehru was naive, romantic: CIA </b>
CNN-IBNlink
Posted Thursday , June 28, 2007 at 14:20
New Delhi: In a development that could drive a wedge into India-China relations, the CIA has revealed declassified information on American policy and thinking that were kept secret for decades.

The documents speak <b>of how Beijing deceived New Delhi on the border issue through false assurances to Jawahar Lal Nehru, giving the impression they were petty problems which could be resolved by officials at lower levels. </b>

<b>They also paint Nehru as a naive and romantic statesman who trusted the Chinese. The documents claim that<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'> Nehru kept disagreements on the border issue out of public domain, to maintain his relationship with China</b>. </span>

The CIA is releasing these documents for the National Security Archive, as per the Freedom of Information act.

Nehru, say the first set of documents, even kept border incidents and rising disagreement with China out of Indian public domain in order to contain public opinion and to maintain his relationship with Zhou.

"The Chinese diplomatic effort was a five year masterpiece of guile, executed - and probably planned in large part by Chou en Lai," the CIA analysis says.

<b>"Chou played on Nehru's Asian, anti-imperialist mental attitude, his proclivity to temporize, and his sincere desire for an amicable Sino-Indian relationship." </b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[dhu]

China is expanding into its natural frontier of Siberia. Meanwhile India is boxed in by the propped up Jihadi states.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Russia: Putin's China Problem
This week's Sino-Russia summit highlights the rise of one superpower, and decline of another.</b>

By Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova
Newsweek International

March 27, 2006 issue - Vladimir Putin, like Russia's double-headed imperial eagle, has two faces. Both have lately been very much in evidence. At a meeting of G8 energy ministers in Moscow last week, the Russian president showed his Western visage, presenting Russia as a reliable energy partner and playing the superpower alongside the big hitters of the democratic, industrialized world. This week he travels to Beijing to cement a growing partnership with Asia's other booming authoritarian-capitalist country, China. There he will sign deals on oil pipelines, sales of sophisticated weaponry and nuclear reactors, and security accords reminiscent of the old days of Sino-Soviet entente.

Putin clearly relishes his—and Russia's—newfound clout. But his visit to China raises an interesting question: which of the two nations, in fact, is the real superpower? On the surface, Russia seems to take the laurel, playing an energy-hungry East and West to its advantage. Awash in oil money, Moscow has recently been asserting itself as never before in the post-Soviet era—involving itself in Iran and the Middle East, wielding oil and natural gas as a political weapon against its neighbors in Eastern (and Western) Europe and reasserting control over its near abroad from Belarus to Uzbekistan.

Yet for all its new bullishness, Moscow looks East with a fearful eye. The reality is that China is rising as a military power—thanks in large part to the $5 billion of high-tech Russian arms it buys every year. And long ago it surpassed Russia economically. Yes, Russia may be sloshing with petrodollars. But China's surplus of trade capital is even bigger—to the point that Chinese investment threatens to swamp Russia's dysfunctional economy, particularly in its impoverished but strategically critical Far East. Western G8 members may have objected, fruitlessly, to Putin's inviting China to the Moscow summit. But in truth, it's China—the world's fourth largest economy, with Russia just ahead of Mexico in 12th place—that has the greater claim to a place at the top table. "Russia is shifting from being a junior partner of the United States to a junior partner of China," says Dmitry Trenin, director of Moscow's Carnegie Fund.

Nowhere is China's growing dominance more evident than in Siberia, a vast land far larger than China itself but inhabited by a mere 30 million Russians. Chinese goods are everywhere. In Novosibirsk, the owner of a new hotel can't think of a single thing in the place that isn't from China, from the electric sockets to the beds and furniture. The town's citizens will soon ride to work on Chinese buses; in the markets of Khabarovsk bargain-hungry Russian babush-kas even know the Chinese names for the vegetables they buy from Chinese traders. "Everything we have comes from China—our dishes, leather goods, even the meat we eat is from China," complains Vyacheslav Ilyukhin, head of the Building Department at Novosobirsk's city hall. "Siberia is becoming Chinese."

But Siberia is more than just a market for Chinese goods. Its vast oil and gas reserves make it the ideal gas tank to power China's growth. Earlier this month Putin ordered officials to speed up plans for an $11.5 billion, 4,100km crude-oil pipeline from eastern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean that will eventually carry 1.6 million barrels per day to China and Japan. And Russia's state energy utility, Unified Energy Systems, plans to spend $8.2 billion to build four giant hydropower complexes on the Aldan, Uchur and Timpton rivers in eastern Siberia to help meet China's annual demand for 40 billion kilowatt-hours of power.

China's soaring energy needs would seem to put Russia in the catbird seat. But in fact, it works the other way. There's no denying China's need for Russian natural resources. By some estimates, China will look to Russia to supply 20 percent of its energy imports by 2011. Ditto for other resources like lumber and aluminum. But China is developing other sources of supply as well, like Iran and Kazakhstan for oil. Chinese companies have been buying iron-ore mines in Australia, as well as Canada's largest nickel and zinc mining company, Noranda. <b>China isn't about to become critically dependent on Russia, while Russia is becoming dependent on China—which will account for half of Russia's energy exports by 2015, according to some estimates.
</b>
Meanwhile, china is grabbing other Russian assets. Siberia is home to a vast and underemployed brain trust of technological and scientific talent, which Beijing is busily buying up. Take Akademgorodok, a Soviet-era suburb of Novosibirsk, home to 52 scientific institutes and some 18,000 scientists, including half a dozen Nobel Prize winners. Already, estimates Novosibirsk councilor Aleksandr Lyulko, 80 percent of Akademgorodok's income derives from China. And after years of post-Soviet neglect, the scientists of Siberia are only too happy to fill Chinese orders for everything from wind tunnels and soil analyzers to lasers, DNA labs and electron accelerators. "The West is wary of selling their technologies to the Chinese, so they come here," explains Vasily Areshenko, foreign-relations chief for the Siberian chapter of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "Our own government doesn't give much importance to science. We need China's money."

Moscow politicians have long talked about making Novosibirsk the heart of a new Indian-style knowledge economy. But while Moscow's promises have stayed on paper, Chinese cash is actually kick-starting a rebirth of Russian science. Krasnoyarsk's Institute of Solar-Earth Physics, for instance, has formed a joint venture with the Chinese Center of Space Science; in Novosibirsk, the Institute of Precision Electronics now makes high-powered lasers together with the Shenyan Technological Institute. Last year more than 400 Chinese scientists visited Akademgorodok, notebooks in hand. "China has an enormous interest in learning about new technologies," says Vasily Fomin, director of Akademgorodok's Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. "They say: 'Give us a scientist who can win us a Nobel Prize and we will do anything for you'."

<b>That doesn't sit well with many Russians, particularly back in Moscow. Raised on history texts describing how Russia was overrun by Mongol hordes from the East in the 13th century, they are uneasy about the influx of Chinese money, goods and people</b>. They worry about selling technology that China could use to create its own home-grown tech industries. "A long time ago we taught Chinese to put cars together; now they sell us their Chinese cars," says Vasily Fomin. Less-rational fears of Chinese domination are rife, too. Last month Russia's nationalist Rodina party introduced legislation seeking to restrict the number of foreign (read: Chinese and Caucasian) traders allowed to sell goods at Russian markets. The bill is not likely to pass, but it's an indicator of just how deep the undercurrents of xenophobia run. Rodina's leader, <b>Dmitry Rogozin, has previously accused China of plotting to take over Siberia, if not by force then by demography, </b>and he's called for new laws "to restore Russia's control over its borders"—specifically to stem the inflow of Chinese migrants, nearly half a million of whom already live in Russia. Russians should be encouraged to move to borderareas, he has said, to counter the Chinese "threat to Mother Russia."

Rogozin is not alone in his fear of the "yellow peril." In Novosibirsk, the proposed purchase of 100 hectares of land on the city's outskirts by a Chinese shopping-center developer for $1.6 billion has raised vehement opposition among local politicians. "Novosibirsk will become half Chinese," complains Ilyukhin. "The authorities are too blind to see that we are selling a piece of our motherland." Even elite Kremlin bureaucrats share some of these concerns. Chinese companies have been blocked from buying strategic oil and gas assets, most recently in December, when the China National Offshore Oil Corp. sought to buy up the remains of the once mighty Yukos oil major. And just this month, the Chinese-owned Sinopec Group, Asia's largest petrochemical refiner, expressed interest in buying Udmurtneft, a subsidiary of the private oil joint venture TNK-BP. But that, too, is likely to be barred. The Kremlin, it seems, will tolerate Western majors like BP buying up medium-size Russian oil companies like TNK—but when it comes to the Chinese, the answer is no. Clearly, Putin wants China's money, but not at the cost of giving Beijing control of Russian assets.

At bottom, the Kremlin is deeply conflicted about its emerging eastern partner. Despite their fears, Russian strategists, smarting from the loss of their cold-war superpower status, also dream of creating a Pan-Asian alliance as a counterweight to U.S. hegemony. According to a poll carried out by the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station last year, 74 percent of listeners thought Russia should join in an alliance with China against the United States. "Together, we will be greater than the Americans," one listener wrote on the station's Web site—a fair description of the Kremlin's goal.

Recently, Putin has been talking up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a loose security alliance that includes Russia, China and the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Its stated aim is to control "terrorism" in the region, specifically, Islamic militants who threaten a repressive but Moscow-friendly regime in Uzbekistan and who have fomented unrest in China's Muslim-majority Xinjiang province. But it's also dedicated to evicting the United States from its bases in Central Asia, which make both Moscow and Beijing uneasy. Putin has also been trying to position Russia as an Asian, as well as a European, power—to the point of formally requesting membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, headquartered in Jakarta. "Moscow is irritated by Western criticism," says Dmitry Trenin. "It's looking east for new alliances."

Already, over the course of regular visits, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Putin have formed a common anti-U.S. front on major diplomatic issues ranging from Iraq to, most recently, how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions. Hu will also seek to build on that common ground by lobbying for increased Russian support for its claims to Taiwan, according to one Russian diplomat not authorized to speak on the record. Last May, the two men ended a long-running border dispute after <b>Putin agreed to cede 120 square kilometers of the 4,300-kilometer Russo-Chinese border to Beijing. Slowly but surely, Russia is being pulled into China's economic and political orbit.</b>

Closeness to Beijing, though, poses as many problems as distance. Even at home, with its erosion of free speech, its "managed democracy" and growing state control of the economy, the country seems to be taking a leaf from China's authoritarian book. But that doesn't sit well with Russia's craving for recognition by the West, tangibly expressed by memberships in such clubs as the WTO and G8, whose members are increasingly grumbling that perhaps Russia doesn't deserve such lofty standing among industrialized democracies.

So Russia finds itself in an awkward place, stranded between two poles, east and west. As China's economic and political pull grows, so Western good will ebbs as the United States and Europe grow more outspoken about Putin's rollback of democracy and support for despots like Belarus's Aleksandr Lukashenka. Putin may be too canny a player not to recognize the danger to the east. But as it runs out of friends in the West, Russia may find itself with little choice but to turn its face to China.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11903907/site/newsweek/<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<b>Internet blamed for Shanghai teen pregnancies </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->BEIJING (Reuters) - Nearly half of the pregnant teens in China's financial hub, Shanghai, met their partners on the Internet, state media said on Tuesday.

Zhang Zhengrong, a doctor who oversees the city's first-aid hotline for pregnant teens, <b>said 46 percent of the more than 20,000 teenage girls who called the hotline over the past two years said they had had sex with boys they met on the Internet</b>.

"Most of the fathers disappeared after learning about the pregnancy, and some of the mothers did not even know the fathers' names," the China Daily said.

Zhang blamed the situation on adult Web sites, videos and books and appealed to parents, teachers and society at large to pay more attention to sex education.

A survey by Zhang's hospital found that only 7.9 percent of the parents queried talked to their children about sex, and 79 percent of high school and university students said they got their ideas about sex from the Internet.

Chinese attitudes towards sex have relaxed in recent decades, triggering a boom in extramarital relationships which the<b> ruling Communist Party blames on bourgeois mores imported from the West</b>  <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<b>China Said To Expel Christian Missionaries</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->BEIJING — China has kicked out more than 100 suspected foreign missionaries in a campaign to prevent proselytizing ahead of next year's Beijing Summer Olympics, an American monitoring group said yesterday.

The government launched "a massive expulsion campaign of foreign Christians" in <b>February dubbed Typhoon no. 5, the Midland, Texas-based China Aid Association </b>said.

<b>The foreigners, mostly from America, Australia, Canada, Israel, Singapore, and South Korea were expelled or deported between April and June, the group said</b>.

It said the campaign was believed to be part of "efforts to prevent foreign Christians from engaging in mission activities before the Beijing Olympics next year." China'sForeign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment late yesterday.

Christian mission groups from around the world say they plan to quietly defy the Chinese ban on foreign missionaries and send thousands of volunteer evangelists to Beijing next year.

Evangelicals worked the crowds at the Olympics in Athens, Sydney, and Atlanta, but the groups say the Beijing Games offer an opening like no other, in a communist country that conservative Christians have long reviled.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Nothing to do with India, but concerns China and kidnapping of dissidents and defectors - you know, the usual copyrighted communist tactics:
http://203.99.65.121/section/2/story.cfm?c...jectid=10452476
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Ex-diplomat claims China seized woman</b>
5:00AM Thursday July 19, 2007

A former Chinese diplomat has claimed a woman was kidnapped in New Zealand by the Chinese Government in 2005 and shipped home.

Chen Yonglin is in Wellington meeting politicians before a human rights rally today where he will be a guest speaker.

One News reported last night that he made the claim at a meeting with Green Party MP Keith Locke in Parliament.

"He says a woman with New Zealand residency was kidnapped by the Chinese Government and taken from New Zealand back to China on a state-owned ship," the state-owned broadcaster reported.

It showed Chen Yonglin saying in faltering English: "I know there's one case, a kidnap case happened in New Zealand but if necessary the New Zealand intelligence service is interested I may park with them the details."

Mr Locke said the accusation was "very serious" and he would make sure the police were aware of it.

Prime Minister Helen Clark's office said the Government was not aware of the incident and urged the man to go to the police.

<b>Chen Yonglin is a dissident who defected in May 2005 when he was a diplomat in the Chinese consulate in Sydney.

He was denied political asylum but was granted a visa allowing him and his family to remain permanently in Australia.</b>

<b>In September 2005 he claimed a 1000-strong Chinese spy network was operating in Australia under the authority of a man who, at that time, was still working in the Sydney consulate.</b>
(Some years back Canada came out with how there are many Red spies from China who've infiltrated into that country.)

Beijing denied the allegation.

Speakers at today's rally include representatives of Amnesty International, Friends of Tibet, Mr Locke, United Future leader Peter Dunne and Maori Party MP Hone Harawira.

- NZPA<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
- http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411319/1247097 <b>China dissident reports kidnap to SIS</b> (SIS "Secret Intelligence Service" of New Zealand.)
- A long link at "TV3.co.nz" (The news has triggered off a) <b>Protest to highlight China's human rights record</b>

[Guest]

<b>China, West row in the offing over toys and clothing</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A major diplomatic row between China and the West is in the offing, worse than the bitter stand-off last year between Beijing and Brussels over suspension of  imports of shoes, underwear and shirts, among other things, made there.

Already piqued over the withdrawal of 18 million Chinese made toys worldwide by the US toy giant Mattel and taking off the shelves of children jewellry in Britain, the Chinese authorities have retorted that the recalls and complaints are motivated by trade protectionism rather than safety.

This has been promptly refuted by EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, who described the allegation as “totally false”. But the row is set to cause intense heat as the alerts could cost Chinese loss of billions.

The Chinese anger has boiled over after New Zealand authorities conveyed to the trading standard officials in Britain that cheap clothes made in China have been found to contain high levels of a potentially dangerous chemical.
......
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Naresh]

<b>China’s happy mask —Giles Merritt</b>

<i>Emphasising China’s meteoric rise means lesser understanding in the rest of the world of the need to sustain rapid economic development in order to satisfy the expectations of its 1.3 billion inhabitants</i>

BEIJING — China’s “face” may be its Achilles’ Heel. As it basks in its new status as an economic superpower — the dragon that is outpacing Asia’s tigers as well as the donkeys of the West — China is mistakenly downplaying its own serious structural weaknesses.

The communist leadership finds it hard to mention, let alone emphasise, the country’s problems. Officials’ preoccupation with commanding respect and not losing face leads them to focus almost exclusively on China’s achievements. This is a strategy that risks backfiring, because it misunderstands the dynamics of international politics.

Emphasising China’s meteoric rise means lesser understanding in the rest of the world of the need to sustain rapid economic development in order to satisfy the expectations of its 1.3 billion inhabitants. The government knows that it has a political tiger by the tail, but refuses to acknowledge it, either inside China or outside.

Trade tensions continue to mount. The United States is deeply concerned, following the minimal results of its “strategic economic dialogue” with China in May, and Congress is threatening tough protectionist measures. The European Union may not be far behind; much will depend on how China presents its case over the coming 18 months as the two sides negotiate a wide-ranging Partnership Cooperation Agreement, which will determine the quality of bilateral relations for the next decade.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just visited Beijing, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy likely to follow soon. Both are surely aware that China’s surging exports last year helped it surpass the US as Europe’s largest foreign supplier.

<b>What they won’t see, of course, are the desperately low living standards of China’s teeming millions, especially the rural poor.</b> Yet China is in no mood to plead poverty when dealing with the West. Its aim is to gain as much prestige as possible from the Olympic games in 2008 and the six-month World Expo in Shanghai during the spring and summer of 2010.

It remains to be seen whether the two events will be capable of swinging world opinion in China’s favour and keeping it there. Indeed, the government’s suspicion of the international media is liable to spark friction when thousands of journalists arrive and inevitably widen their coverage beyond athletics to politics and human rights.

For the time being, sentiment about China’s future remains relentlessly upbeat. McKinsey consultants have even forecast that the upper middle-class will number 520 million by 2025 — the sort of projection that the communist mandarins welcome as a tribute to their strange hybrid of a market economy and rigid state control. Yet it is almost certainly the sort of forecast of which they should beware.

The reality of life in today’s China looks very different from the vantage point of a province far from the heady atmosphere of Beijing or Shanghai. For example, like much of the country, Gansu Province, at China’s geographical centre, is grappling with structural and social problems that range from the daunting to the apparently insuperable. Average annual output per capita is about $900, and incomes among the peasants who make up most of its rural population of 26 million are less than $250.

<b>Gansu’s challenges range from modernising its heavy industries to resisting desertification and the encroachment of the Gobi desert. While it has been making slow but steady progress, its future is clouded by worsening water shortages; though it straddles the Yellow River, the water table is dwindling fast.</b>

Back in Beijing, the chief preoccupation is to safeguard 11% GDP growth while assuaging Western governments. By the end of this year, China’s exports will be 24% higher than in 2006, at $1.2 trillion, and its trade surplus will have grown by 43%.

But trade will probably not be the main worry for China’s international relations. Trouble seems more likely to come from growing concern in the West over climate change. Political leaders in EU capitals and the US may be well aware of China’s global economic importance, but the widespread public perception is that its factories are dirty and environmentally harmful. Rows over product safety and intellectual piracy could all too easily fuel calls for tough new trade limits.

The answer is not for China to step up its public-relations effort. Instead, it should be revealing its weaknesses and vulnerabilities to gain Western understanding. That really would be a cultural revolution. — DT-PS/Europe’s World

<i>Giles Merritt is secretary-general of the Brussels-based think tank Friends of Europe and Editor of the policy journal Europe’s World.</i>

Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Guest]

Plight of village and its people in communist utopia. Is this the Nandigram genocide by India's murdering Red traitors? No, it's the Chinese village Shengyou massacre by China's murdering Reds. Communism. Nothing changes from place to place or decade to decade.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6983247.stm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Friday, 7 September 2007, 14:32 GMT 15:32 UK 
<b>Venturing into unreported China</b> 

China has pledged more freedoms for reporters ahead of next year's Olympics, but when the BBC's Dan Griffiths travelled to the countryside to investigate reports of unrest he was detained and questioned.

[Photo caption:] China wants to keep reports of rural unrest under wraps

The village of Shengyou is a three hour drive south of Beijing, deep in the countryside surrounded by fields of maize.

A traditional landscape found across this vast nation - but everything is not as it seems.

My taxi driver tells me that the police have set up checkpoints round the village. He refuses to go any further - so I go the rest of the way on foot.

I walk down a narrow lane with broad poplar trees on either side. A small tractor chugs by, the driver stares at me - foreigners are rarely seen around here.

Round a bend in the road, I see two white vans. Several policemen are standing beside them. They look as out of place in rural China as I do.

The questions come thick and fast. What am I doing? Where have I come from? Who is my contact in the village?

Over the course of the next few hours they will ask me this last question again and again. From nowhere a black car pulls up and I am ushered inside.

<b>Battle of Shengyou</b>

Two years ago there was a riot in Shengyou. In the early hours of a November morning a gang of more than 100 men entered the village.

<b>[Photo caption:] The 2005 clash was caught on video and widely disseminated </b>

They were wearing camouflage gear and construction helmets, some armed with hunting rifles, clubs and shovels.

What happened next was filmed by a local resident and smuggled out to the international media.

<b>The video showed a series of bloody clashes between the villagers and the attackers. Gunshots could be heard above the shouting and screaming.

When the fighting finally stopped, six people lay dead, more than 50 were injured. </b>

With the dramatic footage circulating, the authorities moved quickly.

State media said the Shengyou residents had been resisting the takeover of their property by an electricity company which wanted to build a power plant.

It emerged that there had been a similar clash earlier in the year, which had gone unreported. Several local officials were sacked and the villagers won their claim to stay on the land.

But now the police are back in Shengyou.

<b>'Welcome to Dingzhou' </b>

I am in the backseat of the black car on the way to the nearby town of Dingzhou.

Next to me is one of the men from the checkpoint. He is not wearing a police uniform and refuses to give me his name or show me any ID.

The questions keep on coming - how do I know about Shengyou? Why was I on foot?

I tell him that my taxi driver was too scared to go near the village. He laughs. At one point he reaches over and tries to grab my mobile phone.

I ask some questions of my own - why are they detaining me? What is going on in Shengyou? He says nothing.

At the town's government headquarters, an official shakes my hand. "You are welcome to Dingzhou," he says, pretending that I am an honoured guest.

We sit around a large oval table. I am on one side, officials are on the other. Several refuse to give me their names. They want to see my journalist's identity card. And again the questions.

New regulations issued this year were supposed to give foreign journalists much greater freedom to travel around the country.

They were also supposed to mean less harassment from local officials - a common problem in the past and one that has not gone away.

I tell them I heard reports about problems in the village and had come down to look around.

<b>People living near Shengyou say that armed police were sent into the village two weeks ago.

That was after residents dug up the bodies of those who had died in the violence in November 2005. They wanted to protest at the lack of official compensation for the families of those who were killed or injured then.</b>

[Text:]"It is not until the next day that my driver discovers that while we were eating someone tampered with our car"


<b>What is happening in Shengyou is not unique. It is another reminder of growing social tensions in rural China.</b>

The government has admitted that there were tens of thousands of rural protests last year. Many are about land grabs like the one attempted in Shengyou, others about corruption or the growing gap between rich and poor.

The authorities in Beijing say they want to do something about these problems - but often officials at the local level ignore these edicts.

<b>Heading home</b>

The interview is over. Officials say they will escort me back to the highway.

I meet up with my driver, who has been waiting for me. Three officials also get in the car. They sit either side of me on the back seat. Another in the front.

[Photo caption:]This is the China the government wants to portray

As we drive out of town a black car comes alongside. The driver says we must pull over. This game of cat and mouse continues up the highway to Beijing. Finally I tell my driver to ignore them and head home.

"Have you been to Beijing before?" I ask the officials. They laugh nervously.

Then I see blue and red flashing lights. The police will not say why they have stopped us, nor will they say when we can go. We wait at the side of the road.

<b>Up ahead there is a big neon sign lit up in green - "One World, One Dream". It is the official slogan of the Beijing Olympics.

"Is this how you will treat journalists when China hosts the Olympics?" I ask one of them. "Oh, everything will be different then," he says. </b>

Then another car pulls up, with representatives from the local office of China's foreign ministry. I know my colleagues in Beijing have been pressing the foreign ministry to take action.

"There has been a terrible mistake, we are so sorry." They insist that we must go out for dinner with the officials from Dingzhou, then we can go back to Beijing.

It is a strange experience sitting round the same table with the men who detained me.

It is not until the next day that my driver discovers that while we were eating, someone tampered with our car by removing several of the bolts that attach the wheels to the chassis.

It is nearly midnight by the time we arrive back in Beijing. We drive down the wide, brightly-lit boulevards, past the new office blocks.

<b>This is the China that Beijing wants the world to see. But in Shengyou there is another China - a world that goes unreported by the country's state-run media. </b>

China's president, Hu Jintao, has promised to build what he calls a "harmonious society", but three hours south of Beijing no-one in power seems to be listening.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->These losers will do anything to force their own visions of 'progress' onto people, even massacring The People. China would come up faster and naturally if it was free from the christocommunist disease. All communism has brought is misery, death, dictatorial terrorism, executions and of course a smog to choke even the Underworld.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>First Hindu Temple to be Built in Communist China</b>
10/8/2007 6:33:40 AM 
Source Link- http://www.indiadivine.org/audarya/world-r...ayan-trust.html
It is one of the grandest Hindu temples in the capital and has been built with a lot of thought and precision. An architectural marvel, the Akshardham temple is the cynosure of all eyes. Soon a replica of it will be constructed, thousands of miles away in China. The first Hindu temple in communist China.

The Chinese government has invited the Swaminarayan Trust that runs the Akshardham temples in Noida and in Gandhinagar, to build a similar temple.
A huge piece of land has been earmarked in Fohsan state, which will not only house the temple but also an Indian cultural centre.

"Initial thoughts are to have a cultural centre also along with the temple, a traditional Indian music learning centre and also various Indian language teaching centres including Hindi, on this temple premises," said Jagat Shah, Joint Secretary-General, Indo-China Trade Council.

<b>The Swaminarayan Trust has welcomed the decision, saying there's much more to it than the religious angle.</b>

<b>"This decision taken by Chinese government, letting the Hindus build a temple in China is to be appreciated highly. Its not only question of spirituality but also in many other ways both the countries will benefit. There will also be cultural exchange between people living in these two countries and that outcome will help in spiritual and physical growth of citizens of India and China," said Jasraj Maharaj, religious guru in the Swaminarayan Sect. </b>

A core team of the trust is busy preparing the final design plan. Members of the team and the Indo-China Trade Council are expected to visit the proposed temple site soon.A team of officials from one of China's prestigious construction companies that will execute the project is now in India to study the architecture of Swaminarayan temple.

"China is also very good at construction and especially our company actually focuses on various types of construction designs. I think this being a joint venture with Indian partner, design from India and construction from China, this temple will be the masterpiece," said Xiaojun Lee, Secretary of Board, Panzhihua Guanghua Group, PR China.

The first Hindu temple in the land of dragons will not just be a temple but the hub of cultural exchange between India and China.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

In China's Zhejiang province, many of the cities specialize in making a single product. For example, Datang township manufactures one-third of all the world's socks. Wenzhou creates 70 percent of the cigarette lighters on the planet, and Songxia has cornered the market on umbrellas, churning out 350 million per year.

In India, we don't have such type of cities.

[ramana]

Mudy, Even in Japan there is product specialization in mfg villages and towns. Eg. stainless steel cutlery was concentrated only in certain viallges to gain economy of scale and synergy in expertise.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'China mobilises troops along its border with India'
Posted online: Tuesday , November 20, 2007 at 12:00:00
Updated: Tuesday , November 20, 2007 at 07:12:20
New Delhi, November 20: The BJP on Tuesday claimed that China has mobilised its troops along its border with India in Arunachal Pradesh and asked the UPA government to explain what is happening in the state.

The party also alleged that Chinese troops were making incursions into the Indian territory regularly and accused the government of ‘concealing’ the facts.

"Arunachal Pradesh is in deep, deep trouble. Government should come clean on what is happening there," BJP MP Arun Shourie said in New Delhi.

India, he said, is now facing ‘one of the gravest situations’ after the Chinese invasion of 1962 from an external source other than the Bangladeshi infiltration.

He also accused the government of ‘outsourcing’ its foreign policy and ‘concealment’ of facts and turning a blind eye towards the Chinese violations in Arunachal Pradesh.

The government is ‘silent’ on Pakistan, while it has ‘outsourced’ the foreign policy to CPM as far as Nepal is concerned. On the LTTE problem "people are writing poems praising them," he added.

BJP MP from Arunachal Pradesh Kiran Rijiju, who addressed the press conference along with Shourie, claimed Chinese troops even blew up a Buddha statue in Tawang sector of the state.

While the government claims that there were no incursions, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police says there were at least 146 incursions in 2006, he added. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Why China had to mobolize, don't they know Moron Singh is PM of India?
China is disappointing me, they just have to wink towards Moron Singh and Moron Singh along with her Bibi and Queen will stand in queue to flower marching Red Army.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Army moves troops to India-China border </b>
Pioneer News Service | New Delhi
... after Chinese intrusions in Bhutan
The Army, in the backdrop of reported intrusions by Chinese forces in Bhutan, has moved more than 6,000 troops to the Sino-Indian border, close to the tri-junction of India, Bhutan and China. Army officials, however, described the movement from Jammu and Kashmir as a "routine retreat of troops to their original locations."

The shifting of Army formations north of Nathu La comes in the wake of reports of Chinese troops coming close to the Siliguri corridor. But Army authorities brushed it aside, saying Chinese forces have been coming close to the Dolam Plateau for over two decades as the boundary in the area was still to be defined.

Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor said here on Thursday the intrusions by the Chinese forces in Bhutan was a diplomatic matter and it was a matter between the two neighbouring countries.

Elaborating upon the movement of troops, officials said the forces being moved were all formations of the Kalimpong-based Army's 27 Mountain Division. These formations were mobilised during Operation Parakaram in 2001.

According to Army sources, an entire brigade of the 27 Division and an additional battalion had been moved back over a period of three-four months, as situation in Jammu and Kashmir had 'stabilised'.

When asked whether the Army was concerned about reported intrusions of Chinese army in Bhutan, General Kapoor, speaking on the sidelines of a seminar jointly organised by the Defence Ministry and the Confederation of Indian Industries(CII) here, said it was a matter between Bhutan and China to solve.

<b>"It is a matter between Bhutan and China to resolve. So, that is an issue at diplomatic level. I have nothing to say," he said. </b>

Incidentally, India and China were all set to undertake the first-ever joint Army exercise focusing on counter terrorism next week in Yunnan province of China.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Watch this area, media/UPA is hiding major info.

[Guest]

India speeding up nuclear missile production

AFP

NEW DELHI (AFP) — Nuclear-armed India said on Friday it was ready to <b>jump-start production of long-range nuclear missiles which can hit targets deep in China or Pakistan.</b>

V. K. Saraswat, the chief of India's missile development project, said the assembly lines were in place to speed up the production of the precision rockets.

Military insiders told AFP the announcement was a response to reports of growing cross-border military intrusions into India by China, which has an unresolved border dispute with its Asian neighbour.

The statement came amid reports Friday that India had moved a brigade-sized (6,000-man) army unit to the Bhutan-China border on India's uneasy eastern flank.

"India is now capable of delivering missiles much earlier than the earlier period of three to seven years as basic building blocks for production and deployment of long-range missile are now in place," scientist Saraswat said.

The comments also coincided with the second test in so many days of the locally made 700-kilogramme (1,540-pound) surface-to-air Akash missile on Friday.

Saraswat, speaking to reporters in southern Hyderabad city, one of India's largest hubs for strategic research, said nuclear-capable missiles would be built much faster with private sector participation.

"We will develop the next levels of missiles in a much shorter time.

"The private industry has emerged as a co-developer of the sub-systems of the missiles, which is helping us in cutting down development time," Saraswat added.

India's defence industry opened up to the private sector three years ago after state-owned ordenance units failed to deliver.

Saraswat's comments came after India's chief military scientist M. Natarajan Wednesday said New Delhi will test a ballistic missile with a top range of 6,000 kilometres (3,800 miles) in 2008.

"The defence industry, having gone through a reality check, is now kicking up with results, and I'll describe it as a positive sign," a senior defence ministry official, who did not want to be named, told AFP.

India has built a range of ballistic and cruise missiles as part of a 1983 project.

*************

A chinese invasion of Indian border states is imminent in the next few years. It is better to prepare from now and start increasing capacity of war production.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A chinese invasion of Indian border states is imminent in the next few years. It is better to prepare from now and start increasing capacity of war production. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No use, if leadership lacks will to use them. Any third rated country comes and slap India.
Chini invasion started in 1962, now they just have to march inside West Bengal where red Carpet is waiting for them.
Staying in power is more important then proetcting India or its citizens.