Uighur Terrorists: Western World Shot Their Own Feet Again

The arrests on July 8th, 2010 of three men in Norway and Germany accused of orchestrating a terrorist bomb plot seemed like another routine raid by a Western government in the continuing campaign against groups linked to Al Qaeda. But one detail stuck out: Norwegian officials said one of the men was a Chinese Uighur, and all three supposedly belonged to Turkestan Islamic Party that advocates separatism in western China.

Terrorism experts say the plot in Norway indicates that Al Qaeda and the few members of the Turkestan Islamic Party, or TIP, who trained in the tribal areas of Pakistan see some mutual benefit in cooperating. The use of relatively obscure ethnic Uighur recruits could allow Al Qaeda to penetrate more deeply into the West. (Source)

Even US declared Turkestan Islamic Party as one terrorist group, but the organization is considered as a tool to damage China, its members and organizations are still under protection in US and European countries.

Taliban is an old story that tells how western countries lifted a stone that would hit their own feet, Turkestan Islamic Party is just another one, but I guess it would not be the last one.

Video: Free Iraq, Free Tibet, Very Good Cause!!

The Real US Deficit With China – Knowledge

Americans are out of touch with today's China. It's a knowledge deficit that carries more weight in the long-term bilateral relationships between China and the United States than the ballooning US trade deficit with China. And as China makes a comeback on the world stage, it's one that the US should address.

Chinese visitors to the US have shared the shock of witnessing a severe dichotomy between how much Americans seem to talk about China and yet how little they know about it. The US status as the world's superpower, coupled with its location, warrants people this type of benign negligence.

But what about those experts who have the power to impose their perceptions of China on others? All too often China experts in the US cannot even speak the language. How can they claim to understand a culture without knowing how its people communicate?

This knowledge deficit accounts directly for widespread and deep-rooted misperceptions about China.

There are three faulty, recurring talking points in the American media.

First, China is a rising power, and a rising power is dangerous. The first part of this argument is incomplete, and the latter part is misplaced. China is not only a rising power; it is a returning power. China, as a united continental power, has existed for more than 2,000 years.

As a returning player, China is composed, restrained, and mature, just like a former champion returning to the title game after a short lapse. Also, if history is any guide, Chinese-ruling regimes have not been considered aggressive or expansive; they were famous for building walls. This fact alone should call into question the comparison of China's current resurgence with Japan's and Germany's disastrous rising path before World War II.

Second, China is a Communist country, and Communism is evil. Repeatedly placed upon China by media commentators, most notably CNN's anchorman Lou Dobbs, this characterization is both simplistic and utterly misleading.

To today's China, Marxism is as foreign as liberal democracy. When you look back at China's past, no alien cultures have uprooted Chinese tradition; instead, they were either localized, or submerged. China can still be Chinese without the Communism title.

Likewise, today's ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could easily be renamed the Chinese Confucian Party (CCP) without changing much of its ideological belief or organizational structure, or even its acronym for that matter.

Both the "ruling by virtue" policy promoted by former President Jiang Zemin and the "harmonious society" guideline proposed by current leader Hu Jintao were derived more from the Confucian doctrine than from the Marxist ideology. Singling out "Communist" as the definer confuses the reality.

Third, Tiananmen Square in 1989 is an iconic image that lingers in the minds of the Chinese. American observers' obsession with this tragic event reflects how deep their perception gap about China runs. There is no question that what happened that summer was historic. However, it was a generation ago, and sea changes have occurred since then.

Those who were born in 1989 are turning 19. What this new Chinese generation cares about is not the guy who blocked those tanks, but the Chinese Super Girl Singer and Yao Ming. America's unyielding interest in Tiananmen is out of touch. Is the Watergate scandal still the dominant issue facing the US today?

This lack of updated information about China becomes more problematic in a larger context. Chinese students are required to study English beginning in primary school. Students are exposed to both American culture and the Western way of thinking by college. For at least two decades, tens of thousands of the best and the brightest Chinese students attend American's top-tier graduate schools, channeling back the most updated perceptions and information about the US.

Although the number of American students studying in China witnessed a huge jump over the past few years, the accumulated knowledge deficits and language barriers are still immense.

This imbalance of knowledge, just like the imbalance of trade, is unsustainable. With the trade problem, Chinese leaders outlined a "win-win partner" scenario, and American policymakers have mapped out the "responsible stakeholder" blueprint. However, no strategy will be feasible if the two parties cannot understand each other well enough to weather the uncertainties ahead.

It is highly probable that the next generation of Americans will live in a world where China is the largest economic power. Are they prepared? When and how are they going to fix this current knowledge deficit with China?

• Xu Wu is an assistant professor in strategic media and public relations at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. He is the author of "Chinese Cyber Nationalism."

The article comes from http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p09s02-coop.html

Time For The West to Practise What it Preaches

By Abdoulaye Wade

When it comes to China and Africa, the European Union and the US want to have their cake and eat it. In an echo of its past colonial rivalries, European leaders and donor organisations have expressed concerns that African nations are throwing their doors open too wide to Chinese investors and to exploitation by their Asian partners.

But if opening up more free markets is a goal that the west prizes – and extols as a path to progress – why is Europe fretting about China’s growing economic role in Africa? The expansion of free markets has indeed been a boon to Africa. But as I tell my friends in the west, China is doing a much better job than western capitalists of responding to market demands in Africa.

The battle for influence in the world between the west and China is not Africa’s problem. Our continent is in a hurry to build infrastructure, ensure affordable energy and educate our people. In many African nations, African leaders are striving to reinforce robust economic growth in a sustainable manner and reduce “brain-drain” incentives that have led to an exodus of well-educated Africans to Europe.

China’s approach to our needs is simply better adapted than the slow and sometimes patronising post-colonial approach of European investors, donor organisations and non-governmental organisations. In fact, the Chinese model for stimulating rapid economic development has much to teach Africa.

With direct aid, credit lines and reasonable contracts, China has helped African nations build infrastructure projects in record time – bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, dams, legislative buildings, stadiums and airports. In many African nations, including Senegal, improvements in infrastructure have played important roles in stimulating economic growth.

These are improvements, moreover, that stay in Africa and raise the standards of living for millions of Africans, not just an elite few. In Senegal, a Chinese company cannot be awarded an infrastructure-related contract unless it has partnered with a Senegalese company. In practice, Chinese companies are not only investing in Senegal but transferring technology, training, and know-how to Senegal at the same time.

It is a telling sign of the post-colonial mindset that some donor organisations in the west dismiss the trade agreements between Chinese banks and African states that produce these vital improvements – as though Africa was naïve enough to just offload its precious natural resources at bargain prices to obtain a commitment for another stadium or state house.

In the past, the political power-play between Taiwan and China often spurred Asian investment on the African continent. Today, however, economic relations are based more on mutual need – and the economic reality that the EU and the US cannot compete with China. A number of big projects in Senegal had initially been funded by the Taiwanese, but in 2005, Senegal abandoned the politicisation of development and opted for decisions based on a free market.

I have found that a contract that would take five years to discuss, negotiate and sign with the World Bank takes three months when we have dealt with Chinese authorities. I am a firm believer in good governance and the rule of law. But when bureaucracy and senseless red tape impede our ability to act – and when poverty persists while international functionaries drag their feet – African leaders have an obligation to opt for swifter solutions. I achieved more in my one hour meeting with President Hu Jintao in an executive suite at my hotel in Berlin during the recent G8 meeting in Heiligendamm than I did during the entire, orchestrated meeting of world leaders at the summit – where African leaders were told little more than that G8 nations would respect existing commitments.

At the same time that China has been especially nimble, the prices and quality of goods coming from Asia give African governments no choice other than to buy Chinese, Indian and Malaysian goods. For the price of one European vehicle, a Senegalese can purchase two Chinese cars. The proof is in the parking lot at the presidential palace in Dakar. Low-cost Chinese Chery and Great Wall models are giving Senegal’s middle and working classes access to a new car, a sign of our emerging consumer class. We are even using these affordable Chinese cars in a pilot project to reinsert unemployed women into the workforce by creating a fleet of taxis called Sister Taxis. When products are affordable, innovative programmes become realistic.

China, which has fought its own battles to modernise, has a much greater sense of the personal urgency of development in Africa than many western nations. Last year, the Chinese Eximbank pledged $20bn in development funds for African infrastructure and trade financing over the next three years, funds that outstripped all western donor pledges combined. News of the Exim commitment caused a fuss in some quarters of Europe. But western complaints about China’s slow pace in adopting democratic reform cannot obscure the fact that the Chinese are more competitive, less bureaucratic and more adept at business in Africa than their critics.

Today I find myself at the heart of an economic struggle with the EU. If Europe does not want to provide funding for African infrastructure – it pledged $15bn under the Cotonou Agreement eight years ago – the Chinese are ready to take up the task, more rapidly and at less cost. Not just Africa but the west itself has much to learn from China. It is time for the west to practice what it preaches about the value of market incentives.

Abdoulaye Wade is President of Senegal


Source.

China's Investments in Africa: Sharing a Common Fate

This is a report about China's investments in Africa that started in 1950s. Many of them are not for commercial purpose. These videoes are good answers to western propagandas.

China's investment in Africa Part 1



China's investment in Africa Part 2



China's investment in Africa Part 3

When Americans are High about Darfur, How About the Real Genocide In Iraq?

According to a new study, 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since the 2003 invasion, the highest estimate of war-related fatalities yet. The study was done by the British polling firm ORB, which conducted face-to-face interviews with a sample of over 1,700 Iraqi adults in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Two provinces -- al-Anbar and Karbala -- were too dangerous to canvas, and officials in a third, Irbil, didn't give the researchers a permit to do their work. The study's margin of error was plus-minus 2.4 percent.

Field workers asked residents how many members of their own household had been killed since the invasion. More than one in five respondents said that at least one person in their home had been murdered since March of 2003. One in three Iraqis also said that at least some neighbors "actually living on [their] street" had fled the carnage, with around half of those having left the country.

In Baghdad, almost half of those interviewed reported at least one violent death in their household.

(Source)

Where is the voice from Steven Spielberg about genocide in Iraq?

China's lessons for the World Bank

As the World Bank clings to its free-market ideology, China is providing more practical help for developing countries.

Jeffrey Sachs

The China Daily recently ran a front-page story recounting how Paul Wolfowitz used threats and vulgarities to pressure senior World Bank staff. The newspaper noted that Wolfowitz sounded like a character out of the mafia television show The Sopranos. At the same time, while the Wolfowitz scandal unfolded, China was playing host to the Africa Development Bank (ADB), which held its board meeting in Shanghai. This is a vivid metaphor for today's world: while the World Bank is caught up in corruption and controversy, China skilfully raises its geopolitical profile in the developing world.

China's rising power is, of course, based heavily on its remarkable economic success. The ADB meeting took place in the Pudong district, Shanghai's most remarkable development site. From largely unused land a generation ago, Pudong has become a booming centre of skyscrapers, luxury hotels, parks, industry, and vast stretches of apartment buildings. Shanghai's overall economy is currently growing at around 13% per year, thus doubling in size every five or six years. Everywhere there are startups, innovations, and young entrepreneurs hungry for profits.

I had the chance to participate in high-level meetings between Chinese and African officials at the ADB meetings. The advice that the African leaders received from their Chinese counterparts was sound, and much more practical than what they typically get from the World Bank.

Chinese officials stressed the crucial role of public investments, especially in agriculture and infrastructure, to lay the basis for private-sector-led growth. In a hungry and poor rural economy, as China was in the 1970s and as most of Africa is today, a key starting point is to raise farm productivity. Peasant farmers need the benefits of fertiliser, irrigation, and high-yield seeds, all of which were a core part of China's economic takeoff.

Two other critical investments are also needed: roads and electricity, without which there cannot be a modern economy. Farmers might be able to increase their output, but it won't be able to reach the cities, and the cities won't be able to provide the countryside with inputs. The officials stressed how the government has taken pains to ensure that the power grid and transportation network reaches every village in China.

Of course, the African leaders were most appreciative of the next message: China is prepared to help Africa in substantial ways in agriculture, roads, power, health, and education. And the African leaders already know that this is not an empty boast. All over Africa, China is financing and constructing basic infrastructure. During the meeting, the Chinese leaders emphasised their readiness to support agricultural research as well. They described new high-yield rice varieties, which they are prepared to share with their African counterparts.

All of this illustrates what is wrong with the World Bank, even aside from Wolfowitz's failed leadership. Unlike the Chinese, the bank has too often forgotten the most basic lessons of development, preferring to lecture the poor and force them to privatise basic infrastructure, rather than to help the poor to invest in infrastructure and other crucial sectors.

The bank's failures began in the early 1980s, when, under the ideological sway of President Ronald Reagan and prime minister Margaret Thatcher, it tried to get Africa and other poor regions to cut back or close down government investments and services. For 25 years, the bank tried to get governments out of agriculture, leaving impoverished peasants to fend for themselves. The result has been a disaster in Africa, with farm productivity stagnant for decades. The bank also pushed for privatisation of national health systems, water utilities, and road and power networks, and grossly underfinanced these critical sectors.

This extreme free-market ideology, also called "structural adjustment", went against the practical lessons of development successes in China and the rest of Asia. Practical development strategy recognises that public investments - in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure - are necessary complements to private investments. The World Bank has instead wrongly seen such vital public investments as an enemy of private-sector development.

Whenever the bank's extreme free-market ideology failed, it has blamed the poor for corruption, mismanagement, or lack of initiative. This was Wolfowitz's approach, too. Instead of focusing the bank's attention on helping the poorest countries to improve their infrastructure, he launched a crusade against corruption. Ironically, of course, his stance became untenable when his own misdeeds came to light. The bank can regain its relevance only if it becomes practical once again, by returning its focus to financing public investments in priority sectors, just as the Chinese leadership is prepared to do.

The good news is that African governments are getting the message on how to spur economic growth, and are also getting crucial help from China and other partners that are less wedded to extreme free-market ideology than the World Bank. Many African governments at the Shanghai meeting declared their intention to act boldly, by investing in infrastructure, agricultural modernisation, public health, and education.

The Wolfowitz debacle should be a wake-up call to the World Bank: it must no longer be controlled by ideology. If that happens, the bank can still do justice to the bold vision of a world of shared prosperity that prompted its creation after the second world war.

Source.

China's approach to African nations a lesson for the World Bank

Jeffrey Sachs, New York

The China Daily recently ran a front-page story recounting how Paul Wolfowitz used threats and vulgarities to pressure senior World Bank staff.

The newspaper noted that Wolfowitz sounded like a character out of the mafia television show "The Sopranos". At the same time, while the Wolfowitz scandal unfolded, China was playing host to the Africa Development Bank (ADB), which held its board meeting in Shanghai. This is a vivid metaphor for today's world: while the World Bank is caught up in corruption and controversy, China skillfully raises its geopolitical profile in the developing world.

China's rising power is, of course, based heavily on its remarkable economic success. The ADB meeting took place in the Pudong district, Shanghai's most remarkable development site. From largely unused land a generation ago, Pudong has become a booming centre of skyscrapers, luxury hotels, parks, industry, and vast stretches of apartment buildings. Shanghai's overall economy is currently growing at around 13 per cent per year, thus doubling in size every five or six years. Everywhere there are start-ups, innovations, and young entrepreneurs hungry for profits.

I had the chance to participate in high-level meetings between Chinese and African officials at the ADB meetings. The advice that the African leaders received from their Chinese counterparts was sound, and much more practical than they typically get from the World Bank.

Chinese officials stressed the crucial role of public investments, especially in agriculture and infrastructure, to lay the basis for private-sector-led growth. In a hungry and poor rural economy, as China was in the 1970s and as most of Africa is today, a key starting point is to raise farm productivity. Peasant farmers need the benefits of fertiliser, irrigation, and high-yield seeds, all of which were a core part of China's economic takeoff.

Two other critical investments are also needed: roads and electricity, without which there cannot be a modern economy. Farmers might be able to increase their output, but it won't be able to reach the cities, and the cities won't be able to provide the countryside with inputs. The officials stressed how the government has taken pains to ensure that the power grid and transportation network reaches every village in China.

Of course, the African leaders were most appreciative of the next message: China is prepared to help Africa in substantial ways in agriculture, roads, power, health, and education. And the African leaders already know that this is not an empty boast.

All over Africa, China is financing and constructing basic infrastructure. During the meeting, the Chinese leaders emphasised their readiness to support agricultural research as well. They described new high-yield rice varieties, which they are prepared to share with their African counterparts.

All of this illustrates what is wrong with the World Bank, even aside from Wolfowitz's failed leadership. Unlike the Chinese, the Bank has too often forgotten the most basic lessons of development, preferring to lecture the poor and force them to privatise basic infrastructure, rather than to help the poor to invest in infrastructure and other crucial sectors.

The Bank's failures began in the early 1980s, when, under the ideological sway of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, it tried to get Africa and other poor regions to cut back or close down government investments and services. For 25 years, the Bank tried to get governments out of agriculture, leaving impoverished peasants to fend for themselves. The result has been a disaster in Africa, with farm productivity stagnant for decades. The Bank also pushed for privatisation of national health systems, water utilities, and road and power networks, and grossly under-financed these critical sectors.

This extreme free-market ideology, also called "structural adjustment", went against the practical lessons of development successes in China and the rest of Asia. Practical development strategy recognises that public investments - in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure - are necessary complements to private investments. The World Bank has instead wrongly seen such vital public investments as an enemy of private-sector development.

Whenever the Bank's extreme free-market ideology failed, it has blamed the poor for corruption, mismanagement, or lack of initiative. This was Wolfowitz's approach, too. Instead of focusing the Bank's attention on helping the poorest countries to improve their infrastructure, he launched a crusade against corruption. Ironically, of course, his stance became untenable when his own misdeeds came to light.

The Bank can regain its relevance only if it becomes practical once again, by returning its focus to financing public investments in priority sectors, just as the Chinese leadership is prepared to do.

The good news is that African governments are getting the message on how to spur economic growth, and are also getting crucial help from China and other partners that are less wedded to extreme free-market ideology than the World Bank.

Many African governments at the Shanghai meeting declared their intention to act boldly, by investing in infrastructure, agricultural modernisation, public health, and education.

The Wolfowitz debacle should be a wake-up call to the World Bank: it must no longer be controlled by ideology. If that happens, the Bank can still do justice to the bold vision of a world of shared prosperity that prompted its creation after World War II.

Jeffrey Sachs is a professor of economics and the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Source: http://nationmultimedia.com/2007/05/25/opinion/opinion_30035104.php

This could be a direct answer to those who said or believe that China is colonizing Africa. Those people never understand why African countries is collectively, happily to shake hands with China after they had got "assistants" from western countries.

Efforts to cut spending veiled effort to end war

President Bush has asked Congress for $100 billion to carry on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a lot of money. I wish there was not a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is really being run by Iran and Syria. The fact of the matter is that they have in mind to kill us and destroy our society. Is $100 billion too much to keep these fanatics at bay?

One thing for sure, standing on the corner of 10th and White Sands in Alamogordo with a sign calling for "Peace, Unity and Love" will probably not scare the Iranians and Syrians away. Being nice to them is interpreted, by them, as weakness and an invitation to redouble their efforts to bring down the Great Satin, i.e. us.

The Democrats, who cling to a slim majority in both houses of Congress, have replied to President Bush's request for funds by offering a bill. The Wall Street Journal on March 17 reported the first chapter of that bill contains, among other things, $25 million for spinach, $20 million to restore farmland damaged by freezing temperatures, $1.46 billion for livestock farmers, $78 million to ensure proper storage of peanuts, $500 million for urgent wild land fire suppression and though not part of this bill there is the raise in the minimum wage nationwide.

That money has to come from somewhere. For God's sake, we are at war, people are trying to kill us and destroy our civilization and we are heaping this on top of our funds to support our troops. It was Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Why are the Democrats trying to do the same thing?

I understand that the Democratic leadership and the liberals who want to end the war yesterday or this afternoon at the latest, are too cowardly to try to just shut off the funds for the war. That would make them publicly responsible for the consequences of doing so. They are trying to do the same thing by stealth, by imposing conditions on the use of the funds for the war, and time limits that will tie the president's hands and those of the military commanders conducting day to day operations, if the Iraq parliament fails to meet our Democrats' deadlines. The conduct of any war is an executive responsibility, not a legislative one.

I submit that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate are just plain incompetent to govern. God help the United States if the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards are ever handed the presidency. President George W. Bush's judgment respecting the conduct of the war is open to Monday morning quarterbacking. Let's put it this way, have you made any mistakes in judgment since March 2003? Suffice it to say that, at least the president does not favor irresponsible, immediate surrender and damn the consequences.

The article was posted on Alamogordo Daily News

Please don't think I agree with this author, insead, I feel it is very funny to see how Americans view internal and external issues. I need to point out this author should be a educated American and interested in the political affairs.

Indian Tajik Airbase is Ready?

The "India Tajik air base" was reported again by Indian's indianexpress. The title is Tajik air base is ready, gives India its first footprint in strategic Central Asia.

The report says that:
Conceived in 2002 under the NDA regime, the Ayni air base allows India rapid response to any emerging threat from the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan arc including a terrorist hijacking like the IC-814. It also gives New Delhi a limited yet significant capability to inject special forces into a hostile theatre as and when the situation demands.

The other aspect is India’s role in the energy security calculus in the region with prospects of Central Asian natural gas reaching the subcontinent and negotiations with energy-rich countries like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Energy security is now a major concern with the Strategic Policy Group under Cabinet Secretary discussing the issue with the service chiefs, Home, Defence and Foreign Secretaries on February 7.

Lets talk about the geopilitics of Tajikistan first.

In geography, Tajikistan is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. It borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. India does not share any border with Tajikistan at all.

Politically, Tajikistan is a member of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an intergovernmental organization which was founded on June 14, 2001 by leaders of the China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The aim of the organization is the copperation on security, economy and culture.

Indian media have been bragging this air base for a long time, The base had been "ready" once in 2004 in Indian media . Ridiculously, As Indian newspapers continue to speculate that the country will secure a military base in Tajikistan, Officials in Tajikistan immediately denied the reports. A defence ministry source told NBCentralAsia that the Indian military has been providing training and technical assistance to the Tajik army for some years, but there is no agreement to set up an airbase. (Source)

No matter the "Indian airbase in Tajikistan" is real or not. But the Indian's bragging shows that India has no sense of diplomacy.

First of all, Tajikistan belongs to several regional security groupings including the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and it would need the approval of other member states - Russia, other former Soviet states, and China – which would be unlikely to give their assent to an Indian military presence in the region. Nor would the idea be favoured by the United States, which is currently promising to invest substantial funds in Tajikistan. (See the above link)

The second, If the airbase is true, it would be viewed as a very unfriendly act by Pakistan, an India's rival. Tajikistan also would run into the risk of becoming embroiled in the confrontation between these two countries.

The third, India does not border with Tajikistan. Does Pakistan or China allow India's fighters to fly over to Tajikistan? furthermore, It could be difficult for India to provide logistic support to the Indian airbase if it is true. This will limit the airbase's scale and capability. In other words, the airbase serves India nothing.

The fourth, the airbase is not Tajikistan's interest either. India is hostile to both Pakistan and China. Tajikistan has much closer relationships with China than with India geographically, politically and economically. Today, India's political influence is largely limited south Asia. Even in the south Asia, India has bad relationships with almost all of its neighbours. India's experience in the 13th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit proved that India's influence in south Asia is limited.

The Indian airbase in Tajikistan could be Indian's bragging and hype of a big power again.

Think Again: India

The following came from the article on Foreign Policy website. The author, Barbara Crossette, reported for the New York Times on the killing of Sikhs in New Delhi in 1984 and was later the Times chief correspondent for South Asia 1988-1991 and bureau chief at the United Nations 1994-2001. This article speaks out something about India's situation.

“India and the United States are natural allies”

Not so fast. It was not until the collapse of its champion and friend, the Soviet Union, that Delhi saw reasons to improve ties dramatically with the United States. Recent mutual overtures to warm U.S.-Indian ties are still works in progress on both sides. Though the world’s most populous democracy seems to be increasingly in sync with free-market American thinking, India’s interests often conflict with those of the United States.

Consider India’s relationship with Iran. The energy-hungry subcontinent looks at Iran in the same way that the United States views Saudi Arabia. Iran and India reached a “strategic partnership” in 2003, cementing the “historical ties” between the two nations. India is now chafing at Western demands that it stop backing Iran’s right to develop its nuclear capacities. Despite a new American deal to share advanced nuclear technology with India, Delhi is likely to resist opening its own nuclear facilities to serious international inspection and remains steadfast in its refusal to sign major international arms-control agreements. The father of its clandestine nuclear bomb, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, is now the country’s president.


“India is a responsible world power”

Not yet. India has a history of interference in the politics of its weaker South Asian neighbors. A rebellion in Pakistan split the country in two in 1971 with a lot of help from Delhi, whose army effectively created Bangladesh. Over a million people died in the bloody ethnic cleansing campaigns that followed. In the 1980s, Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels started a vicious civil war from safe bases in India’s Tamil Nadu state, with generous assistance from Indian intelligence agencies. Sikkim, a little Tibetan Buddhist kingdom, disappeared altogether after a Machiavellian manipulation of its ethnic Nepali population by former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who spent the better part of the 1970s and 1980s troublemaking in the region. Only recently, under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, have these activities been curtailed.

India has nevertheless projected a positive image in the world, largely because the country is far more successful than the United States at public diplomacy. India’s outstanding diplomatic corps and government officials are more focused on winning all-or-nothing support for India in the international arena than they are on confronting India’s shortcomings.

Impressive economic growth and a nuclear arsenal have made India a world power, and may earn it a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. The question remains, however, whether India’s voice and vote would do any more than echo the mantras of the Nonaligned Movement and the Group of 77. Last year, for instance, India supported Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s bid for a Security Council seat. India contributed 0.4 percent of the United Nations budget in 2006, less than Israel, about the same as Poland, only slightly more than Ireland, and one fifth of the dues paid by China. India, unlike the United States, does field many international peacekeepers. The Indian armed forces are superbly well trained, urbane, and effective. Within India, however, U.N. activity is always under close scrutiny. The U.N.’s international monitoring mission for Kashmir, one of the first to be established more than half a century ago, is forced to work almost entirely on the Pakistani side of the border.


“India will surpass China”

Perhaps, But at What?. India, which currently has a population of 1.1 billion people, will be the world’s most populous nation sometime in the next few decades. But that may be the only arena in which it overtakes China.

Both countries have large urban-rural gaps and other income and living standard disparities, but China is now well ahead of India on a number of key indicators. China ranks at number 81 of 177 countries on the latest United Nations Human Development Index (in the neighborhood of Armenia or Peru), while India is 126 (below Namibia and just ahead of Cambodia). In China, a person’s chance of dying before the age of 40 is just under 7 percent. In India it’s over 16 percent, higher than in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Eighty percent of Indians live on $2 a day or less, compared with about 46 percent of the Chinese. Almost half the children under 5 in India are malnourished, compared with 8 percent in China.

India’s democratic system prevents it from taking draconian measures, such as China’s one-child policy, to keep population growth in check. India’s population is growing at 1.38 percent a year, a figure that may look low until it is multiplied by more than 1 billion. India adds more than 15 million people a year to its population, nearly twice the population of Austria. Indian leaders are aware that a “youth bulge,” which demographers expect to level off by 2025, can be conducive to economic growth. But countries in this position need to, “broaden the opportunities for young people to develop their human capital and use it productively,” in the words of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2007. That’s the route to prosperity followed by Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea—and now China. The adult literacy rate in China is above 90 percent. In India, it’s 61 percent. About one quarter of primary-school-age Indian children are not in school. In China, the figure is practically zero.


“India is becoming a high-tech, middle-class nation”

Prove it. India’s vaunted middle class is still a distinct minority. In reality, the gap between rich and poor remains enormous. An Oxfam report in 2006 predicted that even if India met all the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015, which is almost impossible, 500 million Indians would still have no access to basic sanitation. The World Bank has concluded that India may have many highly skilled professionals, scientists, and engineers, “but they represent only a fraction of the population.” The information technology sector in India, which accounts for just 4 percent of GDP, employs only 1 million people, and most come from predictable, higher-caste, private-school-educated, English-speaking families. Although some parts of the country are becoming world centers of research and development in technology, just 32 out of every 1,000 Indians have access to the Internet. That’s 3.2 percent of the population.


“India is a model of tolerance”

No. Human rights abuses and corruption of political power are far more prevalent in India than in other democracies. Indians can use the courts for redress, but the justice system is incredibly backlogged, and large numbers of abuses go unpunished. Worse yet, the Hindu caste system is hopelessly discriminatory. Poor people can be killed for offenses as petty as trespassing in a high-caste Brahmin temple or drawing water from an upper-caste well.

The treatment of most Indian women can be just as bad. Women are much more likely to be illiterate, earn one-third as much as men across the board, and die in the thousands annually as the victims of abusive spouses or in-laws. The same goes for religious minorities. In 1984, mobs in New Delhi, reacting to the assassination of Indira Gandhi, slaughtered around 3,000 Sikh men and boys. Witnesses identified Congress Party politicians directing some of the killings, yet none among them were ever convicted. In a more recent incident, 2,000 Muslims were killed in the state of Gujarat in 2002. As in the case of the Sikh massacres, where the army ultimately had to restore order, corrupt police forces in Gujarat stood aside and let the carnage go on.

This is to say nothing of Kashmir, whose people consider themselves ethnically and historically separate from India. Most Muslim Kashmiris have become united in their contempt for Indian rule. Over the last two decades, tens of thousands of people on all sides have died in Kashmir; thousands more have been arrested or “disappeared.” Human rights groups have decried abuses on both sides. But extrajudicial killings by the Indian military are common and well documented. It is a stinging indictment of democratic India.

With gifts of parliaments, dams and hospitals, China woos Africa

This article came from here.

By: RUKMINI CALLIMACHI - Associated Press

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau -- China paid for the marble and tile parliament building soaring above the crumbling homes of this former Portuguese colony, and is also promising a dam and a military hospital -- all with none of the political strings Western donors might attach.

Intent on cementing ties across Africa, China is active even in impoverished Guinea-Bissau, a small nation with little industry, no oil and few exports.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing ended a two-day visit here Thursday, part of a tour that includes Chad, Benin, Central African Republic, Eritrea and Mozambique. Li arrived from Equatorial Guinea, Africa's third-largest oil producer, where he agreed to forgive about $75 million in debt.


Some nations on Li's itinerary are sources of the raw materials China's booming economy craves. Countries like Guinea-Bissau may not have much to offer today, but could in years to come. In courting them, China has turned on its head the Western aid formula that has tied public works projects to progress in good governance.

"China is not like the World Bank, they don't attach all these conditions on the money," said Edmundo Vaz, a former adviser to the Guinea-Bissau Finance Ministry who now runs a bank.

"The West makes us wait, but we're a poor country -- we don't have time wait," he said.

The Chinese strategy is especially troubling to countries like France, traditionally a power in West Africa, said Valerie Niquet, a director at France's Institute for International Relations. France has a particular interest in Chad and Central African Republic, countries on Li's tour where stability has been undermined by violence in neighboring Darfur.

"China is not listening at all to the concerns that are being expressed by Paris on these development strategies," she said.

When asked about China's investment in nations with records of human rights abuses -- notably Sudan and the Central African Republic -- Li replied curtly: "Do you know what the meaning of human rights is? The basic meaning of human rights is survival -- and development."

Inside the parliament building, security guard Feliciano Balde said his country is better served by Chinese aid.

"In a corrupt country, it's better to come and build something big like this where the people can come to discuss politics," said the 42-year-old Balde. "At least this is something we can see. Other countries give us money, but the politicians eat it, and so people like me never see any of it."

Africa has become a crucial part of China's growth strategy. Trade between Africa and China has grown fourfold since 2001, topping $45 billion in the first 10 months of last year. At a summit attended by 35 African heads of state in Beijing last fall, Chinese entrepreneurs signed deals worth $1.9 billion with African governments and firms.

China has found a seemingly limitless market in Africa for its cheap goods. And oil-rich countries like Nigeria and Angola provide the natural resources China needs to sustain its rapid growth.

The imbalance between a superpower like China and a struggling West African country like Guinea-Bissau has prompted some to describe the Chinese overtures as the latest chapter in Africa's history of exploitation.

Ivan Nhuqui watched a Chinese construction crew working on another gift -- a small subdivision of cinderblock homes for the military elite.

"It hurts me to see this. The construction is bad. It has no quality. And although the buildings are big compared to what we have, they're small compared to our sea," the 20-year-old said.

He referred to maritime treaties signed with China in recent years that give Chinese fishing vessels access to Guinea-Bissau's waters. Some say the treaties are the unofficial price for the new parliament building. It's a claim officials from both nations deny, but one that former U.S. Ambassador to Guinea-Bissau John Blacken says is not far-fetched.

"These buildings and things are basically tokens in return for the fishing agreements which are extremely beneficial to the Chinese," said Blacken, who estimates the Chinese have netted $85 million worth of fish from the country's waters.

By contrast, the parliament building cost roughly $6 million.

"What the government doesn't seem to understand is that they're being systematically robbed," Blacken said.

Prime Minister Aristides Gomes acknowledged an imbalance of power, but argued that the government can hold its own. "It's true that we come to negotiating table from a position of weakness," he said. "But we can't be fearful to the point of paralysis."

What is clear is that Chinese influence has seeped deeply into African soil.

On the pavement outside the building where the Chinese and the Guinean foreign ministers met to discuss the latest construction plans, Una Dang ekes out a living selling salted purple yams for 20 cents a serving.

"I don't really understand what they're doing here," she said, nodding toward a group of Chinese Embassy officials awaiting Li. "But why would I? My eyes are always gazing down, serving."

In her line of sight are her yams, arranged on a metal platter. She doesn't realize it, but the oval plate adorned with a motif of orange roses was made in China.

-- AP writers Rodrigo Angue Nguema in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, and Angela Doland in Paris contributed to this report.

China-Africa Summit

48 out of the 53 heads of state in Africa paticipated China-Africa Forum summit in this month. This simply show the tight connection between China and African countries and China's popularity among African leaders and people.

China began to assist African countries since 1960s. China built hospitals, stadiums, railroads and other infrostructure projects, sent agricultural and medical export teams to this area that was colonized and almost abandoned by the west world. China's assistance was based on political or ideological reasons. But today, the conomical reasons are more important.

According to the World Bank, China is poised to become the continent’s biggest lender, having pledged more than $8bn this year alone.

Almost every country is getting its share. Ghana said yesterday that it was close to finalising a $600m deal for a 400-megawatt hydroelectric dam. Gabon recently signed a $3bn iron ore deal with a Chinese consortium, which will help to construct a railway and container port. Last week Zambia was promised investment of $200m for a smelter to produce 150,000 tonnes of copper. Mozambique has $2.6bn for a hydroelectric dam. Since the start of the year Egypt has seen its trade with China surge by 47.6% to reach nearly $2bn. Chinese investors and state agencies have spent billions on road-building in Kenya, a hydroelectric dam in Ghana and a mobile phone network in Ethiopia.

The biggest deals have been energy-related. Squeezed out of much of the Middle East by the United States, China now gets a third of its oil from Africa. The main suppliers have reaped the rewards. Angola has a $3bn line of credit from China. Nigeria recently sold a stake in an oil and gas field for $2.3bn - China’s largest overseas acquisition yet. More deals are on the way. This weekend’s summit is expected to wrap up with a new package of aid and trade.

But China is not just buying resources, it is selling a model of development. While the west focuses on political freedoms and universal rights, Beijing says the priority should be on improving living standards and national independence. The superiority of this approach, it argues, has been proved by success in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.Source

China-Africa trade has been on fast track.

Last year, trade between China and Africa totaled $39.8 billion, up more than one-third from the year before. Unlike the West, China applies no import fees on products from 28 African countries.Source

The projected China-Africa trade will across US$50 billion this year and will be doubled to more than US$100 billion in 2010.

China has cancelled 10.9 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) worth of African debts. US$3 billion in preferential loans and US$2 billion in preferential buyer's credits African countries were anounced during the summit, and the aid to Africa will be doubled by 2009.

US$1.9 billion investment deals were signed during the summit. It included a US$938 million aluminum plant in Egypt, US$300 million highway renovation in Nigeria, US$30 million telecommunication project in Ghana, US$60 million textile business in Sudan, US$200 million copper project in Zambia, US$55 million cement factory in Cape Verde and a mining contract worth US$230 million with South Africa.

It's official: China is India's security threat

According to the AsiaTimes report, India has put China in its short blacklist of countries whose investment in India that India government thinks a sensitive for India's national security.

New Delhi has long been wary of allowing Chinese to invest in sensitive sectors, such as ports and telecommunications, but the new edict will extend security reviews to all sectors, including such innocuous sectors as household appliances. For the firsttime China will be officially labeled a "security risk".

Although the two countries have settled many of their differences in the ensuing four decades, the paranoia about China as a security threat seems to be increasing daily in India. For instance, India now feels, said one recent report, that investments from not only China but those from Hong Kong and Macau should also be screened. Besides, investments from North Korea, Taiwan and Afghanistan, too, are being included in the sensitive list. The current FDI norms just categorize Bangladesh and Pakistan as "security risk" countries.

Pakistan , Bangladesh , China...., India looks like have no friends around. It is really a lonely poor country under the leadership of a ridiculous government.

China also has some potential enemies for historical and geopolitical reasons and some countries also treat China in the same way. But in China, business is always business. Confident China never has the similar business policy to deal with other countries in the peace time. China treats foreign investment and business equally no matter which country they come from.

The reasons why India government does this:
1. Insecurity before the stronger China
2. Inferior complexity of India before China
3. The strong memory of their defeat of Sino-India war in 1962
4. No deplomatic ability of India government.

IndianExpress Lied about India's block against Chinese Cpompanies

Here is an incompleted list of Chinese business cases that were denied by Indian government for its insecurity feeling about china.

The Communist Party of India has sought clarification from the United Progressive Alliance Government on its decision to "block" Chinese firms from investing in India's telecommunication and modernisation of ports.

"The ground given is threat to our national security. How is it that FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] from other countries are welcomed in our telecommunication sector and our Ministers are seen frequently wooing them, but the line is drawn where Chinese firms are the bidders? How is it that a South Korean firm is invited to build a port of its own adjacent to our own Paradeep Port, which actually threatens the port's existence?" CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan said in his letter to Prime Minster Manmohan Singh.

Source

But when IndianExpress reported the case. It said:

Chinese companies bidding for big projects would prefer to bring in labour force from home and India opposes this. That’s at the core of the current controversy.

Source

Apparently, IndianExpress was lying. For big egineering projects, China companies may need bring some egineers, managers or some skilled workers to host countries for project purpose. But, how about the Huawei and ZTE's request for R&D research center expansion? and how about Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH)’s bid for the Mumbai offshore container terminal? How about Shenzen Cimac-Tianda Airport Support Ltd's bid for supplying aerobridges for Indian airports?

When Indians are boasting about India's "competitiveness" over China, Indians have strong insecurity feeling about China.

Western Dual Standards: Both India and Korea Tested Their Missiles

What happened recently? Most of western people would know Korea's missile tests. Yes, Korea tested its missiles on July 5 and 6, and western media are continuously broadcasting and discussing the news worldwide even today. US and Japan governments even brought the issue into UN and asked for sanction on Korea.

The interesting happened. India tested its long-range missile couple of days later (July 9) and resulted in a big failure. According to the Indian news, US even approved Indian missile test. What a world joke? Ironically, the so-called speech-freedom western media is keeping silence on India's missile test. CNN is still bombing its viewers with Korea's test and totally forget India. Media’s responsibility is to tell their readers or viewers the truth with balanced coverage, so that their readers and viewers can have a fair big picture of what is happening in the world. Apparently, US media failed in this. These events fully prove US media's bias against some particular countries and mislead their readers and viewers intentionally by dirty tricks.

Both India and Korea have their nuclear weapon projects. But the western countries and governments are keeping eyes on Korea and turn their eyes away from India. US and India are even talking about cooperation on nuclear technology. Don’t forget: India does not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a responsible country.

Who could be the bigger threat to the world? Korea or India?

The thread to the world can only be substantialized by power.

Korea with only around 20 million population and has been sanctioned by world powers for more than 50 years. Its economy is weak. India is a country of more than 1.1 billion people and has enjoying the assistance from both socialism and capitalism blocks for more than 50 years. India is stronger than Korea, its threat to the world is bigger.

The claim of threat can only be justified by the history.

Korea is generally a peaceful country since it was founded. The Korean War was only a civil war for Koreans. But outsiders got involved for that. That's a pity for all Koreans including both north and south sides. Even today, Koreans of both sides are all still thinking they are one nation but they were divided against their will by so-called world powers. Korea hasn’t been in war with any other countries.

On the contrary, India's foreign policy is badly aggressive. It had wars with Pakistan, China repeatly. India had violent wars against Pakistan in 1947–48, 1965, and 1971. It had a war against China in 1962. With India's aggressive foreign policy, it has very bad relationship with almost all of it neighbors. Even today India government is repeatly saying its nuclear weapons and missiles are targeting its neighbors.

The world should know: Comparing Korea with India, India is apparently a bigger threat to the world.

The Myth of the New India

This is a article on New York Times. It speaks out some truth in India.

By PANKAJ MISHRA
London

INDIA is a roaring capitalist success story." So says the latest issue of Foreign Affairs; and last week many leading business executives and politicians in India celebrated as Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, finally succeeded in his hostile takeover of the Luxembourgian steel company Arcelor. India's leading business newspaper, The Economic Times, summed up the general euphoria over the event in its regular feature, "The Global Indian Takeover": "For India, it is a harbinger of things to come — economic superstardom."

This sounds persuasive as long as you don't know that Mr. Mittal, who lives in Britain, announced his first investment in India only last year. He is as much an Indian success story as Sergey Brin, the Russian-born co-founder of Google, is proof of Russia's imminent economic superstardom.

In recent weeks, India seemed an unlikely capitalist success story as communist parties decisively won elections to state legislatures, and the stock market, which had enjoyed record growth in the last two years, fell nearly 20 percent in two weeks, wiping out some $2.4 billion in investor wealth in just four days. This week India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, made it clear that only a small minority of Indians will enjoy "Western standards of living and high consumption."

There is, however, no denying many Indians their conviction that the 21st century will be the Indian Century just as the 20th was American. The exuberant self-confidence of a tiny Indian elite now increasingly infects the news media and foreign policy establishment in the United States.

Encouraged by a powerful lobby of rich Indian-Americans who seek to expand their political influence within both their home and adopted countries, President Bush recently agreed to assist India's nuclear program, even at the risk of undermining his efforts to check the nuclear ambitions of Iran. As if on cue, special reports and covers hailing the rise of India in Time, Foreign Affairs and The Economist have appeared in the last month.

It was not so long ago that India appeared in the American press as a poor, backward and often violent nation, saddled with an inefficient bureaucracy and, though officially nonaligned, friendly to the Soviet Union. Suddenly the country seems to be not only a "roaring capitalist success story" but also, according to Foreign Affairs, an "emerging strategic partner of the United States." To what extent is this wishful thinking rather than an accurate estimate of India's strengths?

Looking for new friends and partners in a rapidly changing world, the Bush administration clearly hopes that India, a fellow democracy, will be a reliable counterweight against China as well as Iran. But trade and cooperation between India and China is growing; and, though grateful for American generosity on the nuclear issue, India is too dependent on Iran for oil (it is also exploring developing a gas pipeline to Iran) to wholeheartedly support the United States in its efforts to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The world, more interdependent now than during the cold war, may no longer be divided up into strategic blocs and alliances.

Nevertheless, there are much better reasons to expect that India will in fact vindicate the twin American ideals of free markets and democracy that neither Latin America nor post-communist countries — nor, indeed, Iraq — have fulfilled.

Since the early 1990's, when the Indian economy was liberalized, India has emerged as the world leader in information technology and business outsourcing, with an average growth of about 6 percent a year. Growing foreign investment and easy credit have fueled a consumer revolution in urban areas. With their Starbucks-style coffee bars, Blackberry-wielding young professionals, and shopping malls selling luxury brand names, large parts of Indian cities strive to resemble Manhattan.

Indian business tycoons are increasingly trying to control marquee names like Taittinger Champagne and the Carlyle Hotel in New York. "India Everywhere" was the slogan of the Indian business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this year.

But the increasingly common, business-centric view of India suppresses more facts than it reveals. Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country's $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa and that, as the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report puts it, even if it sustains its current high growth rates, India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106.

Nor is India rising very fast on the report's Human Development index, where it ranks 127, just two rungs above Myanmar and more than 70 below Cuba and Mexico. Despite a recent reduction in poverty levels, nearly 380 million Indians still live on less than a dollar a day.

Malnutrition affects half of all children in India, and there is little sign that they are being helped by the country's market reforms, which have focused on creating private wealth rather than expanding access to health care and education. Despite the country's growing economy, 2.5 million Indian children die annually, accounting for one out of every five child deaths worldwide; and facilities for primary education have collapsed in large parts of the country (the official literacy rate of 61 percent includes many who can barely write their names). In the countryside, where 70 percent of India's population lives, the government has reported that about 100,000 farmers committed suicide between 1993 and 2003.

Feeding on the resentment of those left behind by the urban-oriented economic growth, communist insurgencies (unrelated to India's parliamentary communist parties) have erupted in some of the most populous and poorest parts of north and central India. The Indian government no longer effectively controls many of the districts where communists battle landlords and police, imposing a harsh form of justice on a largely hapless rural population.

The potential for conflict — among castes as well as classes — also grows in urban areas, where India's cruel social and economic disparities are as evident as its new prosperity. The main reason for this is that India's economic growth has been largely jobless. Only 1.3 million out of a working population of 400 million are employed in the information technology and business processing industries that make up the so-called new economy.

No labor-intensive manufacturing boom of the kind that powered the economic growth of almost every developed and developing country in the world has yet occurred in India. Unlike China, India still imports more than it exports. This means that as 70 million more people enter the work force in the next five years, most of them without the skills required for the new economy, unemployment and inequality could provoke even more social instability than they have already.

For decades now, India's underprivileged have used elections to register their protests against joblessness, inequality and corruption. In the 2004 general elections, they voted out a central government that claimed that India was "shining," bewildering not only most foreign journalists but also those in India who had predicted an easy victory for the ruling coalition.

Among the politicians whom voters rejected was Chandrababu Naidu, the technocratic chief minister of one of India's poorest states, whose forward-sounding policies, like providing Internet access to villages, prompted Time magazine to declare him "South Asian of The Year" and a "beacon of hope."

But the anti-India insurgency in Kashmir, which has claimed some 80,000 lives in the last decade and a half, and the strength of violent communist militants across India, hint that regular elections may not be enough to contain the frustration and rage of millions of have-nots, or to shield them from the temptations of religious and ideological extremism.

Many serious problems confront India. They are unlikely to be solved as long as the wealthy, both inside and outside the country, choose to believe their own complacent myths.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of "Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond."

Just who's afraid of China?

Source

June 21, 2006
The United States risks too much in portraying China as a threat to the rest of Asia, writes Hugh White.

FOR years, American strategists tended to underestimate the challenge that China poses to America in Asia. They put their faith in what seemed a simple and foolproof mechanism. The more China's power grew, they assumed, the more other Asian countries would come to fear it and welcome tough US action to counterbalance China and keep it in its box. This would impose a kind of automatic limit to China's regional influence: as its military power grew, its political and diplomatic clout relative to the US would fall.

But it has not worked that way. During the past five years, as China's military power has grown rapidly, its political and diplomatic influence has grown even faster. Beijing has mounted a sustained diplomatic offensive aimed precisely at easing regional fears of China's growing power.

The success of this diplomacy has been startling. Helped, of course, by the immense gravitational pull of its economic boom, Beijing has largely eliminated the negatives in its relationships with every country in the Western Pacific. Australia has been very much part of this pattern. The only exception — though a crucial one — is Japan.

As a result, Washington has woken up to the uncomfortable reality that an increasingly well-armed China might also be accepted as an economic and even political leader in Asia. That poses a real challenge to American primacy, which matters a lot in Washington. Sustaining primacy in Asia is one of America's top long-term strategic objectives.

So America is fighting back by trying to encourage Asians to be more worried by China's growing military power. Last year in Singapore, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld took aim at China's military modernisation, and this month he did it again. His line is that Beijing has not properly explained what its growing forces are for and, without such explanations, China's Asian neighbours should be worried about them.

Is he right? Well, it is certainly true that China's military capability is growing, and changing shape in very significant ways. Until recently, China's military was overwhelmingly focused on big, crude land forces designed to fight the Soviet Union. Now it is focused on modern, high-tech air and naval forces. It is buying submarines with modern missiles and torpedoes, new warships with anti-aircraft radars and missiles, and combat aircraft suited to maritime strikes.

There is no doubt that all this makes China a more formidable maritime power than it has been in many centuries. And maritime power is what matters in Asia, especially for the US, whose strategic position in Asia is based on its traditional naval and air domination of the Western Pacific. It also matters to Japan, Australia and much of South-East Asia, whose security requires the protection of their island territories and seaborne trade from maritime threats.

But Rumsfeld is stretching it a lot when he says we do not know what China's forces are for. In fact, it's plain why China has been building up its forces, as the Pentagon itself concedes in its annual report to Congress on China's military power, published last month. Since the US sent carriers to the waters around Taiwan in 1996, China's military build-up has been primarily focused on ways to increase the costs and risks to Washington of doing the same again in a Taiwan crisis.

Beijing has been buying the ships, submarines, aircraft and other systems to enable it to attack the kind of forces, especially aircraft carriers, that Washington might send against China in a conflict over Taiwan. And there is not much doubt that it has succeeded, at least up to a point.

But China's growing maritime power may make a conflict over Taiwan less likely. The most probable spark for a crisis would be a miscalculated move towards independence by Taiwan's leaders, acting under a false assumption that American military supremacy would deter any Chinese military move. The stronger China's forces, the less likely Taipei is to make that mistake and the less likely we are to see a conflict.

Of course, China's maritime build-up probably has long-term aims beyond Taiwan. One is security for its trade, especially energy imports. China depends heavily on sea lines of communications to suppliers and customers and, unlike Japan, South Korea and Australia, it cannot rely on the US to help protect them. China does not yet seem to have worked out how to respond.

But again, actions by China to secure its sea lines of communication are not necessarily destabilising. China's many trade partners — including Australia — have an interest in the security of China's seaborne trade just as much as China does.

Is there nothing to fear, then, from China's growing maritime power? I would not go that far. China might be building its forces to deter Taiwan and protect its trade, but those forces will, over time, provide China with a substantial capacity to intimidate and, if necessary, to attack countries throughout Asia. Nothing in China's foreign policy gives good reason to worry that it will use its power in that way. But nothing guarantees that it will not. We simply do not know.

And it is no use for Rumsfeld to demand that China tell us their plans. They do not know what the future holds any more than we do. Like the rest of us, they are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

The only alternative is to find a way to step back from the strategic competition that is growing so relentlessly between China and the US. One good start would be for Rumsfeld to stop trying to scare America's Asian friends with dark hints of a China threat. Washington cannot sustain its primacy in Asia by trying to make China look bad. That risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hugh White is a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute and professor of strategic studies at ANU.

Feature: More and more Vietnamese keen on studying Chinese

Source

"Like many other students loving Chinese, I'm sparing no efforts to enrich my language proficiency to have chance to set foot in China for better studying," said Nguyen Thi Cam Nhung, a Vietnamese girl.

Charming in a pink Chinese dress, the 22-year-old student of the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies in Vietnam's capital city said she would make greater efforts to win a big prize ( scholarship for studying in China) in the 5th "Chinese Bridge" - Chinese proficiency competition for foreign college students - to be held in Beijing in July.

On Sunday, Nhung beat 12 Vietnamese students from six major Vietnamese universities in the preliminary round of the 5th " Chinese Bridge" held in Hanoi. She and the second-prize winner will participate in the final round along with contestants from some 50 countries.

"I've determined on becoming a lecturer of Chinese language at my university. So, I do want to study Chinese in China. Mastering only language skills is not enough. I hope myself as well as my future students really to wallow in the beauty of Chinese language and culture," Nhung said, smiling.

Nhung's statement was echoed by the first-prize winner of the 4th "Chinese Bridge" held in Beijing in 2005, Vu Thuy Trang, from the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies. In August, Trang will go to the Chinese capital to pursue an MA (master of arts) degree in business administration.

"Vietnamese people have an old saying: Travel broadens the mind. Studying in China will enrich our professional knowledge. There are many destinations for our studying abroad, but for me, China is most suitable due to great similarities in culture and economy of China and Vietnam," said the newly-graduated girl.

"When I came to Beijing, I was deeply impressed. China is a country you want to stay or at least want to come back again once you go there," she stated.

For many other Vietnamese youths, who have won no scholarships to pursue further studies in China, their families are making efforts to send them to the country. At the Guangxi Education Exhibition held in Hanoi on Saturday, Trinh Thanh Tu, a 27-year- old girl from the city, said her family members were looking for a high-quality Chinese university for her to pursue a master's degree.

"I've already gained a university degree in business administration in Vietnam. I want to deepen my professional knowledge to get a better job in the future. Now, I'm actively improving my Chinese language skills," Tu said.

Nguyen Ngoc Long, dean of the Department of Chinese under the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, said the department annually have 500 graduates, some of them have followed further studies in China, either on scholarship or self-financed basis.

"Many Vietnamese people like to study in China mainly because of similarities in conditions regarding food, accommodation and travel of Vietnam and China. Psychological and physiological features of Vietnamese and Chinese people are also much the same," Long said.

Tuition fee and cost of living in China are suitable to financial ability of many Vietnamese households, he added.

"As early as in their third year, almost every student at the Chinese department have found a good part-time job. Their good command of Chinese makes it easy for them to have chance to work for Chinese-invested companies here," Long said, noting that more and more projects invested by Chinese-speaking people from China's mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan districts, Malaysia and Singapore are appearing in Vietnam.

Broadened and deepened bilateral ties, especially those in investment and trade between China and Vietnam have resulted in bigger numbers of both Vietnamese students and state cadres studying Chinese.

In recent years, many officials of Vietnamese localities bordering China, including Lao Cai and Lang Son, have been sent to China to study Chinese so that they can handle their work in the language.

According to statistics of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi, there are now over 7,500 Vietnamese students studying in China.

Over the past five years, Chinese language training has seen a sharp rise, reflecting the country's rising position in Asia and the world. Nearly 40 million foreigners now learn Chinese language in some 12,400 schools or universities worldwide, said the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language under the Chinese Ministry of Education.

The number of foreigners learning Chinese around the world is expected to hit 100 million in 2010, said the office.


"In 2010, I think I would have been a highly qualified lecturer of both Chinese language and Chinese culture. Now, my short-term goal is to further study Chinese in Beijing and then come back to Vietnam, telling my future students about what I learn and see with my own eye," Nhung said with a hidden pride gliding past her lively face.

Source: Xinhua

The U.S. Role in Darfur, Sudan

This article should be able to answer many questions about Darfur crisis in Sudan

Publication time: 6 June 2006, 01:17

WHAT is fueling the campaign now sweeping the U.S. to "Stop Genocide in Darfur"? Campus organizations have suddenly begun organizing petitions, meetings and calls for divestment. A demonstration was held April 30 on the Mall in Washington, D.C., to "Save Darfur."

Again and again it is said that "something" must be done. "Humanitarian forces" and "U.S. peacekeepers" must be deployed immediately to stop "ethnic cleansing." UN troops or NATO forces must be used to stop "genocide." The U.S. government has a "moral responsibility to prevent another Holocaust."

Outrage is provoked by media stories of mass rapes and photos of desperate refugees. The charge is that tens of thousands of African people are being killed by Arab militias backed by the Sudanese government. Sudan is labeled as both a "terrorist state" and a "failed state." Even at anti-war rallies, signs have been distributed proclaiming "Out of Iraq-Into Darfur." Full-page ads in the New York Times have repeated the call.

Who is behind the campaign and what actions are they calling for?

Even a cursory look at the supporters of the campaign shows the prominent role of right-wing evangelical Christians and major Zionist groups to "Save Darfur."

A Jerusalem Post article of April 27 headlined "U.S. Jews Leading Darfur Rally Planning" described the role of prominent Zionist organizations in organizing the April 30 rally. A full-page ad for the rally in the New York Times was signed by a number of Jewish organizations, including the UJA-Federation of NY and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

But it wasn't just Zionist groups that called it. The rally was sponsored by a coalition of 164 organizations that included the National Association of Evangelicals, the World Evangelical Alliance and other religious groups that have been the strongest supporters of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. The Kansas-based evangelical group Sudan Sunrise helped arrange buses and speakers, did extensive fund raising and co-hosted a 600-person dinner.

This was hardly an anti-war or social justice rally. The organizers had a personal meeting with President George W. Bush just before the rally. He told them: "I welcome your participation. And I want to thank the organizers for being here."

Originally the demonstration was projected to draw a turnout of more than 100,000. Media coverage generously reported "several thousands," ranging from 5,000 to 7,000. The rally was overwhelming white. Despite sparse numbers, it got wide media coverage, focusing on celebrity speakers like Academy Award winner George Clooney. Top Democrats and Republicans gave it their blessing, including U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Corzine, by the way, spent million of his own money to get elected.

The corporate media gave this rally more prominence than either the anti-war rally of 300,000 in New York City on the day before or the millionfold demonstrations across the country for immigrant rights on the day after.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, Secretary of State Condo leezza Rice, Gen. Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have all argued in favor of intervention in Sudan.

These leading architects of imperialist policy often refer to another model when they call for this intervention: the successful "humanitarian" war on Yugoslavia that established a U.S./NATO administration over Kosovo after a massive bombing campaign.

The Holocaust Museum in Washington issued a "genocide alert"-the first such alert ever issued-and 35 evangelical Chris tian leaders signed a letter urging President Bush to send U.S. troops to stop genocide in Darfur. A special national curriculum for students was established to generate grassroots support for U.S. intervention.

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have embraced the campaign. Liberal voices such as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Rabbi Michael Lerner of TIKKUN and Human Rights Watch have also pushed the campaign to "Save Darfur."


Diversion from Iraq debacle

The criminal invasion and massive bombing of Iraq, the destruction of its infrastructure that left the people without water or basic electricity, and the horrible photos of the U.S. military's use of torture at Abu Ghraib prison created a world outcry. At its height, in September 2004, then Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell went to Sudan and announced to the world that the crime of the century-"a genocide"-was taking place there. The U.S. solution was to demand the United Nations impose sanctions on one of the poorest countries on earth and that U.S. troops be sent there as "peacekeepers."

But the rest of the UN Security Council was unwilling to accept this view, the U.S. "evidence" or the proposed action.

The campaign against Sudan increased even as evidence was being brought forward that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was based on a total lie. The same media that had given credibility to the U.S. government's claim that it was justified in invading Iraq because that country had "weapons of mass destruction" switched gears to report on "war crimes" by Arab forces in Sudan.

This Darfur campaign accomplishes several goals of U.S. imperialist policy. It further demonizes Arab and Muslim people. It diverts attention from the human rights catastrophe caused by the brutal U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, which has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

It is also an attempt to deflect attention from the U.S. financing and support of Israel's war on the Palestinian people.

Most important, it opens a new front in the determination of U.S. corporate power to control the entire region.

U.S. interest in Sudan

Sudan is the largest country in Africa in area. It is strategically located on the Red Sea, immediately south of Egypt, and borders on seven other African countries. It is about the size of Western Europe but has a population of only 35 million people.

Darfur is the western region of Sudan. It is the size of France, with a population of just 6 million.

Newly discovered resources have made Sudan of great interest to U.S. corporations. It is believed to have oil reserves rivaling those of Saudi Arabia. It has large deposits of natural gas. In addition, it has one of the three largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, along with the fourth-largest deposits of copper.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, however, the Sudanese government has retained its independence of Washington. Unable to control Sudan's oil policy, the U.S. imperialist government has made every effort to stop its development of this valuable resource. China, on the other hand, has worked with Sudan in providing the technology for exploration, drilling, pumping and the building of a pipeline and buys much of Sudan's oil.

U.S. policy revolves around shutting down the export of oil through sanctions and inflaming national and regional antagonisms. For over two decades U.S. imperialism supported a separatist movement in the south of Sudan, where oil was originally found. This long civil war drained the central government's resources. When a peace agreement was finally negotiated, U.S. attention immediately switched to Darfur in western Sudan.

Recently, a similar agreement between the Sudanese government and rebel groups in Darfur was rejected by one of the groups, so the fighting continues. The U.S. poses as a neutral mediator and keeps pressing Khartoum for more concessions but "through its closest African allies helped train the SLA and JEM Darfuri rebels that initiated Khartoum's violent reaction." (www.afrol.com)

Sudan has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. Over 400 ethnic groups have their own languages or dialects. Arabic is the one common language. Greater Khartoum, the largest city in the country, has a population of about 6 million. Some 85 percent of the Sudanese population is involved in subsistence agriculture or raising livestock.

The U.S. corporate media is unanimous in simplistically describing the crisis in Darfur as atrocities committed by the Jan jawid militias, supported by the central government in Khartoum. This is described as an "Arab" assault on "African" people.

This is a total distortion of reality. As the Black Commentator, Oct. 27, 2004, points out: "All parties involved in the Darfur conflict-whether they are referred to as ‘Arab' or as ‘African,' are equally indigenous and equally Black. All are Muslim and all are local." The whole population of Darfur speaks Arabic, along with many local dialects. All are Sunni Muslim.

Drought, famine and sanctions

The crisis in Darfur is rooted in intertribal fighting. A desperate struggle has developed over increasingly scarce water and grazing rights in a vast area of Northern Africa that has been hit hard by years of drought and growing famine.

Darfur has over 35 tribes and ethnic groups. About half the people are small subsistence farmers, the other half nomadic herders. For hundreds of years the nomadic population grazed their herds of cattle and camels over hundreds of miles of grassy lowlands. Farmers and herders shared wells. For over 5,000 years, this fertile land sustained civilizations in both western Dar fur and to the east, all along the Nile River.

Now, due to the drought and the encroaching great Sahara Desert, there isn't enough grazing land or enough farmland in what could be the breadbasket of Africa. Irrigation and development of Sudan's rich resources could solve many of these problems. U.S. sanctions and military intervention will solve none of them.

Many people, especially children, have died in Sudan of totally preventable and treatable diseases because of a U.S. cruise missile attack, ordered by President Bill Clinton on Aug. 20, 1998, on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum. This plant, which had produced cheap medications for treating malaria and tuberculosis, provided 60 percent of the available medicine in Sudan.

The U.S. claimed Sudan was operating a VX poison gas facility there. It produced no evidence to back up the charge. This simple medical facility, totally destroyed by the 19 missiles, was not rebuilt nor did Sudan receive a penny of compensation.

UN/NATO role in Sudan

Presently 7,000 African Union troops are in Darfur. Their logistical and technical back-up is provided by U.S. and NATO forces. In addition, thousands of UN personnel are overseeing refugee camps for hundreds of thousands dislocated by the drought, famine and war. All of these outside forces do more than hand out needed food. They are a source of instability. As capitalist would-be conquerors have done for hundreds of years, they consciously play one group off against another.

U.S. imperialism is heavily involved in the entire region. Chad, which is directly west of Darfur, last year participated in a U.S.-organized international military exer cise that, according to the U.S. Defense Depart ment, was the largest in Africa since World War II. Chad is a former French colony, and both French and U.S. forces are heavily involved in funding, training and equipping the army of its military ruler, Idriss Deby, who has supported rebel groups in Darfur.

For more than half a century, Britain ruled Sudan, encountering widespread resis tance. British colonial policy was rooted in divide-and-conquer tactics and in keeping its colonies underdeveloped and isolated in order to plunder their resources.

U.S. imperialism, which has replaced the European colonial powers in many parts of the world, in recent years has been sabotaging the economic independence of countries trying to emerge from colonial underdevelopment. Its main economic weapons have been sanctions combined with "structural adjustment" demands made by the International Monetary Fund, which it controls. In return for loans, the target governments must cut their budgets for development of infrastructure.

How can demands from organizations in the West for sanctions, leading to further underdevelopment and isolation, solve any of these problems?

Washington has often used its tremendous power in the UN Security Council to get resolutions endorsing its plans to send U.S. troops into other countries. None were on humanitarian missions.

U.S. troops carrying the UN flag invaded Korea in 1950 in a war that resulted in more than 4 million deaths. Still flying that flag, they have occupied and divided the Korean peninsula for over 50 years.

At the urging of the U.S., UN troops in 1961 were deployed to the Congo, where they played a role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first prime minister.

The U.S. was able to get a UN mandate in 1991 for its massive bombing of the entire Iraqi civilian infrastructure, including water purification plants, irrigation and food processing plants-and for the 13 years of starvation sanctions that resulted in the deaths of over 1.5 million Iraqis.

UN troops in Yugoslavia and in Haiti have been a cover for U.S. and European intervention and occupation-not peace or reconciliation.

The U.S. and European imperialist powers are responsible for the genocidal slave trade that decimated Africa, the genocide of the Indigenous population of the Americas, the colonial wars and occupations that looted three-quarters of the globe. It was German imperialism that was responsible for the genocide of Jewish people. To call for military intervention by these same powers as the answer to conflicts among the people of Darfur is to ignore 500 years of history.

(Sara Flounders went to Sudan just after the bombing of the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in 1998 with John Parker as part of an International Action Center fact-finding delegation led by Ramsey Clark.)