People's Republic of China, Dec. 27 2011

[pankajs]

Xi Jinping hopes traditional faiths can fill moral void in China: sources

(Reuters) - President Xi Jinping believes China is losing its moral compass and he wants the ruling Communist Party to be more tolerant of traditional faiths in the hope these will help fill a vacuum created by the country's breakneck growth and rush to get rich, sources said.

Xi, who grew up in Mao's puritan China, is troubled by what he sees as the country's moral decline and obsession with money, said three independent sources with ties to the leadership.

He hopes China's "traditional cultures" or faiths - Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism - will help fill a void that has allowed corruption to flourish, the sources said.

Skeptics see it as a cynical move to try to curb rising social unrest and perpetuate one-party rule.

<snip>

Government agencies would moderate policies towards Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in the hope these faiths would also help placate the disaffected who cannot afford homes, education and medical treatment, the sources said.

"The influence of religions will expand, albeit subtly," a second source said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Traditional cultures will not be comprehensively popularized, but attacks on them will be avoided."

Skeptics described such tactics as a ploy to divert blame away from the party for the many problems that anger ordinary Chinese, from corruption to land grabs.

<snip>

China estimates it has 50 million practitioners of Buddhism and Taoism, 23 million Protestants, 21 million Muslims and 5.5 million Catholics,

Independent experts put the number of practitioners of Buddhism, Taoism and folk religions at between 100-300 million.

[pankajs]

China employs two million microblog monitors state media say

More than two million people in China are employed by the government to monitor web activity, state media say, providing a rare glimpse into how the state tries to control the internet.

The Beijing News says the monitors, described as internet opinion analysts, are on state and commercial payrolls.

<snip>

They are "strictly to gather and analyse public opinions on microblog sites and compile reports for decision-makers", it said. It also added details about how some of these monitors work.

<snip>

"He then monitors negative opinions related to the clients, and gathers (them) and compile reports and send them to the clients," it says.

The reports says the software used in the office is even more advanced and supported by thousands of servers. It also monitors websites outside China.

[Sushupti]

Xi Jinping hopes traditional faiths can fill moral void in China: sources

President Xi Jinping believes China is losing its moral compass and he wants the ruling Communist Party to be more tolerant of traditional faiths in the hope these will help fill a vacuum created by the country's breakneck growth and rush to get rich, sources said.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSB ... 9?irpc=932

[kish]

New low for China, cooking oil from "Gutter waste"

After fake eggs and poisoned milk powder, Chinese 'gutter oil'

A Chinese court on Wednesday jailed one man for life and sentenced more than a dozen to up to 15 years in jail for producing and selling cooking oil made from gutter waste, the latest food safety scandal to fuel public mistrust. The Intermediate People's Court in the city of Lianyungang,
480 km (530 miles) north of Shanghai, found the defendants guilty of making and trafficking in the "poisonous, harmful" oil between January 2011 and March 2012, it said on its website.

The product, made from waste oil and "meat-product waste", known in China as "gutter oil", was sold to processors in at least four provinces or provincial-level cities, including Beijing, it said. In 2011 and 2012 Wang's company, Kangrun, made more than 60 million yuan ($9.80 million) selling the oil.

Food safety is a highly emotive issue in China where there have been numerous scandals in recent years, from photos of food oil being scooped from drains to tales of phoney eggs and poison milk powder.

[Christopher Sidor]

Its an 1932 US map of China. Hope it will become true at least in near future.

+1

[pankajs]

China arrests 139 in Xinjiang for urging jihad: Report

China has arrested 139 people in Xinjiang for allegedly spreading jihad, state-run media said on Wednesday, as it warns of growing religious extremism in the far western region home to Muslim Uighurs.

[Suraj]

An interesting account of opinion shaping:
Milder Accounts of Hardships Under Mao Arise as His Birthday Nears

The famine that gripped China from 1958 to 1962 is widely judged to be the deadliest in recorded history, killing 20 to 30 million people or more, and is one of the defining calamities of Mao Zedong’s rule. Ever since, the party has shrouded that disaster in censorship and euphemisms, seeking to maintain an aura of reverence around the founding leader of the Communist state.

But with the approach of celebrations of the 120th anniversary Mao’s birth on Dec. 26, some of his supporters and party polemicists are stepping beyond the longstanding official reticence about the famine to argue for their own, much milder version of the disaster and to assail historians who disagree.

They deny that tens of millions died in the famine — it was at most a few million, some of them say — and they accuse scholars who support higher estimates of fanning anti-party sentiment.

“The big rumor that 30 million people starved to death in the three years of hardship,” said a headline in September in The Global Times, an influential party-run tabloid.

The headline accompanied a commentary by a mathematician, Sun Jingxian, who has won publicity for his claim that at most 2.5 million people died of “nutritional fatalities” during the Great Leap Forward. He argues that bigger estimates are an illusion based on flawed statistics.

Mr. Sun asserts that most of the apparent deaths were a mirage of chaotic statistics: people moved from villages and were presumed dead, because they failed to register in their new homes.

A new book, “Someone Must Finally Speak the Truth,” has become a touchstone for supporters of Mao, who deny that the famine killed tens of millions. The author, Yang Songlin, a retired official, maintains that at most four million “abnormal fatalities” occurred during the famine.

That was indeed a tragedy, he acknowledges, but one for which he mostly blames bad weather, not bad policies. He and other like-minded revisionists accuse rival researchers of inflating the magnitude of the famine to discredit Mao and the party.
...

China’s leaders have not publicly commented on the controversy. But Mao’s reputation remains important for a party that continues to stake its claims to power on its revolutionary origins, even as it has cast aside the remnants of his revolutionary policies. And Xi Jinping, the party leader installed in November, has been especially avid in defending that legacy, even though his family suffered more under Mao than did the families of his recent predecessors.

[panduranghari]

中国杀手 - This needs to be added to all Chinese forum

烈火中国杀手

烈火中殺手

What does that mean?

[chaanakya]

China Killer

Agni China Killer

Killer flames


From g chacha

[kish]

Torture methods employed by "People's" Republic of China is so barbaric, No wonder chinese are shit scared of their government.

Insight - China party's secretive judicial system laid bare in torture case

As Yu Qiyi's interrogation entered its 39th day, officials from the Chinese Communist Party's anti-corruption watchdog debated how to get a confession out of the detained man, the chief engineer at a state-owned firm in eastern Wenzhou city.

One official noted he had forced Yu's head under water the night before. A day later, Yu died after being dunked repeatedly in a bucket of ice-cold water.

Six officials were convicted last month of torturing Yu to death. Testimony given in the case, seen by Reuters, illustrates the brutality of a secretive detention system for party members and the drive to get confessions as President Xi Jinping presses on with an aggressive anti-corruption campaign.

Lawyers say the case - highly unusual because Yu's interrogators were charged - also renews questions about the legality of the process given rampant abuses in the system.

The party introduced the detention system, called "shuanggui", in 1990 to weed out corrupt members as the temptation to take bribes sky-rocketed on the back of China's nascent economic boom.
.
.
"Yu Qiyi was terrified of water," Cheng told investigators in testimony that detailed the debate on how to get Yu to confess.

"If we continue dunking him in water, we might be effective, so the leaders said continue," according to a transcript of his remarks given to the court in the nearby city of Quzhou, where the trial was held.
.
.
The brutality against Yu drew public outrage. Photos of his bruised corpse were put on the Internet by his family before the six officials were indicted.

One Chinese netizen posted an online comment calling the abuse of Yu "fascist". Another said: "In the face of strong power, we are all ants, there's no exception even for people within the system."

Even official news agency Xinhua weighed in, saying in an online posting that "if you do not lock power into the system's cage, it will be difficult for anyone to feel a sense of security".

This week, China's prosecutor-general, Cao Jianming, said some investigators relied too much on confessions rather than evidence, although he did not refer to the party's detention system.

The cause of Yu's death was "inhalation of liquids leading to pulmonary dysfunction", according to the defence statement from Chi, the lawyer representing one of the accused.

"When I arrived at the scene, I was very shocked because he had changed dramatically, he was emaciated," said Yu's ex-wife, Wu. "The doctor told me there was no point in resuscitating him, there was no hope."

"They hung a 20-kg sandbag around my neck to try to force me to admit I had taken bribes," he said. "When you experience those kinds of things, you want to commit suicide but they made me wear a helmet so that I couldn't smash my head against the wall in an attempt to die."

[NRao]

Japan will stand up to China, says PM Shinzo Abe

[kish]

Series of bombblast perpetrated 'allegedly' by muslims has hit Communist Party headquarters in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan.

Bomb explosions outside provincial Communist Party headquarters kill 1, injure 8 in northern China

A series of small explosions killed one person and injured eight others on Wednesday outside the provincial headquarters of the ruling Communist Party in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan, officials said.

Officials gave no word on the target or perpetrators of the blasts, which state media said were caused by homemade bombs.

The explosions came during heightened security following a suicide car crash at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing that killed the car's three occupants and two bystanders in what officials called an act of terrorism committed by Muslim militants from western China.
.
.
A street cleaner interviewed on state television said the explosives were planted in flower beds in two separate locations and that eight blasts were heard in all.

[Garooda]

Why? Isn't the current population enough?

Shanghai’s semen is facing an unprecedented crisis with experts labelling pollution as one of the “major culprits” for the mega-city’s increasingly dismal sperm quality, Chinese media claimed.

Only one-third of the semen at Shanghai’s main sperm bank meets World Health Organisation standards, wasn't aware WHO had sperm standards. the Shanghai Morning Post reported on Thursday.

Li Zheng, a sperm expert from the Urology department at Shanghai’s Renji Hospital, told the newspaper he was “very worried” about how male infertility rates were “increasing year on year”. “ Might be a good place to start a war instead of using weapons. If we don’t protect the environment now, mankind will face a worsening infertility predicament,” Dr Li, who also runs the sperm bank, was quoted as saying.

A 2012 study, coordinated by Dr Li, concluded that over the last 10 years worsening environmental conditions had closely mirrored the falling quality of sperm. Low sperm counts and aspermia, a condition that causes a man to produce no semen at all, were among the problems.

The Shanghai Morning Post urged its readers to lead greener lives in order to protect future generations.

“In the view of reproductive health experts, loving the earth means loving oneself and, what's more, loving the next generation.”

Reports of a potential link between Shanghai’s semen crisis and air and water pollution came as thick smog enveloped China’s financial capital.

Shanghai’s air quality levels were around twice as bad than those in Beijing on Thursday, with city authorities urging schools to cancel outdoor activities.

Levels of the dangerous air-borne particle called PM2.5 rose as high as 312 in Shanghai on Thursday morning, according to aqicn.org, a pollution monitoring website.

Last December, state news agency Xinhua said that China’s infertility rate had risen to around 12.5 per cent of people of childbearing age compared to just three percent two decades earlier. Doctors said part of the blame lay with stress, street pollution and living conditions.

In September, three respected academic institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, announced that in 2014 they would launch a five-year study of the connection between female infertility and pollution.

[Gus]

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/06/world ... _inthenews
The decorations came in a $29 "Totally Ghoul" toy set that Keith purchased in a local Kmart store in 2011. When she opened the package before Halloween last year, a letter fell out.

In broken English mixed with Chinese, the author cried for help: "If you occasionally (sic) buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here... will thank and remember you forever."
...

[Paul]

A good article on how Deng has managed to convert PRC's position with it's neighbours from a position of weakness to one of strength in the space of one generation. The current generation of PRC leaders look like pygmies in comparison to Deng's wisdom and foresight.

But I wish he had attacked India instead of Vietnam in 1979. A buildup on their side had happened after the Sumudrumong Chu incident but nothing happened and In the space of 10- 15 years after that they have built this mega infrastructure in Tibet to give them an advantage in any future conflict. Had Tianmen square not happened in 1989, a major border incident like Nathu La 1967 would likely have happened.

India lost the window of opportunity to settle scores with China in the 1970s and 80s when they were under pressure from all quarters. Pakistan was on the backfoot after 1971 this interval in the 1970s should have been utilized to give a bloody nose to China.

China's foreign policy under Deng
This is the second part of my blog entries on Deng Xiaoping based on the book by Ezra Vogel. Next time, I will explore Deng and June 4th student movement, but this entry will look over his foreign policy works. Ezra Vogel did a great job exploring the major foreign policy decisions faced with Deng at the time of his reign. They included the normalization of relations with USA, Japan, USSR, war with Vietnam and negotiations with Taiwan and Tibetan exile government.

When looking at the normalization of relationship with USA and Japan in the late 70s, it's really interesting to see how weak China's negotiation positions were. At that point, China needed the west for investments, technology, education and support against USSR. In fact, Mao decided to approach US only after he realized China badly needed America to help fend off the Soviet threat. It's probably hard for someone from Deng's generation to imagine the West needing China for money to bail out.

When Deng came back to power in the late 70s, China was facing not only overwhelming Soviet threat to the north and West (the backfires could bomb Beijing and fly back to their bases without escort) compare this to the muscular PLA defenses now, but also a superior trained and equipped Vietnamese side to the south. Even North Korean support was not guaranteed. China was faced with a full encirclement and was weak economically and militarily. First, Deng made sure to firm up China's relationship with the North Koreans to reduce threat from East. Then, Deng decided China had to break the encirclement by attacking Vietnam. Of course, China was facing the threat of Soviet retaliation, so it worked hard to speed up the normalization of relations with both USA and Japan. America and its allies feared USSR hegemony over continental Asia, so both USA and Japan were willing to extend hand to China for cooperation against USSR. Deng recognized a window of opportunity to show a new and stable China to the rest of the world and normalize relations with Western powers. In 1972, China had already officially normalized relations with Japan, but a more comprehensive treaty needed to be signed and China wanted an anti-hegemony clause for support against USSR, Before Deng visited Japan in October 1978, Japan had been reluctant to accept such a clause that was so blatantly pointed at USSR. China was limited by time constraint of its impending invasion into Vietnam, so eventually gave in by allowing a mitigation clause saying the anti-hegemony was not aimed at anyone. When Deng visited Japan, he put a lot of Japanese at ease about Chinese intentions and focused on future cooperations rather than the past. By not bombarding Japan with past guilt, Deng won a lot of support from Japanese business in investment and modernization. When I read this, I think that the current generation of Chinese leaders also have better options in negotiations with Japan than only trying to push forward with hard power. They can have less aggressive foreign policy toward Japan without appearing to be weak at home.

By the late 70s, high level discussions were under way for normalization of relations between China and USA. Deng realized that he not only needed US to counter Soviet threat, but also to modernize and invest. Deng's biggest pitch to USA was the threat of Soviet ambitions and hegemony in Asia. He labeled the Americans as too soft on USSR. There was the one major problem of Taiwan. Deng would not normalize relations with US unless US broke diplomatic relations with Taiwan, ended US/Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty and withdrew its military from Taiwan. Deng expected Taiwan to be forced to reunify with China once this happens. Deng would allow Taiwan to still have its own autonomy and even keep its army, but take down its flag. US basically agreed with all the conditions, but insisted that it reserves the right to sell Taiwan selected weapons of defensive nature. Deng eventually gave in to that demand allowed normalization to continue. i think Deng realized that China did not have enough leverage on Washington to stop all weapon sales. They had a narrow window of opportunity to negotiate the normalization of relation due to the political climate in Washington and the Taiwan lobby. Deng and the US negotiators at that time believed that weapon sales would eventually stop completely as American public accept mainland as the only China, which would pressure Taiwan into reunifiction talks. I think Deng held out hope that Taiwan would cave and reunify with China during his life time, but that obviously did not happen. Two important events happened to stop this. Taiwan ended martial law and human right abuses and adopted democracy. The June 4th student movement was crushed in Beijing and stopped China's move toward greater political reform. After that, Mainland became the evil dictatorship and Taiwan became the democratic underdog seeking liberty. It would be hard to imagine American public supporting ending weapon sales at this point. At the same time, the Chinese leadership have not given up the hope that America would stop weapon sales to Taiwan over time due to these early discussions. So if you wonder why China makes a big deal out of each weapon sales to Taiwan, it is because China expected USA to stop selling weapons to Taiwan several years after the normalization. We've seen many change of leadership in America since 1979, but the Chinese leadership still adopts the same position taken by Deng over 30 years ago. Of course, the normalization has helped China far more than USA, so Deng was correct to conceed on the weapon sales even if he was accused by some as too soft in negotiations. More importantly, Deng impressed his American counterparts with his directness and provided a look of reason to the American public during his visit. He did not appear as a hated communist but rather someone looking to improve the lives of his people. That's someone the Western world can sympathize in. He managed to have a successful trip even though he told Carter that China is about to attack Vietnam. The current generation of Chinese leaders are a bunch of lifeless technocrats who always stick by the script. I don't think any of them could have pulled that off without widespread condemnation.

Once Deng came back from America, China launched its war against Vietnam. The elite PLA troops were left along the Soviet border for possible retaliations, so only secondary tier of troops were attacking Vietnam. The conflict concluded in less than 30 days without Soviet intervention and PLA claimed to have achieved its primary goals before withdrawing with a "Scorch Earth" policy. However, PLA suffered serious casualty, because it was still recovering from the Cultural Revolution and was simply not ready to fight. Looking broadly, Deng did achieve his goal of reducing Vietnamese power in ASEAN region and enhancing China's standing amongst countries fearing Vietnam/USSR hegemony. The Scorch Earth policy seriously damaged infrastructure/countryside in North Vietnam and severely reduce the offensive capability of Vietnam along the border. By demonstrating to Vietnam that it is willing to attack, Vietnam was forced to keep more than half a million soldier to protect itself from China. Vietnam eventually could not afford to keep that many soldiers along Chinese border while also occupying Cambodia, so it had to give up its dream of regional hegemony. This conflict basically removed the Soviet encirclement allowing China to have peace and fully pursue economic development. Even so, I tend to think the last part could have been achieved without attacking Vietnam. Not only did China suffer 20,000 to 60,000 causalities, it also diverted precious resources that should have gone toward improving the economy. Unlike the current American model of financing war on debt, China had to run a relatively balanced budget at that time. On top of that, the invasion and earth scorching policies have left deep distrust and resentment toward China from Vietnam. And after Soviet Union got bogged down in Afghanistan in the 80s, China no longer faced the same level of encirclement dangers from the Soviets. We will never know if the Soviet encirclement threat was so great that China had to loose so many young lives and money to ensure peace and stability.

Deng's approach toward USSR as a whole was quite effective. By the 70s, the security threat facing China from USSR was so strong that even Mao decided to turn to the much hated Americans for support. PLA combat capabilities significantly weakened during the Cultural Revolution as it focused on class struggle and political thoughts rather than training and improvement. And America was receptive toward Chinese overtures because it was concerned that USSR would take over China and dominate all of Asia. Deng faced the same threat when he took over, which is why he made such a strong presentation to Japan and America about the threat of Soviet hegemony in Europe and Asia. He repeatedly pointed out American weakness and labeled SALT II as American appeasement toward Soviets. Deng himself took a very hard stance toward Russians. He attacked Vietnam to show that Russia was not prepared to be drawn into a land war in East Asia. This was an extremely gusty and risky move, because PLA really would have a hard time stopping Soviet advances had a retaliation come. Deng felt that Soviet concerns in Europe and China's new found friendship with USA and Japan would prevent Soviet retaliation to the north. He turned out to be right. After he felt the encirclement threat was gone, he reached out to USSR again for normalization of relations. He felt that USSR would eventually exhaust from arms race with America and its war in Afghanistan, so he gave them three conditions for normalizing relations. He demanded that the Soviets had to pull out of Afghanistan, remove troops from China's northern border area and the Vietnamese had to leave Cambodia. He stuck by those conditions all through the 80s until the Soviet leadership gave in to normalize relations. Gorbachev came in 1989 on Deng's terms and even offered to sell China its most advanced Su-27 fighter jets.

Deng, like Mao and Zhou before him, had hoped that Taiwan would reunite with China during their lifetime. In 1683, 22 years after remnants of Ming troops fled to Taiwan, their leaders agreed that Taiwan would again become part of China. Deng hoped that Chiang Ching-Kuo would also rejoin Taiwan to China. He proposed that Taiwan could keep its own social system for 1000 years and even keep its own army, but have to take down its flag. Chiang was defiant and maintained that the Republic of China represented all of China. Deng wanted to isolate Taiwan in the international stage to pressure them into voluntarily rejoining China, but the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act provided all the support that Taiwan needed. It was a huge blow for Deng, who felt that that the conditions of normalization would lead to reduction of arms sales to Taiwan. Deng believed at that time that US would eventually stop selling all weapons to Taiwan, which would pressure Taiwan to rejoin China at some point down the road. 15 years after Deng's death, US and China still have the same position toward Taiwan. On one hand, Taiwan has drawn closer to China with business integration, increased trades, direct flights and increased tourism. On the other hand, the majority of Taiwanese now consider themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. Deng had said that China is willing to wait a century and even a millennium to reunify with Taiwan. You can see that the current Chinese leadership is still trying to slowly increase its leverage over Taiwan until Taiwan takes down its flag. The negotiations over Hong Kong was also quite interesting. Britain was coming off the highs of Falkland Islands victory and Thatcher came into the negotiations thinking that Deng's positions were negotiation tactics. Thatcher came out of the meeting with Deng so shaken by Deng's tough stance that she slipped and fell to her knees. Over the next year, Deng made it clear that China is not Argentina and would send in the troops to take control of Hong Kong if needed. China's forceful position eventually persuaded the British to sign the declaration for handing over Hong Kong in 1997.

Deng's positions toward Tibet was not as inflexible as some may think. Back in the 1950s, Mao had achieved relatively good relations with the Tibetans by allowing Dalai Lama to have relative autonomy over the Tibetan Autonomous Regions (TAR). Tibetans accepted Chinese sovereignty, but was granted the right to administer TAR, keep their own currency and even maintain their own army. China would be in charge of foreign affairs, military affairs and border controls. The problem happened due to the communist reforms in areas outside of TAR, where half of the Tibetans lived. The Tibetans in Sichuan rioted and then fled to Tibet after they were beaten. Of course, we had more conflicts on TAR in 1959, which led to Dalai Lama moving the Tibetan exile government to India. When Deng came to power, he had to reconcile with Tibetans who had suffered the wrath of Cultural Revolution when the red guard destroyed a lot of Tibetan culture. Deng really tried to make amend when he first came to power, but he also was unaware of the true alienation of Tibetans against the Han population. When Tibetan exile delegation visited TAR, they became more critical of Chinese treatment of Tibetans. Hu Yaobang and Deng tried to take a much softer approach in TAR to satisfy the Tibetans. However, their position was still not good enough for Dalai Lama and also increased Tibetan belief that they can become independent. The two sides did try to reconcile their positions, but at least one Tibetan condition is too much even for the most reasonable and leniant Chinese negotiator. Tibetan exiles wanted the boundaries of Tibet to be extended to include the Tibetan minority areas in other provinces including Sichuan, Ginghai, Gansu and Yunnan. Now, Tibetans are the minorities in these area (and have been so for quite some time), so I think this is probably the most unreasonable condition. Now, the softer approach toward Tibetan led to to Tibetan revolts for full independence in the late 1980s, which were crushed. Since then, China has practiced a much more heavy handed approach in Tibet while trying to promote economic growth to stabilize the region. Through the negotiations in the 80s, I think Chinese leadership concluded that although Dalai Lama himself may accept autonomy and return to rule in Tibet, the rest of the Tibetan exile movement are more extreme and would not allow Dalai Lama to take a middle approach. I think the Chinese leadership would've been okay with granting Dalai Lama the same level of autonomy that he had in the 1950s (if not more) for TAR, but there have been too much bad blood built up in the recent years for Tibetans to accept that. The positions from both side have not really changed since the 80s. Unless Chinese leadership is willing to apologize to the Tibetans and push local officials to be more lenient in TAR, I don't really see things moving for the better. On the overall scheme of things, Deng never regarded Tibet as important as Taiwan, Hong Kong and foreign relations.

I think the most impressive part is that Deng knew what he could extract from each country that he dealt with. He knew which countries he needed to visit to build up support for his agenda. He also had a clear understanding of the geopolitical situation around the world and waited for the right time to strike. He also appealed to other world leaders with his directness and honesty. During normalization of relations with USSR, he told American counterparts that negotiations were going on and assured them that relations with America would remain strong. Deng formulated the theory that China should "adopt a low profile and never take the lead". Simply put, Deng knew how to reduce tension and build relationships without caving into foreign demands. After Deng, I think the Jiang Zemin + Zhu Rongji administration also did a good job, but the current Hu Jintao administrations just seem to bundle one situation after another. The other interesting thing he did was allowing large numbers of Chinese students to travel abroad to study (compared to Soviet fears of brain drain). He thought that those who go abroad would help China even if they did not return to China right away. That's one assessment that he had great foresight in. An ever increasing number of former students that settled abroad have now brought back their knowledge and expertise to improving China. I see this in my parents' generation. Many of them are living comfortable lives in the Western world, but still talk of doing something to help their home land. Overall, I think Deng should not have attack Vietnam. Other than that, I think his policies were spot on

They lost a lot of soldiers in the war with Vietnam but managed to restrict their expansion in Cambodia. The same thing happened in 1962...they were not looking to win territory but restricted India's space for the next 30-40 years. No wonder they always think Mao did the right thing by attacking India.

[svinayak]

A good article on how Deng has managed to convert PRC's position with it's neighbours from a position of weakness to one of strength in the space of one generation. The current generation of PRC leaders look like pygmies in comparison to Deng's wisdom and foresight.

They lost a lot of soldiers in the war with Vietnam but managed to restrict their expansion in Cambodia. The same thing happened in 1962...they were not looking to win territory but restricted India's space for the next 30-40 years. No wonder they always think Mao did the right thing by attacking India.

It is all about image. Their image during Mao and Deng was built to show they are strong.
Each of these wars from 1959-1979 by PRC was to show the neighbors to be wary of PRC and then PRC started building its economy. PRC economy was built from 1978 till 2000 when it was supported to enter WTO.
Has this strategy come to an end now? This has to be analyzed.

The attack on India by Mao in 1962 was to stop Nehru who gave enormous lead to India in the world stage. They thought that it will stop India and roll back India influence
It stopped Nehru but not India.

They did not have to attack India after 1962. They just armed Pak after 1980s and just watched

This is an enlightening video about how much the Chinese people are influenced by American way of life

[r_subramanian]

An interesting report on China's Moon Rover launch. Agence France-Press report as published in South China Morning Post

Space launch debris wrecks Hunan villagers’ homes
Debris from the rocket carrying China’s first moon rover plummeted to earth in a village more than a thousand kilometres from the launch site, crashing into two homes, a report said on Tuesday.

The incident about nine minutes after the launch of the Chang’e-3 mission early on Monday happened in Suining county in the central province of Hunan, which has been hit by space wreckage nearly 20 times, the Xiaoxiang Morning Post said.
...
But debris from China’s numerous space launches has frequently found its way to Suining county, which has been hit by rocket parts nearly 20 times since the early 1990s, the Xiaoxiang Morning Post reported.

Last May wreckage from a rocket sent up by the Xichang Launch Centre crashed into homes and hit a high-voltage wire in the area, according to the Shanghai Daily News.

In October 2011 a steel frame weighing more than 250 kilograms landed in a field after another satellite launch, and other wreckage pierced a house roof.

Link: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/ ... gers-homes

[kish]

Seems like chinese too are waging a two-front way, 1) externally, all her neighbours 2) internally, environment.

Shanghai smog closes city; flights cancelled, schools shut

Shanghai authorities ordered schoolchildren indoors and halted all construction on Friday as China's financial hub suffered one of its worst bouts of air pollution, bringing visibility down to a few dozen meters, delaying flights and obscuring the city's spectacular skyline.

The financial district was shrouded in a yellow haze(Possibly toxic chemical waste), and noticeably fewer people walked the city's streets. Vehicle traffic also was thinner, as authorities pulled 30 percent of government vehicles from the roads. They also banned fireworks and public sporting events.

"I feel like I'm living in clouds of smog," said Zheng Qiaoyun, a local resident who kept her 6-month-old son at home. "I have a headache, I'm coughing, and it's hard to breathe on my way to my office."

Shanghai's concentration of tiny, harmful PM 2.5 particles reached 602.5 micrograms per cubic meter Friday afternoon, an extremely hazardous level that was the highest since the city began recording such data last December. That compares with the World Health Organization's safety guideline of 25 micrograms.

The dirty air that has gripped Shanghai and its neighboring provinces for days is attributed to coal burning, car exhaust, factory pollution and weather patterns, and is a stark reminder that pollution is a serious challenge in China. Beijing, the capital, has seen extremely heavy smog several times over the past year. In the far northeastern city of Harbin, some monitoring sites reported PM 2.5 rates up to 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter in October, when the winter heating season kicked off.

As a coastal city, Shanghai usually has mild to modest air pollution, but recent weather patterns have left the city's air stagnant. On China's social media, netizens swapped jokes over the rivalry between Shanghai and Beijing, saying the financial hub was catching up with the capital in air pollution.

Alan Yu, a chef in Shanghai, satirized the air on his microblog as though he were sampling a new vintage of wine.

"Today, Shanghai air really has a layered taste. At first, it tastes slightly astringent with some smokiness. Upon full contact with your palate, the aftertaste has some earthy bitterness, and upon careful distinguishing you can even feel some dust-like particulate matter," Yu wrote.

The environmental group Greenpeace said slow-moving and low-hanging air masses had carried factory emissions from Jiangsu, Anhui and Shandong provinces to Shanghai. But it said the root problem lies with the excessive industrial emissions in the region, including Zhejiang province to the south.

"Both Jiangsu and Zhejiang should act as soon as possible to set goals to reduce their coal consumption so that the Yantze River Delta will again be green with fresh air," Huang Wei, a Greenpeace project manager, said in a statement.

[member_23658]

Its pretty crazy. My office colleagues in shanghai were coughing into the phone during conference calls. The smog was apparently inside the office with the pollution index at 530. 530 is unimaginable, i have been in a 400 level city once : it literally burns your eyes, throat and mouth to step outside for a minute.

[Philip]

Great! China has thrown into the dustbin its pollution-free days of clean air under the Chairmanship of the "Great Helmsman".In those days,almost everyone bicycled to work,happy and fit individuals.Then came aping the west and the worst mistakes made by the west,pandering to the automobile which is also happening in India.The automobile occupies so much of valuable space in a city,spends most of its time parked and like plaque,clogs up the arteries of the city,its roads.Little emphasis is placed upon public transport which is the norm in Europe.Everywhere in the EU,the bicycle is making a strong comeback.Germany,Denmark are prime examples.If one visits most old cities in Europe,one sees many areas pedestrianised.A combination of trams,trolley-buses, buses,metros and mainline rail networks -all operating together in some cities,effectively transport people used by all.We in Asia ,especially China ,which thought that by building giant skyscrapers that dehumanise people,they have "progressed".similarly,stacking people in little matchboxes vertically which requires huge amounts of costly services and power to run these vertical townships,require billions to make such cities functionable.A fraction spent in improving the infrastructure and lives of people living in smaller town and villages would drastically reduce migration and coupled with swift rail services,decongest crowded cities where people can live in more salubrious suburbs away from the concrete jungles.China ad the developing world's nations have learnt little from the west's urban planning mistakes and are now paying a very heavy price for it.

It is past time that India too learnt from the planning mistakes of the west and China and formulated a comprehensive policy of efficient public transport as a priority for all Metros and tier-2 cities,which will be relevant for decades,anticipating the rise in population.The entire concept of shopping too is undergoing a revolution,with a new mall in the US (?) aping the style of the "souk",Grand Bazaar in Istanbul,where shoppers can haggle over prices,even at the Svarowski shop! India too ha great ancient city planning traditions and concepts,the "bazaar" being found in every India city,meant for the people,pedestrian friendly and green,requiring no great expensive services like AC,lifts,escalators,etc. the norm for costly malls,which collapse economically when a newer more sophisticated mall arrives.CP in Delhi is still the most popular spot to shop and wander around.One of my favourite spots.

Please read Shorie's latest book,"Self-Deception",India's China Policies.
Origins,Premises,Lessons.

Harper Collins.

His conclusions:

*We must make nationalism respectable again.
*We must make pursuing the national interest legitimate.

"The central difference between China and India is that the Chinese leadership is more competent at every level than the Indian one".
We have to "bridge that gap with the urgency of a man whose hair is on fire"

[pankajs]

Riot in China's Xinjiang leaves 16 dead

BEIJING: Police in China's restive far western region of Xinjiang shot dead 14 people during a riot late on Sunday in which two policemen were also killed, the regional government said on Monday.

Police were attacked by a mob throwing explosive devices and wielding knives when they went to arrest "criminal suspects" in a village near the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, the government said on its official news portal Tianshan.

[Peregrine]

Riot in China's Xinjiang leaves 16 dead

Cross Posted on Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan Thread :

THANK YOU PAKISTAN

Cheers

[ramana]

Looks like China food contamination is rampant with even US companies partaking of the opportunities.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 24316.html

....
Food safety has been a major concern for Chinese consumers. Last year rat meat labeled as lamb was sold in Shanghai. In 2012 China's largest dairy producer had to recall some of its baby formula products after an "unusual" level of Mercury was found in them. In 2008 six children died and about 300,000 became ill from contaminated infant formula that tested positive for the industrial chemical melamine. Eggs sold with toxic levels of melamine were also sold to consumers that year.

[kmkraoind]

Leaked Records Reveal Offshore Holdings of China’s Elite - ICIJ.org

Close relatives of China’s top leaders have held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist elite’s wealth, a leaked cache of documents reveals.

The confidential files include details of a real estate company co-owned by current President Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law and British Virgin Islands companies set up by former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and also by his son-in-law.
.....
For instance, Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse helped Wen Jiabao’s son create his BVI company while his father was leading the country.

There is a hyperlink table, which shows who is related to whom and their rerouting methods.

[Peregrine]

China's Xinjiang rocked as 12 killed in fresh violence

Six people died in explosions and another six were shot dead by police in China's Xinjiang, authorities said Saturday, in the latest wave of violence to hit the restive region.

The violence in Xinhe in Aksu prefecture in China's far west appears to be linked to triple explosions that rocked the same area on Friday evening, which authorities said resulted in three deaths.

It is unclear if the three deaths reported Friday are included in the latest tally of 12 fatalities.
"As police were dealing with violent incidents a mob threw explosives," with six people killed by police, five arrested and another six killed as they "committed the offence", the Tianshan news portal, which is run by the local government, said Saturday.

Xinhe is an area located at China's extreme west, on its border with Kyrgyzstan and populated predominantly by members of the country's Uighur minority.

Tianshan reported late Friday that triple explosions killed three people and wounded two others in the same area of the largely Muslim region.

One person was killed after two blasts in a hairdressing salon and market, while two others died inside a car which "self exploded" when surrounded by police, Tianshan said.

The vast western region has for years been hit by sporadic unrest by predominantly Muslim Uighurs, which rights groups say is driven by cultural oppression, intrusive security measures and immigration by Han Chinese.

In recent months it has seen more regular violent incidents, usually involving men armed with knives and explosives, according to official media.

Beijing attributes the unrest to religious extremists and separatism.

The most serious recent violent incident took place in the Turpan area of Xinjiang, leaving at least 35 people dead in June.

Cheers

[gunjur]

Apologies if already posted.

Who Will Be the Next China?

[gunjur]

Apologies if already posted elsewhere on BRF

China and Taiwan in first government talks

China and Taiwan have held their first high-level talks since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

Wang Yu-chi and Zhang Zhijun, the top cross-strait officials from each side, attended the four-day talks in Nanjing.

No official agenda was released for the talks, which are widely seen as a confidence-building exercise.

China regards Taiwan as part of its territory. In the past, all talks have gone via quasi-official organisations.
Mr Zhang, head of mainland China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said: "It's impossible to imagine in the past that we could sit here and meet."

"We must have some imagination if [we want to] resolve some difficulties, not just for such a meeting, we should also have a bigger imagination for cross-strait future development," he added.

Mr Wang, head of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, described the meeting as "a new chapter for cross-strait relations".

"For us to simply sit at the same table, sit down to discuss issues, is already not an easy thing."

Improving ties
Given the sensitivities, the meeting room had no flags on display, and the officials' nameplates had no titles or affiliations, the AFP news agency reported.

Beijing insists that Taiwan is part of China and has a stated aim of reclaiming the island.

Taiwan still calls itself the Republic of China and nominally claims the same territory as the Communist government in Beijing, although it does not press these claims.

The US is committed to defending Taipei, despite not formally recognising Taiwan as an independent country.

The situation has created a decades-long military stand-off between Beijing and Washington.

But cross-strait ties have improved since Taiwan's pro-Beijing President Ma Ying-jeou was elected in 2008.

Cross-strait flights began in 2008, and tourists from the mainland have boosted Taiwan's economy.

Trade agreements have allowed Taiwanese technology firms to expand massively, investing billions of dollars in the mainland.However, Mr Ma is unpopular and analysts say his governing Kuomintang party is likely to lose local elections later this year.

Universal value'
The talks are the first formal government-to-government dialogue since the 1949 split.

For years, mainland China and Taiwan dealt with each other indirectly, though so-called friendship associations and trade groups, the BBC's Celia Hatton in Beijing reports.

Amid all the smiles, tension remains: China refuses to retract its long-standing threat that it could eventually take back Taiwan, by force if necessary, our correspondent adds.

Taiwan negotiators are likely to propose the posting of permanent representatives on each other's territories.

But they will also face pressure to talk about press freedom after China refused accreditation to several media outlets.

"Press freedom is a universal value," Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.

"We've repeatedly said that the most important thing regarding news exchange between the two sides is the free and equal flow of information."

Many Taiwanese are sensitive to issues of press freedom, having lived under a dictatorship that tightly controlled the media until the 1980s.

Correspondents say Beijing's negotiators are likely to press for closer economic co-operation.

[KrishG]

At least 27 dead in "terror" attack at Chinese train station

At least 27 people have been killed in a "violent attack" at a train station in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming carried out by a group of unidentified people brandishing knives, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua said on Sunday.

Another 109 were injured, the report added. It said the attack had taken place late on Saturday evening.

State television said on its official microblog that the incident had been deemed a "violent terror attack".

Pictures on the Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo showed bodies covered in blood lying on the ground at the station.

There was no immediate word on who was responsible.

State television said on its official microblog that domestic security chief Meng Jianzhu was on his way to the scene.

[UlanBatori]

Pakiness? This is far from Uighuristan, but relatively close to Myanmar border. Gives new meaning to the term "Flashmob" Black dresses - fashion statement? Pak Army burkhas?

[anmol]

27 killed, 109 hurt in knife attacks in China's Kunming city
by PTI, economictimes.indiatimes.com
March 1st 2014 8:14 PM

BEIJING: Twenty-seven people were killed and 109 others injured when a group of unidentified men armed with knives attacked a railway station in the capital of China's southwestern Yunnan Province today.

State-run Xinhua news agency ran a news flash saying 27 people were killed and 109 injured in the incident in the provincial capital city of Kunming when knife-wielding men attacked the city's railway station.

Pictures on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, showed local police patrolling the station.

Bodies in blood were spotted on the ground in the pictures. Doctors were seen transporting injured people to a local hospital.

A Weibo user who was dining in a restaurant near the railway station, said that she was "scared to death," adding that she saw a group of men in black with two long knives chasing people, Xinhua said.

The suspected terrorist attack came ahead of the meeting of theChinese parliament next week.

The origin of the attackers is not yet known or whether they hailed from northwestern Xinjiang province where China says the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al-Qaeda-linked group is stirring up a separatist movement among the ethnic Muslim Uyghurs.

Several such attacks have taken place in Xinjiang in recent months as the remote province has been witnessing ethnic unrest between the native Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese from the mainland for the past few years.

Three people were killed in an attack by the ETIM at the iconic Tiananmen Square in Beijing last year, when a car crashed into a crowd of tourists.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=290_1393687533

[UlanBatori]

AoA! My co-yak-herders are being unphairly blamed!

Members of a separatist group from Xinjiang, in northwest (Himchal), are believed to have carried out the assault, authorities said. The report referred to them as terrorists. Police said that, in addition to killing at least four attackers, they had shot and wounded a female suspect.
Mass knife attacks are not unprecedented in China. Some occurred in 2010 and 2012, but the attacks happened at schools and didn't appear to have political connections.

[Peregrine]

An interesting account of opinion shaping:
Milder Accounts of Hardships Under Mao Arise as His Birthday Nears

The famine that gripped China from 1958 to 1962 is widely judged to be the deadliest in recorded history, killing 20 to 30 million people or more, and is one of the defining calamities of Mao Zedong’s rule. Ever since, the party has shrouded that disaster in censorship and euphemisms, seeking to maintain an aura of reverence around the founding leader of the Communist state.

They deny that tens of millions died in the famine — it was at most a few million, some of them say — and they accuse scholars who support higher estimates of fanning anti-party sentiment.

“The big rumor that 30 million people starved to death in the three years of hardship,” said a headline in September in The Global Times, an influential party-run tabloid.

The headline accompanied a commentary by a mathematician, Sun Jingxian, who has won publicity for his claim that at most 2.5 million people died of “nutritional fatalities” during the Great Leap Forward. He argues that bigger estimates are an illusion based on flawed statistics.

Suraj Ji :

I am sorry that I cannot Tabulate but here is the Documented Loss of Population during the Period 1958 - 1962

China Population and Development Research Center

http://web.archive.org/web/200312191208 ... otpope.htm


.............……………………………INCREASE

1955...…. 614,560,000…...11,900,000

1956....… 628,280,000…...13,720,000

1957...….645,630,000.....17,350,000……REDUCTION FROM
………………………................................ 1956-1957 INCREASE

1958...…. 659,940,000.....….. 14,310,000........... 03,040,000

1959...…. 672,070,000.....….. 12,130,000......…… 05,220,000

1960...…. 662,070,000........-10,000,000......…. 27,350,000

1961...…. 658,590,000......…-03,480,000......…. 20,830,000

1962...…. 672,950,000.....……14,360,000.......……02,990,000

1963...... 691,720,000.....……18,770,000

1964...…. 704,990,000....…...13,270,000

1965.......725,380,000....….. 20,390,000

As such the “Loss of Population” 1958 – 1962 was 59,430,000

I hope my Figures make sense although in reality the Loss should be greater

Cheers

[Suraj]

Thanks, Peregrine, for the data!

[UlanBatori]

Northern Himachalians show their mettle

[Gus]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014 ... nother-day

They peered at the photo blankly, leaning to take in the details.

"Is it from South Korea?" asked a student studying for a doctorate in marketing, with no flicker of recognition.

"Is it Kosovo?" a young astronomy major guessed.

The photo they were staring at so intently was the iconic image of China's 1989 pro-democracy movement — — which showed a lone Chinese protester blocking a column of tanks rolling down the wide boulevard toward Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The extent is such that only 15 out of 100 students at four Beijing universities identified the Tank Man picture as being taken in their capital in 1989. Nineteen students incorrectly guessed it was a military parade, a higher number than those who recognized it.

Among the few that knew the photo, its visceral power produced reactions that were sometimes physical; students tensed up immediately, some even shied away from the photo.

"This is a sensitive topic," one undergraduate at Peking University said nervously. When asked if he would talk about it, he answered, "I think I cannot," then took off, almost at a run.

The brutal suppression of the protests in 1989 remains so taboo that the names of these students have been withheld. It is an episode of history that is neither taught in schools nor mentioned in the official media.

The countless books lining the shelves of China's bookstores have no mention of the movement that swept the country in the spring of 1989; the flood of propaganda peddling the government line — that these were counter-revolutionary protests — that appeared in the immediate aftermath has vanished.

On China's vibrant social media, censors try to delete references to the June 4 crackdown, no matter how elliptical. This year, banned terms include "25 years," "this day," "mourn" and, somewhat poetically, "when spring becomes summer."

For the vast majority of today's young Chinese, the events of 1989 are unknown or as remote as ancient history. They are preoccupied by economic concerns such as getting a job or saving money to buy an apartment. For them — living in fast-paced cities filled with newly constructed mirrored skyscrapers — the retrospective justification provided by a quarter-century of rapid economic growth is convincing, especially when weighed against the fate of the Soviet Union and its former satellites.

As one earnest post-graduate student told me: "The thing to consider is: If another party rules our country, what would be the outcome? Maybe it won't be as desirable as people thought."

Even as she admitted that the Communist Party had mishandled its response to the 1989 protests, she decided that maybe it had been for the best.

"You have to be grateful for the things they have done for us," she concluded.

Such views are the result of the patriotic education classes introduced into schools after 1989. This two-decade-long campaign — one of the largest ideological campaigns in human history — was born out of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's conviction that the 1989 movement occurred due to a lack of ideological and political education. In seeking to reassert its legitimacy, nationalism was the best – perhaps the only – tool available to China's Communist leaders....
..

[Philip]

"Neville Max-ill",long time India hater and Chinese mouthpiece is at it again.He offers Mr.Modi some gratuitous advice in hoping to generate pro-Chinese debate in advance of the visit of the Chinese hegemonmist,in the near future.In his paen of praise of China,there is no mention of how the Chinese are treating the Tibetans,reeling under the Han jackboot and their fate.Mr.Modi would do far better to listen to HH the Dalai Lama before engaging with the Chinese neo-imperialist,than take the advice given to him by its rent-boy.He wants Mr.Modi to be India's "Gorbachev"! The man who destroyed the Soviet Union in exchange for a false promise of ending the Cold War and non-expansion of NATO,which Mr.Putin has tenaciously fought against and restored much of Russia's strategic super-power status and economic revival.I'm sure Mr.Modi can see through this Middle Kingdom's mouthpiece's sinister's advice and resemble more of Mr.Putin than Mr.Gorbachev (surely that role was played by Dr.Snake-oil Singh?)!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Home ... 960836.cms
What Modi can do with China
Neville Maxwell | Jun 3, 2014,

Many of those proffering ideas to India's new prime minister are suggesting he should emulate Richard Nixon who belied his reputation as a fierce anti-communist with an audacious diplomatic breakthrough to make an American peace with China. But a far more apt exemplar for Narendra Modi would be Mikhail Gorbachev, who assumed power in Moscow in circumstances, so far as Soviet relations with China were concerned, with a great deal in common with India's today.

Just as had Nehru's India previously, the USSR in the 1960s adopted an intransigent and bullying approach to China over their border disputes, brushing aside Beijing's reasonable and practical suggestion that differences be subjected to negotiation with the haughty insistence that there were no disputes, that Sino-Soviet boundaries ran exactly where Moscow said they ran.

To its unyielding refusal to negotiate, the USSR added its own variant of a "forward policy". It began to exercise armed force to drive the Chinese off the two great continental rivers, Amur and Ussuri, which together, under the 19th century Sino-Russian Treaty of Peking, comprise the boundary features in their eastern sector.

Defeat in the fierce battles fought in 1969 on the ice of Ussuri river left a bitter memory in Russia, official and popular. And Moscow followed Nehru's example again, accusing China of "unprovoked aggression" to cover up its own record of provocative bellicosity. For years Sino-Russian relations stayed frozen in hostility.

So Gorbachev inherited a deadlocked territorial quarrel which had in the recent past brought the USSR and China to the point of war, and with ideological differences to intensify the estrangement. He broke out of that stalemate with a variant of Nixon's audacity: in a much heralded 1986 speech in Vladivostok he called for friendship with China — and slipped into his text a fundamental reversal of policy, implicitly accepting the need for general negotiations over the disputed borders.

Beijing responded promptly, negotiations began, Sino-Russian enmities waned and in due course (it took over a decade) their boundaries were agreed and diplomatically settled, to the last kilometre, with many seemingly intractable contradictions being resolved in the process. The way was thus opened to entente cordiale between Moscow and Beijing which has today become arguably the most important element in world affairs.

The parallels between the position Modi inherits and those that faced Gorbachev are clear. For India today the bitter memory is of the earlier but much greater defeat in the 1962 border war. Consequently, Indian public attitude towards China simmers always just below the boil, its elite steadily fuelling it with complaints and charges about Chinese "incursions" over unmarked, intangible and disputed borderlines.

Modi enjoys many advantages, however, both personal and official. Personally, he has developed positive links with China, offering a foundation of familiarity upon which to build mutual trust. And a record of quasi-diplomatic exchanges about the border dispute has been built up over many years, with inevitable progress towards mutual understanding between the governments at the official level. Those are enough, if he has the will, to open the way for Modi to seize the great prize that has for decades been waiting for an Indian prime minister with the imagination and courage to claim it — a Sino-Indian boundary settlement.

For it has been the cruellest irony in the Sino-Indian estrangement that replaced the friendship Nehru long preached but then destroyed that their border dispute is entirely factitious and was at first eminently resolvable. Each country securely holds the territory vital to it and has no need or real desire for territory it cartographically "claims".

The dispute over the McMahon Line, for example, is essentially legalistic rather than territorial. India clings to the British-coined falsehood that this borderline derives legitimacy from the 1914 Simla Conference, making negotiation otiose; this has made it impossible for China to give expression its readiness, made clear by Zhou Enlai and cautiously maintained by Beijing's leaders since his time, to ascribe legitimacy to McMahon's alignment, the de facto border China inherited.

As for Aksai Chin, Nehru's claim to that long-held Chinese territory was always chimerical and for a new government in New Delhi to waive it in return for some Chinese territorial concessions — the essence of boundary negotiation — would be only to free the country from an albatross.

That is not to say that a Sino-Indian boundary negotiation would now be easy and straightforward, as it would have been when Zhou Enlai first called for it in the late 1950s. It would strike difficult contradictions of interest, for example Tawang, which, unlike the rest of what Beijing nowadays calls "Southern Tibet", was seized not by British imperialists but by independent India in 1951.

But there is nothing as difficult as the trickiest problems faced by the Sino-Russian negotiators, certainly nothing that could not be overcome if both sides sincerely sought agreement. Since intergovernmental exchanges over the borders have long been established, Modi would be spared even the need for a signal such as Gorbachev sent in Vladivostok.

An instruction to officials engaged to turn those into genuine boundary negotiations, following an overall understanding in principle reached with Beijing's leaders, and grandly announced, would be enough to set the two countries on the road back to friendship, a turning which might in the end have as much global significance as does Sino-Russian amity.

The writer is a journalist who covered the 1962 India-China war. He leaked the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report earlier this year.

[Shreeman]

June 4:
Death(s) 241–2,600
Injuries 7,000–10,000
NGO response Zilch
Visa denials 0

[Aditya_V]

Where are these 241-2600 deaths suppossed to happen on June 4?

[Shreeman]

Where are these 241-2600 deaths suppossed to happen on June 4?

25th anniversary of 1989, see the date has no significance to you, nor scale of the event.

[Philip]

How swiftly does memory fade,esp. of such a diabolic attack on human life and dignity.The picture of an ordinary Chinese stopping a column of tanks by just standing in their way can never be erased from human memory ,just as the shot of a totally naked little girl running in pain on a roadway after an American napalm attack in the Vietnam War,stirred the conscience of America. So too was the picture of the little child buried in the earth,with only the face and its lifeless eyes open,as testament to the unholy Bhopal gas disaster,where Warren Anderson,the then chairman of Union Carbide,lives in luxury,safe from justice while lakhs of sufferers have yet to get relief from their aftereffects that have debilitated their lives.

Tian Men was one such moment in time,forever frozen as the event that exposed China's hypocrisy and savagery.

25 years on from a day that shamed a nation: Tiananmen square massacre – as it happened
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 81466.html

It is a quarter of a century since the People's Army put down China's incipient protest movement with shocking brutality. Michael Fathers, The Independent's then Asia Editor, was there. These were his dispatches from the atrocity
Michael Fathers

Tuesday 03 June 2014
Michael Fathers, who was beaten up by frenzied troops, reports on how China's leaders broke faith with their people.

I was at the southern end of the square at midnight, walking along the main boulevard to see the student barricades. Suddenly, out of the night, two Armoured Personnel Carriers appeared from a side street and roared down the boulevard, one behind the other, smashing through the barriers. They were followed by about 3,000 soldiers who positioned themselves near the square. One APC stalled and was set on fire by the mob.

I kept walking towards a barricade of buses a mile away, where four lorries with troops and two earth-moving vehicles were trapped on either side by buses and people. Then flares and tracer bullets shone from behind me and the cracks of automatic gunfire could be heard. The troops were advancing on the square. My colleague, Andrew Higgins, was behind at Qianmen Gate, the front entrance to the square. He said the troops surged past the Roast Duck restaurant and were met with a hail of bricks and stones before they opened fire. Everyone fled but then regrouped.

To the north, more gunfire could be heard. I moved up a side street heading for the Avenue of Eternal Peace, where tanks had broken through a barrier of burning buses. It was 1.30am and the start of a huge troop advance to the square. About 50 Chinese and I hid at the entrance to a tiny lane and watched them. Other people were on the roofs of the houses. The armour was followed by troop trucks, scores of lorries, interspersed with petrol tankers, lorries with mesh trailers for prisoners and some stores.

How The Independent reported the massacre at the time How The Independent reported the massacre at the time Having successfully walked past the soldiers as they moved to the square in the south, I decided to leave the lane and follow this other army to Tiananmen, about half a mile away. The Avenue of Eternal Peace was deserted. Cracks of gunfire mingled with explosions from two burning buses behind me, a military lorry and two Jeeps ahead of me. Further towards the square, on the northern side of the avenue, was New China Gate, the entrance to Zhongnanhai, the compound of China's Communist Party leaders beside the Forbidden City.

I looked behind as I walked along the pavement on the opposite side. A squad of army goons, waving pistols, electric cattle prods and batons were running towards me. They jumped me, screamed at me, pointed a pistol at my head, beat me about the legs with their batons and dragged me across to New China Gate. Several soldiers broke ranks and ran to me, punching me, kicking me with karate leaps in the back, thighs and chest. There was pure hatred in their eyes.

They pushed me down into a kneeling position and had another go at me, whacking me across the back with their rods and kicking, always kicking, until I fell over. They pulled off my spectacles and crushed them into the ground. They screamed at me. Then they took me behind a stone lion guarding the gate. Their first thought was that I was an American. One man who spoke some English realised I wasn't. They put two guards beside me.

Backlash: the army responded with violence to peaceful protests (Corbis) Backlash: the army responded with violence to peaceful protests (Corbis)
If this is the People's Army, God spare China. They behaved like the Red Guards, with a systematic and frenzied brutality. They were the very institution that was once called out to protect China from the Red Guard excesses. Now they are killing civilians.

The smooth face of the Chinese Communist establishment appeared two hours later, dressed in cream flannels and a pastel T-shirt, the very image of "moderation" that the Foreign Office has come to believe is the new China and whom it can trust over Hong Kong. "You have committed an unfriendly act," he said. I thought that was a bit much. "You fell over, didn't you? That's why you have that bruise on your arm." I also had boot marks and bloodstains on my shirt from a baton blow. My right knee was swollen, my hips were aching, my trousers were ripped. He confiscated my notebook and gave me a receipt and a written pass to get beyond the army lines into a side street.

All the while the lorries kept rumbling forward, stopping from time to time until the citizens of Peking were pushed back from the northern end of the square by the entrance to the Forbidden City.

Andrew Higgins was by now crawling in the mud in front of the vermilion-painted grandstands beside Mao's portrait at the Gate of Heavenly Peace, as bullets whizzed over his head. At first, he said, there was some panic among the young soldiers when they saw the huge crowd. But they were ordered to open fire. An APC was set alight by a youth who climbed on to it when it stopped. The crew were pulled out and beaten, but students intervened and rescued them.

A celebrated image of a man trying to stop the tanks entering the square (AP) A celebrated image of a man trying to stop the tanks entering the square (AP)
The army had nabbed me at 2am. By 4am when they let me go, the gunfire could still be heard from the square. At one stage some students came from side streets, shouting "go home, go home" to stalled lorries outside the leadership compound. They were scattered by militia men with clubs like axe-handles, which cracked a few skulls. It was probably the one occasion during the night when they did not use guns.

Along the tree-lined streets beside the Forbidden City, groups of people were talking softly, scared but curious. They treated me as a bit of a hero when they saw my bruises and carried me on the backs of their bicycles for about a mile to the rear entrance of the Peking Hotel, on the other end of the square. Soon after I arrived, about 10 tanks and 20 APCs rumbled past the hotel. About half an hour later some of the armour returned again from the square, and in a continuing moving circle, they opened fire all around. Two buses were smouldering outside the hotel.

It was a battlefield. It was a lesson in brute power. I blubbed when I got back to my hotel near midday. I couldn't stop. Perhaps it was shock, or maybe it was because of the carnage. I was weeping for the people of Peking. I cannot see how they are ever likely to trust their leaders again.

***

The rape of Peking

By Michael Fathers and Andrew Higgins

It was the worst single act of violence against the Chinese people since the Communist Party took power in Peking 40 years ago. Hundreds were dead, many more were wounded and still the People's Liberation Army continued throughout yesterday and into the early hours of this morning to fire on the capital's citizens.

Tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) which had blasted their way into Tiananmen Square spread out across the centre of the city, opening fire from time to time with machine guns at groups of people who were on the streets. From 3am onwards, nearly 90 fresh tanks roared in from the city's eastern suburbs along the main boulevard past Tiananmen Square to reinforce those already in Peking.

The capital had become a city under siege. Fires could be seen burning in the south of Peking early this morning. The chatter of gunfire and the thunder of an electric storm shook the night. The people of Peking, outraged by the bloodletting, continued to challenge the military despite the massive forces arrayed against them. Students, whose seven-week campaign for political change triggered the onslaught, yesterday displayed the grisly evidence of the killing. They paraded corpses of fallen comrades at their universities.

Crushing blow: soldiers in armoured vehicles fired on the public in Tiananmen Square (Corbis) Crushing blow: soldiers in armoured vehicles fired on the public in Tiananmen Square (Corbis)

In Hong Kong more than 200,000 nervous residents appeared at a rally to mourn the dead in Peking and called for a general strike on Wednesday. "What happened in Peking has broken confidence in Hong Kong's future," said Elsie Elliott Tu, a member of the Legislative Council. Margaret Thatcher, in a statement from Downing Street, said she had been "appalled by the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed people". Although she could "understand the deep anxiety" felt in Hong Kong, which reverts to China in 1997, Britain would "continue to stand by its commitment to a secure future" for the colony and was "confident" China would do the same.

Students in Shanghai erected barricades and bus drivers went on strike. Roads leading to Fudan University and Tongji University and those to the waterfront by the Peace Hotel were blocked. The streets of central Peking were covered with bloodstains, rubble and the wreckage of Saturday night's pitched battle. At the far western end of the Avenue of Eternal Peace, a long line of APCs were gutted and smoking. Several miles in the other direction, the burned body of a soldier was strung up and dangled from an overpass. Headless corpses, crushed by tanks and APCs, were lying on other roads.

State radio, quoting the army newspaper, Liberation Army Daily, said the armed forces had achieved a great victory and crushed counter-revolutionary violence. The official media gave detailed accounts of military casualties, saying 1,000 soldiers had been hurt. It acknowledged only that there had been some civilian casualties. Reports in Peking said the civilian death toll could be as many as 1,400. Across the city, hospitals were overflowing with bodies lying in blood-smeared corridors. Doctors said they were unable to cope with the carnage and many injured were likely to die for lack of attention. In one hospital, a power cut forced surgeons to operate by torchlight to remove bullets.

The state radio unconsciously mimicked the infamous American adage in Vietnam that to save the village you had to destroy it. In explaining the military assault on Peking, the radio said: "It was necessary to undertake that action to save lives and property."

The troops control Tiananmen Square, the site of the student protest and now the focus of a massive military build-up. More than 100 tanks, dozens of APCs and tens of thousands of troops occupied the square and its surroundings. Throughout the day a helicopter acted as a spotter for the army, taking off and landing in the square repeatedly, and apparently tipping off troops at any sign of a large gathering of civilians.

The square was the army's, but the battle for the streets had yet to be won. The fight for the hearts and minds of Peking's citizens seems already lost. Students and an independent and illegal workers' union have called for a general strike today to express public outrage. However, work already seems to have stopped. Public transport is not operating, many people, frightened and appalled by the violence, have kept away from work.

Activists duck for cover during the Chinese crackdown (Corbis) Activists duck for cover during the Chinese crackdown (Corbis)
New violence seems likely after the capture of an APC by the students and reports that they are building an arsenal of their own from captured weapons. Several university campuses have been surrounded by troops and armoured vehicles. Student leaders urged their colleages to stay indoors, but they seemed to be losing control as anger over the military onslaught on their peaceful movement replaced the carnival mood of previous weeks.

Ordinary citizens taunted the troops with chants of "fascists", "murderers go home". Slogans attacking Li Peng, the Prime Minister, had been daubed in blood on buses and walls. "Li Peng, you will never be at peace," read one message in fresh blood on the side of a booth. Others condemned 84-year-old Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader. According to one report Mr Deng, although in serious condition in hospital, had given the order for the troop advance into the capital, saying that the youth movement had to be suppressed "even if they are protesting out of ignorance". Acknowledging that many ordinary people had joined the student cause, he is alleged to have said: "In China even one million people is still only a small number."

The savagery of the army's action came against a background of political turmoil brought about by the impending succession. How ill Mr Deng is remains unclear, but factions within the party and the military have already begun to stake their claim to lead China when Mr Deng does finally leave the scene. How to handle the students' Democracy Movement became the focus of the battle for future supremacy. Mr Deng's once-ordained successor, Zhao Ziyang, the party General Secretary, called for moderation towards the students and has been stripped of his authority, though not yet his title.

Opposing him and, for the moment victorious, is Li Peng. The final outcome is far from certain and he is now not only reviled by Chinese people as a butcher, but totally dependent on the fickle loyalties of the military.