Very cool find.Akshut wrote:
If you're in the intelligence business, Google Earth makes hiding big things nearly impossible. This image is believed to be of a 1.8-square-mile scale model of a disputed region on the border of China and India. Google Earth spotters found it in a remote area in north central China (Google Earth coordinates 38.265652,105.9517)
He speaks Mandarin chinese language and can sort it out.NRao wrote:The current Sino-Aussie drama seems to be a version II of Nehru's Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai. Rudd is in for a bad ride thou'.
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/l ... pfrogs.php
Jul 15 2009, 12:20PM
Dr. Chu in China: Warnings, Money, Leapfrogs
Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are both in China today, forming a new joint research program for US/China cooperation on clean vehicles and buildings with China's Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang. (The very fact that Chu and Gang are sitting down to talk is reason for some hope: They are cut from similarly brainy optimistic technocratic cloth and before government both spent a long time at the cutting edge of private industry's research. Chu was at Bell Labs, where he won a Nobel. And Gang was at Audi's research center in Germany. Having interviewed both of them, I can easily imagine them having a beer. But if they do, there will be a leapfrog under the table, testing out its first hops.
Chu and Locke are on a unenviable chore of a mission to get China to publicly commit to reducing CO2 emissions. The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital Blog points out that the tensions in this mission are evident in the difference between the WSJ headline ("Chu Warns China on Emissions") and the China Daily's: "Chu Says US Ready to Lead on Climate Change." The less public truth, as Chu knows from his stint at LBNL, which works extensively with China, is that China is very concerned about the environmental and competitive impacts of climate change and legislation and is preparing extensively and helter skelter, but not talking about it much. (Here's an article I wrote about the extent of China's energy efficiency program and its 20 year cooperation with LBNL.) Numerous bureaucrats told me that they were coming to see carbon reductions as a competitive strategy, particularly against the slower moving US, and a way of breaking out of the trap of low-cost labor as the country's competitive advantage. In the Reuters article, Locke rightly points out that China needs far more than energy efficiency.
And that's where Wan Gang comes in. He returned to China from Germany after writing a highly influential paper saying that the only way for China to dominate the auto industry of the future is to be a pioneer in alternative fuel vehicles. Aka Leapfrogging. (Here's an article I wrote about that mission for Wired. Substitute hybrid and electric for hydrogen and note that Wan Gang's fortunes have risen considerably.)
China can't bet its future on leapfrogging anymore than the US can bet its competitiveness on preventing the worldwide adoption of emissions standards. Will Chu and Gang figure out a collaboration that satisfies the competitive urges of both?
It is funny you mention Mandarin.Acharya wrote:He speaks Mandarin chinese language and can sort it out.NRao wrote:The current Sino-Aussie drama seems to be a version II of Nehru's Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai. Rudd is in for a bad ride thou'.
So the FHL/DIE has spoken. She is with the Uighers and drags India into the mud.shravan wrote:Pallavi Aiyar: Urumqi is not too different from Godhra
Anyone care to guess, why is this issue being brought up ?. My guess is US is pressurising us on Kashmir, and India is responding that we need clarity on Aksai Chin, which the pukes have given to the sugar (cheeni) daddy
..Why did India suspend exports to IranAt the moment, Iran's gasoline imports are not affected by U.S. sanctions or the international, U.N.-agreed sanctions. But the willingness of other countries to sell gasoline to Iran has faltered as political pressure mounts over Iran's nuclear program. India, a major supplier, recently suspended exports of gas for a brief while, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. "If you really want to use effective sanctions, then you want to cut off gas imports," says Erica Downs, China energy fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "If the Chinese do invest $40 billion and dramatically increase Iran's refining capacity, it would definitely weaken one of the weapons in the U.S. arsenal."
with what India did in Egypt we can expect the US to hand over everything to others and take over Indian armed forces for itself.Guddu wrote:Anyone care to guess, why is this issue being brought up ?. My guess is US is pressurising us on Kashmir, and India is responding that we need clarity on Aksai Chin, which the pukes have given to the sugar (cheeni) daddy
When you buy for US$2 in New York an umbrella that's made in China, you have to wonder how they do it. After all, the umbrella components have to cost something, there's shipping, and there's profit for numerous middlemen and the retailer. Among the economic miracles unfolding in China over the past two decades, the most mysterious may be how a country that skipped the Industrial Revolution, substituting the Cultural Revolution, became the low-cost factory floor to the world.
Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's Production Game provides fascinating and disturbing answers. Chinese manufacturers cut corners wherever they can, from product quality to factory equipment and maintenance. They unilaterally change product and packaging specifications to trim costs. They raise prices after the deal is signed, leaving the importer to absorb the added cost. They reproduce their customers' products for sale at higher margins in other markets.
Intangibles also boost the Middle Kingdom's appeal to Westerners. China is exotic without being bizarre, romantically foreign yet as familiar as the local Chinatown. People may speak a different language and use that weird writing, but they wear familiar clothes, not robes or headdresses. Chinese don't pray five times a day, sacrifice animals, or insist visitors adopt odd gestures such as bowing. While this 4,000-year-old civilization insists on its cultural uniqueness, modern China has also made conscious efforts to accommodate Western business. For example, Midler cites the widespread use of English names, in sharp contrast to Japan or India, where cultural barriers for foreigners begin with local names.
More like China would seize the opportunity to attack India:
It would really funny if India managed to grab a sliver of Tibet and held on to it.Sanjay M wrote:
More like China would seize the opportunity to attack India:
http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/07/ ... india.html
I think Israel plays an increasingly critical role in strengthening India's defence, I have always wondered about Israel's relations with China. How strong are China - Israel relations? Would that affect Israel's support for India?NRao wrote:IF China gets hold of Indian land, the US will have to play dumb - make proper noise (as with Pakistan). It will not side either side but will say the proper things (resolve stuff, etc).
But, if India were to get a decent bit of Chinese land, then I am not sure if the US will play the same game.
India, it is said, is geared for a 1.5 war (Offense with one and defense with the other). This time around it will have to defend against Pakistan and cream China (no option there).
Also, I am inclined to believe that Israel will have to play a very decisive role: both as a supplier and if it becomes a two front war to keep Uncle in line.
Asking for too much from Indian politicians. Proactive decision making is not YET a forte of Indians in general.Prabu wrote: Anger Against Beijing
What about Generals in India?NRao wrote:Proactive decision making is not YET a forte of Indians in general.
The Chinese approach of systematically nurturing and promoting diplomatic linkages with Bangladesh provides it with a number of strategic advantages against India. Likewise, there are also several related strategic fallouts for Bangladesh. As far as China is concerned, it will be in a position to link its electronic listening systems at Coco Island in Myanmar and the staging/listening systems in Bangladesh and monitor Indian naval and missile activity. Given the wide disparities in the India-Bangladesh naval order of battle, Bangladesh would be under pressure to open its facilities to the PLA Navy as a countervailing force against the Indian Navy. The prospect of Chinese ships and submarines operating in the North Andaman Sea would have serious repercussions for India's projection capabilities. This is sure to result in some aggressive counter-maneuvering by the Indian Navy, and the Indian naval response would be to execute a blockade and entanglement of Chinese naval assets in Chittagong.
India and US sign and China (www chinadaily com) makes the content: US-India defense "pact".
Let's start with India. WSJ this week hosts Jeff Smith with a nifty review of China's spidery encirclement of the subcontinental state. Apparently New Delhi announced it was increasing its troop presence in the Himal in response to Chinese expansionism, provoking the usual tantrums from Beijing. That region of the world doesn't get all the sexy media coverage that the Taiwan Strait gets, but it is a powder keg in its own height-challenged, oxygen-deprived way....
In recent years however China has been raising the temperature at the border. Chinese claims to Arunachal Pradesh and frequent Chinese "incursions" into the nearby Indian state of Sikkim have begun to multiply in line with Beijing's rising economic and political influence. Moreover, unlike India, China has methodically developed its infrastructure along the disputed border, littering the barren terrain with highways and railways capable of moving large numbers of goods and troops.
For its part, New Delhi has become both increasingly aware of its disadvantage and exceedingly suspicious of China's intentions. India's June 8 announcement that it will deploy two additional army mountain divisions to the northeastern state of Assam will bring India's troop levels in the region to more than 100,000. The Indian Air Force, meanwhile, announced it will station two squadrons of advanced Sukhoi-30 MKI aircraft in Tezpur, also in Assam. They will be complemented by three Airborne Warning and Control Systems and the addition or upgrade of airstrips and advanced landing stations. This is part of a broader effort to bolster India's military and transportation infrastructure in its neglected northeast.
When it comes to India it is possible for writers to state seriously that China is heating things up. These are the same tactics it uses with Taiwan, but the curious fact is that in the Taiwan case, the island takes the blame. Probably because it is more difficult to find Indians willing to carry water for Beijing than Americans.....
Upon hearing India's plans, Beijing became irate. The People's Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece that serves as a window into the thinking of Beijing's insular leadership, published an exceptional broadside against New Delhi on June 11. It described India's "tough posture" as "dangerous," and asked India to "consider whether or not it can afford the consequences of a potential confrontation with China." China is not afraid of India, the editorial taunted, while mocking India for failing to keep pace with China's economic growth. The editorial reminded New Delhi that Beijing had friends in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal but most importantly, it left no doubt about Beijing's future position on Arunachal Pradesh: "China won't make any compromises in its border disputes with India."
This is exactly the same tone that China takes with Taiwan: the Peaceful Riser(tm) erupts with threats and taunts. You could replace "India" with "Taiwan" in that paragraph and not miss a beat... right down to the same stupid visa and status games:
This is not the first time China has lost its cool over the border issue. Back in 2006, China's Ambassador to India ignited a political firestorm when he declared the "whole state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory... we are claiming all of that. That is our position." Later, on two separate occasions, China denied visas to Indian officials from Arunachal Pradesh, explaining Chinese citizens didn't require visas to travel to their own country.
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China has been applying pressures as well. This March, China broke with Asian tradition and tried to block a $2.9 billion loan to India at the Asian Development Bank, furious that the loan would fund a $60 million flood-management program in Arunachal Pradesh. (Last week China was overruled with help from the U.S., and the loan went through.) Before that, Beijing clumsily attempted to torpedo the U.S.-India nuclear deal from its seat at the Nuclear Suppliers Group. And of course, China remains an opponent of India's bid to join the United Nations Security Council and a staunch ally of India's nemesis, Pakistan.
Thank all gods China is a Peaceful Riser(tm) and not a belligerent, expansionist power intent on grabbing pieces of its neighbor's territories, eh? Smith also notes:
But what riles India most is China's incursion into its backyard and the belief China is surrounding the subcontinent with its "string of pearls" -- Chinese "investments" in naval bases, commercial ports and listening posts along the southern coast of Asia. There are port facilities in Bangladesh and radar and refueling stations in Burma. Thailand, Cambodia and Pakistan now all host Chinese "projects;" China's crown jewel is the Pakistani deepwater port of Gwadar.
Then there are Sri Lanka and Nepal, India's immediate neighbors, where civil wars have opened space for Beijing to peddle influence. A bloody insurgency by Maoist rebels in Nepal gave way in 2006 to power-sharing agreement now on the brink of collapse. China has openly supported the Maoists against the royalist establishment backed by India. In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, the decades-long civil war between the Hindu Tamil minority and the Buddhist Sinhalese majority was decisively ended by the latter May, but not before Beijing could gain a foothold in the island-nation. Appalled by the brutality of the fighting, India had scaled back its arms sales to Colombo in recent years. China happily filled the vacuum, in return gaining access to the port at Hambontota on the island's southern coast.
In addition to all this, Smith also says that China supports Maoist rebels in India. Note that India does none of these things to China -- there are no Indian bases on the Senkakus or in Korea. Maybe New Delhi ought to expand its contacts with Japan, including joint defense exercises...
Just the other day Mathew Rudolph sent me a mail from the U.S. informing me of the death of Ji Xianlin. He was a greatly venerated Chinese scholar who had “secretly translated the Sanskrit-Hindu text of the Ramayan into Chinese during the Cultural Revolution”. Ji Xianlin died on July 11 at the age of 98.
This news saddened me greatly, and for a variety of reasons. Foremost amongst them was, of course, the passing away of such a great scholar. He was foremost amongst those responsible for keeping alive the delicate plant of “South Asian studies in China between the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the revival of popular Chinese interest in India in the late 1990s.”
What I found as even more remarkable was the spontaneous outpouring of popular grief and the official Chinese sentiment at Ji’s passing away. Obviously this grief cannot be attributed to Ji’s lifelong connection with India, but his great scholarship of Indian languages was renowned, and I do not know that for those Chinese who think of Ji and India together “it is largely the romantic view of India as the land of Buddha’s birth.” Also, certainly for some Chinese, “the spiritual elements of ‘Hindu mythology’ and thought”.
Timothy B. Weston of the University of Colorado, paying his tribute, writes to say: “It has been moving to watch the response in China to the July 11 death of renowned scholar, Ji Xianlin (1911-2009). While Ji’s unsurprising departure at the ripe old age of 98 has not brought quite the same flood tide in China as [say] Michael Jackson’s unexpected death a few weeks earlier at age 50 [did] in the United States” (or around the world) the manner in which this venerable scholar is being remembered in Beijing is truly remarkable. The Communist Party paid handsome tributes and leaders followed suit. Long lines of people wishing to “pay their last respects waited for hours to gain entrance to a memorial ceremony held on the Beijing University campus where Ji taught”. The press was full of tributes “to the man from academe.”
This is the other aspect that saddens me; the knowledge that Ji’s death went almost entirely unnoticed in India. I certainly came across no reference to it. And this made me reflect whether an “elderly Indian scholar” would receive similar attention (or any) in India?
Ji was doubtless an outstanding scholar. His career was “noteworthy for its singular achievements and cosmopolitan dimensions.” Originally a student of Western literature at Quinghua University, Ji travelled to Germany in 1935 for study. At the “University of Gottingen he moved in a new direction, choosing to major in Sanskrit and other ancient Indian languages under the direction of Ernst Waldschmidt and Emil Sieg.” Ji received his Ph.D. in Germany and after World War II returned to China where he took a position at Beijing University and founded the Department of Eastern Languages. He chaired that department for the next three decades and built it into one of the most important academic departments and China’s premier centre for the study of Eastern languages.
Ji’s greatest scholarly accomplishments were really in the realm of “the history of Indian Buddhism and comparative linguistics.” According to his former student Zhang Baosheng, now a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at Beijing University, Ji’s academic achievements “represented the next wave of greatness within the long, proud tradition of Chinese evidential scholarship.” Whereas Chen Yinke, Ji’s patron and celebrated historian, used “literary works as a means of verifying history”, Ji pioneered a method of “using comparative linguistics to verify historical events and to track changes over time.” Ji’s scholarly findings over the course of his career won for him “academic prizes in India, Iran and Japan”.
In his later years, Ji had become a “living symbol of the ideal Chinese scholar, and as such of a type of person who it is ever more difficult to find in today’s fast-paced, money-crazed Chinese society.” Here was a man who had been born and raised in “the old society, who knew the classics, who had attained great fame and yet who did not attempt to convert his glory into power, wealth, or celebrity, who in fact talked down his achievements and continued to work hard at his research as long as he was able.” He was not a Confucian philosopher but he did come to be seen as a “Confucian sage” who personified the committed life of the scholar. His integrity and wisdom, not just his outstanding scholarly achievements, led to his being recognised as a “national treasure,” though he himself rejected such labels.
I pay my homage to this great Indologist from China.
(The writer is a Lok Sabha MP for the Bharatiya Janata Party and a former External Affairs Minister.)
NEW DELHI, July 30: China is in possession of 38,000 sq km of Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir after the 1962 war besides 5180 sq km of land illegally ceded by Pakistan under an agreement in 1963, the Rajya Sabha was informed today.
Replying to questions on Indian land occupied by China, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna said in a written reply that India had always maintained that this Boundary Agreement between China and Pakistan was ‘illegal and invalid’. The Government had raised the issue in all negotiations with the Chinese side including in the meetings of Special Representatives.
To a question concerning the strained relationship between India and China over a ‘small area’ in Sikkim, the Minister denied that the relationship was strained. Regarding the queries if China had threatened to remove heap of stones lying on the border areas and if India had banned entry of Chinese army in Indian territory, the Minister replied ‘doesn’t arise’.
Regarding the Chinese secretly building a port at Humbantota, located in south of Sri Lanka, Mr Krishna said the Government was aware of the port development with Chinese assistance since 2007 and India had not approached Sri Lanka regarding this issue. (UNI)
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A second man died of pneumonic plague in northwestern China as authorities quarantined a town to stop the disease spreading.
The 37-year-old man died yesterday in Ziketan in Qinghai province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. He was a neighbor of a 32-year-old herdsman who was the first person in the town to die from the disease, according to the report.
After virtually agreeing there was no need to “demonise” Beijing as a potential threat, the National Security Council meeting last Saturday emphasised the need to watch China carefully in the context of its recent actions vis-a-vis New Delhi in the Nuclear Suppliers Group on the Indo-US nuclear deal, ADB funds for Arunachal Pradesh and UN action to designate Pakistani Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) founder Masood Azhar a terrorist.
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This indicated that Beijing saw New Delhi as a competitor for the high table and would use every opportunity to put India down. Newly appointed Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao spoke at length on China and National Security Advisor M K Narayanan summarized at the end of the meeting.
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The essence of the discussion indicated that China would concentrate on Arunachal Pradesh — or South Tibet as it calls it — after it sorted out the Taiwan issue. The meeting noted that progress on upgradation of infrastructure on the Indian side was slow with environment hurdles in building roads in Arunachal Pradesh.
The chiefs of the Armed Forces briefed the meeting on India’s defence preparedness and indicated the need to overcome delays in weapons acquisition. The Army chief made it clear that artillery modernisation was long delayed since the 155 mm Bofors howitzers had been bought way back in 1986. The Air Force talked about the need to increase and modernise the two-decade-old air defence radar network. The Navy spoke on delay in acquisition of the aircraft carrier Gorshkov.
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engti wrote:New member, so apologies if I am posting in the wrong section.
I was recently checking Arunachal Pradesh out on Google Maps, and almost every place had a chinese name.
You can see what I mean by visiting this link http://maps.google.co.in/maps?q=chitrad ... =9&iwloc=A
Screenshot of it here http://twitpic.com/b7hsu/full
While I don't think the Chinese govt. made Google do this directly, what probably what happened is that Google has used some chinese map which showed Arunachal Pradesh as belonging to China.
Still, those of you who know about how disputed this region is, know that there is definitely no way we can allow this to stand, esp. on a site as popular and as heavily used as this.
So anybody has any idea how we can change this? I have tried to raise this with journalists I know. But journos these days have no appreciation of history. Historical claims have been made on our territory on flimsier grounds.
Anyway, if I huffing and puffing for nothing please do tell me so