Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

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Arjun
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Arjun »

http://www.timesnownews.com/india/artic ... ina/204005

The clarification from MEA does not address whether the supposed advisory is true or not...
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Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Peregrine »

How Trump could really hurt China on trade: Target electronics

US President Donald Trump’s proposed steel and aluminum tariffs won’t cause China too much pain. If he really wants to land a blow on the biggest trading nation, he would need to target electronics, toys and textiles.

Metals were just 5.1 per cent of American imports from China in 2016, World Bank data shows, while machinery and electronics made up 48 percent. Miscellaneous items like furniture and toys accounted for 16.5 per cent of imports. Textiles and clothes made up 8.6 per cent.

The data show Trump is attacking the wrong imports if he wants to cut the huge trade deficit with China, and that doing so would require measures against higher value products. Problem is, tariffs on goods such as electronics would ripple across a vast global supply chain, hurting US allies from Japan to South Korea and Taiwan.

“If Trump really wants to hit China’s exports to the US, he’ll have to move beyond small fry steel and solar panels to big ticket items such as electronics and telecom products,” said Louis Kuijs, chief Asia economist at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong. “Any serious attempt to bring down the US trade deficit with China will need to focus on the big categories.”

Trump said on Thursday that the US will slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to protect national security, a major escalation of his hawkish trade agenda that could hit producers from Europe to Asia and spur global retaliation. He said he plans to sign a formal order next week that will impose tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on aluminum.

The announcement came the same day Chinese president Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, Liu He, was scheduled to meet with Trump’s economic team in Washington: White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The tariffs may provoke retaliation from China, the world’s biggest steel and aluminum producer. US tariffs “overturn international trade order,” and “countries including China will take relevant retaliatory measures,” Wen Xianjun, vice chairman of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, told Bloomberg Friday via WeChat.

Beijing has already launched a probe into US imports of sorghum, and is studying whether to restrict shipments of US soybeans -- targets that could hurt Trump’s support in some farming states. While China accounts for just a fraction of US imports of the metals, it’s accused of flooding the global market and dragging down prices.

Trump warned this week that the US will use “all available tools” to prevent China’s state-driven economic model from undermining global competition. On China trade though, action against steel, aluminum and solar show he’s yet to bring out the heavy artillery.

“To have a large effect he would have to go beyond individual products to broad restrictions on imports of labor-intensive products from China: footwear, garments, smartphones, televisions and appliances,” said David Dollar, a former US Treasury attache in Beijing and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The US focus on narrowing the bilateral trade deficit puts China in an untenable position because it’s driven as much by macroeconomic conditions in the two countries as it is by trade policies, says Eswar Prasad, a former chief of the International Monetary Fund’s China division and now a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

With a major fiscal expansion underway in the US at a time when the economy is already gaining momentum, the US trade deficit is bound to rise further, says Kuijs at Oxford Economics.

That sets the stage for a potential tit-for-tat trade confrontation. China’s economic might gives Xi’s government the leverage it needs to strike back decisively, including scaling back purchases of American products and subjecting well-known US companies with large Chinese operations to tax or antitrust probes.

China hasn’t been shy about threatening US corporate interests. A Communist Party newspaper warned in late 2016 that a trade war would have economic consequences. "Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus," the Global Times said in an editorial. "US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted."

"There will definitely be a rhetorical reaction" from China, Andrew Polk, co-founder of research firm Trivium China in Beijing, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. "But I wouldn’t expect them to comeback, counter-punch very hard because their whole goal is to make sure that the heat of a trade war doesn’t get ratcheted up."

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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Singha »

Cheen has arrested the relatives of 5 journalists all foreign citizens who wrote about treatment of uighurs
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by SSridhar »

India, Vietnam vow to jointly work for open Indo-Pacific - ToI
India and Vietnam on Saturday inked three pacts, including one on nuclear cooperation, and resolved to jointly work for an open Indo-Pacific, while calling for a rules-based regional architecture.

In their talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang also vowed to expand bilateral cooperation in several key sectors, including defence, oil and gas, and agriculture.


"We will jointly work for an open, independent and prosperous Indo Pacific region where sovereignty and international laws are respected and where differences are resolved through talks," Modi said in a media statement in the presence of the Vietnamese President.

"Both sides are committed towards expanding the bilateral maritime cooperation and for an open, efficient and rules-based regional architecture," he said.

The remarks come amid China's growing assertiveness in the region.

On defence cooperation, the Prime Minister said both sides decided to collaborate in defence production and explore opportunities in transfer of technology.

During the talks, Modi said India and Vietnam have also "agreed" to deepen trade and investment ties in sectors such as oil and gas exploration, renewable energy, agriculture and textiles.

The three pacts signed after the talks between the two leaders would provide for cooperation in areas of nuclear energy, trade and agriculture.

Earlier in the day, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on the Vietnamese president.

Their discussions focused on steps to further strengthen country's comprehensive strategic partnership by expanding cooperation across all sectors, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Quang was also given a ceremonial reception at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
shiv
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by shiv »

My new video

Chinese Navy Access to the Indian Ocean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRBhZ2ATWqI
VinodTK
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by VinodTK »

shiv wrote:My new video

Chinese Navy Access to the Indian Ocean
^^^ Very good video Shiv, thanks for putting it together
kit
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by kit »

shiv wrote:My new video

Chinese Navy Access to the Indian Ocean
cool video boss !! .. is that your youtube channel ?.. looking forward to new ones 8)
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Bart S »

https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-young-rur ... mistresses
Management Centre at Renmin University in Beijing, published this January, showed that 95 per cent of corrupt officials had illicit affairs, usually paid for, and 60 per cent of them had kept a mistress.

Until recent crackdowns forced greater discretion, Chinese official life had two social circles. As the mobster Henry Hill puts it in the film Goodfellas (a key reference point for Chinese provincial officialdom): ‘Saturday night was for wives, but Friday night at the Copa was always for the girlfriends.’

At dinner with Shanshan, Xiaoxue and Lingling — two of Shanshan’s slightly older friends from Sichuan — they all agreed that the social circuit had disappeared of late, and that it had come largely as a relief. ‘It used to be a big part of work,’ said Xiaoxue, who was kept by a businessman back in Sichuan. ‘You had to make yourself look really pretty, and you had to make up to the most important people there, but not so much that the woman they came with would get jealous. But you still had to be…’ she started to flutter her eyelashes and raised her voice an octave: ‘Oh, you’re so clever! Oh, what important work you do! Oh, you’re really 55? You look so strong!’

‘That was how I came to Beijing,’ Lingling added. ‘I was with an official in Neijiang [in Sichuan], and they were hosting an inspection visit. One of the officials who was visiting really liked me, and he asked the guy I was with then to lend me to him, in exchange for connections. So I slept with him while he was in Neijiang, and then he brought me up to Beijing. But it didn’t work out between us.’

‘If you’re an official, you have to have a mistress, or at least a girlfriend,’ Xiaoxue said, ‘otherwise you’re not a real man. I used to have this friend who was a fake mistress. She was best friends with a gay guy — not a “duck” [male prostitute], just a normal gay guy — who was an official’s boyfriend. So the official would pay her to come out with him and pretend to be his mistress.’
I wonder if WinXi the Pooh has done away with this as well :rotfl:
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by AlapArya »

shiv wrote:My new video

Chinese Navy Access to the Indian Ocean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRBhZ2ATWqI
Just subscribed to you man. The work you do is amazing! Yes, the Cheeni Navy posing any threat to the IN in the IOR is just a fantasy of Emperor Eleven Gin Pegs. Hence, the proxy Terroristan is important for their overall OBOR via CPEC stratagem. If we are to counter China anywhere, it should be at the PoK. Need to cut them off and deny Cheen access to Pakistan by any means possible!
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by shiv »

Thanks guys. I have another video about the "String of Pearls" coming up..
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Ashokk »

India, China try to reset ties ahead of Modi’s SCO trip
NEW DELHI: India and China are preparing for a series of high-level interactions leading up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in June and both sides are expected to tone down some of the hardline approaches that have characterised bilateral relations in the past few months.
Teams of Indian and Chinese experts on transborder rivers will meet in Hangzhou between March 26 and March 30 to discuss sharing of information. During the Doklam stand-off last year, China had refused to share hydrological data. India has been concerned at China’s dam-building exercise on the Brahmaputra.

From April 13-15, China’s National Development and Reform Commission will hold a strategic and economic dialogue with India’s Niti Aayog. The last such dialogue was held in 2016. This will be followed by a meeting of SCOforeign ministers in Beijing at the end of April.

The series of interactions will culminate with the PM’s visit to Qingdao for the SCO summit on June 9. Post-Doklam, India and China are trying to put the pieces together.

This was most evident with foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale writing a note to government officials to desist from attending events by the Dalai Lama as bilateral relations are in a “sensitive” zone. The note, leaked to the media, gave the impression that India has decided to roll back engagements with the Tibetal spiritual leader. However, a foreign ministry statement on Friday said India’s position on the Dalai Lama is “clear and consistent”. “He is a revered religious leader and deeply respected by the people of India.

There is no change in that position. His Holiness is accorded all freedom to carry out his religious activities in India,” it said. Asked for his assessment of the leaked note, China analyst Claude Arpi said, “There is no doubt that the coming months will be hot (especially when the passes in the central and eastern sectors open). But suppose India had bent backwards in Doklam, would the Chinese have been ‘nicer’ and supported a seat for India in the UN Security Council? The answer is no. Bending backwards will not help Delhi.”

In February, Gokhale had travelled to Beijing for his first meetings with the Chinese leadership in his current position. The schedule of meetings for the coming months were firmed up after he met both Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and special representative Yang Jiechi. Both Wang and Yang had visited India after Doklam. Wang credited the resolution of the Doklam crisis to the “mature” leadership of both countries. After his most recent meeting with Gokhale, Wang continued to ask India to be “prudent”.

The official readout of the meeting has him telling Gokhale that “the two sides should increase strategic mutual trust and accelerate common development based on the political consensus of the leaders of the two countries. It is hoped that India will handle sensitive issues with prudence and work toward the same goal of promoting healthy development of China-India relations”.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Julian_Bashir »

20 year lurker, first time poster, be kind

Posting in full as subscription required

Edited to remove copyright issues[*]

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/i ... 268dbdbd92


Myth 1: China is simply resuming its “natural” position as the world’s greatest power after an anomalous 200-year “blip” of Western industrial and technological primacy.

Myth 2: China’s strategic culture is non-expansionist and pacifist, and this makes it different from the colonialist and imperialist West.

Myth 3: Chinese elites have a wise, long-term view of the world — a mandarin view, as it were.

Myth 4: China’s current borders — and even its extraterritorial claims, such as those in the South China Sea — date back to “ancient times”.

Myth 5: Chinese mariners sailed all around the world long before Europeans, discovering the Americas and igniting the Italian Renaissance.

Myth 6: The Chinese Communist Party has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the past 30 years

Myth 7: Liberal democracy is incompatible with Chinese culture.

paulmonk.com.au
Last edited by Julian_Bashir on 05 Mar 2018 01:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Pratyush »

We have a DS 9 fan on the forum. :mrgreen:

Welcome.

Please edit your post and leave the link only as to avoid any copy right issue.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by shiv »

Julian_Bashir wrote:20 year lurker, first time poster, be kind

Posting in full as subscription required

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/i ... 268dbdbd92
Thanks for posting
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by chola »

Julian_Bashir wrote:20 year lurker, first time poster, be kind
Julian, many thanks for posting. I will answer the myths from my perspective on the commanding heights of Wall Street :)
Myth 1: China is simply resuming its “natural” position as the world’s greatest power after an anomalous 200-year “blip” of Western industrial and technological primacy.
But does the PRC actually claim this or it is a projection on the part of the Western media (but not the Western business or diplomatic circles)?

We know from their negotiations on trade and financial regimes like the WTO the Chinese ALWAYS stake claims on being poor and under-developed to game the system. We see chini corporations do the same. I see very little in the practical world where it is claiming to be the world’s greatest power. It consistently asks for exceptions and privileges granted for other third world nations which is far more dangerous, IMHO, than a major power actively pulling its own weight.

On Wall Street, the chini negotiating stance is always “we are poor, we deserve this break and that break because we are third world and developing.” Basically, they expected Western firms to partner and hand over technology to them as a form of welfare because they see themselves as underdeveloped and entitled to it. Again, I find this more dangerous than a blowhard nation claiming to be number one because the tactic actually works when combined with a large market and China ends up with a lot of technology and access that others, including India, cannot get.
Myth 2: China’s strategic culture is non-expansionist and pacifist, and this makes it different from the colonialist and imperialist West.
The second myth’s narrative works hand-in-glove with their negotiation tactic of “being third world, poor and in need of privileges reserved for the third world.” It also smooths their way into the actual third world and allows a sort of privilege as the “non-western” or “non-colonial” fellow third-world super power that can help them with money, infrastructure and, most importantly, imported goods.
Myth 3: Chinese elites have a wise, long-term view of the world — a mandarin view, as it were.

Myth 4: China’s current borders — and even its extraterritorial claims, such as those in the South China Sea — date back to “ancient times”.

Myth 5: Chinese mariners sailed all around the world long before Europeans, discovering the Americas and igniting the Italian Renaissance.
The myths above (3, 4, 5) are pretty useless or counterproductive, IMHO, and not worth bothering with. Every nation will project that its people have a great long term view of the world, that its borders and claims are historical and just and that it had done great things in thr past (sailed around the world in this case.) None of that really affects negotiations which give the PRC actual material advantages.
Myth 6: The Chinese Communist Party has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the past 30 years

Myth 7: Liberal democracy is incompatible with Chinese culture.
Now the above two (6, 7) are complete myths but not things that we as Indians should actively work to change.

I don’t give a damn whether the chini people is “unshackled” from the CCP. In fact, I want them to remain shackled if the communist party is less effective than a liberal democracy.

It is no advantage to us in having a democratic Cheen that is freer, more efficient and pulling in even more Western investments. Why would we want a PRC with the per capita income of a Japan, SoKo or Taiwan? Let them stay communist.

Overall, the first “myth” is not a chini propagated myth but a western imagination of one. This is dangerous because how the PRC actually gains advantage globally is using tactics that hides their role and responsibilities as a major power never mind being the “greatest” power.

Myths 3 to 7 are meaningless and won’t help them. Myths 6 and 7 are good for India in the long term. CCP-dominated Cheen is far less potentially wealthy (and less dangerous to our standing) than a free China built along the lines of Japan, Taiwan or Singapore.

Myth 2 is the one that we should actively fight against. This is the one that gives them a free ride in Africa, South America, the Middle East and Turd World Eurasia. We should make it clear to the world, especially the turd world, that Cheen is equivalent to the West as a colonial presence in their land.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by shiv »

The purpose of the article is to remove western myths. The article does not say that the Chinese claim all these things. Since we Indians blindly follow any myths that Western man throws at us in English the article is a lesson for Indians.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Julian_Bashir »

:D @Pratyush..Thanks

@Chola, what Shiv Saar said, I have nothing more to add.
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Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Peregrine »

'Maybe we'll give that a shot': Donald Trump praises Xi Jinping's power grab

Donald Trump has celebrated Xi Jinping’s bid to shepherd China back into an era of one-man dictatorship, suggesting the United States might one day “give that a shot”.

China’s authoritarian leader took power in 2012 and had been expected to rule until 2023. However, last week it emerged that Xi would attempt to use an annual meeting of China’s parliament, which kicks off on Monday morning, to abolish presidential term limits by changing the Chinese constitution.

Liberals have condemned the power grab, which will almost certainly be approved by members of the National People’s Congress who have flocked to Beijing for the two-week summit. Experts say the amendment paves the way for Xi to be China’s ruler-for-life. “This is a critical moment in China’s history,” Cheng Li, a prominent expert in elite Chinese politics who has criticised the move, told AP.

However, Trump offered a more positive assessment during a fundraising event at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he hosted Xi last April. “He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great,” the US president reportedly told Republican donors.

“And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot some day,” Trump added, according to CNN which obtained a recording of what it described as an upbeat, joke-filled speech.

Even before Trump’s controversial remarks Chinese activists and dissidents had voiced disappointment over the lack of criticism from western governments and leaders.

“This kind of reaction is very short-sighted,” said Zhou Fengsuo, a democracy activist who has lived in exile since fleeing the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

“This kind of permanent leadership never ends well … history tells us it will not just be a Chinese issue, it will have a deep and profound influence on the world ... [China] will see a lot of uncertainty and likely conflict because of this.”

The topic of Xi’s power grab is so politically sensitive within China that nearly all of the academics approached by the Guardian for comment in the lead-up to Monday’s congress declined to talk.

Xing Hua, the only Chinese scholar who agreed to be interviewed, claimed foreign journalists were “over-interpreting” and “over-emphasising” the move. “I hope western media can view this proposal in a comprehensive and objective manner,” said Xing, from the China Institute of International Studies, a state-run think tank.

However, western experts say they are convinced Xi’s plan is to rule for many years to come.

“He’s now 64. So he has got at least 20 years [left in him] … that would take him almost to the centenary of the establishment of the People’s Republic [in 2049],” said Roderick MacFarquhar, a Harvard University China expert.

MacFarquhar said China’s “supreme ruler” was seeking to change China’s constitution rather than simply ignoring it, so as to avoid looking like “some sort of Banana Republic”. But the effect was the same: “He’s signalling: ‘I’m going to stay on forever.’”

“Dictators are always arrogant,” said Qiao Mu, a journalism professor who moved into exile in response to Xi’s reign. “It’s a disaster for political civilization.”

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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by chanakyaa »

Not sure why the Times group, which makes enough money to afford to produce original articles, simply peddles articles from other websites (Bloomberg in the case). Most of the outsourcing to China happens on behalf of mega corporations, but the fake news producers will spin it as a tariff thing. The tariffs may not survive in the WTO. If/When it gets overturned, DT will go back to his blue collar, average six pack voter and say that its WTO's fault. In the meantime, election promise checked.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by shiv »

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... g-its-time
TH: Can you very briefly describe what Xi Jinping Thought is?

KR: Xi Jinping Thought is less a body of ideological concepts than an assertion that he has parallel political status to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. That’s his core political point.

If we were to delve deeply into the publications for which Xi is responsible and ask how does that differ from Marxism, Leninism, Mao and Deng thought; or how does it differ from Jiang Zemin’s theory of what is arcanely called The Three Represents (how you bring entrepreneurs into the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party) or Hu Jintao’s Theory of Scientific Development (which was about how you incorporate sustainability into the framework of China’s economic development), there will not be anything that’s fundamentally incompatible. It is a statement primarily of his personal political authority early in his political career.

TH: We are under the impression that Xi’s very popular in China right now. There are, I’m sure, many Chinese old enough to remember the chaos that ensued at the end of Mao’s reign, and we’re often told that younger Chinese want some sort of new freedoms or additional liberties. Do you think there’ll be any shift in public opinion against him for this term-limit move? Or do you think he has entrenched himself as the nation’s father sufficiently?

KR: Well, China’s political system, which is an authoritarian structure and unapologetically so, does not permit organized dissent. And also, the strength and power and authority of its security apparatus are organized in a way that dissent is simply not possible at any scale. I think Xi Jinping will be very conscious, however, that by abolishing a term limit on the presidency, which was inserted into the Chinese Constitution in 1982 after the Cultural Revolution, that that will attract a lot of comment, criticism and attention from across the ranks of the party itself. But it’s unlikely that these will become manifest in any political challenge at this stage toward his continuing political authority.

TH: But by that you mean there’s going to be more ruffled feathers inside the party elites than with the public at large?

KR: The party at large will have a view that this is Xi Jinping -- he’s the leader. And there’s a Chinese four-character phrase which says, "Bow your head and listen to the organs.” As for the public, and the public will have a range of different views, but in the large part, they are concerned about their standard of living, their ability to get a job, whether air pollution is under control, or that they have a good and positive life compared with what they had before.

But, in intellectual circles and in certain private-sector entrepreneurial circles, questions will be raised about whether this has a significance broader than term limits itself. In other words, does it signal a bigger turn to the left in Chinese politics in respect to the economy? That I think will be the question alive in Chinese domestic politics as discussed below the surface in this period.
KR: Over the years I’ve probably spent five, six, seven hours in conversation with Xi Jinping either directly on the telephone or in smaller groups. What do I make of him personally? I think he’s a person of extraordinary intellect in the sense that he is well read in terms of his own country’s history but also in international history. He comes to the position with a well-defined worldview, which is the subject of my particular study at Oxford at present. But secondly, he’s a guy of extraordinary self-confidence. This is a fellow who never uses briefing notes in his discussion. He is confident enough to range across any subject that you lay on the table. And therefore, he’s the sort of political personality with whom -- assuming the U.S. president has a comprehensive and integrated worldview -- you can productively deal.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Arjun »

Interesting that both the governments in China and Turkey, traditional Paki backers, are showing their true colours and 'coming out of the closet' at around the same time....Will an Axis of Evil become much more evident over the next 5 years, in a throwback to the world of the 1930s ?
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Prasad »

Can't summarise all of them. Better to read them in full. Yet another series of articles -
China using big data to detain people before crime is committed: report
Called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, or IJOP, it assembles and parses data from facial-recognition cameras, WiFi internet sniffers, licence-plate cameras, police checkpoints, banking records and police reports made on mobile apps from home visits, a new report from Human Rights Watch finds.

If the system flags anything suspicious – a large purchase of fertilizer, perhaps, or stockpiles of food considered a marker of terrorism – it notifies police, who are expected to respond the same day and act according to what they find. "Who ought to be taken, should be taken," says a work report located by the rights organization.

Another official report shows how reports generated by IJOP are used to send people to an "Occupational Skills and Education Training Centre" where political re-education is carried out.
https://twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/9 ... 9015510016
Facial recognition system at railway station in Wuhan. This is in Hubei. Not Tibet or Xinjiang but China proper.

Xinjiang to invest in poorest areas
Under the new plan, officials will be sent to 192 areas in the 22 counties and stay there until 2020, with 144 volunteers assisting the anti-poverty work.
Not sure if I've posted this one earlier. But I do remember the QR-coding of knives from an earlier article. Defly read this one.
What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State
But state repression in Xinjiang has never been as severe as it has become since early 2017, when Chen Quanguo, the C.C.P.’s new leader in the region, began an intensive securitization program.

Mr. Chen has brought to Xinjiang the grid system of checkpoints, police stations, armored vehicles and constant patrols that he perfected while in his previous post in Tibet. The C.C.P. credits him with having quieted there a restive ethnic group unhappy with its rule. In his first year governing Xinjiang, Mr. Chen has already recruited tens of thousands of new security personnel.
Xinjiang assigns 76,000 officials to poor villages
In an effort to enhance work in extremely poor villages and to alleviate poverty, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Committee in Xinjiang has assigned 76,000 officials and 12,000 working groups to cover every village in the region, the Xinjiang Morning Post reported on Thursday.

Video: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-c ... resentment

This one is from Foreign Policy (heads-up for those who don't like to give them page hits) But do read -
A Summer Vacation in China’s Muslim Gulag[url]
ince announcing a “people’s war on terror” in 2014, the Chinese Communist Party has created an unprecedented network of re-education camps in the autonomous Xinjiang region that are essentially ethnic gulags. Unlike the surgical “strike hard” campaigns of the recent past, the people’s war uses a carpet-bombing approach to the country’s tumultuous western border region. Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang’s party secretary and the architect of this security program, encouraged his forces to “bury the corpses of terrorists in the vast sea of a people’s war.” But the attempt to drown a few combatants has pulled thousands of innocent people under in its wake.

“The videos (at re-education camps) featured a state-appointed imam who explained legal religious practices and appropriate interpretations of Islam. Sometimes the videos had skits warning about the consequences of engaging in ‘illegal religious activities,’ which are displayed on large posters outside every religious site in the region. In one skit, a young man was apprehended for studying the Quran at an underground school, a practice authorities are trying to eliminate.

At a recent security meeting in Kashgar in Xinjiang, a Han Chinese official told a crowd of Uighurs: “You can’t uproot all the weeds hidden among the crops in the field one by one — you need to spray chemicals to kill them all.”


[url=http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/02/chinese-police-are-secretly-demanding-personal-information-from-french-citizens-uighurs-xinjiang/]Chinese Police Are Demanding Personal Information From Uighurs in France
mid a global campaign to monitor and control the Uighur diaspora, Chinese police are demanding that Uighurs living in France hand over personal information, photos, and identity documents — and in some cases, the personal information of their French spouses.

Police officers from local public security bureaus in China have asked French Uighurs to send their home, school, and work addresses, photos, scans of their French or Chinese ID cards, and, in some cases, the ID cards of their spouses and scans of their marriage certificates if they were married in France.


One Uighur living in Paris who now has French citizenship first refused to comply, then gave in when relatives in China asked the individual to send the information and documents, including home address, school name and address, work name and address, and a scan of the individual’s French passport.

“I was very, very angry. I said, ‘I am not Chinese, I am French, I have nothing to do with China,’” the Uighur living in Paris told FP, requesting anonymity. “My family said very sadly, ‘Yeah, but you are Uighur and we are here.’”

“Hello, I am a police officer with the [redacted] police station,” begins one such WeChat conversation, viewed by FP, in mid-2017. “Let’s have a good talk, otherwise it will be a lot of trouble to have to pay a visit to your father and mother’s house every day.”

The police officer went on to demand that the recipient send contact information, copies of diplomas from French schools, work and home addresses, proof of employment, and a copy of the individual’s passport. The officer also asked the individual to take a photo of themselves standing next to a famous local building, presumably to verify the individual’s location, and to send that, too, along with photos of their workplace and school.
"Full Employment” in Tibet: The Beginning and End of Chen Quanguo’s Neo-Socialist Experiment
Publication: China Brief Volume: 18 Issue: 3
By: Adrian Zenz

Image

Draft_Report_on_Tibets_Linguistic_MinoritiesBeijing’s ‘crime tipster’ population reaches 140,000 in 2017
"At first I downloaded the smartphone app intending to catch a celebrity taking drugs and report it on the platform," Gao Liao, a 30-year-old Chaoyang resident told the Global Times on Monday.

"I have now learned how to report a fire, knowledge about counter-terrorism as well as some knowledge about how to protect myself and others from the app," she said.

Authorities have thanked the "Chaoyang masses" for tips that landed celebrities in hot water, notably the case of actor Wang Xuebing, arrested in 2015 on drugs charges.
China’s “Social Credit System” Will Rate How Valuable You Are as a Human
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ArjunPandit
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ArjunPandit »

^^it will be an anal-ytical way to purge useless people
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by chola »

ArjunPandit wrote:^^it will be an anal-ytical way to purge useless people
Eugenics at its core.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Arjun »

To be fair, there are a number of social media based credit scoring systems being used in the West and India...what's the difference out here ?
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Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Peregrine »

China hikes defence budget to $175 billion - three times that of India's

BEIJING: China today announced a 8.1 per cent hike in its defence expenditure for this year to a whopping $175 billion, which is over three times higher than India's defence budget+ , as it seeks to further advance an ambitious modernisation drive for its military.

The 8.1% increase is higher than last year's announcement, when China upped military spending by 7% over the previous year.

According to a budget report to be submitted to the National People's Congress (NPC) today, the 2018 defence budget will be 1.11 trillion yuan ($175 billion).

China last year increased the defence budget to $150.5 billion. China is the second largest spender on defence after the US. The Pentagon has requested a budget of $686 billion in 2019, up $80 billion from 2017.

The increase of China's defence budget by 8.1 per cent this year, is three times higher than India's latest defence budget of about $46 billion.

A new military order? Defence spends by China, Russia, India on the rise

China's budget announcement comes as President Xi Jinping, the commander in chief of the country's armed forces, focuses on increasing both the sophistication and reach of the country's military.

Though China announced its military spending at about $150.5 billion last year, observers say it is considerably higher, considering it is now building two more aircraft carriers in addition to the one already in service as well as addition of new jet fighters, including stealth fighter J-20.

The Chinese Navy also expanded its global reach with flotilla ships sailing through the far-off oceans to expand China's influence.

The official media justified the increase to $175 billion, saying although slightly higher than the previous two years, the growth rate is the third time to dip into the single digit since 2013, following 7.6 per cent in 2016 and 7 per cent in 2017.

China's defence budget takes up a smaller share of its gross domestic product (GDP) and national fiscal expenditure compared with other major countries, Zhang Yesui, the spokesperson of the NPC told the media here yesterday.

Its military spending per capita is also lower than other major countries, Zhang said.

"A large part of the growth of the defence budget is to make up for the low military spending in the past and is mainly used to upgrade equipment and improve the welfare of servicemen and women and the living and training conditions of grassroots troops," he said.

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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Bart S »

Arjun wrote:To be fair, there are a number of social media based credit scoring systems being used in the West and India...what's the difference out here ?
This is not a social media based credit scoring system but a social credit system tracking actual behavior.

This is very much needed in India. For e.g if you are one of the idiots who doesn't queue properly at the toll gate and causes traffic jams, or spits on the road, or runs a red light, your social credit should go down and you should be regarded as a lower quality person with less access to certain privileges. If you are a habitual litterer, this should show up on your record and a potential employer should be able to see your behavior and track record. You are a 'student activist' who advocates Kashmiri separatism, your social credit should go down to the point where you are never eligible for a govt job.

We have a large mass of people with no civic sense or decency who can get away with it with impunity.

If we have a large enough database of social/behavioral data like that, perhaps the algorithms currently used to predict customer behavior etc can similarly be used to preempt the likes of Nirav Modi and the bank officials who helped him.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Singha »

there were warning signs of nimo and choksi way back from people who dealt with them in the industry, delayed payments, sending subpar diamonds but charging top money, the more ethical elements in the trade refused to have anything with nimo choksi duo after getting burned.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by shiv »

Bart S wrote: This is very much needed in India. For e.g if you are one of the idiots who doesn't queue properly at the toll gate and causes traffic jams, or spits on the road, or runs a red light, your social credit should go down
It was called the caste system. We have now rejected it by law but we do follow it by other means, This is OT for this thread
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Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Peregrine »

Xi may Scare Asia Back Into Washington's Orbit

China has a new emperor. Can Trump strike back?

One thing seems certain about Xi Jinping’s move to establish himself as China’s dictator for life: The bolder and more openly assertive foreign policy he has pursued since taking power five years ago is here to stay. The conventional wisdom is that the U.S., its Asian allies, and the broader international order are thus in for a rough stretch, as China demands its place in the sun. “Xi’s consolidation of power,” writes my Bloomberg View colleague James Stavridis, “will make China an even more formidable competitor.” Less appreciated, though, is that this approach could also end badly for China, because Xi may be overplaying his country’s hand.

What’s indisputable is that Xi’s approach to foreign affairs marks the culmination of a break with Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxim that China should “hide our capabilities and bide our time.” The basic idea was that China’s neighbors and the U.S. would seek to contain a rising power that too openly displayed its geopolitical ambitions. To discourage foreign hostility, and to ensure access to the trade and investment, Beijing should therefore keep a low profile and avoid picking fights when possible.

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, Beijing followed this strategy with remarkable fidelity, achieving enormous gains in what Chinese analysts called “comprehensive national power” while provoking remarkably little international resistance.

Yet more recently, China has been moving in another direction. The process started in 2008-09, before Xi assumed power, when the global financial crisis led Chinese officials to conclude -- prematurely -- that America had been dramatically weakened, and that Beijing could accelerate its bid for primacy in the South China Sea, East China Sea and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific. The shift has accelerated significantly since Xi took over.

Over the past five years, Xi’s steady accumulation of authority at home has been mirrored by his bid to make China a recognized and respected great power on the global stage. Under his leadership, China unilaterally declared an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea and undertook a remarkable campaign to build and militarize artificial islands in the South China Sea. Beijing has pushed projects -- such as the Belt and Road Initiative, Regional Comprehensive Economic Project, and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank -- meant to draw neighboring countries into China’s economic orbit and weaken U.S. influence.

Chinese commentators have also talked up the concept of “Asia for Asians” -- code for a regional order from which America is excluded -- and the Chinese military has ostentatiously displayed “carrier-killer” missiles and other weapons meant to keep Washington at arm’s length.

And since late 2016, China’s quest for international power and leadership has gone into overdrive. At the Davos World Economic Forum in early 2017, Xi depicted China as a global leader on trade and climate issues, in unsubtle contrast to U.S. policies. At the 19th Party Congress in October, Xi declared that China could now “take center stage in the world” -- as explicit a repudiation of the “hide and bide” strategy as one can imagine. The message Xi is sending is that China is no longer willing to wait indefinitely for its geopolitical moment. The time to make China great again is now.

The reasons for this insistence are both personal and geopolitical. By all accounts, Xi has a strong sense of his own destiny, and wants to be the leader who restores China to its historical statute and prominence. And with the U.S. in political disarray and its president expressing ambivalence about the country’s longstanding global role, Xi senses that China’s window of opportunity has opened.

The U.S., its allies, and other countries that are nervously watching China’s rise are thus in for a prolonged geopolitical challenge, as a country of 1.4 billion people throws its weight around on the global stage. Xi is determined to “rebuild an Asian order with China at its center,” says Australia’s Hugh White, a gambit that will put great strain on the regional order the United States has constructed. Yet there is also great danger for China, because Xi’s agenda risks triggering the international resistance previous leaders sought to avoid.

This is an old story in international affairs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Kaiser’s Germany might have become Europe’s dominant power had it simply prioritized economic growth and avoided antagonizing its neighbors. Yet by pursuing an aggressive foreign policy and starting a naval arms race with Great Britain, it provoked the hostility of the coalition that would eventually defeat it -- with American help -- in World War I.

Today, China confronts a similar dilemma. For reasons of history and geography alone, most of China’s neighbors are naturally more inclined to resist than to welcome Chinese hegemony. The fact that Beijing remains a one-party, Leninist dictatorship only increases the fear that it inspires among many democratic neighbors. The basic logic of geopolitics suggests that these countries will move to counter China’s rise -- as many of them are already doing.

Even before Xi took power, Chinese coercion in the South China Sea and East China Sea was squandering much of the regional goodwill Beijing had won through its “smile diplomacy” in earlier years. And over the past decade, regional powers such as Japan, India and Australia have tightened or modernized their relationships with Washington, invested in new military capabilities, and sought greater security cooperation among democratic countries in the region. Vietnam and Singapore have pursued deeper defense relationships with the U.S., and Indonesia and Malaysia are showing interest in doing likewise.

Many of these trends predate Xi’s rise, but they are intensifying as he makes his agenda clear. Beijing’s behavior has shattered any remaining illusions that China can rise without causing severe strategic turbulence, so its neighbors are looking for ways of containing the dragon.

Yet they will only be successful in doing so if they have the full backing of the U.S., and here the signals are mixed. On the one hand, Chinese ambitions are rapidly awakening responsible U.S. national security professionals to the rising danger in the East, and thereby catalyzing the same balancing tendencies we are seeing within the region. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy described China as a dangerous, revisionist power; the Pentagon has now produced a defense strategy and a defense budget that are geared toward an intense political-military competition with Beijing.

On the other hand, the Trump administration has handed China a great strategic gift by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have offset Beijing’s economic influence by linking an array of Asia-Pacific countries more closely to Washington. The president himself also seems torn between condemning China as a geoeconomic rival -- see his recent steel and aluminum tarrifs -- and buddying up to Xi, who cuts the strongman figure Trump seems to so admire.

The crucial strategic question, then, is how strongly the U.S. will support the front-line countries that are increasingly alarmed by what they see in Beijing. After all, a committed superpower with lots of friends and allies in China’s backyard can still make life plenty difficult for Beijing.

Xi’s foreign policy boils down to a gamble that Trump’s America will not be up to this task. If he is right, the geopolitical payoff for China will be immense. If he is wrong, the geopolitical blowback could be severe.

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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by TKiran »

Xi’s foreign policy boils down to a gamble that Trump’s America will not be up to this task. If he is right, the geopolitical payoff for China will be immense. If he is wrong, the geopolitical blowback could be sever
Actually, Xi is right. This analysis is post-facto analysis, already China is getting payoff immensely. If he was wrong, already there would have been severe blowback if Xi's gamble was wrong.

The conclusions of this analysis seem like it's a prediction, but it's already a post-facto. As I said many times, it will take atleast a decade (in fact another 9 years, as I said about a year back) to realize the fact that USA has only the residual momentum, but it's fuel is already exhausted.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by TKiran »

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
·
Indian defense minister's grudging admission: PLA building "sentry posts, trenches and helipads" in disputed Doklam, where China agreed to disengage and then, in Scarborough style, began quietly changing the status quo. The admission puts an end to MEA's obfuscation on the issue.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
·
1. To put the situation in Doklam—disputed between Bhutan and China—in context: Before last summer's troop standoff, there were no permanent structures or deployments on the plateau. Now, as Indian defense minister admitted, PLA helipads and other military structures have come up

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
·
2. PLA thus has changed the status quo in Doklam, other than at the face-off site, which is located in a small corner. This, in turn, means that Bhutan—whose territorial integrity India is obligated to defend—has effectively lost territory that it always claimed as its own. Sad!
Last edited by TKiran on 06 Mar 2018 10:58, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by TKiran »

Now atleast now my suggestion that India should have stayed put at doklam for a year or two makes sense.

There was no need to beg China to take the face saver formula.

Now nothing can be done...
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by TKiran »

https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news ... t6l3H.html

After govt's red card, Tibetans​ shift Dalai Lama event from Delhi to Dharmashala
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Singha »

just staying on the doklam line would not have helped, they would have still brought up the civil engg crews and built things behind their own deployment.

we needed to occupy some other parts of doklam (within the bhutan claim line) and squat there forever and incite a artillery duel if they started anything. unfortunately the GOI does not want to do that , so cheen continues to be free to nibble at place and time of its choosing.

they are already trying to do that in northern bhutan if any free scraps of land extending from tibet are available.

witness how powerfully their proxy TSP is armed, and how weak our proxy Bhutan is in comparison. if Bhutan were armed and motivated to the level of TSP, they could defend those parts of doklam on their own with us feeding in supplies and intel.
thats the only solution really.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Dipanker »

TKiran wrote:https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news ... t6l3H.html

After govt's red card, Tibetans​ shift Dalai Lama event from Delhi to Dharmashala

How is this to be interpreted? Reacting to Chinese arm twisting? When did that happen? If so why is China doing it now? Is our govt. handling it professionally in the manner befitting to a nation of our size and weight? We certainly are not a 800 lb gorilla but we do fancy ourselves weighing about 600+ lb or so?
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by abhik »

TKiran wrote:Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
·
Indian defense minister's grudging admission: PLA building "sentry posts, trenches and helipads" in disputed Doklam, where China agreed to disengage and then, in Scarborough style, began quietly changing the status quo. The admission puts an end to MEA's obfuscation on the issue.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
·
1. To put the situation in Doklam—disputed between Bhutan and China—in context: Before last summer's troop standoff, there were no permanent structures or deployments on the plateau. Now, as Indian defense minister admitted, PLA helipads and other military structures have come up

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
·
2. PLA thus has changed the status quo in Doklam, other than at the face-off site, which is located in a small corner. This, in turn, means that Bhutan—whose territorial integrity India is obligated to defend—has effectively lost territory that it always claimed as its own. Sad!
You can either spin the turn of events as A) the Chinese didn't keep their promise or B ) the standoff ended after we tucked our tail between our legs and retreated.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Dipanker »

^ Answer is B.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by SSridhar »

India, China step up engagement - Suhasini Haidar, Atul Aneja, The Hindu
India and China are seeking to step up the pace in improving ties, with two high-level ministerial meetings this month leading to a summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and a slew of engagements through the year, officials in Delhi and Beijing confirmed to The Hindu .

“The leaders had decided during their [post-Doklam] Xiamen meeting in August last year that they must heighten the frequency and level of meetings, and we hope to see many more engagements in 2018 than before,” a senior diplomat told The Hindu.

He referred to 2017 as a “difficult year” for ties, with the 73-day Doklam standoff and differences over Masood Azhar and the Nuclear Suppliers Group membership raising temperatures.

Official olive branch

In signs that the two sides are also setting the stage for more harmonious dealings ahead, China agreed to Pakistan’s nomination to the FATF grey list on terror finance last month, while New Delhi has reportedly asked officials to be careful of China’s sensitivities.

Sources said the Defence Ministry had put off its Institute of Defence Strategic Analysis (IDSA) Asian Security Conference scheduled for March 6 to 8 ,which was expected to take a more hawkish line on Chinese security policy and the Belt and Road initiative (BRI). “It appears India doesn’t want hard opinions on China aired from the government’s most prominent defence think-tank,” a source privy to the decision said.

Later this month, the government will host Guo Yezhou, Vice- Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a key figure in the party overseeing foreign policy formulation.


The dates of Mr. Guo’s visit, who will be part of a high- level delegation, have not been confirmed yet, primarily because of the ongoing session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, which will continue till March 20.

Trump’s trade threat

Meanwhile, Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan or his deputy are expected to visit for talks with Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu aimed at improving trade imbalances.

Officials hope they will attend an informal ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) organised by the Commerce Ministry on March 19 and 20.

The WTO ministerial meeting is being seen as a significant platform of countries worried by the U.S.’s tough position on tariffs and President Donald Trump’s threats of a “trade war”, even as he called the WTO a “disaster for America”.


The next important engagement will be the India-China strategic economic dialogue, held between officials of the NITI Aayog and China’s top planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). “This is a highly important dialogue where the nuts and bolts of specific projects in five different areas will be discussed threadbare,” a diplomatic source said.

Five working groups will hold detailed discussions on infrastructure, energy, hi-technology, investments and resource conservation.

Mr. Modi is expected to meet President Xi in June at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Qingdao.

But at least two officials did not rule out the possibility of an “informal summit” before that.

All eyes are also on India’s participation at the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) meeting in Beijing from April 8 to 11, which is China’s equivalent of the World Economic Forum.
In November, India has agreed in principle to participate in the high-profile import exhibition in Shanghai, despite reservations about China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

(With Kallol Bhattacherjee)
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Aditya_V »

The Chinese Road through Bhutan now comes to around 17 Meters away from Indian posts, we have heavily upgraded our infra and so have they. The Chinese now definitely have built lots of stuff in Bhutan. They seem to have occupied 20 Sq Km of Bhutan,

Question is a) How do we confront them when Bhutan itself does not seem to want to take them. So far there is no road south to the Torsa Chu.
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