pankajs wrote:Got you.
Google chacha has Mumbai GDP @ $416 billion at present. So by 2030 Mumbai should at least be @ 3rd or 4th position if not higher.
As you pointed out, Britshit still haven't come to grip with the loss of the *Crown Jewel*.
China on Monday stepped up the on-going messaging between Beijing and New Delhi, highlighting a steady improvement in their post-Doklam ties.In response to a question, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang, said during his routine briefing that China had noted “positive remarks by the Indian side.”
Mr. Lu was apparently referring to observations by Raveesh Kumar, the spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs.
Positive vibes
In response to positive remarks by China’s Foreign Minister regarding the prospects of Beijing-New Delhi ties, Mr. Kumar had said on Friday that India was “willing to work with the Chinese side to develop our relations based on commonalities while dealing with differences on the basis of mutual respect and sensitivity to each other's interests, concerns and aspirations.”
He had added that as “two major countries and large economies, relations between India and China are not just important bilaterally, but also have regional and global significance.”
Mr. Lu, in his response, stressed that during his annual press conference on Thursday, the Chinese Foreign Minister had “elaborated on China's basic position on its relations with India.”
“We wish to work with Indian side to take the important consensus between the two leaderships as our guidance to improve our mutual trust, enhance mutual beneficial cooperation, manage our differences and ensure the correct track of our relations' development,” Mr. Lu observed.
Dragon and elephant as friends
During his media conference, Mr. Wang had said in response to a question on the flurry of visits by the Chinese and Indian officials after the 73-day Doklam military standoff in the Sikkim sector that, “The Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant must not fight each other but dance with each other. If China and India are united, one plus one will not only include two, but also 11.”
Mr. Wang and Chinese state councillor Yang Jiechi had visited India in December, in the backdrop of the post-Doklam meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the September summit of the BRICS countries in the Chinese coastal city of Xiamen. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale had visited China last month for talks with top officials.
Track-1 meetings lined up
A string of track-1 meetings are now in the offing, including the China-India strategic economic dialogue next month, which is likely to be preceded by visits to India of Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan and of Guo Yezhou, Vice Minister in the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
True that!Dipanker wrote:pankajs wrote:Got you.
Google chacha has Mumbai GDP @ $416 billion at present. So by 2030 Mumbai should at least be @ 3rd or 4th position if not higher.
As you pointed out, Britshit still haven't come to grip with the loss of the *Crown Jewel*.
Google Chacha also list GDP of state of Maharashtra as $390 billion, so unless the rest of the Maharashtra GDP is $390b - $416b = -$26 b, one of the figure is wrong, easy to guess which one.
Yensoy ji,yensoy wrote: Now who are the net losers from financial point of view? The Chinese people who have put in their savings into miserably yielding bank accounts (or risky shadow banking accounts), the Chinese people who are overpaying for property whose supply is constrained and controlled by crony moguls, and once again the Chinese people who are being forced to contribute to a social security system of dubious finances.
All this is great as long as GDP keeps rising - people's salaries will trend up, their ability to pay down their mortgage will improve. It may even survive a temporary flattening of the GDP since not everyone is going to need access to their savings right away. But if there is a sustained period of slow, no or negative growth, then the sh!t will hit the fan.
And nobody is more aware of all this than the Chinese people who, if circumstances permit, are voting with their feet - moving their wealth and even families to Western shores. It's the rich Chinese whose wealth sources are primarily in China who are moving out, not only the middle class with aspirations and ambitions to succeed in a foreign land.
This is what the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) crowd say. These MMT econonmists were advising Sanders and they still say all this with a straight face. Its patently wrong and is horseshit.Chola wrote:So just saying Cheen has debt is a simple but false argument because it takes great wealth in the first place to be able to loan yourself (and others, in China’s case) that money.
Money cannot magically appear for a government to provide debt to money losing endeavors. If Cheen is building out a 100+ blue-water surface fleet and still has another couple of trillions to throw at OBOR then their economy has to be able to support it.
The Chinese are apparently conditioned to be acquiescent. The Communist Party of China (CCP) tells the people what work they can do and interprets history as a tool to design nationalism and patriotism. With a membership of 89.45 million, how does it manage to rule 1.3 billion people?
Having been ruled by emperors for 2000 years, maybe the Chinese are accustomed to it; now the CCP could be another dynasty with a different name. China grew economically and geographically when ruled by the Mongols and the Manchus. Modern China under Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping has been rising aggressively. Do we see any similarities between the Mings, Qings and Pings? Now, Xi Jinping has cleared the path to continue as emperor, indefinitely.
Absolute control
CCP control over governance is absolute, having penetrated into villages with one official for a thousand population. All government departments have a party branch, and the secretary dictates policies. Provincial governors are appointed by the party and party secretaries wield great power in governance, often intervening in decision-making. The ‘Tiao Tiao Kuai Kuai’ system is popular: by this horizontal party supervision is shown to be more important than vertical government supervision. Even the right to represent the working class in the resolution of disputes is retained by the CCP.
More than 30 million people died in the great famine of 1959-61. Local leaders exaggerated grain production figures to project a communist Utopia and forcibly procured grains to show large turnover. Communist propaganda led the people to dream of surplus produce and they even ate up the grain seeds. Millions died of starvation but party control was so strong that peasants were not allowed to even dream of a protest. Most city residents were not even aware of it.
Currently, communist governments exist only in China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba and Laos. Many other countries went through a democratic transition. Will there ever be such a transition in China? Some leaders worry about it because:
• The Soviet Union collapsed after 74 years of communist rule. The CCP will complete 74 years in power in 2023.
• Urbanisation, increased literacy and social media may popularise democratic values.
• Increase in per capita incomes, growth of the private sector and a burgeoning middle class are catalysts for a transition.
• Taiwan and Hong Kong reflect Chinese democratic aspirations.
Possibility of change
China came closest to a democratic transition in the late 1980s, when Taiwan, South Korea and the Soviet Union went through the same. Many moderate senior leaders tried to bring in reforms which were forcibly suppressed by Deng Xiaoping and the PLA and the leadership which came to power since then.
CCP Document No 9, 2013, the ‘Communiqué on Current State of the Ideological Sphere’, forbade propagating viewpoints that challenged CCP rule.[Xi Jinping was responsible for this document in c. 2012 before becoming the President formally in c. 2013] These included ideas such as:
• Western constitutional democracy is attempting to deny the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
• ‘Universal values’ ridicules the ideological and theoretical basis for party rule.
• ‘Civil society’ deconstructs the social base for party rule.
• ‘Neo liberalism’ derides state control of the economy.
• ‘Western news views’ challenge the party’s control over media.
• ‘Historical nihilism’, which denies the history of CCP and new China.
As the likelihood of democratic dreams fulminating is greatest from the rising middle class, the party has entered into a ‘social contract’ with them.
They are appeased for not insisting on political reforms. The middle class works with the party, with many of them joining the party. Private entrepreneurs provide material advantages to official patrons and exploit the leverage .
The CCP’s most powerful tool for control, the ‘hukou household registration system’, classifies all citizens as agricultural or non-agricultural. State welfare programmes distinctly favoured non-agricultural hukou holders as the party thought they were more likely to protest.
Non-agricultural hukou holders were not allowed to move to cities or obtain residency permits and found it difficult to progress socially and economically.
The question now is whether the Chinese people will remain subjugated forever? Will an ageing population, an adverse Gini coefficient, and awareness arising out of globalisation prod the people to demand a role in governance?
The CCP dynasty under ‘Emperor’ Xi is very powerful but can we forget the collapse of the Roman and Mongol empires?
The writer is faculty member of the National Defence College, New Delhi
Even if we take the low end of the band, $390b as 2017 GDP of MH of which let's estimate Mumbai to be 50% (it is probably a lot higher) that is $195b or 140b UK pounds. With a lowball GDP growth rate of 5% per year, it puts Mumbai upwards of 250b UKP; it should very much be on the list.Dipanker wrote:Google Chacha also list GDP of state of Maharashtra as $390 billion, so unless the rest of the Maharashtra GDP is $390b - $416b = -$26 b, one of the figure is wrong, easy to guess which one.pankajs wrote:Got you.
Google chacha has Mumbai GDP @ $416 billion at present. So by 2030 Mumbai should at least be @ 3rd or 4th position if not higher. As you pointed out, Britshit still haven't come to grip with the loss of the *Crown Jewel*.
China’s naval presence deterred Indian intervention in Maldives crisis: sources
BY SANJEEV MIGLANI AND SHIHAR ANEEZ
REUTERS
MAR 8, 2018
ARTICLE HISTORY
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NEW DELHI/COLOMBO – A Chinese naval combat force that entered the Indian Ocean for the first time in four years may have helped deter an Indian intervention in the Maldives after its pro-China president imposed a state of emergency, according to military and diplomatic sources and analysts.
India has traditionally been the biggest player in the tiny island chain 400 kilometers (250 miles) to its south, and faced calls from Maldives’ opposition leaders last month to use force against President Abdulla Yameen to restore democracy.
After the state of emergency was declared, India — which sent troops to foil a coup in the Maldives three decades ago — moved aircraft and ships to its southern bases and put special forces on standby, two military sources in New Delhi said.
But in the end Prime Minister Narendra Modi held off from hard action, unwilling to entangle the military in a foreign country of 400,000 people, the sources said.
Beijing’s signals that it would not look kindly on any foreign involvement in the Maldives — where it is investing millions of dollars as part of its Belt and Road Initiative — backed up by its naval presence in the eastern Indian Ocean, may also have weighed against an intervention, security analysts said.
China’s defense ministry said its ships carried out routine exercises. “These drills were normal exercises for this year, and not aimed at any third party,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters, when asked whether the maneuvers were linked to the crisis in Maldives. It did not elaborate.
Beijing’s foreign ministry said it was paying close attention to events in the Maldives and had asked the government in the capital, Male, to protect Chinese interests there.
India’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A naval official confirmed the Chinese ships entered the Indian Ocean, but said they were thousands of miles away from the Maldives.
“The Indian navy has a robust maritime domain awareness and we have a clear picture of the happenings in the Indian Ocean Region,” the official said.
Details of the deployments by India and China, as well as diplomatic messages from Beijing that have not previously been reported, show how the Asian giants flexed military muscles as crisis unfolded in the strategically located region.
Both militaries have since backed off, and last week Vijay Gokhale, India’s top diplomat, made an unscheduled visit to Beijing where the two sides discussed ways to address their “differences on the basis of mutual respect and sensitivity to each other’s concerns, interests and aspirations,” the Indian foreign ministry said. It did not give more details.
Liu Zongyi, a South Asia expert at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told the People’s Daily in January that Yameen’s tilt towards China had caused unhappiness in New Delhi.
India had been infuriated with the signing of a free trade deal with China last December, he said, adding: “The political unrest in the Maldives in actual fact is a power struggle with international factors.”
Chinese flotilla
At the end of January, a Chinese navy “surface action group” — which included an amphibious Type 071 vessel for troops to make a marine landing — quietly crossed into the Indian Ocean through Indonesia’s Sunda Straits.
It was the first time such a force had entered the area since an exercise by a similar group in 2014 in the eastern Indian Ocean that raised concern in India about Chinese motives behind conducting amphibious drills.
Thousands of miles away in the Maldives, Yameen — long criticized for running his Muslim majority nation with an iron fist — rejected a surprise Supreme Court decision on Feb. 1 to free political dissidents.
Instead, the Maldives’ leader threw the judges too into prison and imposed a state of emergency, saying he was acting to thwart a coup.
Beijing said events in the Maldives were an internal matter and the international community should play “a constructive role” and avoid “further complicating the situation.” Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army posted photos of the warships, whose number had by then swelled to 11, taking part in rescue training exercises, according to Chinese state media.
Some analysts saw a carefully calibrated message from China.
“These are ‘grey zone’ tactics; you don’t raise the level of provocation to a level that the adversary finds a reason to react or retaliate, but you send the message home,” said Abhijit Singh, a former Indian naval officer, at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.
“The message to India was: ‘if you come too close to the Maldives, we are not too far away.’ “
China, whose navy is now four times bigger than India’s, is increasingly asserting itself in the Indian Ocean. It has built a network of friendly ports, its so-call “String of Pearls,” around shipping lanes through which more than three-quarters of its oil moves.
Military manoeuvres
Soon after the emergency was declared in the Maldives, India’s military moved C-130 Super Hercules and C-17 Globemaster transport planes from near Delhi to its Yelahanka air force base near the southern city of Bengaluru, and ordered paratroops to be on stand-by, the two Indian military sources said.
Warships were also put on readiness at the southern naval command in Kochi, they said. A government official dealing with security issues said moving planes and ships was standard operating procedure for the military.
A few days later the Indian navy launched “large-scale operational exercises” in the western Indian Ocean involving 40 warships, including an aircraft carrier. The naval official said these were pre-planned.
Yameen was unfazed, and on Feb. 20 extended the emergency by another 30 days despite international calls not to do so.
A source close to Chinese diplomats in Colombo said that Beijing had told its missions in the region that China stood ready to help Yameen if India tried to unseat him. The source was not clear whether that included military help.
A diplomat at the embassy of the Maldives in Colombo said Beijing had given the same assurance of support to the Yameen government. A second diplomat said China had been dragged into the political crisis by the Maldivian opposition accusing Beijing of seizing some of its islands.
Throughout the crisis, the Maldivian government was in continuous contact with the Chinese embassy in Male and China was informed about Yameen’s every move, including the state of emergency, well in advance, the first diplomat said.
“The Chinese interest is purely commercial,” Maldives’ minister of fisheries and agriculture Mohamed Shainee said. “They have invested a lot and they have to protect their investments.”
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday that she will visit China in April.
“Yes, it is going to be probably in late April,” she said in response to questions from presspersons on the sidelines of a seminar on ammunition management in the Army. However, she added that the agenda is yet to be finalised.
Last week, the Defence Ministry officials had denied reports that she was likely to visit China in the backdrop of efforts from both sides to ease tensions in bilateral relations.
Relations between both the countries have been tense since the 73-day Doklam stand-off last year. Since then China has increased its presence along the border and close to the Doklam stand-off site.
However, in the last two weeks, both sides have announced several steps to normalise the relationship.
As usual nonsense by desi reporters. Which naval presence, the one that is thousands of miles away?China’s naval presence deterred Indian intervention in Maldives crisis: sources
where will it relocate to .. South China sea? 
Where? This is worrying. I checked the latest images on Google Earth - it was still there but images are from 2017. No 2018 imagesTKiran wrote:Maldives is gone.
If the Chinese can pay him to be anti-India, we can pay him to be pro-India. He just needs to name the price.TKiran wrote:^^^emergency will be extended till such time that Yameen is sure of his election as president. Once democratically elected, it's Chinese gamble that is paid off.... Maldives is gone.
I see a problem with many indignant viewpoints that have been expressed. Maldives is in no way our special friend. It is yet another nearby country whom we should be threatening if they do stuff that we do not like. However if the President rapes the speakers wife or Zameen replaces Yameen it is no skin off our balls. China warning us was the biggest load of horseshit I have heard. They were 2500 km away with no logistics support. And as Brahm Chellaney tweeted their warning came after India made it clear that we would not interfere. The fact that China was howling shows that they know too damn well that we could have interfered if we wanted - but what the heck? Our friend in the Maldives -the ex president Nasheed is sitting in exile in Sri Lanka making demands about what India should do for him. He has also stated a lot of stuff that is questionable in terms of accuracy. Naturally - he wants to get back in power and as long as India covers his ass he will be thrilled.TKiran wrote:^^^Shiv sir, that was sarcasm out of frustration... I am not as cool as you. I would have wanted India to intervene in Maldives and conduct elections, and even if yameen wins, we should give a strong warning not to mess with India, and make him renege on China agreements and all that that a non-pusillanimous powerful country like India would have done. Sorry that I stepped on your toes (sincerely apologize), but it was not meant to be that way.
The pisko foundations of this behaviour seem to derive in large part from something Shiv has referred to in this post:shiv wrote:
...
I think as a nation we behave in a schizophrenic manner. On the one hand we howl and rant crying "we are weak. We are fcued" etc - but on the other hand we demand that India behaves like the typical cowardly bully - simply bashing someone because he is nearby and imagining that by deposing that leader all would be well. All the while we are shitting brix about China but acting as if we are great supapowa with Maldives. This is laughably hypocritical and I think the Indian govt has done exactly the right thing.
"Advanced West" was the paradigm, the US was the anchor-in-chief of the global security order. All-powerful and nobody could challenge it. Everything America did was brilliant and Machiavellian and planned to their own advantage and also fearless. Opening up to China in 1972, winking at Chinese nuke proliferation in the 1980s-90s, bringing China into WTO in the 2000s, making grand proposals for a "G-2" (US/China) co-dominium to run the world in the 2010s, etc. Every word they spoke was from a position of unshakeable strength; it HAD to be. They are America.Now if you look at the body of literature that has come from that era - it is still considered true. You will find that the world is divided up into the "advanced west" (includes Japan), the Soviet Union and its bloc, a "rising China" and third world of developing nations India, Africa etc
This is the way Indian scholars look at the world. They have never learned that India too has a place in this world - but they simply cannot place India anywhere because the "academic theories of the world" have no place for India.
Good, post. malidives is not our "backyard" (whatever that means) but a sovereign country whose internal affairs are none of our business. We can seek to influence them but a regime change with indian troops ? Even USA tries to assemble a coalition before military backed regime changes.shiv wrote:I see a problem with many indignant viewpoints that have been expressed. Maldives is in no way our special friend. It is yet another nearby country whom we should be threatening if they do stuff that we do not like. However if the President rapes the speakers wife or Zameen replaces Yameen it is no skin off our balls. China warning us was the biggest load of horseshit I have heard. They were 2500 km away with no logistics support. And as Brahm Chellaney tweeted their warning came after India made it clear that we would not interfere. The fact that China was howling shows that they know too damn well that we could have interfered if we wanted - but what the heck? Our friend in the Maldives -the ex president Nasheed is sitting in exile in Sri Lanka making demands about what India should do for him. He has also stated a lot of stuff that is questionable in terms of accuracy. Naturally - he wants to get back in power and as long as India covers his ass he will be thrilled.TKiran wrote:^^^Shiv sir, that was sarcasm out of frustration... I am not as cool as you. I would have wanted India to intervene in Maldives and conduct elections, and even if yameen wins, we should give a strong warning not to mess with India, and make him renege on China agreements and all that that a non-pusillanimous powerful country like India would have done. Sorry that I stepped on your toes (sincerely apologize), but it was not meant to be that way.
I think that we Indians have a weird picture of what India should do in the Indian ocean. No one is our friend. We need not help anyone. We just threaten them or hit them if they act funny, that's all. No point acting like we are Americans bringing democracy.
I think as a nation we behave in a schizophrenic manner. On the one hand we howl and rant crying "we are weak. We are fcued" etc - but on the other hand we demand that India behaves like the typical cowardly bully - simply bashing someone because he is nearby and imagining that by deposing that leader all would be well. All the while we are shitting brix about China but acting as if we are great supapowa with Maldives. This is laughably hypocritical and I think the Indian govt has done exactly the right thing.
I actually have a problem with this statement in the sense that it simply rehashes "conventional" statements without examining the truthkiranA wrote:
India's influence is clearly waning in its neighbourhood ranging from hindu nepal to budhist sri lanka to muslim maldives.
To get an idea of what this means ... lets check an image from WorldView-4 with a resolution of 0.31 meters. This image is of Varanasi, India. Click to fully load the image and check the boats that line up along the waters edge in the middle of the top half. CARTOSAT-3 would be better than this.The Indian Space Research Organisation is to build a remote sensing satellite, Cartosat-3, capable of taking images of the earth with a resolution of 0.25 metres.
Currently, GeoEye-1 produces the highest resolution earth images taken by a commercial satellite. The American spacecraft, launched in September 2008, is capable of taking panchromatic images with 0.41 metre resolution. WorldView-2, another satellite operated by the same company, DigitalGlobe, offers a best resolution of 0.46 metres. However, in accordance with U.S. regulations, commercially released images from these satellites are degraded to 0.5 metre resolution.
DigitalGlobe plans to launch WorldView-3 next year, which will supply images with a resolution of 0.31 metres. Cartosat-3’s camera would better that performance. In the words of one expert, this satellite's images could allow a scooter to be distinguished from a car.
Add to that this bit from the recent visit of the French president. While the other agreements were highlighted this bit did not get its due it seems to me.The Cartosat-3 series will have around six satellites, some of which would replace existing remote-sensing satellites with more powerful capability.
Now, I don't know exactly what this means. It could mean any or many of the belowBoth sides also announced a vision document on cooperation on a number of space-research related issues, including space security. The space agreement is designed to support joint maritime operations as it will help in maritime surveillance for the Indian Ocean region.
But you say trilateral ... but what aboutThe matter is expected to come up during a bilateral meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is presently on a visit to India from December 10-12 for the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral dialogue, that is taking place on Monday, sources told BusinessLine.
Does this not, by the same logic, smacks of India Appeasement? What is goose for the sauce is not goose for the chutni???Later this month, State Councillor Yang Jiechi will visit India to resume the talks on border management with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, both of whom are Special Representatives of their respective governments on border issues.
Absolutely. But these leaders are informed by ill informed babus who simply become babus by reading the same "Competition success" and other GK books that Rudradev referred to in an earlier post. The blind leading the blind. Strategic thought is absent in India at surprising levels and we are sailing on a few bright sparks here and there.Chandragupta wrote: we really need to do something about is the way Indian babudom and political leaders are shit scared of China. Perhaps, it is the Nehru effect - they are all scared that a 1962 redux will end their political careers? Nothing else explains the pusillanimity when it comes to China.