Bharat Rakshak

Arjun wrote:If my understanding is correct - you are saying even if China plays nice with us on Pakistan, Kashmir and border issues AND does not try any other containment tricks, we should yet continue to play the Tibet card and prepare for a war at some stage with China. While what you say makes sense purely from a geostrategic standpoint - that's a maximalist position that I will need to mull over more to get comfortable with.

1. When one knows that the opponent is under more severe pressures on more strategically important points, so a ceasefire would hold until the conditions change (temporary agreements).
2. When one knows that the opponent has no other choice, and when one can ensure that it stays that way.

Accusations that a prominent former Microsoft Corp. executive in China distorted his academic credentials have triggered a heated public discussion in the country over what experts say is pervasive academic fraud.

The controversy began earlier this month after Fang Shimin, a science writer known for his vocal criticism of plagiarism and academic fraud, claimed that Jun Tang, who was president of Microsoft's China operation from 2002 to 2004, had falsely claimed to have earned a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology.

Mr. Fang said he had tried to check the claim, which he said was made in one edition of Mr. Tang's popular book "My Success Can Be Copied," by calling the university but that he couldn't find records of Mr. Tang having graduated. A representative for Caltech, reached Thursday, said Mr. Tang didn't graduate from the school.

The controversy has become one of the hottest topics of discussion among Chinese Internet users, spurring a whirlwind of local media coverage. Some Internet users have dubbed the incident "Fake Diploma-Gate." It follows other high-profile cases in recent years of alleged academic fraud that have called attention to what experts say is a pervasive problem in China, not least for businesses trying to confirm the background of potential hires.

Tad Kageyama, a Hong Kong-based senior managing director at Kroll, a New York-based risk consulting subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Cos., said part of the reason for falsified résumés is a fixation among employers in China, as elsewhere in Asia, on the prestige of schools that candidates attend rather than valuing candidates' experiences.
That emphasis, combined with the relative ease of acquiring illegitimate diplomas in China, is part of the reason that résumé fraud is more common in China than elsewhere.

Pacific Western University was labeled a "diploma mill" by the U.S. government in a report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2004, which listed the school as an unaccredited institution that awarded degrees for a flat fee and required no classroom instruction. The report said a doctorate from Pacific Western cost $2,595 at the time.

"It all comes down to China," said Patrick Cronin, director of the Asia Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. "China is right now an absolute ascendant power, even to the point where people are over projecting China's rise. If you can deny China its two ocean strategy, you have the potential to enlarge the chess pieces."

China has started damming the middle reaches of the Brahmaputra river, or the Yarlung Tsangpo as it is known in Tibet, to begin construction on a 510 MW hydropower project that has raised concerns in India.

The government for the first time revealed that it has, since November 8, begun damming the Tsangpo's flow to allow work to begin on the hydropower project at Zangmu. This is the first major dam on the Brahmaputra and has been billed by the Chinese government as a landmark hydropower generation project for Tibet's development.

A news report on Monday said the “closure of the Yarlung Zangbo river on November 12 marked the beginning of construction.” Work is expected to continue beyond 2014, when the first set of generators will be put into operation. The total investment in the project is 7.9 billion yuan ($1.2 billion).

The Indian government has raised concerns about the possible downstream impact of this project during talks with China earlier this year. Chinese officials have assured their Indian counterparts that the project would be “run of the river,” having little impact downstream.

China has said that its projects were only for hydropower generation, and were neither storage projects nor designed to divert the water.

Officials at India's Ministry of External Affairs have, however, voiced frustration over China's general lack of willingness to share information regarding the Zangmu project, meaning they had little means to verify claims on the specific construction plans and impact on flows.

According to Ramaswamy R. Iyer, former Water Resources Secretary of the Government of India, for India “the point to examine would be the quantum of possible diversion and the impact it would have on the flows to India.”

There is still some uncertainty on what China intends for the project, and whether or not a storage reservoir, which could affect downstream flows, will be built beyond the minimal “pondage” required to operate the turbines.

Chinese media reports indicated that the Zangmu project is unlikely to be the last on the Brahmaputra. A news report on the widely read portal Tencent said the Zangmu dam was “a landmark project” for Tibet's development, being the first major dam in Tibet, and “a project of priority in the Eleventh Five Year Plan.”

The report said that such projects would “greatly relieve the energy stress in the middle regions of Tibet” and upgrade power capacity from 100 MW to over 500 MW.

Mr. Iyer said a larger concern for India was the absence of a water-sharing treaty with China, which does not allow India to either qualify or address Chinese claims regarding specific projects.

“Between India and Pakistan, we have a treaty which specifies what we should do,” he said. “We're not supposed to retain a drop, and [even] during a stated period of construction, inflow is equal to outflow.”

“But with China,” he added, “we have no treaty. So what they will do, we have no idea.

Drawing a dramatic parallel between the territorial red lines of both countries, India on Sunday told China that just as New Delhi had been sensitive to its concerns over the Tibet Autonomous Region and Taiwan, Beijing too should be mindful of Indian sensitivities on Jammu and Kashmir.
...
The comparison – which is intended to drive home the depth of Indian concerns over recent Chinese attempts to question the country's sovereignty in Kashmir — was made by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna in his meeting with China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the sidelines of the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting here.

Dhiman wrote:So the way I see it unless SM Krishna was literally holding the Chinese FM against the wall by neck while delivering this warning, it is completely useless. MEA is filled with bunch of useless idots who can do nothing else but "shiver in their dhotis" and come up with wild misguided philosophies to justify their dhoti shivering. All this warning-sharning are useless if one does not have a demonstrated history of backing up such warnings with solid action.

For the first time in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize the award may not be handed out this year after a strenuous campaign by the Chinese government to stop one of its citizens, the jailed human rights campaigner Liu Xiaobo, receiving the honour.

Under Nobel Prize rules, the 10 million kronor (£880,000) award can only be collected by the laureate or a close family member.

The government in Beijing placed Mr Liu's wife under house arrest as soon as the award was announced last month and his two brothers are under surveillance. One of them, Liu Xiaoxuan, who had said he would represent his brother at the Oslo ceremony, sent a brief text message last night to the outside world, saying: "I am being monitored, cannot take interviews, can only keep silent."

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The Chinese government has also stepped up its diplomatic efforts to prevent the ceremony going ahead. Yesterday, in a highly unusual move, five countries declared they would not be sending ambassadors to the ceremony. Russia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Morocco and Iraq are all joining with China in an unprecedented boycott.

Ambassadors from 16 other countries have yet to reply to the standard Nobel invitation, which has been accepted by 36 nations.

Earlier this month China wrote to all diplomats in the Norwegian capital pressuring them not to attend the ceremony. They received letters warning there would be "consequences" if their governments showed support for Liu Xiaobo – whom Beijing says is a "criminal".

There has never before been such a furious anti-Nobel campaign, according to the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad. "I don't know of any example where a country has so actively and directly tried to have ambassadors stay away from a Nobel ceremony," he said.

The pageant itself is still scheduled to be held before around 1,000 guests in Oslo City Hall on 10 December. There will be a speech by the chairman of the peace committee, after which text messages from the winner will be read out by the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. There will also be music from a children's choir requested by Mr Liu, who is serving an 11-year sentence in a Chinese jail for "subversion" after co-authoring a Charter calling for reforms to China's one-party political system.

But the handover of the Nobel gold medal, diploma and prize money will not happen – for the first time in the history of the prize.

Recipients of the honour have been absent in the past. The most recent was the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released from house arrest last week. When she was named the Nobel laureate in 1991, her son Alexander Aris gave the acceptance speech on her behalf.

During the Cold War the Polish labour leader Lech Walesa was not allowed out to collect the honour, but his wife was permitted to travel to Oslo to accept it on behalf of her husband in 1983. When the Russian physicist Andrei D Sakharov won it in 1975 the Soviet authorities gave permission for his wife, too, to collect the prize.

Even in 1936, when the winner, Count Carl von Ossietzky, a German journalist who had been held in Nazi concentration camps, was refused a passport to travel to Oslo, the prize money, if not the award itself, was collected by his lawyer – who was later jailed for embezzling it.

The Chinese crackdown is more draconian than has ever been demonstrated by any government when a dissident has been awarded the prize.

Most ambassadors have remained silent on their reason for declining. But a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Oslo, Vladimjir Isupov, said yesterday: "It is not politically motivated and we do not feel we are pressured by China." The Russian ambassador would not be in Norway at the time of the ceremony, he said.

But few observers believe that. This year's laureate, Liu Xiaobo, has been an annoyance to the Chinese Communist Party through long years as a political activist. The 54-year-old university professor first came to international attention in 1989 when he returned from the United States to Beijing to take part in the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. After they were bloodily suppressed he was sent to prison for nearly two years. In 1996 he was jailed again and sent to a "re-education" labour camp for three years, where he married another activist, Liu Xia. Since then he has continued to speak out on a range of taboo subjects, including China's treatment of Tibetans.

His current jail term for "inciting subversion of state power" came after he helped write Charter 08, a manifesto calling for political change in China. The document – published on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 2008 – demanded a new constitution in China, an independent judiciary and freedom of expression.

Two days before it was due to be published Mr Liu was arrested by police in a late-night raid on his home.

In making the award the Norwegian Nobel Committee commended his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". The country had made rapid economic progress in recent decades, it said, and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But now it needed to make political progress too, in line with Article 35 of its own constitution, which says that "citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration".

Such public criticism has outraged the government in Beijing.

Some believe that foreign pressure on China is counter-productive. Before Mr Liu's last trial the United States government called on Beijing to release him "immediately and to respect the rights of all Chinese citizens to peacefully express their political views". The Chinese government responded by holding a one-day trial – on Christmas Day when it assumed most people in the West would be busy with other matters.

So determined has it been that Mr Liu's award should not be collected that it has imposed travel bans on all prominent human rights activists, for fear that they might turn up in Oslo to make a speech accepting the prize for Mr Liu. Among them is Mr Liu's lawyer Mo Shaoping, who has been banned from attending a legal conference in London.

Mr Liu's wife posted on the internet a list of 143 Chinese activists, academics and celebrities she wanted to invite to the award ceremony. None appear to have been allowed out of the country.

Meanwhile Liu Xiaobo languishes in prison. Once a month his wife visits him for an hour watched over by two guards and a security camera. "Mentally and physically he's fine," she said after one recent visit. "He runs for an hour each day, he reads and he writes me letters."

As to when the formal presentation might finally be made, the organisers were noncommittal yesterday. It will be delayed indefinitely, they said, "until we have the right people here".

harbans wrote:As i have often stressed "it's always the doctrine". PRC is similar to Islamism and Nazism. A core doctrine that does'nt allow criticism. I doubt even if the President, Premier or most of the cabinet don't personally like what is happening can do anything about it. The doctrine takes over in such cases and fear prevents those even in "power" to do things which are humane and naturally just. Any person seeing going soft on these kinds is a target of the doctrine and consequently zealots who guard it to the hilt. In such systems it's always the zealot who will wield power that's derived directly from the core doctrine.

I hope India sends it's ambassador to honor Liu.

A Chinese Twitter user has been sentenced to a year in labor camp after retweeting a sarcastic message, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

Cheng Jianping, 46, may be the first Chinese citizen to become a prisoner of conscience based on a single post on Twitter, according to the group. She was accused of “disturbing social order” and sentenced to “reeducation through labor.”

On Oct. 17, tweeting as wangyi09, Cheng reposted a micro-blog post from her fiance, Hua Chunhui, tweeting as wxhch. The original message mockingly urged young Chinese nationalists, who have recently organized several anti-Japanese rallies, to attack the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo.

“Anti-Japanese demonstrations, smashing Japanese products, that was all done years ago by Guo Quan [an activist and expert on the Nanjing Massacre],” the tweet read. “It’s no new trick. If you really wanted to kick it up a notch, you’d immediately fly to Shanghai to smash the Japanese expo pavilion.”

Cheng reposted the message, adding “Charge, angry youth.”

She and Hua were both arrested last month on what was to be their wedding day, according to Amnesty International. Hua was released less than a week later.

Foxconn Technology Group is one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers. It makes hardware for a prestigious list of clients, including Apple, HP, Dell, Nokia and Nintendo.

Yet its workers have compared it to a prison. Some say they're forced to work illegal overtime and night shifts, have been subjected to "corporal violence" and exposed to hazardous materials, and have their privacy invaded by management. And employees say they are still underpaid despite the promise of an across-the-board 30 percent raise earlier this year.

Capping the list of woes at the Taiwanese manufacturer, Reuters reported earlier this month that a 23-year-old employee of Foxconn had jumped to his death. It was the 13th reported Foxconn employee suicide of the year.

Foxconn has tried to manage perceptions where it can, if not actually confront the oddly tragic trend within the company. On Sept. 4, on assignment with Bloomberg Businessweek, photographer Thomas Lee joined other journalists on a tour of Foxconn City.

Lee observed underused facilities, an eerily quiet workforce, an ever-ambitious chairman and the flow of migrants to long hours on the production lines. (Gizmodo's Joel Johnson recently made his own visit to Foxconn's dorms while on assignment for Wired.)

Above: Employees pass a security station before entering or leaving Foxconn City.

"The security guard is younger than many of the workers, who actually walked in and out without being stopped," says Lee. "Most of the time he gave directions to people, which was helpful. Each employee has an ID card for scanning on entry and exit, so they are tracked in that manner."

However, the state-of-the-art rail system is changing peoples’ perceptions about China almost as fast as it is whisking passengers around Mina.

“People couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw pilgrims being ferried between the holy sites of Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat,” said journalist Hadi Fakihi. “Those who rode the train were gushing about its high-tech aspects. China has overnight become a nation to respect and emulate.”

“China has won hearts with this successful project,” said Rashad Husein, vice president of the South Asian Pilgrim Establishment. “It is the first time China has executed such a massive project in the Islamic world. This will not only bring China and the Muslim world closer; this will strengthen the bond between Saudi Arabia and China.”

The Obama administration began a broad effort Wednesday to enlist China to help rein in North Korea in the wake of its deadly attack Tuesday on South Korea.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged China to act, calling Beijing "absolutely critical" to the international effort to get North Korea to stop its military provocations.

"It's very important for China to lead," Mullen said Wednesday on the ABC program "The View." "The one country that has influence in Pyongyang is China."

amit wrote:William Pesek, who in my opinion is one of the most cued to Asia Gora journalists has a very good article in Bloomberg. One should try to read between the lines as Pesek saab conveys a lot of things in the cols which he writes.

Black Swans Abound as North Korea Lobs Shells

For Hu, the timing couldn’t be worse. China is struggling to keep its overheating economy on track. Officials in Beijing must slow growth, while making sure those efforts don’t antagonize hundreds of millions of Chinese seeking higher wages. You would think Hu’s regime has enough on its hands and it’s high time it put North Korea on a shorter leash. It has great financial leverage over Pyongyang.

You can bet Hu will get an earful from world leaders, including Obama. At the Seoul G-20, China was vocal about America’s stimulative monetary policies. It urged the U.S. to act responsibly for the good of the world economy. Now Obama can turn the tables and ask Hu to do the same with Kim.
{He's connecting the dots between QE2 and this sudden firing by Panda's most loyal munna, albeit in a very crafty indirect way.}


Our intelligence on North Korea is rather lacking. Media stories focus on chronic food shortages and how sanctions inflict pain. Then we learn about Siegfried Hecker’s visit this month to a nuclear plant. The Stanford University professor speaks of “astonishingly modern” technological advances at the Yongbyon reactor site. Clearly, efforts to squeeze Kim are failing. {Another pointer to Panda}

Kim’s Allowance

China owes it to the world to dock Kim’s allowance and restore some sobriety to the Korean peninsula. Lee has a very short list of options here. It also seems clear that North Korea had outside help and equipment to build its new uranium- enrichment facility so quickly. China really does need to read North Korea the riot act.

The geopolitical-risk angle here is terrible news for investors everywhere. This isn’t a straight-forward Black Swan moment. Yes, it will have an impact on markets, yet Asians are rather accustomed to Kim lobbing volatility bombs their way. Even so, this is a warning that something big and destabilizing -- beyond anything investors have contemplated -- could come from Pyongyang at any moment.

{This is China's threat to Khan saab: you try to squeeze us with quantitative easing then we will screw the global markets and put your Munna's in trouble by releasing our mad dog(s)}.

A sudden coup, for example, might unnerve investors. Ending the disastrous Kim dynasty has a certain appeal to many of us. Yet some rogue, unknown general with lots to prove might not be an improvement. With Europe’s debt crisis unfolding and the U.S. dollar shaky, missiles shot in the direction of, say, Tokyo can’t be ruled out.

Along with causing untold pain and suffering for Japan’s populace, an attack would devastate stocks, send bond yields soaring and cause havoc in currency markets.

Geopolitics in Asia often trumps economics, and events in Korea are convulsing markets that are already off balance. North Korea is Exhibit A of the potential Black Swans out there. Denial is no longer an option.

The point to note is that if Panda is loosening the lease on one of its Munnas, will it also do the same to the other Baitch that it holds with his other hand? The news of Kiya-nahi meeting all those folks should be viewed in this context.

Bottomline: QE2 has thread very close to Panda's red lines. Any further QE3 or such would cross it. So IMO this is a shot across the bow. And yes there's no way Lee can afford a hot war unless NoKo mobilises first. Any SoKo reaction would be defensive. The so-called arc of democracies in the far east is in no condition to fight.

In a confidential cable last year, released by WikiLeaks, a US diplomat quoted Kyrgyz officials saying that China had offered three billion dollars to close Manas air base, a key US conduit for the war in Afghanistan.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, who arrived here {Beijing} on Sunday on a three-day visit, will hold talks with State Councillor Dai Bingguo, China's designated special representative for the boundary negotiations.

The two representatives have been instructed to address the issue with a “sense of urgency,” following last month's meeting between Primer Minister Manmohan Singh and Mr. Wen in Hanoi on the sidelines of the Asean summit. Monday's talks assume particular significance, coming as it does ahead of Mr. Wen's visit to New Delhi. Officials said the special representatives had been given a wide mandate to discuss a range of issues beyond the border dispute over the next two days so as to lay the groundwork for the premier's visit.

Officials said last year's talks were currently at “stage two” of the dispute, which involves finding a framework for a final package settlement of the disputed areas in the western and eastern sections of the border. The first stage concluded in 2005, with the agreement on political parameters. The final stage will involve the specifics of delineating the border.

AdityaM wrote:Now did we not have a airbase which failed to materialise in the same region

AdityaM wrote: Now did we not have a airbase which failed to materialise in the same region

A Chinese town attempting to improve the image of its municipal security force has attracted controversy by saying they will only hire "tall and attractive" women under the age of 23.

But the official Global Times newspaper said on Tuesday the Chinese government’s position was that both countries “will take into consideration each other’s concerns, and work toward an equitable and justified settlement of border issues that is acceptable to both sides.”

Indian officials say a hardening of China’s claims on Arunachal Pradesh means the talks are likely to remain long, drawn-out. China voiced strong opposition to the Prime Minister’s visit to the State last year, which it refers to as “Southern Tibet.”

The Global Times quoted Zhao Gancheng, a leading Chinese strategist, as saying “Indian activities near the border” and “remarks made by senior Indian officials who played up the China threat” had “harmed the chances” reaching a quick resolution.

rsingh wrote:Now where is Lal mullah?

China is North Korea's only real ally, providing it with economic and diplomatic support, but there appears to be a limit to how much information even it gets from Pyongyang.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is believed to have had a stroke in 2008, but China was still looking for signs of it the following year, according to the leaks.

Senior Chinese Communist Party official Wang Jiarui met Kim Jong-il in 2009, says a US diplomatic cable out of Seoul.

"Wang could not detect any scars on [Kim Jong-il's] head after his widely reported surgery after suffering a stroke," read the despatch.

With a failing economy, North Korea seems keen to attract as much Chinese aid as possible.

One report says Kim Jong-il - described by one Chinese official as a man who likes a drink - visited China earlier this year to get more economic assistance.

The country also wants as much Chinese investment as possible.

Another document, sent from the US consulate in Shenyang earlier this year, says some North Korean officials are selling mining and fishing rights to Chinese businesses in exchange for funds for construction projects.

It goes on to say that this arrangement sometimes allows the children of high-ranking officials in both countries to "hijack the most favourable investment and aid deals for their own enrichment".

The long-running border dispute should not affect “the overall interest” of relations between China and India, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, two weeks ahead of Premier Wen Jiabao's much-anticipated visit to New Delhi.

Last month, the Chinese government asked India and others not to send representatives to witness the investiture, warning that attending the ceremony would have repercussions on the bilateral relationship, and possibly impact Mr. Wen's visit.