Bharat Rakshak

The result of China’s speedy economic recovery, even as the advanced nations continue to reel, is a hubris that bodes ill for both itself and the world

China wants to build a high-speed rail line connecting its south-western city of Kunming to New Delhi and Lahore, part of a 17-country transcontinental rail project, officials familiar with the plans told The Hindu.

. . .ambitious pan-Asian high-speed rail link, which envisages connecting cities in China to Central Asia, Iran, Europe, Russia and Singapore.

One proposal involves a line running from Kunming, in south-western Yunnan province, to New Delhi, Lahore and on to Tehran, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and one of the country's leading railway consultants.

“India is a relatively small country with a huge population,” he told The Hindu in an interview. “It will be too costly to build highways for India, so our high-speed rail link project will improve transportation efficiency and resources. I am confident we can finally reach an agreement, which will greatly help exports to the Indian Ocean direction.” He said talks with Indian officials were “friendly,” and they had been “welcoming” of the idea.

When completed, the plan will give China unprecedented access to energy resources in many of these countries.

China will bear the brunt of the cost of building the high-speed rail lines in many of the countries involved, but will in return get access to energy resources in a proposed “resources for technology” arrangement, the Global Times reported.

sanjaykumar wrote:THANK YOU DALAI LAMA

SSridhar wrote:China wants High-speed Rail Link through India to Pakistan
Excerpts

China wants to build a high-speed rail line connecting its south-western city of Kunming to New Delhi and Lahore, part of a 17-country transcontinental rail project, officials familiar with the plans told The Hindu.

. . .ambitious pan-Asian high-speed rail link, which envisages connecting cities in China to Central Asia, Iran, Europe, Russia and Singapore.

One proposal involves a line running from Kunming, in south-western Yunnan province, to New Delhi, Lahore and on to Tehran, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and one of the country's leading railway consultants.

“India is a relatively small country with a huge population,” he told The Hindu in an interview. “It will be too costly to build highways for India, {I wonder has opium made a comeback in China? He says this after more than 90 per cent of the Golden Quadrilateral system has been completed} so our high-speed rail link project will improve transportation efficiency and resources. I am confident we can finally reach an agreement, which will greatly help exports to the Indian Ocean direction.” He said talks with Indian officials were “friendly,” and they had been “welcoming” of the idea.

When completed, the plan will give China unprecedented access to energy resources in many of these countries.

China will bear the brunt of the cost of building the high-speed rail lines in many of the countries involved, but will in return get access to energy resources in a proposed “resources for technology” arrangement, the Global Times reported.

Malayappan wrote:A new arrogance in the Middle Kingdom

The result of China’s speedy economic recovery, even as the advanced nations continue to reel, is a hubris that bodes ill for both itself and the world

says Prof Pranab Bardhan. Article in Business Standard

China's trasformation has been remarkable since Deng Xiaoping unleashed capitalism, but as ex-diplomat George Walden writes in China: a Wolf in the World? you cannot feel at ease with a regime that still covers up Mao's murderous nihilism. He reminds us too that China has never forgiven the humilations inflicted by the West when the two civilizations collided in the 19th Century, and intends to exact revenge. Handle with care.

The long-simmering clash between the world's two great powers is coming to a head, with dangerous implications for the international system.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
14 Mar 2010

US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Chinese ambassador to America Zhou Wenzhong on the Great Wall of China Photo: Reuters
China has succumbed to hubris. It has mistaken the soft diplomacy of Barack Obama for weakness, mistaken the US credit crisis for decline, and mistaken its own mercantilist bubble for ascendancy. There are echoes of Anglo-German spats before the First World War, when Wilhelmine Berlin so badly misjudged the strategic balance of power and over-played its hand.

Within a month the US Treasury must rule whether China is a "currency manipulator", triggering sanctions under US law. This has been finessed before, but we are in a new world now with America's U6 unemployment at 16.8pc.

"It's going to be really hard for them yet again to fudge on the obvious fact that China is manipulating. Without a credible threat, we're not going to get anywhere," said Paul Krugman, this year's Nobel economist.

China's premier Wen Jiabao is defiant.

"I don’t think the yuan is undervalued. We oppose countries pointing fingers at each other and even forcing a country to appreciate its currency," he said yesterday. Once again he demanded that the US takes "concrete steps to reassure investors" over the safety of US assets.

"Some say China has got more arrogant and tough. Some put forward the theory of China's so-called 'triumphalism'. My conscience is untainted despite slanders from outside," he said

Days earlier the State Council accused America of serial villainy. "In the US, civil and political rights of citizens are severely restricted and violated by the government. Workers' rights are seriously violated," it said.

"The US, with its strong military power, has pursued hegemony in the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and trespassing their human rights," it said.

"At a time when the world is suffering a serious human rights disaster caused by the US subprime crisis-induced global financial crisis, the US government revels in accusing other countries." And so forth.

Is the Politiburo smoking weed?

in the last 12 months, Beijing has filed more cases with the W.T.O.’s powerful trade tribunals in Geneva than any other country complaining about another’s trade practices

In addition, Beijing has worked to suppress a series of I.M.F. reports since 2007 documenting how the country has substantially undervalued its currency

people familiar with China’s response said that the Chinese government missed the November deadline and then submitted a vague document containing mostly historical data. These people said that China feared giving ammunition to critics of its currency policies at the monetary fund and beyond. Both people asked for anonymity because of China’s attitudes about its economic policies.

Countries blocking release are mostly tightly controlled places like Myanmar, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia, although Brazil has also not released its reports.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama Expressed his Pleasure at being Introduced as the " Son of India " Saying he took Pride in this status.

He began his lecture at the Madhya Pradesh assembly auditorium on Wednesday Saying He had been Living in India for the past 51 Years and was Proud to be Called the Son of the Country.

The Dalai Lama was referred to as a "Son of Mother India" when he was introduced to the audience at the lecture.

The Buddhist Leader said that the same "Dal" and "Chapatti", on which Millions of Indians Live, made his Life Easier.

Governor Li’s confrontation with the reporter neatly illustrates the yawning gap between the government’s promises of openness and accountability and the daily reality of censorship. Just two days earlier, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, reading aloud his annual report to the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, cited the need for the government to “let the news media fully play their oversight role.”

Yet Mr. Li, a delegate to the legislature, grew indignant when a Beijing reporter buttonholed him outside a conference chamber at the Great Hall of the People and asked for his thoughts about the case of the karaoke waitress. The 21-year-old waitress had fatally stabbed a local party official after he and a companion tried to force her into sex at a karaoke parlor.

Despite official efforts to suppress the scandal, the waitress’s arrest on murder charges incited online fury, drawing worldwide attention and turning the waitress into a national hero. The charges were reduced, and she was freed without serving a prison term.

By all accounts, Mr. Li did not take the question well. He asked the reporter, identified as Liu Jie, which publication she represented. When she said she wrote for People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s paper of record, he exploded.

“So you’re from a party paper!” he scolded. “Is this how a party paper guides public opinion? I’m going to the chief of your paper!”

He then snatched her recorder and stalked off toward the elevator, according to a report on the Web site of the independent-minded Beijing magazine Caijing.

Caijing’s report survived online for 18 hours before government censors ordered it removed. Caijing responded by publishing criticisms of the governor’s conduct by two of the party’s liberal elders: Zhou Ruijin, former deputy editor of People’s Daily, and Zhong Peizhang, former news director for the party’s propaganda department. Censors ordered both taken down.

But so far, authorities do not appear to have stopped the online spread of the protest letter about the episode, although they have blocked the Web site of the protest’s prime organizer.

By late last week, the March 14 letter had garnered more than 1,000 signatures. It calls on the legislature to investigate the governor’s conduct and to force him to apologize and resign from his official posts. It cites the governor’s rank, the “sacrosanct” setting and the fact that “Wen Jiabao’s words were still ringing in our ears” when the governor delivered his diatribe.

The second reason for the jaundiced view of the Rajapaksa administration by the West could be the link up with China. Rajapaksa was once again blessed with tremendous fortunes because China around 2005-7 was in the process of building up its ‘String of Pearls’ in the Indian Ocean — to project its naval power — and saw Hambantota as one of the most attractive of the pearls in the string.

News that China is pressing ahead with the construction of yet another port in the Indian Ocean – this time in Sri Lanka – has led to alarm in India that the strategic ‘string of pearls’ China is building along the lucrative trade routes from Africa to Asia could become an expensive choker on the Indian economy. But India is not taking the move lying down.

Acharya wrote:China is surrounded by hostile forces militarily ready to block its possible aggression. The communist regime does not have a real navy and its air force is pretty much defensive. No overseas bases. Not a single military ally. For 60 noisy years, the communists were not even able to cross the Taiwan Strait. They made a few bucks all right but they are far from a world power. USSR collapsed almost overnight, leaving literally no time for some academically-prepared folks to even make a comment about it. China is no USSR, not even close. They might think of doing something but they do not possess the means of doing it. After the Korean War, Communist China tried a few military clashes with India, the USSR (very small scale) and then Vietnam as you mentioned. Did they win anything? I doubted. They are problem-loaded, crucial, strategic reserves/resources are running out, not to mention domestic social unrest in Tibet, and the vast NW Muslim area.

SSridhar wrote:China wants High-speed Rail Link through India to Pakistan
Excerpts

China wants to build a high-speed rail line connecting its south-western city of Kunming to New Delhi and Lahore, part of a 17-country transcontinental rail project, officials familiar with the plans told The Hindu.

. . .ambitious pan-Asian high-speed rail link, which envisages connecting cities in China to Central Asia, Iran, Europe, Russia and Singapore.

One proposal involves a line running from Kunming, in south-western Yunnan province, to New Delhi, Lahore and on to Tehran, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and one of the country's leading railway consultants.

“India is a relatively small country with a huge population,” he told The Hindu in an interview. “It will be too costly to build highways for India, so our high-speed rail link project will improve transportation efficiency and resources. I am confident we can finally reach an agreement, which will greatly help exports to the Indian Ocean direction.” He said talks with Indian officials were “friendly,” and they had been “welcoming” of the idea.

A_Gupta wrote:China's increasing scientific publications:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... blish.html

James B wrote:

A_Gupta wrote:China's increasing scientific publications:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... blish.html

What about quality??. I think most of these publications would be in low quality journals with a spattering of high quality publications. It means squat.

When the four Rio Tinto executives were arrested last year by state security agents, Chinese state media said they had sought to obtain secrets about Chinese steel production and procurement that could aid Rio Tinto in its attempts to keep the price of iron ore high.

When the charges were filed a few weeks later, they were downgraded to bribery and theft of “commercial secrets,” rather than espionage. Prosecutors did not explain the change at the time. They have also not made clear how the bribery charge subsequently morphed into a guilty plea for accepting bribes, or how accepting bribes relates to stealing commercial secrets.

In court testimony on Monday, three employees of Rio Tinto, including Stern Hu, an Australian national, and two Chinese nationals who work for the company, admitted to receiving several millions of dollars in bribes, according to lawyers involved in the case. The lawyers also said the three and a fourth Rio Tinto employee, who is expected to enter a plea on Tuesday, were being accused of taking more than $12 million in bribes as well as stealing commercial secrets.
....

Beginning Tuesday afternoon, the four executives are also expected to be charged with stealing commercial secrets. That part of the trial is closed even to Australian consular officials.

A_Gupta wrote: Well, you can go by citations.
See this, http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php, I believe it is maintained by a desi, B.B. Goel - at least that is how I found it.

The citations from China is totally driven by volume rather than quality.

Quantity has a quality all of its own

Hari Seldon wrote:

The citations from China is totally driven by volume rather than quality.

Good point. But like Russian (and now chinese!) military doctrines say:

Quantity has a quality all of its own

Concern is cheena won't remain low-quality for another generation. O no. What'll we jingoes hold onto for comfort and reassurance then?

amit wrote:China wants High-speed Rail Link through India to Pakistan
Excerpts

China wants to build a high-speed rail line connecting its south-western city of Kunming to New Delhi and Lahore, part of a 17-country transcontinental rail project, officials familiar with the plans told The Hindu.

. . .ambitious pan-Asian high-speed rail link, which envisages connecting cities in China to Central Asia, Iran, Europe, Russia and Singapore.

One proposal involves a line running from Kunming, in south-western Yunnan province, to New Delhi, Lahore and on to Tehran, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and one of the country's leading railway consultants.

The ISC blamed the attacks on government-backed hackers from China and Russia and even said that Islamist terrorists were also behind some of the attacks.

“There is no doubt some state actors have sucked out huge amounts of intellectual copyright, designs to whole aero engines, things that have taken years and years of development.”

Two years ago, Chinese President Hu Jintao called on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to “assert supremacy over online public opinion, raise the level and study the art of online guidance and actively use new technologies to increase the strength of positive propaganda.”

After Hu's speech, Communist Party officials and the State Council issued an official call for “comrades of good ideological and political character, high capability and familiarity with the Internet to form teams of Web commentators ... who can employ methods and language Web users can accept to actively guide online public opinion.”

The CCP has hired thousands of freelance Internet propagandists whose job is to infiltrate chat rooms, message boards and comment areas on the Internet posing as ordinary users to voice support for the agenda and interest of the CCP. They praise China’s one-party system and condemn anyone who criticizes China’s policy on Tibet. They comment aggressively on news reports about China’s food-safety problems, relations with Taiwan, suppression of bird-flu and AIDS information, Internet censorship, jailing of dissidents, support of Sudan’s military in Darfur and other sensitive topics. Comments applaud the Chinese government and slam its critics, all using scripts and lines approved by the party.

With 300,000 people, you can see how the CCP could easily determine what makes it onto the front page of Digg, and what gets shouted down. They could use Wikipedia, YouTube and Slashdot as their most powerful tools of global propaganda. It would be trivial for China to determine Yahoo's "Most Popular" news items ("Most E-Mailed," "Most Viewed" and "Most Recommended").

Over the long term, the existence of China’s 50 Cent Army erodes the value of the Web 2.0, which is based entirely on the actions of users. If half those users are working for the CCP, then the results of user actions are compromised. Nobody can trust it.

It’s also yet another threat to Internet anonymity, which is already under pressure from legislators and some organizations who believe that anonymous posts create opportunities for fraud, deception and the exploitation of children. The more China’s 50 Cent Army succeeds, the more support will fall behind the idea of fixing the problem by illegalizing anonymity.

Ultimately, China’s 50 Cent Army threatens free speech. And although new threats to free speech are constantly being invented – the 50 Cent Army being one of the most recent innovations – the defense of free speech is always the same: More free speech.

So be on the lookout for the CCP’s paid posters, and oppose them at every opportunity.

At the conference the theme was "India – Powering Asia's Ascent." The US might have been expected to be the cheerleader for such a theme, but it was Victor Zhikai Gao, a westernized Beijing adviser, who enthusiastically called for China and India to see their disputed Himalayan mountain border "not as an insurmountable barrier" but as a "bridge linking these two ancient civilizations together, for mutual benefit, and for mutual enrichment" – while a senior US official merely recited a years-old list of economic reforms that American business wants India to implement.

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister and India's chief international negotiator on climate change, admitted that both countries were using each other for their own reasons, but added: "Partnership with China is a strategic message that we can collaborator and co-operate," even when the media was polarizing differences. "Negotiating with China is a headache for the United States. But negotiating with both India and China together is a nightmare", he added with a grin.

Gao had the same theme. The Chinese, he said, "share a collective sense of gratitude for India for having provided the spiritual richness which has so splendidly filled the spiritual void in the traditional Chinese civilization. This should be the foundation upon which China-India relations should be built upon and thrive".

Beijing has criticised U.S internet giant Google, after it decided to withdraw its server from China and redirect users to its uncensored Hong Kong site. In January a rift grew between the two after the firm announced it would no longer censor it's services - later citing viral attacks on the accounts of human rights workers for the decision. Authorities in Hong Kong say they won't comply with the mainland in controlling the company's web content. But investigative journalist Webster Tarpley thinks the belief that moving operations to Hong Kong will solve the problem, is naive.

Acharya wrote:Google is part of the US govt and has national security council inside Google.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE-0TUt61ws
Tarpley: US gov uses Google proxy to attack China

If you thought corporate "astroturfing" (fake grassroots activity) was a problem at sites like Yelp and Amazon that feature user reviews of products, imagine how much worse it would be if the US government employed a couple hundred thousand people to "shape the debate" among online political forums. Crazy, right? What government would ever attempt it?

According to noted China researcher Rebecca MacKinnon, the answer is China, which allegedly employs 280,000 people to troll the Internet and make the government look good.

Karan Dixit wrote:Dell's said to be joining Google in fleeing China in search of a "safer environment with [a] climate conducive to enterprise," potentially taking the $25 billion it spends on equipment and parts in China to India.

http://gizmodo.com/5500886/dell-leaving ... s-in-india