Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[CougarKing]

While this applies more to the civil aviation industry, perhaps this might be another possible troop ferry/airlifter for the PLAAF if the need ever arose?

China wants to rival Boeing, Airbus with its C919 'big plane'

BEIJING — For now, China's big entry into the standard passenger jet business is little more than a 20-foot-long model plane on display here at Beijing Expo air show.
But the model — of the planned C919, single-aisle jetliner designed to seat up to 190 passengers — represents something much larger.

It's what's called the "big plane" project here. It symbolizes the country's stepped-up efforts to get into the commercial passenger jet business in a big way and challenge U.S. plane-making giant Boeing and European rival Airbus, which dominate the global jetliner market. And it will be a showcase for China's ambition to be more than a low-tech producer of consumer goods for the world.

"To develop the large-scale airliner is a strategic decision of the Chinese government and one of the major programs for building up an innovation-oriented country," Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang said last month, according to the Xinhua state news agency.

The model of the C919 was unveiled in August. Work on a prototype began only last month. A maiden flight isn't scheduled until 2014, and the jet won't be available commercially until 2016. Even then, it's aimed at China's domestic market rather than for U.S. or other countries' airlines.

But the Chinese manufacturer already says the twin-engine, narrow-body design of the C919 is superior to the planes it would compete against: the Boeing 737, the best-selling jetliner in the world, and its competitor, the Airbus A320.

Read full article at...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2009-10-12-china-planes-c919-boeing_N.htm?csp=Travel

 

[MarkOttawa]

Obamapolicy:

U.S. Hopes to Strengthen Ties With China's Expanding Military
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/14/AR2009101403715.html

During his first visit to China next month, President Obama hopes to strengthen ties with Beijing on efforts to combat climate change, address the global financial crisis and contain nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran. Perhaps most important, he also aims to improve the U.S. relationship with China's military.

The once-insular nation is broadening its international interests and investing around the globe, and its military is rapidly modernizing. So there is concern that U.S. and Chinese forces may find themselves bumping into each other without formal mechanisms in place for the two militaries to iron out disagreements.

Even as those worries grow, a longtime issue for China remains: It does not want the United States to sell weapons to Taiwan, which it still claims as part of its territory, and views that as the baseline of any talks. "The military relationship is a red-meat issue in China," said a senior Chinese diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "It is the one issue that could jeopardize our relations with the United States."

White House officials hope to diffuse that concern, arguing that the bigger matters between the two countries are more pressing than ever. Even at the height of the Cold War, senior administration officials have noted, the Pentagon had a more substantive relationship with the Soviet Union's military than it does with the People's Liberation Army today...

In the past, some U.S. officials said forging ties with the Chinese military wasn't that important. Even though its defense spending had risen dramatically, outpaced only by the United States', China's intentions were limited to defending its sovereignty.

But two developments have changed American thinking, analysts say. The first was the realization that every crisis between the United States and China -- including the Chinese army crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators in 1989 and the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999 by U.S. planes -- has involved the nations' militaries.

The second was the conclusion that the People's Liberation Army wants to expand its activities around the world as China expands its international investments [emphasis added]. Last year, China dispatched three navy ships outside of Asia for the first time in its modern history, sending them to fight piracy off Somalia alongside an international task force.

The Obama administration has held a series of high-level contacts with the Chinese army that will culminate with a visit to the United States this month by Xu Caihou, a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and the highest-ranking Chinese military official to come here in years.

But beyond that, China's military seems intent on keeping the Pentagon at arm's length, and U.S. officials point to number of concerns...

More on the Chinese military build-up follows.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[CougarKing]

China again demonstrates that any dissent and disorder will not be tolerated:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_as/as_china_protest

BEIJING – China sentenced three more people to death Thursday for murders committed during riots in the far western Xinjiang region in July, bringing to nine the number of people facing execution for the unrest.

Nearly 200 people were killed when Muslim Uighurs and members of China's dominant Han ethnicity turned on one another in the streets of the regional capital, Urumqi. First, Uighurs assaulted random people in the overwhelmingly Han city. Days later, Han vigilantes retaliated in Uighur neighborhoods. It was the country's worst communal violence in decades.

The official Xinhua News Agency said three new defendants were sentenced to death by the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court and three others were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve — a penalty usually commuted to life in prison.

The condemned men were all Uighur except for one Han Chinese man who was convicted of beating a Uighur man to death with a steel bar during the revenge attacks, Xinhua said.

The Uighurs sentenced to death were convicted of murder for the beating deaths of two people on July 5. One of those given a two-year reprieve was found guilty of a beating death and the other an arson attack on an auto dealership that destroyed 40 cars and resulted in heavy financial losses.

In all, 14 people were sentenced Thursday, including three who received life sentences for attacking people, setting fires and destroying private property. Of those, five were jailed for between five to 18 years for arson or assault, Xinhua said. A spokeswoman for the Xinjiang regional government, Hou Hanmin, said all those given jail terms were Uighur except for one.
The report did not say what pleas the defendants entered or if they would appeal.

Dilxat Raxit, a Uighur rights activist and spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, condemned the rulings. He said local sources in Xinjiang told him the defendants were not allowed to pick their own lawyers and spent just 10 minutes with the lawyers before the trial began.

"China does not have an independent justice system," he said in an e-mailed statement. "Judgments like these for the July 5 cases are mostly political and symbolic in nature. They are done for show and reported as lofty propaganda in order to serve a political purpose."

On Monday, six Uighur defendants were sentenced to death by the same court. Those sentences were the first to be handed down in the trials of scores of suspects arrested during and after the riots.

The violence flared on July 5 after a protest by Uighur youths demanding an investigation into a deadly brawl between Han and Uighur workers at a toy factory hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in southern China.

The government has blamed the rioting on overseas-based groups agitating for more Uighur rights in Xinjiang. Beijing has presented no direct evidence, and overseas Uighur activists have denied supporting violence.

Swift punishment of those arrested over the rioting was among the demands of Han protesters who swarmed Urumqi's streets early last month calling for the firing of Xinjiang's powerful Communist Party boss Wang Lequan. Five people died in those protests under circumstances that remain unclear.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

While this applies more to the civil aviation industry, perhaps this might be another possible troop ferry/airlifter for the PLAAF if the need ever arose?

It certainly looks dual purpose, keeping in the tradition of Warsaw bloc civil airliners with glass noses.

China is in a push to make it own brands world known rather than producing for others. Many of the pianos are made in China under other well known brands, the fctory is now marketing them under their own. QC is still an issue, my friend works with Chinese factories a fair bit, they are hungry for feedback, but not sure what to do with it when they get it.

 

[Edward Campbell]

China again demonstrates that any political dissent and disorder will not be tolerated:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_as/as_china_protest

I don't think I would call what so many Uyghurs are doing political dissent. They are, at the very least, worse than our own, violent, FLQ separatists of the '60s and '70s and we certainly didn't call that political dissent. In fact "apprehended insurrection" was the phrase I recall being used.

The Uyghurs are an 'oppressed minority,' no question about that, but so, arguably, are the Tujia people who live in Hunan province and, by that definition, so were (are) French Quebecers. We didn't allow that "oppression" to excuse murders in Quebec in 1970; "we" imposed the (now defunct) War Measures Act and set about searching for the perpetrators with the intent of punishing them.

The sad fact is that the government of the day in Ottawa, in 1970, caved and allowed the murderers of a Quebec cabinet minister to be exiled to Cuba. The government of the day in Beijing is not doing the same.

 

[CougarKing]

Not surprising.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091015/wl_time/08599193033700

As Asia's economic growth races ahead of that of the U.S., the investment portfolios of Asia's wealthiest people are picking up enough momentum to slingshot them past their North American counterparts.


A report released Oct. 13 by Merrill Lynch and consulting firm Capgemini Financial Services projects that with the global recession easing, the total net worth of Asia-Pacific's wealthy - those with at least $1 million in investable assets - is set to grow at a faster pace than the holdings of rich people in other parts of the world. If this trend takes hold, the total value of assets held by Asia's rich could surpass the combined assets of North America's wealthy by 2013. All the world's millionaires will have a combined net worth of $48.5 trillion in four years, according to Merrill Lynch/Capgemini. Of that, $13.5 trillion will be held by Asia's Élite, compared with $12.7 for all of North America. Arvind Sundaresan, Asia Pacific sales chief for Capgemini, says the projection is based on economic data and growth rates as well as interviews with wealth managers. He adds that his company's estimate "is very much on the conservative side." (See pictures of Shanghai today.)

This doesn't necessarily mean Bill Gates (net worth: $40 billion) will lose his place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's richest man any time soon. But as Eastern economies, powered by a resurgent China, bounce back, the ranks of the planet's wealthiest are becoming increasingly populated by Asians. China in particular is minting nouveaux riches at a remarkable rate. Five years ago, the country had just three billionaires, according to the Hurun Rich List, which annually ranks the country's 1,000 wealthiest individuals. Today, China has 130 billionaires, according to Hurun's latest ranking released Oct. 13. That's up from 101 in 2008 (the U.S. has 359 billionaires, according to Forbes magazine).


 




Topping China's rich list is Wang Chuanfu, founder of BYD, a Chinese car manufacturer making hybrid electric cars. Wang, who's worth an estimated $5.1 billion, wasn't even on the list last year. But BYD's stock price has been soaring since Warren Buffett - who is ranked by Forbes as the world's second richest man with a $37 billion fortune - invested in the company in September 2008. Fast-growing BYD is also getting help from China's buoyant car market, which despite the sluggish global economy is expected to grow 5% in 2009.


Wong Kwong Yu, named by Hurun last year as China's richest person with $6.3 billion, fell off the list this year after the tycoon was convicted and sent to jail for manipulating share prices of a medical company controlled by his brother. This year's second-richest Chinese is so-called "paper queen" Zhang Yin, who has accumulated $4.9 billion by buying recycled paper from the U.S. and turning it into cardboard boxes.


Although Asians have been getting rich quicker than most, this doesn't mean the region's millionaires were unscathed by the financial crisis. In fact, during the depths of the market meltdown, they fared more poorly than the average Daddy Warbucks. According to the Merrill Lynch/Capgemini survey, wealthy Asians in 2008 lost 35% of their net worth, compared to a global average loss of 24%. But Asian stock and property markets - and the investments of wealthy Asians - have rebounded sharply since March as regional economies shrugged off recession. China's GDP is projected to expand 8.5% this year, compared with 1.5% growth in the U.S.


Wang of BYD may have a ways to go before he challenges Gates for the title of world's wealthiest. But Rupert Hoogewerf, founder and compiler of the Hurun Rich List, says that given current trends, "there's a very strong possibility that in 15 years time you'll see somebody in China being number one in the world."

 

[CougarKing]

"Sexy Beijing: Beijing or Hong Kong"

Just a sampling of cultural differences between Beijing and Hong Kong- this topic episode in particular deals with views of which region's men make better husbands.  :rofl:


Note: the word "shuai"(帅) more means "sexy", not just good-lookiing as translated by the host.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

OOOHHH!

Has anyone here read this work? I was going to bring it up earlier, but I didn't think there would be enough interest.

It's kind of old news, but it caused quite a stir when it came out!
<a href=http://missilethreat.com/static/19990200-LiangXiangsui-unrestrictedwar.pdf>Read the translation here</a>

Apologies for the necro-post, but yesterday I read this book as part of the research for a paper (due Tuesday - I should probably be writing it instead of goofing off here...).  The book has an excellent if scorching review of Desert Storm, and despite a foray into out and out weirdness in Chapter 7 (the principle of 0.168) it comes to relatively sound conclusions on how to take on a larger country (read the US) and win.  Perhaps more interesting is that elements of the book appear in the PLA PJO (principle of joint operations) publication of 1999 that kickstarted China's "revolution in doctrinal affairs".

All in all, well worth the read.

 

[CougarKing]

The influence of the Varyag design is obvious:

Wuhan mock-up showcases naval ambitions

Greg Torode Chief Asia correspondent
Oct 19, 2009 
The emergence of a giant concrete ship in the unlikely setting of Wuhan is the latest sign that Beijing's desire for aircraft carriers is fast moving towards a full-blown production programme....

http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2c913216495213d5df646910cba0a0a0/?vgnextoid=36b0cac098864210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=teaser&ss=china&s=news

 
A general view of the mock aircraft carrier being constructed on top of a building in Wuhan.

 
A general view of the control tower

  A leaked security picture of the shipyard at Changxing shipyard showing heavy lifting cranes that have recently been put in place.

 

[CougarKing]

More pics with "aircraft" on the "flight deck":

"Chinese Military Mash-up" Wuhan training flight deck article link

This odd building is found in Huang Jiahu (黄家湖), where there is a huge University City. According to Chinese news resources, this so-called “Comprehensive Testing Platform” project was initiated in about June or July of 2008.

This project is run by the well-known Chinese Warship Research & Design Center (No.701 Institute under CSIC).

From the picture, you can see a mock flight deck, one Su-27 fighter and one Z-8 helicopter (both are probably full scale models). The most obvious is the “Island” commanding structure which is very similar to the one of “varyag” in Dalian. It is very interesting that Chinese people cut a big square opening on the commanding structure. For the picturing angle, there are possibly 3 square openings on other 3 sides of the structure.

Since “China-Defense-Mashup” has reported that “varyag” Aircraft Carrier’s commanding structure has been being improved since the end of August. The “big square openings” indicate that Chinese Navy will certainly equip “varyag” carrier with domestic ship-borne AESA radars, perhaps a improved version on Type 052C Destroyer.

 

[CougarKing]

Not gonna happen.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091020/world/taiwan_us_china_diplomacy

Taiwan has invited Eric Shinseki, US secretary of veterans affairs, officials here said Tuesday, as the island aimed for the highest-level American visit in a decade.

Tseng Jing-ling, minister of Taiwan's Veteran Affairs Commission, confirmed the invitation during a parliamentary session on Monday, his aide told AFP.


Shinseki could travel to Taiwan as early as spring next year for a symposium on veteran issues, an area that is not considered politically sensitive and therefore more palatable to China, the United Daily News said.

He would be the first cabinet-level US official to arrive in Taiwan since a visit in 2000 by Rodney Slater, transportation secretary in the Bill Clinton administration.


Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but has remained a key ally and a leading arms supplier to the island.


The triangular relationship between China, the United States and Taiwan was strained under the island's former president Chen Shui-bian who often irked Washington and Beijing with policies pushing for formal independence.

Ties have improved markedly after Chen was succeeded by Ma Ying-jeou last year, becoming the least confrontational president in the island's history as a de facto separate country.


However, Beijing still considers Taiwan part of its territory awaiting reunification, and it opposes official foreign contacts with the island, which split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Female Chinese Jet Fighter Pilots to Be Equipped with New Suits

http://big5.cri.cn/gate/big5/english.cri.cn/6909/2009/08/31/45s512398.htm

Interesting pictures [of the aircraft].

 

[CougarKing]

Some comments from CMC Vice-Chairman Xu Caihou in his visit to Washington:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/091026/us/politics_us_china_usa_military

China's military sought to assure the United States on Monday that its arms buildup was not a threat and said Beijing wanted to expand cooperation with the Pentagon to reduce the risk of future conflicts.

At the start of a visit to Washington, Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the People's Liberation Army Central Military Commission, said military ties were generally moving in a "positive direction" and defended China's fast-paced military development as purely "defensive" and "limited" in scope.


"We are now predominantly committed to peaceful development and we will not and could not challenge or threaten any other country" and "certainly not the United States," Xu told a Washington think tank ahead of talks with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.


Xu described China's development of advanced weapons systems, including cruise and ballistic missiles, as "entirely for self-defense" and justified "given the vast area of China, the severity of the challenges facing us."


"As you know, China has yet to realize complete unification," Xu said, in an apparent reference to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. "So I believe it is simply necessary for the PLA to have an appropriate level of modernity in terms of our weapons and equipment."


Xu's visit, which will include a tour of major U.S. military bases, including U.S. Strategic Command, was meant to give a boost to military-to-military dialogue, which Beijing resumed this year after halting it in 2008 to protest a $6.5 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan.


NAVAL INCIDENTS


U.S. officials have expressed alarm about what they see as China's unprecedented military expansion over the past year. Last week, Gates said better dialogue was needed to avoid "mistakes and miscalculations."


"I want to make clear that the limited weapons and equipment of China is entirely to meet the minimum requirements for meeting national security," Xu said through a translator.


He said military mechanization was still at an early stage. "China's defense policy remains defensive" and was designed to repel attacks, not initiate attacks, he said. "We will never seek hegemony ... military expansion."


Chinese vessels have confronted U.S. surveillance ships in Asian waters repeatedly this year and Beijing has called on the United States to reduce and eventually halt air and sea military surveillance close to its shores.


Xu said those U.S. missions "infringed upon Chinese interests," adding: "It is encouraging to see that both sides have recognized that we should not allow such incidents to damage our ... mil-to-mil relations."


Xu said U.S.-Chinese military relations have improved since President Barack Obama took office in January and can be expanded further.


"The military-to-military relationship constitutes an important part of overall bilateral relations. It is important not only to strategic trust ... but also to regional stability," he said. "The Chinese military is positive toward developing mil-to-mil relations with the U.S. military."


Last month, U.S. intelligence agencies singled out China as a challenge to the United States because of its "increasing natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization."


(Reporting by Adam Entous; editing by Stacey Joyce)

 

[CougarKing]

More executions, this time for some involved in Tibet riots last year:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/091027/world/international_us_china_tibet_1

Two people have been executed in China for their involvement in deadly riots in Tibet last year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, the first officially confirmed to have been carried out.


The International Campaign for Tibet, which campaigns for self-rule for the restive mountain region in far-west China, said on Monday that Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak were executed for arson-related crimes committed in Lhasa, the regional capital, in March last year. Tibetans sometimes use just one name.


Tibetan protests led by Buddhist monks against Chinese rule on March 14 last year gave way to torrid violence, with rioters torching shops and turning on residents, especially Han Chinese, who many Tibetans see as intruders threatening their culture.


At least 19 people died in the unrest, which sparked waves of protests across Tibetan areas. Tibetan exile groups say more than 200 people died in the subsequent crackdown.


Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu did not give any details about the executions but said they were linked to the violence, which Beijing blamed on the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader. The Dalai Lama had denied responsibility.

"The procedural rights of the defendants were fully ensured," Ma told a regular news conference. "The two criminals who were executed had strictly conducted first and second trials and the Supreme People's Court examined and ratified the sentences."


Some exiled Tibetan groups have said that another two Tibetans were executed over the unrest that rippled out from Lhasa to other ethnic Tibetan regions.


Last week, 500 Tibetans, mostly Buddhist monks and nuns, marched with candles through Dharamsala in north India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based, denouncing what they said were executions of four Tibetans for the protests last year.


(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Ben Blanchard)

 

[CougarKing]

A unique story from an unexpected source:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091104/entertainment/china_us_politics_obama_family


GUANGZHOU, China (AFP) - US President Barack Obama's half-brother Mark Ndesandjo Wednesday broke his silence to speak of their abusive father at the launch of his first novel.

Ndesandjo, who has lived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen for seven years, said he wrote "Nairobi to Shenzhen" after a string of extraordinary events -- including his brother being elected president -- made him come to terms with his past.


"My father beat me. He beat my mother. You just do not do that," he told a press conference hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China and attended by representatives of the US Consul-General here.

(...)

Obama's Kenyan father and American mother separated when Obama was just two and the president has spoken about the problems children face growing up with an absent father.


Ndesandjo, son of Obama's late father and his third wife Ruth Nidesand, had been dodging the media since his identity came to light during Obama's election campaign.


He had not used the name "Obama" and had not even told his close acquaintances about his connection with the president until it was reported in the media. But the backdrop at his book launch Wednesday named him as "Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo".


Bearing a strong resemblance in facial features and voice to President Obama, Ndesandjo recalled scenes of the election night at Chicago's Grant Park which helped him come to terms with the many issues "I had shut out of my life, including the Obama name."


"I saw all the hope and joy in the people's eyes. I was so proud of my brother Barack. That peeled away the hardness I had felt for so many years."


Ndesandjo said his novel, which was originally meant to be his autobiography, was about a man who was forced to confront his early experiences in Kenya and the United States after arriving in China in the wake of the September 11 attacks.


He said he would publish his second book, an autobiography, in the next few months.


"I want to tell my story, not have others tell it for me."


A graduate of Stanford and Brown universities, Ndesandjo said he left his hometown for China when he lost his job and did not know where his life was heading. He said he eventually decided to devote most of his time to music and service.


He reportedly runs a business consultancy in Shenzhen helping to connect Chinese exporters with US buyers.


Harley Seyedin, president of American Chamber of Commerce in South China and host of the book launch, described Ndesandjo as a talented pianist, writer, artist, and businessman, and a long-time good friend of his.


Ndesandjo said that 15 percent of the proceeds of his novel would go to helping disadvantaged and orphaned children in China and the rest of the world.


Asked if there was anything he would like to tell his brother ahead of Obama's first presidential visit to China in November 15, Ndesandjo, who speaks fluent Chinese, said: "I would encourage not only my brother President Obama, but also American people, (to understand) that China is about family. Family is always a recurrent theme here."
 

 

[a_majoor]

"Smart Diplomacy" indeed:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6b6956e6-cb01-11de-97e0-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

China brands US ‘protectionist’

By Geoff Dyer in Beijing

Published: November 6 2009 18:39 | Last updated: November 6 2009 18:39

China on Friday accused the US of protectionist and biased trade policies less than a week before president Barack Obama’s first visit to Beijing.

In a stinging rebuke to Washington, China’s commerce ministry promised to take measures to protect its domestic industry after the US slapped anti-dumping duties on $2.6bn of Chinese steel pipe imports. The duties are part of a growing roster of trade conflicts between the two countries, despite a high-level meeting last week in China aimed at reducing tensions.

“China resolutely opposes such protectionist practices and will take steps to protect the interests of our domestic industries,” Yao Jian, ministry spokesman, said on its website.

“The US should give objective consideration to the fact that the fundamental problem of the US industries in question is the fall of demand brought about by the financial crisis.”

The decision by the US Commerce Department, which imposed tariffs of up to 99 per cent on some Chinese steel pipes, follows a move earlier in the week by the US, European Union and Mexico to file a formal complaint at the World Trade Organisation against Beijing’s restrictions on exports of specialised raw materials. Last month the Obama administration levied 35 per cent tariffs on tyres made in China.

In response, the Chinese have opened probes into US exports of poultry on grounds of safety and into cars and car parts because of the state aid those industries have received.

Lawyers in Beijing say that the government has raised the issue of state aid to push its case for China to be awarded market economy status, which would make it harder for the US to bring anti-dumping cases against Chinese products and has long been a sore issue in Beijing. “They are trying to show that every country’s markets have imperfections,” said a US trade lawyer in Beijing.

In its statement on Friday, the Chinese commerce ministry said: “We hope that the US will set aside its biases and act as quickly as possible to recognize China as a market economy.” At the US-China meeting in Hangzhou last week, Gary Locke, the US Commerce secretary, promised to set up a panel to consider the issue.

“We should be aware of this kind of trend of western countries using the WTO and free trade as an excuse to challenge us,” said Mei Xinyu, a researcher at a think tank connected to China’s commerce ministry. “Western countries adjust their own trade policies depending on the market needs of their own interest group.”

At the meeting last week, China agreed to allow US imports of pork and to relax restrictions on importing wind power components. However, Paulo Soares, head of the Chinese operations of Suzlon, the Indian wind power group, said the new rules would make little difference. “The big companies already have installed manufacturing operations and established supply chains, so it is not going to change anything,” he said.

 

[CougarKing]

The Dalai Lama up to his "mischief"? 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091108/ap_on_re_as/as_india_dalai_lama

The Dalai Lama brushed off Chinese protests and traveled Sunday to a remote Himalayan town near the Tibetan border to lead five days of prayers and teaching sessions for Buddhist pilgrims.

Thousands of poor villagers braved freezing temperatures and icy winds for a rare chance to glimpse the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Monks clanged cymbals and sounded traditional Tibetan horns to greet the Dalai Lama as he arrived at the Tawang monastery from a nearby helipad.

The Dalai Lama smiled and chatted with the gathered crowds. One monk shaded him with a giant yellow silk umbrella, while scores of others bowed before him as he walked into a hall to lead a prayer session.
(...)

 

[CougarKing]

China increasing its Africa footprint:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091108/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_china_africa

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt – China's premier on Sunday pledged $10 billion in new low interest loans to African nations over three years, offering the beleaguered continent sorely needed cash while dismissing criticism that Beijing's motives in Africa are far from altruistic.

Wen Jiabao's promise at the start of a two-day China-Africa summit was warmly received by African leaders and officials, most of whose nations confront a miasma of despair further accentuated by a global financial crisis that is only now showing signs of abating.

"The Chinese people cherish sincere friendship toward the African people, and China's support to Africa's development is concrete and real," Wen said at a forum that attracted leaders such as Sudan's Omar al-Bashir — who faces an international arrest warrant — and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Both are heads of state out-of-favor with the West.

Wen said China wants to help Africa build its financing capacity and would provide $10 billion in concessional loans — ones with generous terms.

As part of an eight-point plan, he said China would also forgive government debts of the poorest African nations that have relations with Beijing and would build 100 new clean energy projects for the continent. It would also gradually institute a zero-tariff policy on 95 percent of goods from some of the poorest countries. All this would take place over three years.

The latest offer marks a doubling of the $5 billion loan pledge China made in 2006 to African nations — a promise that Beijing and most at the summit said China has upheld. Over the past eight years, trade between China and Africa has surged tenfold to almost $107 billion by the end of 2008, and Wen said despite the financial crisis, Chinese investments in Africa were up 77 percent in the first three quarters of 2009.

But China's inroads into Africa have drawn accusations by some in the West that the Asian powerhouse has ignored Africa's needs and the dismal rights records of some nations while looking only to sap the continent of the resources it needs to fuel its bustling economy. Critics contend that its aid is predicated on these countries renouncing ties with Taiwan — a belief Wen appeared to validate by stipulating that assistance was pegged to having diplomatic relations with China.

But more troubling for some has been Beijing's willingness to pour money into some countries irrespective of their internal politics.

China has, for example, been a key force in developing Sudan's vital oil sector even as the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum is accused of atrocities in the Darfur region. More recently, a $7 billion mining deal was signed between a little-known Chinese company and Guinea's government — an agreement that came weeks after soldiers there opened fire on demonstrators and raped women in the streets.

The Chinese premier said he took issue with claims that "China has come to Africa to plunder its resources and practice neocolonialism."

"This allegation, in my view, is totally untenable," Wen told reporters. "Any person who is familiar with China-Africa interaction knows that relations between the two sides did not begin yesterday."

China has been active in Africa for decades, working on infrastructure projects and supporting African nations in their fight against colonial powers in the early 1950s and 60s. He said that at that time, China did not take a "single drop of oil or a single ton of minerals."

Wen said China's imports of African mineral resources and energy account for only 13 percent of the continent's total exports and its investments in Africa's oil and gas sector were only one-sixteenth of the total investments in the continent.

"So, why do some people only criticize China?" Wen asked.

Earlier, the Chinese premier invited others in the international community to step up and do their part to support Africa. The comments appeared to be a subtle nudge at Western nations with a checkered colonial past on the continent.

Zimbabwe's Mugabe — blamed by many in the West for driving his country's economy into the ground — praised China's growth as a model.

"Over the past 60 years, China has achieved phenomenal economic growth and development, purely from its own efforts without having to resort to the colonization and economic plunder of other nations," Mugabe said. "Its economic miracle is indeed a source of pride and inspiration to all of us."

Other leaders, like Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, expressed frustration with fallout from the global economic crisis that she said has "eroded benefits accumulated over years of reform."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the summit's host, said participants should seize the opportunity to press developed nations, "given their responsibility in the financial and economic crisis," to live up to their obligations in helping developing nations cope with the fallout.

(This version CORRECTS the style on the transliteration of the Sudanese president's last name.)

 

[Kirkhill]

OK - lets stipulate that Africa needs cash

The Copenhagen Greens aim to transfer cash from US (those with cash) to THEM (those without cash) to redress the lack of cash

However the problem is not just a lack of cash.  It is a lack of cash in the hands of the people that need it. As long as you are dealing with statist regimes that is not going to happen.

Problem No. 1 -  Getting it by the bast**ds that the UN recognizes as leaders (including the King of Kings). 

The various African Aristocrats do not want for cash - Transferring funds to them will only result in more Mercedes being driven by Aristos. The Greenies, believers in the altruism of idealistic bureaucrats, think that continuing to feed the Aristos will eventually result in a change of behaviour.  Wall: Meet Forehead.  Forehead, Wall. This way to Bedlam.  Thus I am opposed to the paying of Maundy Money to assuage someone else's sense of guilt.  No truck nor trade with enviro-socialists.

But - Africa does need cash, and it needs to reach Africans, not African states.

Conventionally individuals are rewarded with cash  when they sell something - either some Good that they own or a Service that they can provide.

There is little that Canada needs in the way of Goods that Africa can supply.  Africa supplies resources.  We have resources.  We don't need their resources.  We compete with them to supply resources.  The fact that we don't need their resources actually saves us from having to support the Aristos of the state mafia.

Africa doesn't supply manufactured Goods, the one thing we might be interested in.  They don't manufacture Goods.

What Africa needs is a good Sweat Shop, complete with Company Store and Company Scrip.  They need Nike. Or RIM.

China's fund transfer meets two of their strategic goals:  The supply of resources for a billion hard-done-by subjects ( I can't bring myself to call  Chinese citizens of China); The support of like-minded Statists who will vote with them in world governance fora like the UN.

We need to find ways to exploit "subsidiarity" to undercut that State regimes and exploit the innate Capitalist that exists in every living, breathing, communicating and trading human.  We need to export Canadians to manage African Sweat Shops.

 

[tomahawk6]

Choose your poison,an ascendant China or one in economic collapse. The Chinese economy is an export oriented economy with huge infrastructure problems,a huge under class that hasnt benefited from the boom in the cities. The cities face a severe water shortage in the near term. Right now they are flush with cash. Continued recession or even depression in the west will severely hurt the Chinese economy.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29330.html

The conventional wisdom in Washington and in most of the rest of the world is that the roaring Chinese economy is going to pull the global economy out of recession and back into growth. It’s China’s turn, the theory goes, as American consumers — who propelled the last global boom with their borrowing and spending ways — have begun to tighten their belts and increase savings rates.


The Chinese, with their unbridled capitalistic expansion propelled by a system they still refer to as “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” are still thriving, though, with annual gross domestic product growth of 8.9 percent in the third quarter and a domestic consumer market just starting to flex its enormous muscles.


That’s prompted some cheerleading from U.S. officials, who want to see those Chinese consumers begin to pick up the slack in the global economy — a theme President Barack Obama and his delegation are certain to bring up during next week’s visit to China.


“Purchases of U.S. consumers cannot be as dominant a driver of growth as they have been in the past,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said during a trip to Beijing this spring. “In China, ... growth that is sustainable will require a very substantial shift from external to domestic demand, from an investment and export-intensive growth to growth led by consumption.”


That’s one vision of the future.


But there’s a growing group of market professionals who see a different picture altogether. These self-styled China bears take the less popular view: that the much-vaunted Chinese economic miracle is nothing but a paper dragon. In fact, they argue that the Chinese have dangerously overheated their economy, building malls, luxury stores and infrastructure for which there is almost no demand, and that the entire system is teetering toward collapse.


A Chinese collapse, of course, would have profound effects on the United States, limiting China’s ability to buy U.S. debt and provoking unknown political changes inside the Chinese regime.


The China bears could be dismissed as a bunch of cranks and grumps except for one member of the group: hedge fund investor Jim Chanos.


Chanos, a billionaire, is the founder of the investment firm Kynikos Associates and a famous short seller — an investor who scrutinizes companies looking for hidden flaws and then bets against those firms in the market.


His most famous call came in 2001, when Chanos was one of the first to figure out that the accounting numbers presented to the public by Enron were pure fiction. Chanos began contacting Wall Street investment houses that were touting Enron’s stock. “We were struck by how many of them conceded that there was no way to analyze Enron but that investing in Enron was, instead, a ‘trust me’ story,” Chanos told a congressional committee in 2002.

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Now, Chanos says he has found another “trust me” story: China. And he is moving to short the entire nation’s economy. Washington policymakers would do well to understand his argument, because if he’s right, the consequences will be felt here.


Chanos and the other bears point to several key pieces of evidence that China is heading for a crash.


First, they point to the enormous Chinese economic stimulus effort — with the government spending $900 billion to prop up a $4.3 trillion economy. “Yet China’s economy, for all the stimulus it has received in 11 months, is underperforming,” Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” wrote in Forbes at the end of October. “More important, it is unlikely that [third-quarter] expansion was anywhere near the claimed 8.9 percent.”


Chang argues that inconsistencies in Chinese official statistics — like the surging numbers for car sales but flat statistics for gasoline consumption — indicate that the Chinese are simply cooking their books. He speculates that Chinese state-run companies are buying fleets of cars and simply storing them in giant parking lots in order to generate apparent growth.


Another data point cited by the bears: overcapacity. For example, the Chinese already consume more cement than the rest of the world combined, at 1.4 billion tons per year. But they have dramatically ramped up their ability to produce even more in recent years, leading to an estimated spare capacity of about 340 million tons, which, according to a report prepared earlier this year by Pivot Capital Management, is more than the consumption in the U.S., India and Japan combined.


This, Chanos and others argue, is happening in sector after sector in the Chinese economy. And that means the Chinese are in danger of producing huge quantities of goods and products that they will be unable to sell.


The Pivot Capital report was extremely popular in Chanos’s office and concluded, “We believe the coming slowdown in China has the potential to be a similar watershed event for world markets as the reversal of the U.S. subprime and housing boom.”


And the bears also keep a close eye on anecdotal reports from the ground level in China, like a recent posting on a blog called The Peking Duck about shopping at Beijing’s “stunningly dysfunctional, catastrophic mall, called The Place.”


“I was shocked at what I saw,” the blogger wrote. “Fifty percent of the eateries in the basement were boarded up. The cheap food court, too, was gone, covered up with ugly blue boarding, making the basement especially grim and dreary. ... There is simply too much stuff, too many stores and no buyers.”