Tag Archive for ‘China’ at Asian Window

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Great Himalayan Trail: trekking’s holy grail

Published

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on March 12, 2010

in Sport

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From The Guardian:

Have you got six months off? Do you fancy a long walk? If so, World Expeditions may have just the holiday for you. They have become the only trekking outfit to offer a guided trip along the first completed section of the Great Himalayan Trail (GHT).

Stretching for 1,700km along the length of Nepal, the GHT will take you a mere 157 days to complete. You’ll see eight of the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000m, including Everest, and cross passes reaching up to 6,000m, climbing a total of 150,000m. That’s a Snowdon every day for half a year. Oh, and it will set you back £20,500.

The GHT isn’t the world’s longest long-distance footpath. The Continental Divide Trail in the US is 5,000km and the Trans Canada will be three times that. But this steroidal version of the Pennine Way looks like being the most coveted of all. Eventually, the trail’s originators hope it will stretch from the mighty 8,000m peak Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, considered the westernmost outlier of the Himalaya, to Namche Barwa in Tibet. It will connect five Asian countries – Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan. More:

http://www.thegreathimalayatrail.org/

Inside Tibet

Published

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on February 9, 2010

in Tibet and human rights

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The Economist correspondent travels to Tibet on a “rare authorised trip by a foreign journalist”:

Day four

On the plane out of Lhasa, I sit next to a Nepali businessman who frequently visits Lhasa to buy shoes. He puts them in containers to be taken by lorry to Nepal, where most of them are re-exported to India. He has his complaints: about the duties he has to pay at the border, and the snow that sometimes blocks traffic. But of the road from Lhasa to Nepal, he is full of praise. It once took three days by lorry, he says. Now it is a day and a half. “China is so developed,” he says wistfully, looking out of the window at the ribbons of light marking highways and city streets below. He has little positive to say about Nepal and its roads.

China has been pouring money into its infrastructure in the past few years, and—from a business perspective at any rate—Tibet has been a big beneficiary. On my last visit to Lhasa, in 2008, I went by train. The railway line, Tibet’s first such link with the Chinese interior, had been opened just two years earlier and is one of the country’s most spectacular engineering accomplishments. Critics of Chinese rule in Tibet condemn its impact on the environment and the encouragement it gives to a flood of immigrants from the rest of China. But as a feat, it amazes: the $4.2 billion line crosses higher terrain than any other in the world, including permafrost—which requires elaborate ground-cooling measures to protect the rails from changes in temperature. More:

Savita Bhabhi: A (sex) symbol of free speech?

Published

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on January 14, 2010

in Business, India, Media, Technology and human rights

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S. Mitra Kalita in the Wall Street Journal:

A 2008 image of an online cartoon of Savita Bhabhi.

What does Savita Bhabhi—the sari-clad Internet porn star—have to do with Google’s threat to leave China?

For Indian companies, potentially a lot.

Savita, of course, is the voluptuous cartoon character who looks like a cross between reality television star Rakhi Sawant and Veronica Lodge of the Archie Comic book series. There’s nothing subtle about Savita—although she certainly tries.

“I’m going to take a shower! You should also change out of those wet clothes,” she greeted a neighbor in a November episode, for example. As expected, the two end up together in the shower. The illustrations are explicit, the dialogue laughably simple: “Oh that feels so…” or “Oh I’m going to…”

In June, the Indian government banned her. Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the ministry of communications and technology, says the decision was driven by a complaint received from a women’s group in Maharashtra. He did not know which one. More:

Click here to read India’s tech minister’s take on Google, China

Previously at AW:

Estimated nuclear weapons locations 2009

Published

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on November 26, 2009

in India and Politics

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"Israel probably has about four nuclear sites, whereas the nuclear storage facilities in India and Pakistan are – despite many rumors – largely undetermined."

Hans M. Kristensen in Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Blog: [via 3quarksdaily]:

The world’s approximately 23,300 nuclear weapons are stored at an estimated 111 locations in 14 countries, according to an overview produced by FAS and NRDC.

Nearly half of the weapons are operationally deployed with delivery systems capable of launching on short notice.

The overview is published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and includes the July 2009 START memorandum of understanding data. A previous version was included in the annual report from the International Panel of Fissile Materials published last month. More:

India vs China in the Maldives

Published

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on November 12, 2009

in India, Politics, Sri Lanka and The Maldives

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Jeremy Page from Delhi in The Times, London:

You have to go to a tropical paradise to find the latest front in the brewing cold war between China and India.

On the southernmost tip of the Maldives lies the island of Gan, a tiny patch of coconut palms and powdery white beaches. It was here that Britain set up a secret naval base in 1941, building airstrips and vast fuel tanks to support its fleet in the Indian Ocean during the Second World War.

The RAF then used it as a Cold War outpost until 1976, when the British withdrew and the officers’ quarters were converted into a resort called Equator Village.

Now, 33 years later, India is preparing to reopen the base to station surveillance aircraft, helicopters, and possibly ships, to monitor Chinese vessels in the Indian Ocean. Under a deal signed in August, India is also installing radar across the Maldives, linked to its coastal command. More:

Also read: Opportunity, Made in China by Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express

Beware the reverse brain drain to India And China

Published

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on October 18, 2009

in Economy

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Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic, is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University. From the Washington Post:

We learned that these workers returned in their prime: the average age of the Indian returnees was 30 and the Chinese was 33. They were really well educated: 51% of the Chinese held masters degrees and 41% had PhDs. Among Indians, 66% held a masters and 12% had PhDs. These degrees were mostly in management, technology, and science. Clearly these returnees are in the U.S. population’s educational top tier?precisely the kind of people who can make the greatest contribution to an economy’s innovation and growth. And it isn’t just new immigrants who are returning home, we learned. Some 27% of the Indians and 34% of the Chinese had permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens. That’s right?it’s not just about green cards.

What propelled them to return home? Some 84% of the Chinese and 69% of the Indians cited professional opportunities. And while they make less money in absolute terms at home, most said their salaries brought a “better quality of life” than what they had in the U.S. (There was also some reverse culture shock?complaints about congestion in India, say, and pollution in China.) When it came to social factors, 67% of the Chinese and 80% of the Indians cited better “family values” at home. Ability to care for aging parents was also cited, and this may be a hidden visa factor: it’s much harder to bring parents and other family members over to the U.S. than in the past. For the vast majority of returnees, a longing for family and friends was also a crucial element. More:

Fears for Indian tiger after China okays sale of endangered animal products

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on September 3, 2009

in Wildlife

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From the Times:

The world’s dwindling population of tigers could be pushed closer to extinction after China quietly approved the sale of products extracted from the endangered animals.

Environmentalists warned yesterday that the move could boost trade in illegal potions and create a market for poachers preying on the rare animals as far away as India.

Tiger tonics, such as wine made from ground bones, are regarded as potent traditional Chinese medicines and fetch a high price on the black market.

The Chinese State Forestry Administration, which is responsible for wildlife, issued a document allowing trade in legally obtained tiger and leopard skins in December 2007, but with such little fanfare that it barely rated a mention in the domestic media. More:

The daughter deficit

Published

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on August 20, 2009

in India and Society

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Tina Rosenberg in the New York Times Magazine:

In the late 1970s, a Ph.D. student named Monica Das Gupta was conducting anthropological fieldwork in Haryana, a state in the north of India. She observed something striking about families there: parents had a fervent preference for male offspring. Women who had given birth to only daughters were desperate for sons and would keep having children until they had one or two. Midwives were even paid less when a girl was born. “It’s something you notice coming from outside,” says Das Gupta, who today studies population and public health in the World Bank’s development research group. “It just leaps out at you.”

Das Gupta saw that educated, independent-minded women shared this prejudice in Haryana, a state that was one of India’s richest and most developed. In fact, the bias against girls was far more pronounced there than in the poorer region in the east of India where Das Gupta was from. She decided to study the issue in Punjab, then India’s richest state, which had a high rate of female literacy and a high average age of marriage. There too the prejudice for sons flourished. Along with Haryana, Punjab had the country’s highest percentage of so-called missing girls – those aborted, killed as newborns or dead in their first few years from neglect.

Here was a puzzle: Development seemed to have not only failed to help many Indian girls but to have made things worse. More:

Risking the Taliban to confront the deadliest of peaks, K2

Published

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on June 28, 2009

in Sport and Technology

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Graham Bowley in the New York Times. Bowley is writing a book about the 2008 accident on K2 that left 11 climbers dead:

At midnight one evening earlier this month, I slipped out of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, heading north in a white Toyota minibus on a journey to find the second tallest mountain on earth, K2.

My purpose was to write a book about the mountaineers who dared challenge its deadly slopes – to get a taste, if not a full draught, of the danger myself. In the end, I got more than I bargained for, and not from Nature alone.

K2, which towers 28,251 feet above the border between Pakistan and China like an almost perfect white pyramid, is considered one of the most beautiful but also one of the most dangerous mountains in the world. By the opening of this climbing season, only 296 people had ever conquered its summit and 77 had died trying.

But this year, just reaching the mountain had become perilous. I had to travel, in a minibus that felt like a bubble, on a long and treacherous road that skirted Pakistan’s Swat Valley. There, at that moment, the Pakistani Army and the Taliban were fighting for control, making the lowlands south of K2 another of the most hazardous places on Earth. More:

The China-India border brawl

Published

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on June 24, 2009

in Conflict

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Jeff M. Smith in Wall Street Journal Asia:

The peaceful, side-by-side rise of China and India has been taken for granted in many quarters. But tensions between the two giants are mounting, and Washington would do well to take note. On June 8, New Delhi announced it would deploy two additional army divisions and two air force squadrons near its border with China. Beijing responded furiously to the Indian announcement, hardening its claim to some 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory that China disputes.

To understand what the tussle is about, consider recent history: The defining moment in the Sino-Indian relationship is a short but traumatic war fought over the Sino-Indian border in 1962. The details of that conflict are in dispute, but the outcome is not: After a sweeping advance into Indian territory, China gained control over a chunk of contested Tibetan plateau in India’s northwest but recalled its advancing army in India’s northeast, leaving to New Delhi what is now the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Relations have been characterized by mistrust ever since, but neither nation has shown any inclination to return to armed conflict. More:

Monk in waiting

Published

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on June 7, 2009

in Faith, Religion and Tibet

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This year marks 50 years of Tibetans living in exile in India, a period in which the Dalai Lama has been the face of their struggle. The Sunday Express profiles Ogyen Drodul Trinley Dorje, the 24-year-old Karmapa who many say could be the new face of the Tibetan struggle. By Devyani Oniyal:

In a spacious room on the fourth floor of the Gyuto monastery in Sidhbari, a farming village near Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, Ogyen Drodul Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, stands with a grave expression. He is receiving a few people who have sought a private audience with him. Some have come merely to pay their respects and to receive his blessings, others in the hope that he can fix their problems. Two old gentlemen bend to touch his feet, three women have come all the way from Hong Kong-one of them with a “business problem”. There is a reverential hush in the room, broken suddenly by the cry of a little girl accompanying her mother. With an unfortunate sense of timing peculiar to children, she bawls incessantly and is taken out of the room by her crushed mother. The Karmapa finally allows himself a half-amused look before returning to his duties with practised ease.

It’s an ease that has grown in the nine years that he has been living in India and will come in handy if he were to eventually become, as many say he will, the new face of the old Tibetan struggle. In the Tibetan hierarchy, the Karmapa, who is the head of the Kagyu sect and whose role is purely spiritual, is the third most important leader after the Dalai Lama (who heads the Gelugpa sect, the biggest sect), and the Panchen Lama, who went missing in China in 1995, a few days after he was chosen by the Dalai Lama. More:

[Image: The Buddhist Channel]

China creates spectre of dueling Dalai Lamas

A battle is looming as the current Dalai Lama and his followers in exile compete with the Chinese government for control of how the 15th Dalai Lama will be chosen. Edward Wong from Dharamsala in the New York Times:

For centuries, the selection of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has been steeped in the mysticism of a bygone world.

On the windswept Tibetan plateau, his closest aides look for divinations in a sacred lake. A mountain god transmits oracular messages by possessing a high lama. Monks scour villages for boys precocious in their spiritual attunement.

All that is about to change, as the current Dalai Lama and his followers in exile here in India compete with the Chinese government for control of how the 15th Dalai Lama will be chosen. The issue is urgent for the Tibetans because the current Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of all Tibetans and the charismatic face of the exile movement, has had recent bouts of ill health. He turns 74 in July.

Both the Chinese and the Tibetan exiles are bracing for an almost inevitable outcome: the emergence into the world of dueling Dalai Lamas – one chosen by the exiles, perhaps by the 14th Dalai Lama himself, and the other by Chinese officials. More:

China, Tibetans spar over Buddhist reincarnation

Published

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on March 10, 2009

in Religion

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On the eve of the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against China that forced him to flee to India, Beijing’s rules on whom to recognize are a source of conflict with the Dalai Lama. Gordon Fairclough reports from Kangpu, China, in the Wall Street Journal:

China’s government and its officially atheist Communist Party are working to boost control over Tibetan religious and political life by taking on a mystical phenomenon at the heart of both: reincarnation.

Beijing’s moves are part of an intensifying effort to build a Tibetan Buddhist establishment more in step with its desires as it seeks to prevent unrest among Tibetans — which is flaring again ahead of the 50th anniversary Tuesday of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

The government’s new approach to reincarnation was on display in an unusual recent ceremony at a hilltop monastery here in southwestern China. A senior provincial official, standing before the three-tiered prayer hall, proclaimed that a local monk was the reincarnation of a respected Tibetan lama.

Reuters has an overview of some of the key issues affecting the succession and some potential scenarios.

The house where the 14th Dalai Lama was born

Published

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on March 4, 2009

in Tibet and Travel

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From The Economist:

It is tucked away in Hong Ya, a mountain hamlet of 200 people, which merges with the dusty crags to which it clings. Worshippers and tourists are not deterred. They seek out a pair of wooden doors with white prayer scarves draped through iron knockers. Inside, they pay their respects to a man China reviles.

The residence, with its throne room and prayer wheel spinning next to a portrait of the exiled leader, is a curious anomaly. It is there by Chinese government design. A casualty of the Cultural Revolution, it was rebuilt in 1986 when China was negotiating with the Tibetan government-in-exile. Xinhua, the official news agency, reported that it cost 350,000 yuan ($51,000) to resurrect, and boasts 61 rooms. In fact, there are six at a push. One stores a motorcycle.

Can you choose your reincarnated successor?

Published

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on February 1, 2009

in Faith

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The Dalai Lama strives for continuity. China has other goals. Michael Powell in The new York Times:

A photograph of a painting of the 14th Dalai Lama, who was discovered by Buddhist leaders as a 2-year-old, with the aid of signs. AFP

The search for the present Dalai Lama commenced in earnest in 1935 when the embalmed head of his deceased predecessor is said to have wheeled around and pointed toward northeastern Tibet.

Then, the story goes, a giant, star-shaped fungus grew overnight on the east side of the tomb. An auspicious cloud bank formed and a regent saw a vision of letters floating in a mystical lake, one of which – Ah – he took to refer to the northeast province of Amdo.

High lamas set off at a gallop and found a 2-year-old boy in a distant village. This child, they determined after a series of tests, was the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

The drama of Miss Tibet

Published

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on November 26, 2008

in Tibet

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In the long-standing conflict between China and Buddhists seeking a return to their homeland, the Miss Tibet pageant is a symbol of defiance. Emily Wax from Dharamsala, India, in the Washington Post:

Choekyapy, a monk, teaches English and Web-surfing skills to Sonam Choedon, 18, who won the crown this year.

The Miss Tibet pageants, seen by many as a showcase of feminine beauty, have been fraught with controversy and drama. Even though the contests take place in a drowsy Himalayan town in India — home to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan exiles — the Chinese government and some Tibetan elders have pressured contestants to withdraw. It is probably one of the few things that the political rivals can agree on. “Heavy is the head that wears the tiara,” one Tibetan TV station reported.

Unsurprisingly, there are few runners-up in the Miss Tibet pageants. This year, only two entered the contest, which is in its seventh edition.

And the winner was Sonam Choedon, a shy 18-year-old with shiny waist-length black hair and high cheekbones. At 16, she fled her homeland on the Tibetan plateau to Dharmsala, headquarters of the Tibetan Government in Exile.

Tibetan exiles back Dalai Lama

Published

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on November 23, 2008

in Tibet

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From BBC:

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Tibetan exiles meeting in India have agreed to back the Dalai Lama’s policy of seeking autonomy, rather than full independence from China.The Tibetan spiritual leader’s approach to continue talks with Beijing received the majority vote at the meeting in Dharamsala, but delegates concluded that if China makes no effort to meet the demands, other options would be put forward.

Click here for another report.

A generation gap in Tibet’s royal family

Jyoti Thottam in TIME:

Khedroob Thondup nephew of the Dalai Lama. AP

“I was seven years old in 1959, and I was studying in Darjeeling,” recalls Khedroop Thondop. “One day my teachers told me that I was to go and receive someone at the train station. That’s when I realized that I was related to His Holiness and that I was Tibetan.”

As the Dalai Lama’s nephew, the eldest son of the Tibetan spiritual leader’s eldest brother, Thondop, now 56, has already led an extraordinary life. He was born in Calcutta, where his father, a political leader in the Tibetan government, had been posted. He went to the elite St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, got an MBA in the United States, ran a family business for several years in New York City, and then returned to India in 1977 to serve as his uncle’s special assistant. Two years later, he went to Beijing for Tibet’s first negotiations with China, taking notes on the meetings between his father and Chinese supreme authority at the time, Deng Xiaoping. For the last 21 years, he has run a center for Tibetan refugees in Darjeeling and has served three terms in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile.

Born in exile: the young Tibetans of Dharamsala

In the streets of Dharamsala, Sébastien Daguerressar, special correspondent of France 24 channel, got firsthand testimonies from these young Indian-born Tibetans, who dream of winning back a country they have never seen.

Khendrab Palden

He sits on the pavement, facing the temple on Dharamsala’s main road. Teacup in hand and MP3 player in his ears, he takes in the sun. “I’m considering exile,’ he says, anticipating my question. His name is Khenrab Palden, 26, and exile for him is not just a personal goal – it’s a professional one. He is a filmmaker. His parents left Tibet before he was born, he explains. But thanks to the Tibetan community, his parents set up a business and managed to send their son to study in the US.

In Massachusetts, Khernrab studies anthropology, the history of religion, and film. “I feel 60% Tibetan, 20% Indian, and 20% American. My country will be where I make my living. Tibetans are like the Jews chased out of their countries by Hitler.”

Previously in AW: At exile meeting, Tibetans debate independence

At exile meeting, Tibetans debate independence

Published

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on November 22, 2008

in Tibet

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Long associated with the Dalai Lama and his “middle way,” the exile movement has reached a crossroads. Edward Wong from Dharamsala, India, in the New York Times:

In Dharamsala, India, Tibetans in exile waited last Saturday to welcome the Dalai Lama. Tibetans are discussing whether to advocate separatism from China. AP/NYT

In Dharamsala, India, Tibetans in exile waited last Saturday to welcome the Dalai Lama. AP/NYT

In this Himalayan hill town, where Tibetan prayer flags flutter and red-robed monks study Buddha’s call for forbearance, talk is brewing of kicking off the world’s next separatist movement.

Posters around town advertise the word “rangzen” – Tibetan for “independence.” Not in years has it been heard so much in the streets here, falling from the lips of members of the Tibetan diaspora whose frustration runs as deep as the mountain ravines of their homeland. Decades of dialogue with the Chinese government, they say, have failed.

“Support for independence will definitely increase,” Dhondup Dorjee, 30, said, as he took a break from a heated discussion with fellow exiles to grab lunch in the cafeteria of the Tibetan hospital. “What are the pressures we can put on the Chinese? The pressures will come in any form.”

Is the dream of independence for Tibet now a lost cause?

Published

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on October 27, 2008

in Faith and Tibet

. 0 Comments

[Updated with the Dalai Lama's response: see link below]

Andrew Buncombe in The Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

Over the weekend, his Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet’s Buddhists and the man who has been at the centre of efforts to highlight the Tibetan cause for decades, explained that he “had given up” his struggle. “I have been sincerely pursuing the middle-way approach in dealing with China for a long time now, but there hasn’t been any positive response from the Chinese side,” the 73-year-old told an audience at Dharamsala, the Indian Himalayan town that is the headquarters of the so-called Tibetan government-in-exile. “As far as I’m concerned, I have given up.”

Does that mean the Dalai Lama is retiring?

Karma Choephel, the speaker of the parliament in-exile, told reporters that the Dalai Lama used to say that he was semi-retired and that now he believed he was was almost completely retired. However, a senior aide to the Nobel laureate last night dismissed speculation that he would start taking a back seat in Tibet’s affairs. “Because of the lack of response from the Chinese we have to be realistic. There is no hope,” said Tenzin Taklha. “His holiness does not want to become a hindrance to the Tibetan issue, and therefore has sent a letter to the parliament regarding what options he has.”

An update from His Holiness on Andrew Buncombe’s blog Asian (con)Fusion:

“His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that Tibetans have long been pursuing a path to find a solution to the issue of Tibet that would be mutually acceptable to Tibetans and Chinese. This has received widespread appreciation from the international community, several governments included. More importantly, it has gained the support of many Chinese intellectuals. More:

Stephen Cohen on how the US sees India

Published

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on October 13, 2008

in India

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In Mint, Jyoti Malhotra interviews Brookings Institution senior fellow of foreign policy Stephen P. Cohen:

Q: Seems to some of us here that the gap between the Indian elite and the Democrats is much wider than between the Indian elite and the Republicans…

A: The Democrats were more influenced by non-proliferation considerations, and for a number of years, this steered US policy towards South Asia, especially after the nuclear tests of 1998. But before that the Democrats were very pro-India, it was the Republicans that were hostile to India. The Republicans thought India was a socialist state, they didn’t like Nehru, they didn’t like Krishna Menon. It’s flip now.

Now that the non-proliferation issue is behind us, I would say one remarkable thing about elite public opinion in the US is that everybody likes India. Whether they are for the deal or against the deal, they like India as a state. I think that is a major accomplishment of India and it puts a new spin on our relationship. But here, for example, the Left parties are systemically anti-American, whereas in the US even those who are against the nuclear deal are very pro-India.

So near and yet so far

Published

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on August 1, 2008

in Economy

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From The Guardian

From The Economist:

In many examinations, 90% is an excellent score, deserving a prize and a handshake from the headmaster. In Geneva this week, only full marks would do, and the world’s trade ministers failed. No matter that they came closer to a deal than anyone should have expected (see article). No matter that they stuck at it for nine days and several nights, in the longest ministerial meeting in the history of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). No matter, too, that this time they parted in stunned disbelief, heads shaking, rather than in acrimony, recrimination and spite, as at Cancún in 2003. They managed “convergence” on 18 of the 20 topics set before them by Pascal Lamy, the WTO’s director-general, but they stumbled on the 19th, a device for protecting farmers in developing countries against surges in imports. They never reached the 20th, cotton. Failed.

You can construct a plausible argument that the collapse of yet another set of talks on the Doha round, which is now coming up to seven years old, is of little importance. While the world’s trade ministers have alternated between talking and not talking to one another about Doha, the world’s businesspeople have carried on regardless: the growth of global commerce has outstripped the hitherto healthy pace of global GDP. Developing countries in particular have continued to open up to imports and foreign investment. You might say that not much was on offer in Geneva anyway: one study put the eventual benefits at maybe $70 billion, a drop in the ocean of the world’s GDP. Global stockmarkets, with so much else on their minds, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. On July 29th, the day the talks broke up, the S&P 500 index rose by 2.3%.

Hard line at WTO earns Indian praise

From The Washington Post:

After nine days of talking tough at the Geneva global trade meeting, which ended in collapse, chief Indian negotiator Kamal Nath returned to New Delhi on Thursday to a hero’s welcome.

He was congratulated by colleagues at a cabinet meeting for “bravely fighting the nation’s battle.” During an interview, his cellphone beeped constantly with text messages reading “Well done,” “You have made India proud” and “You held your own in Geneva.”

The World Trade Organization talks collapsed Tuesday when developing nations, speaking through Nath, stood firm on safeguard measures that they said were vital to protect the livelihoods of millions of farmers against a likely spike in food imports from rich nations.

The Dalai Lama’s flight

Published

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on June 8, 2008

in Books

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In The Times, an exclusive extract from Alexander Norman’s new book [Holder of the White Lotus: The Lives of the Dalai Lama] recounts how the spiritual leader came to leave Tibet:

In October 1949, Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Party swept to power in China. One of Mao’s first announcements made clear that the “peaceful liberation” of Tibet would be a priority for the new regime.

By July 1950, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had advanced to within 100 miles of Chamdo, the capital of Kham (eastern Tibet). The first serious engagement between the two sides, at Dengo, was technically a victory for the Tibetans. But if the Chinese army in the area was only 20,000- strong – against the Tibetans’ 5,000 – a further 5m men under arms stood behind them. The eventual result was a foregone conclusion.

On October 5, the PLA launched a full-scale attack on Chamdo itself. Ngabo, the ineffectual aristocrat governor of Kham, sent several urgent telegrams to Lhasa [the Tibetan capital] requesting instructions. There was no reply. On 15 October, one of his aides de camp succeeded in contacting Lhasa by radio. He was told that although his telegrams had been received, they had yet to be decoded as the Kashag [government of ministers] was currently engaged in its annual week-long series of picnic parties. It was now clear that Ngabo faced the might of the PLA alone. Two days later, he was given permission to retreat. On 19 October, he was captured and all Kham fell into Chinese hands.

A new torch controversy: the battle for Everest

Published

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on May 2, 2008

in Tibet

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As the Olympic flame makes its way to the top of the world’s highest mountain, China’s repressive tactics have sparked fresh criticism. Andrew Buncombe in The Independent, UK:

William Holland was only thinking of the photograph. When he got to the top of Everest he planned to take the rolled-up flag saying “Free Tibet” from his rucksack, pose for posterity with the banner as a backdrop and then roll it away again before starting back down. He was not looking to make a scene.

But that is exactly what transpired. Someone in the group he was climbing with informed the Nepalese authorities of Mr Holland’s flag. When he reached Everest Base Camp he was ordered from the mountain and told to go straight to Kathmandu. From there he was deported from Nepal with an order not to return for two years.

The 26-year-old US climber’s treatment at the hands of the Nepalese authorities is just one indication of how the world’s highest mountain has in recent days become engulfed by the politics and controversy surrounding China and its relationship with Tibet.

Everest Olympic torch diary – 5

BBC’s Jonah Fisher joins the Olympic torch for the high point of its trip – on Mount Everest. In the fifth of his diary instalments, he takes a tour of Everest base camp.

On Wednesday we had a treat. After lengthy negotiations with the border police our minders secured us permission to visit Everest base camp 5km from our media village.

With strict instructions not to film the numerous military trucks on the way, we were driven to the tented camp that forms the command centre for both the climbing team as well as the official Chinese media.

Click here for more and for his previous instalments:

A flashpoint called Tibet

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on April 28, 2008

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What India is passing off as a moderate China policy is actually aberrant behaviour, writes Bharat Karnad, professor at the Centre for Policy Research, in Mint.

The barbed wire barricade outside the Chinese embassy ought to become a permanent fixture of New Delhi’s landscape. It will remind the Indian people and their government about what it is that, at the core, separates India from China: freedom.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, however, has prostrated himself in a kow-tow to the zhung guo (“the central kingdom”) – calling China India’s “greatest neighbour”, deliberately leaving Tawang out of his official visit to Arunachal Pradesh and, as if to confirm this country’s tributary status, preventing anti-China protests in Arunachal Pradesh, hounding and gagging the poor Tibetan community in exile and, after declaring India would not tolerate Chinese minders, allowing Chinese cops to trot alongside the Olympics torch carriers and the contingent of army commandos for the short stretch the “flame” of fair play was exposed to the Indian “public”.

The Internationalilst

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on April 26, 2008

in Leaders

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Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria, who has written a new book, The Post-American World, on the future of the Muslim world, whether American kids are decadent, and what the United States can learn from the Swiss. From 02138 magazine:

Q:You are responsible for covering the entire globe. How do you prioritize?

A: The most important thing is the column. What subject should I choose? Do I have anything value-added to say about it? How do I report on it properly? Who do I call? What should I read?

All these things feed into each other. When we are deciding the cover for Newsweek International, it’s like having meetings with an intelligence agency. There are all these people around the world saying, ‘This is what’s interesting.’ So then we decide what the most interesting is.

But I also step back, every now and then, and consider: If I were to write a book, what are the broad themes here? Is there a big story people are missing?

Why China needs India’s transparency

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on April 26, 2008

in Economy

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Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the author of Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping their Futures and Yours, in BusinessWeek:

A few months ago the gentleman driving my car between New Delhi and an old fort in Alwar district in Rajasthan had to stop to accommodate a collection of villagers protesting water shortages. It is perhaps a sad commentary on this serious problem-water shortages are endemic to Rajasthan, a desert state bordering Pakistan -that the protest barely registered with me.

But what I found interesting, after being stuck behind a line of bullock carts, buses, trucks, and cycle rickshaws all patiently waiting to move around the protest, was the equanimity with which the protest was received. Everyone was inconvenienced, but there was no “protest” against the protesters. Nor was there any attempt by the political classes against whom the protests were directed to subvert the protesters in any way.

China launches ‘education drive’ in Lhasa

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on April 21, 2008

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In a bid to reinforce control in Lhasa, Chinese officials have launched an education drive, reports Chris Buckley for Reuters

China’s Communist Party has launched a political education drive in Tibet’s restive capital, Lhasa, vowing a long campaign to attack pro-independence sentiment and support for the Dalai Lama.

China has blamed recent unrest in Tibetan areas on a “clique” of the Dalai’s followers pressing for independence and seeking to upset Beijing’s preparations for the August Olympics. Over a month has passed since monk-led protests against government control gave way to deadly anti-Chinese rioting in Lhasa on March 14, but security forces have wrestled with continued unrest there and across other Tibetan areas.

In a bid to reinforce control in Lhasa, Party authorities have launched an education drive focused on officials and Party members, the official Tibet Daily reported on Monday.

China’s loyal youth

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on April 14, 2008

in Travel

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As is clear to anyone who lives in China, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government’s suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. Matthew Forney, a former Beijing bureau chief for Time, in The New York Times:

Many sympathetic Westerners view Chinese society along the lines of what they saw in the waning days of the Soviet Union: a repressive government backed by old hard-liners losing its grip to a new generation of well-educated, liberal-leaning sophisticates. As pleasant as this outlook may be, it’s naïve. Educated young Chinese, far from being embarrassed or upset by their government’s human-rights record, rank among the most patriotic, establishment-supporting people you’ll meet.

As is clear to anyone who lives here, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government’s suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. One Chinese friend who has a degree from a European university described the conflict to me as “a clash between the commercial world and an old aboriginal society.” She even praised her government for treating Tibetans better than New World settlers treated Native Americans.

Asian power games

Published

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on April 10, 2008

in Books

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In The Sunday Times, Michael Sheridan reviews Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade (Allen Lane, 20 pounds, 328 pp) by Bill Emmott, the former editor of the Economist

Economics may have shaped the Asia of today but politics are forging its tomorrow, says Bill Emmott, the former editor of The Economist, in a striking new book that predicts a dangerous power struggle between China, Japan and India.

Emmott’s book is already selling well in temples of globalisation such as Hong Kong airport, no doubt because it stands out among the heaps of corporate drivel in the duty-free bookshops. A “disruptive transformation” is in progress, says Emmott, who edited The Economist from 1993 to 2006. It generates wealth but could set off conflict, he fears, identifying the tangled boundaries of Tibet as one danger zone.

Turning point for Tibet

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on April 4, 2008

in Tibet

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President Hu Jintao has an opportunity to transform China’s policy on Tibet, says Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, the Dalai Lama’s chief representative in talks with Beijing, in International Herald Tribune:

In the last few weeks, we have witnessed an uprising against the Chinese authorities’ repressive policies on the Tibetan plateau the likes of which we have not seen in a generation. Beijing has responded with a crackdown on a scale never seen before in Tibet, all just months before the Olympics are to open in Beijing.

As the representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in talks with the Chinese leadership since 2002, I have been deeply fearful that such events would come to pass. But none of us imagined the scale of the protests, given China’s tight control in Tibet.

Personal journey: Caught between a crackdown and a Tibetan welcome

One writer’s peaceful experience in Western Sichuan during the riots left him yearning to return. Michael Benanav in The New York Times:

The ride in the Chinese minivan had taken 11 hours. After enduring multiple delays, the crossing of a treacherous 16,000-foot mountain pass and a seatmate who chain-smoked the entire way, casually flicking the ashes into his lap, I had arrived in Dege. I was in the culturally Tibetan area of western Sichuan Province, practically on the border of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. I had come to Dege to visit the sacred Bakong monastery, which is both the world’s largest library of ancient Tibetan Buddhist texts and a printing house where monks hand-ink thousands of pieces of religious paraphernalia every day.

India takes cricket to China

Published

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on April 2, 2008

in Politics and Sport

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From The Times, UK:

It is a game so complex – nay, fiendish – that one would think its popularity among the Chinese would be assured, but for decades it was banned under communism as a pursuit of imperialist lackeys. Now India is taking cricket to China as it attempts to turn its obsession with the game into a global money-spinner.

A first consignment of bats, balls and other paraphernalia will be sent to China in a month or two, according to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The move follows a request from the Chinese authorities for help in cultivating a game now presented as good for socialist solidarity – a team sport that bonds players.