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Category: China

  • Israel’s attacks will lead to its isolation

    Israel’s attacks will lead to its isolation

    By Gideon Levy

    A8Israel has been dealing one blow after another to the rest of the world. While China has still not recovered from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s absence from the reception at its Tel Aviv embassy – a serious punishment for China’s support for the Goldstone report – France is licking its wounds after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “vetoed” a visit by the French foreign minister to Gaza. And Israel has dealt another blow: Its ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, will boycott the conference next week of the new Israel lobby J Street.

    China, France and J Street will somehow get by despite these boycotts, Turkey will also recover from the great vacationers’ revolt, and we can expect that even the Swedes and Norwegians will recover from Israel’s loud reprimands. But a country that attacks and boycotts everyone who does not exactly agree with its official positions will become isolated, forsaken and detestable: North Korea of today or Albania of yesterday. It’s actually quite strange for Israel to use this weapon, as it is about to turn into the victim of boycotts itself.

    Israel strikes and strikes again. It strikes its enemies, and now it strikes out at its friends who dare not fall exactly in line with its official policies. The J Street case is a particularly serious example. This Jewish organization rose in America along with Barack Obama. Its members want a fair and peace-seeking Israel.

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    That’s their sin, and their punishment is a boycott.

    Oren, meanwhile, is a devoted representative: He also is boycotting. After criticizing Israeli columnists, including this one, in an article in The New Republic for daring to criticize Netanyahu’s speech at the UN – an outrage in its own right – the ambassador-propagandist uses the boycott weapon against a new and refreshing Jewish and Zionist organization that is trying to battle the nationalistic and heavy-handed Jewish-American establishment.

    In whose name is Oren doing that? Not in the name of Israeli society, whose ambassador he supposedly is. The former ambassadors from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would have acted the same way.

    Such aggressiveness is a bad sign. It will drive away our last true friends and deepen our isolation. “A nation alone” has turned into our goal, our isolation has become an aspiration. Whom will we have left after we attack and boycott everyone? Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League? Our propagandist-attorney Alan Dershowitz?

    Dividing the world up between absolute good and evil – our side and our enemies, with no middle ground – is a sign of despair and a complete loss of direction. It’s not just our ambassador in Washington, who knows nothing at all about democracy and pluralism and only wants to please his masters. Such behavior – kicking and barking crazily in every direction – is destroying Israel.

    Without giving us a chance to voice our opinion, Israel is falling to the status of an international pariah, the abomination of the nations. And whom can we thank for that? Operation Cast Lead, for example. Only the United States remains our automatic and blind ally for all our mistakes. Another democracy that saw its status deteriorating so much would ask itself first and foremost what mistakes it had made.

    In Israel our approach is exactly the opposite: The rest of the world is guilty. The Scandinavians are hostile and the Turks are enemies, the French and British hate Israel, the Chinese are only Chinese and the Indians can’t teach us anything.

    Any legitimate criticism is immediately labeled here as anti-Semitism, including Richard Goldstone, the Jewish Zionist. We are pushing everyone into a corner roughly and hope they will change their opinions and suddenly be filled with a deep understanding for the killing of children in Gaza. Now America too, even its Jews, are no longer immune to this aggressive Israel mad with grandeur.

    The damage is piling up from Beijing all the way to New York. After the J Street boycott even American Jews will know that Israel is not a tolerant, open-minded or liberal country, despite what they are being told.

    Now they will know that “the only democracy in the Middle East” is not exactly that, and whoever does not repeat and proclaim its propaganda messages will be considered an enemy – they may also be punished severely.

    They should just ask the billion Chinese who are licking their wounds from the mortal blow the Israeli Foreign Minster dealt them personally.

    Haaretz

  • China Secretly Seizing Uyghur Men, Rights Group Says

    China Secretly Seizing Uyghur Men, Rights Group Says

    CBD69BD0 34F3 4E44 8857 1A078E7BBA31 w393 sChinese troops deployed in Urumqi in September.
    October 21, 2009
    BEIJING (Reuters) — Scores of Uyghur men have disappeared since deadly ethnic riots in far-west China in July, seized by security forces who refuse to tell their families anything about their fate, a rights group has said.

    Police and soldiers swept through Uyghur neighbourhoods of Urumqi, capital of northwestern Xinjiang region, in the days and weeks after the violence that killed nearly 200, bundling men into vans or marching them away, Human Rights Watch said.

    It gave first-hand accounts of more than 40 cases, but added that these were likely just “the tip of the iceberg.”

    Oil-rich Xinjiang is strategically located in Central Asia but is riven by ethnic tensions. Many Uyghurs feel they are becoming an impoverished minority in their own homeland, and are angered by restrictions on their culture and Islamic religion.

    Security forces moved in after protests by Uyghurs in Urumqi on July 5 exploded into bloody attacks on residents, especially Han Chinese.

    Streets were sealed off as police checked men’s bodies for injuries that could hint they took part in violence and asked where they were the during the riots, sometimes beating them.

    Police also burst into homes and offices and seized men without providing warrants or explanations, witnesses said, according to the report from the New York-based advocacy group.

    “Three of the policemen just twisted his arms and started dragging him out,” the report quoted one father saying of a raid which began when police kicked open the door of his home.

    After the Uyghur protests and violence, some Han Chinese also took to the streets, vowing to take revenge for the bloodshed.

    None of the Han Chinese interviewed reported disappearances, although the report said it was possible some had been affected.

    Official data on the number of people detained have been sporadic and sometimes confusing, but they suggest the number is above 1,000.

    A regional spokesman who declined to be named said he could not immediately comment on the report or number of people in detention, but added that figure was “constantly changing.”

    Uyghurs who did go to the police to ask about relatives were turned away or told there was no information, the report said.

    While China often detains people and refuses access by family or lawyers, these cases are different because there was no acknowledgement that someone was being held, the report said.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/China_Secretly_Seizing_Uyghur_Men_Rights_Group_Says/1857011.html
  • China calls time on dollar hegemony

    China calls time on dollar hegemony

    You can date the end of dollar hegemony from China’s decision last month to sell its first batch of sovereign bonds in Chinese yuan to foreigners.

    By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
    06 Oct 2009

    The Chinese yuan: friends take a photo in front of a sculpture of a one-hundred yuan banknote in Beijing
    The Chinese yuan: friends take a photo in front of a sculpture of a one-hundred yuan banknote in Beijing

    Beijing does not need to raise money abroad since it has $2 trillion (£1.26 trillion) in reserves. The sole purpose is to prepare the way for the emergence of the yuan as a full-fledged global currency.

    “It’s the tolling of the bell,” said Michael Power from Investec Asset Management. “We are only beginning to grasp the enormity and historical significance of what has happened.”

    It is this shift in China and other parts of rising Asia and Latin America that threatens dollar domination, not the pricing of oil contracts. The markets were rattled yesterday by reports – since denied – that China, France, Japan, Russia, and Gulf states were plotting to replace the Greenback as the currency for commodity sales, but it makes little difference whether crude is sold in dollars, euros, or Venetian Ducats.

    What matters is where OPEC oil producers and rising export powers choose to invest their surpluses. If they cease to rotate this wealth into US Treasuries, mortgage bonds, and other US assets, the dollar must weaken over time.

    “Everybody in the world is massively overweight the US dollar,” said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. “As they invest a little here and little there in other currencies, or gold, it slowly erodes the dollar. It is like sterling after World War One. Everybody can see it’s happening.”

    “In the US they have near zero rates, external deficits, and public debt sky-rocketing to 100pc of GDP, and on top of that they are printing money. It is the perfect storm for the dollar,” he said.

    “The dollar rallied last year because we had a global liquidity crisis, but we think the rules have changed and that it will be very different this time [if there is another market sell-off]” he said.

    The self-correcting mechanism in the global currency system has been jammed until now because China and other Asian powers have been holding down their currencies to promote exports. The Gulf oil states are mostly pegged to the dollar, for different reasons.

    This strategy has become untenable. It is causing them to import a US monetary policy that is too loose for their economies and likely to fuel unstable bubbles as the global economy recovers.

    Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a board member of the European Central Bank, said China for one needs to bite bullet. “I think the best way is that China starts adopting its own monetary policy and detach itself from the Fed’s policy.”

    Beijing has been schizophrenic, grumbling about the eroding value of its estimated $1.6 trillion of reserves held in dollar assets while at the same time perpetuating the structure that causes them to accumulate US assets in the first place – that is to say, by refusing to let the yuan rise at any more than a glacial pace.

    For all its talk, China bought a further $25bn of US Treasuries in June and $25bn in July. The weak yuan has helped to keep China’s factories open – and to preserve social order – during the economic crisis, though exports were still down 23pc in August. But this policy is on borrowed time. Reformers in Beijing are already orchestrating a profound shift in China’s economy from export reliance (38pc of GDP) to domestic demand, and they know that keeping the dollar peg too long will ultimately cause them to lose export edge anyway – via the more damaging route of inflation.

    For the time being, Europe is bearing the full brunt of Asia’s currency policy. The dollar peg has caused the yuan to slide against the euro, even as China’s trade surplus with the EU grows. It reached €169bn (£156bn) last year. This is starting to provoke protectionist rumblings in Europe, where unemployment is nearing double digits.

    ECB governor Guy Quaden said patience is running thin. “The problem is not the exchange rate of the dollar against the euro, but rather the relationship between the dollar and certain Asian currencies, to mention one, the Chinese Yuan. I say no more.”

    France’s finance minister Christine Lagarde said at the G7 meeting that the euro had been pushed too high. “We need a rebalancing so that one currency doesn’t take the flak for the others.”

    Clearly this is more than a dollar problem. It is a mismatch between the old guard – US, Europe, Japan – and the new powers that require stronger currencies to reflect their dynamism and growing wealth. The longer this goes on, the more havoc it will cause to the global economy.

    The new order may look like the 1920s, with four or five global currencies as regional anchors – the yuan, rupee, euro, real – and the dollar first among equals but not hegemon. The US will be better for it.

    Telegraph

  • UIGHURS: A tale of two cities under siege

    UIGHURS: A tale of two cities under siege

    Watch Video
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8291904.stm

    Three months after the fierce outbreak of ethnic violence in the Western Chinese region of Xinjiang, when more than 200 ethnic Chinese and predominantly Muslim Uighurs were killed, our world affairs editor John Simpson has visited Xinjiang’s two main cities, Urumqi and Kashgar.

    Chinese soldiers man a checkpoint along a street in Urumqi, China (file image from Aug 2009)

    Urumqi is a city under siege – there are patrols of soldiers and armed police in full riot gear everywhere.
    In a 10-minute walk along the city streets you are likely to encounter four or five of them, each composed of a dozen or so men.
    The tension is evident – few people are prepared to speak about what happened here, and none openly.
    One Uighur woman spoke to us in secret about the events of 5 July.
    She witnessed the murder of two ethnic Han Chinese by a gang of Uighurs.
    “People were going crazy,” she said. Altogether, 198 Chinese died that day.
    Then, two days later, Chinese gangs carried out revenge killings of Uighurs.
    No official figures have been issued, but the woman thought about 10 Uighurs had been killed.
    House arrest
    The authorities are very nervous about the presence of foreign journalists.

    Women in China's Xinjiang province

    Access to ordinary people was limited by authorities

    Everywhere we went in Urumqi my television team and I were followed, sometimes by three unmarked police cars at a time.
    And when we flew on to Kashgar, where many of the more militant Uighurs involved in the riots came from, the police detained us at the airport.
    We were allowed to stay in Kashgar until the next morning, but everywhere we went a contingent of police followed us and prevented our filming or interviewing anyone.
    It was clear they thought we had come to meet Islamic fundamentalists, and were determined to stop us.
    That night, we were kept under house arrest at a hotel in the centre of Kashgar.
    Ethnic violence is something that worries the Chinese government deeply. It threatens the cohesion of the entire country.

    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism

    The immediate cause of July’s rioting seemed small enough – rumours spread that two Uighur workers had been killed by Han Chinese in south-east China, thousands of miles away.
    Yet the hostility towards Han Chinese which many Uighurs in Xinjiang feel is so intense that trouble broke out at once.
    The origins for this hostility are complex. The Chinese government has often treated Uighurs generously, offering promising students places at good universities and making it easy for them to work elsewhere in China.
    Yet many remain wretchedly poor. Now the poverty-stricken areas of cities like Urumqi and Kashgar are being knocked down and new housing is being built, but this often increases local resentment.
    People see it as a direct attack on their traditions and culture.
    Worried
    Over the years, ethnic Chinese immigration into Xinjiang has sometimes been encouraged by Beijing and sometimes not, but the net result is that in Urumqi, their own capital city, Uighurs are now a minority.
    There are increasing signs of separatist feeling among them. The discovery of oil has convinced many Uighurs that if they were independent, they could be a viable state.
    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism.
    Uighurs say it scarcely existed before the mid-1990s, and that China was slow in waking up to the challenge.
    Now there are plenty of mosques, particularly in Kashgar, where fundamentalist Uighur imams are active.
    The Chinese Communist Party, always nervous when any rival organisation or movement starts to attract support, has responded with the creation of new task forces.
    Known as “social stability teams”, they act partly as social security workers, addressing grievances, and partly as the eyes and ears of the authorities. Many Uighurs have been recruited to the teams.
    We came across some of them in the slum area of Gulistan, a Uighur stronghold in Urumqi, as they were going from door to door.
    They work closely with the undercover police, and in Gulistan they co-operated with the eight or more in plain clothes who were following us around.
    Urumqi itself is quiet now. The big deployment of soldiers and police has ensured that.
    But in Kashgar the authorities seem far less confident. Three months after the rioting, it is all too clear that the Chinese authorities have not yet got the situation under full control.
    And they are plainly worried.
    Three months after the fierce outbreak of ethnic violence in the Western Chinese region of Xinjiang, when more than 200 ethnic Chinese and predominantly Muslim Uighurs were killed, our world affairs editor John Simpson has visited Xinjiang’s two main cities, Urumqi and Kashgar.

    Chinese soldiers man a checkpoint along a street in Urumqi, China (file image from Aug 2009)
    Urumqi is a city under siege – there are patrols of soldiers and armed police in full riot gear everywhere.
    In a 10-minute walk along the city streets you are likely to encounter four or five of them, each composed of a dozen or so men.
    The tension is evident – few people are prepared to speak about what happened here, and none openly.
    One Uighur woman spoke to us in secret about the events of 5 July.
    She witnessed the murder of two ethnic Han Chinese by a gang of Uighurs.
    “People were going crazy,” she said. Altogether, 198 Chinese died that day.
    Then, two days later, Chinese gangs carried out revenge killings of Uighurs.
    No official figures have been issued, but the woman thought about 10 Uighurs had been killed.
    House arrest
    The authorities are very nervous about the presence of foreign journalists.
    Everywhere we went in Urumqi my television team and I were followed, sometimes by three unmarked police cars at a time.
    And when we flew on to Kashgar, where many of the more militant Uighurs involved in the riots came from, the police detained us at the airport.
    Women in China's Xinjiang province
    We were allowed to stay in Kashgar until the next morning, but everywhere we went a contingent of police followed us and prevented our filming or interviewing anyone.
    It was clear they thought we had come to meet Islamic fundamentalists, and were determined to stop us.
    That night, we were kept under house arrest at a hotel in the centre of Kashgar.
    Ethnic violence is something that worries the Chinese government deeply. It threatens the cohesion of the entire country.

    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism

    The immediate cause of July’s rioting seemed small enough – rumours spread that two Uighur workers had been killed by Han Chinese in south-east China, thousands of miles away.
    Yet the hostility towards Han Chinese which many Uighurs in Xinjiang feel is so intense that trouble broke out at once.
    The origins for this hostility are complex. The Chinese government has often treated Uighurs generously, offering promising students places at good universities and making it easy for them to work elsewhere in China.
    Yet many remain wretchedly poor. Now the poverty-stricken areas of cities like Urumqi and Kashgar are being knocked down and new housing is being built, but this often increases local resentment.
    People see it as a direct attack on their traditions and culture.
    Worried
    Over the years, ethnic Chinese immigration into Xinjiang has sometimes been encouraged by Beijing and sometimes not, but the net result is that in Urumqi, their own capital city, Uighurs are now a minority.
    There are increasing signs of separatist feeling among them. The discovery of oil has convinced many Uighurs that if they were independent, they could be a viable state.
    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism.
    Uighurs say it scarcely existed before the mid-1990s, and that China was slow in waking up to the challenge.
    Now there are plenty of mosques, particularly in Kashgar, where fundamentalist Uighur imams are active.
    The Chinese Communist Party, always nervous when any rival organisation or movement starts to attract support, has responded with the creation of new task forces.
    Known as “social stability teams”, they act partly as social security workers, addressing grievances, and partly as the eyes and ears of the authorities. Many Uighurs have been recruited to the teams.
    We came across some of them in the slum area of Gulistan, a Uighur stronghold in Urumqi, as they were going from door to door.
    They work closely with the undercover police, and in Gulistan they co-operated with the eight or more in plain clothes who were following us around.
    Urumqi itself is quiet now. The big deployment of soldiers and police has ensured that.
    But in Kashgar the authorities seem far less confident. Three months after the rioting, it is all too clear that the Chinese authorities have not yet got the situation under full control.
    And they are plainly worried.

  • Turkish Airlines and Asiana Airlines form code share agreement

    Turkish Airlines and Asiana Airlines form code share agreement

    Published by Ozgur Tore   
    Tuesday, 06 October 2009
    Turkish Airlines has signed a new code share agreement with Asiana Airlines from South Korea as part of an expansion program. The new code share agreement which will go into effect on October 25th, 2009 will enhance the flow of trade and tourism between Turkey and Korea.

     As an outcome of the new code share agreement signed between Turkish Airlines and Asiana Airlines, passengers from Seoul will be able to connect on Turkish Airlines’ network to any of its 119 international destinations including routes to Turkey, Europe, North America, South America, Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East.

    Passengers from Istanbul will also be able to enjoy the convenience of Asiana Airlines’ wide network of connections to South Korea, and other popular destinations in Japan, China and South-East Asia. Asiana Airlines’ network covers 82 international destinations.

    A1

     

    FTNNEWS

  • China publishes white paper on Xinjiang

    China publishes white paper on Xinjiang

     2009-09-21 15:14:40

    Full text: Development and Progress in Xinjiang

        BEIJING, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) — The Chinese government Monday published a white paper on the development and progress in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, stressing national unification, ethnic unity, social stability are the “lifeblood” for the region’s development and progress.

        The paper, released by the State Council Information Office, reviewed the profound changes that have taken place in the past 60 years in Xinjiang, which accounts for about one sixth of the country’s land territory.

        It also slammed the “East Turkistan” forces for seriously disrupting Xinjiang’s development and progress by trumpeting separatism and plotting and organizing a number of bloody incidents of terror and violence.

        The 52-page document is divided into seven sections: Swift Economic Development; Remarkable Improvement in People’s Lives; Steady Development of Social Programs; Preservation of Ethnic Cultures; Upholding Ethnic Equality and Unity; Protecting Citizens’ Rights of Freedom of Religious Belief; and Safeguarding National Unity and Social Stability.

        The great development and progress “should be attributed to the concerted efforts by all peoples of Xinjiang under the banner of solidarity of all ethnic groups, as well as to the success of China’s policies on ethnic minorities,” it said.

        Since the first century B.C., Xinjiang, historically the passage for land transport and civilized contact between Asia and Europe, has been an important part of China, and played a significant role in the construction and development of a unitary multiethnic country, it said.

        Prior to the founding ceremony of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949, Xinjiang witnessed its peaceful liberation. Peoples of Xinjiang, who had undergone great sufferings together with the people in other parts of the country, became the masters of the state, it said.

        Since 1949, particularly after China’s reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, Xinjiang has entered an era of rapid economic and social progress, with the local residents enjoying the most tangible benefits, according to the paper.

        The local GDP in 2008 stood at 420.3 billion yuan, which is 86.4 times higher than that of 1952, three years before the establishment of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, up 8.3 percent on average annually, it said.

        In 2008, the per-capita net income of farmers in Xinjiang was 3,503 yuan, which is 28 times more than that of 1978, while the per-capita disposable income of urban residents reached 11,432 yuan, which is 35 times more than that of 1978, it said.

        The great economic achievements are the results of concerted efforts by all peoples of Xinjiang, and of support from the central government and the entire nation.

        From 1950 to 2008, the central government invested 386.23 billion yuan in Xinjiang, accounting for 25.7 percent of the total investment in the region, it said.

        Huge progress was also made in areas including education, science, arts, health and medical services, employment, social security, as well as the preservation of ethnic cultures, according to the paper.

        In Xinjiang, citizens of every ethnic group enjoy the rights prescribed by the Constitution and laws, including freedom of religious belief, and rights to vote and stand for election, it said.

        According to the Constitution and laws, they also enjoy the rights to equally administer state affairs, to receive education, to use and develop their own spoken and written languages, and to preserve and advance the traditional culture of their own peoples, according to the paper.

        The number of Xinjiang’s cadres from minority ethnic groups was46,000 in 1955. It shot up to 363,000 in 2008, accounting for 51.25 percent of the total number of cadres in Xinjiang, it said.

        Most people of Xinjiang’s 10 major ethnic minority groups, with a total population of over 11.3 million, believe in Islam now, it said.

        The number of Islamic mosques has soared from 2,000 in the early days of the reform and opening-up drive to 24,300 now, and the body of clergy from 3,000 to over 28,000, according to the paper.

        “All these achievements would have been impossible for Xinjiang without national unification, social stability, or ethnic unity,” the paper said.

        However, for years, the “East Turkistan” forces in and outside Xinjiang have been trumpeting national separatism, and plotted and organized a number of bloody incidents of terror and violence, seriously jeopardizing national unification, social stability and ethnic unity, thus seriously disrupting Xinjiang’s development and progress, it said.

        “The ‘East Turkistan’ forces pose a severe threat to the development and stability of Xinjiang,” the paper said.

        The “East Turkistan” forces have seriously violated the basic human rights to life and development of all the peoples of Xinjiang, seriously interrupted the region’s economic development, and pose a threat to regional security and stability, it said.

        According to incomplete statistics, from 1990 to 2001, the “East Turkistan” forces both inside and outside China created more than 200 bloody incidents of terror and violence in Xinjiang, by means of explosions, assassinations, poisoning, arson, attacking, riots and assaults, it said.

        As a result, 162 citizens, including people of various ethnicities, cadres at the grassroots level and religious personnel, lost their lives, and over 440 were wounded, according to the paper.

        In 2002, they again organized several bloody incidents of terror and violence in Xinjiang. The most recent “July 5” riot in Urumqi caused huge losses in lives and property of the people of various ethnic groups, it said.

        By July 17, 2009, 197 people died (most being innocent victims)and over 1,700 were injured, with 331 shops and 1,325 motor vehicles destroyed or burned, and many public facilities were damaged, figures from the paper showed.

        “Ethnic unity is a blessing for all peoples, while separatism would be disastrous,” it said.

        “It has become clearer for the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang that national unification, ethnic unity, social stability, plus the coexistence and development in harmony of all peoples who share weal and woe are the lifeblood for the region’s development and progress,” the paper said.