Note: I would urge everyone who wants to get a grip on exactly what the
Chinese are up to read this book - if you don't want to buy it get your
library to order it (St Pancras Library has a copy after I ordered one).
Khanna writes from a liberal internationalist viewpoint in one sense -
for him the EU is the light to follow as the world hardens into three
empires, the American, the EU and the Chinese - but in another sense he
is not because he is far from being a hardline laissez faire follower.
The scope and ambition of China is truly breathtaking. Most of those on
the list will have probably heard of their forays into Africa and their
attempts to buy strategic first world assets such as Rio Tinto Zinc and
a decent lump of the major US port system but that is just the tip of
the iceberg. They have built a ring of client states around them from
Burma to North Korea who are to All intents and purposes as much part of
China as is Tibet. Their influence extends throughout all of South and
central Asia and across to Latin America. Only the developed world is
still largely untouched by their policy of giving massive amounts of Aid
to get them into a country and then using that country for their own
purposes.
They are being immensely clever. Aid is giving without strings, unlike
that doled out by the West. It is on a truly gigantic scale. They build
infrastructure in Third and Second world countries for free but this
infrastructure is very often to promote their own direct purposes such
as transporting materials and manufactured goods. The deal is, we will
give you money and material help and you will give us food and materials
and allow our cheap manufactures to come into your markets. No
moralising, just and exchange of goods and services.
Interestingly, as the extract from the book I reproduce below shows,
Khanna rates the Chinese development and potential vastly beyond that
of India, despite the latter having the "correct" political system and
China the "incorrect" one from the Western point of view. I foresee a
re-run of the Fascist-Liberal democracy argument in the 1920s and 1930s
over which is the more efficient system and whether the First World can
afford what we now call democracy (in reality elective oligarchy).
Be assured of one thing, the time of laissez faire is almost done as
governments in the developed world suddenly wake up to what is happening
among the five sixths of the world which do not live in the First World.
RH
The Second World
Parag Khanna's
CHINA’S FIRST-WORLD SEDUCTION pp275 -277
INDIA LOOKS EAST
The devastating 2004 tsunami, which centered on Indonesian Sumatra and
swelled over islands and coasts from India to Somalia, reinforced the
reality of a seamless oceanic space in the world’s Eastern
Hemisphere.2° As lunar gravity dictates the tides, however; the Indian
Ocean increasingly serves as the western bay of a greater Pacific space
centered on East Asia. Its western shores—Africa, Arabia, and
Iran—increasingly send their natural resources eastward, even as the
area provides investment and export markets for booming Asia. The
majority of the world’s shipping now traverses this integrated
Indo-Pacific realm, making all of South Asia the third-world western
subsystem of the China-centered Asian order. Over 50 percent of
India’s trade is with East Asia, while Japan, South Korea, and
Singapore are its largest foreign investors. Under the British Raj,
India was the most powerful territory between the Suez Canal and the
Straits of Malacca, but its influence in the Arab world and Central Asia
also ended with the Raj. Hemmed in by the world’s highest mountain
range and a vast ocean, power projection (even with nuclear weapons) is
highly circumscribed for India’s modest army and navy. The United
States explicitly seeks to sponsor India’s rise as “the first large,
economically powerful, culturally vibrant, multiethnic, multireligious
democracy outside of the geographic West”—not to mention as a hedge
against China.21 But India has transitioned from its Cold War
nonalignment to multi-alignment. It declares itself and the United
States to be the “twin towers of democracy” while announcing with
China plans to “reshape world order. ‘22 To lure India, America has
offered high-tech investment, civilian nuclear technology, defense
agreements such as joint F-18
production, and more visas for immigrants. China has emphasized their
common positions in trade negotiations, joint oil exploration,
commercial corridors through the Himalayas, $20 billion in annual trade,
and a civilian nuclear deal as well. Indian IT firms must import
hardware from China to produce their software; that the largest
outsourcing operations in China are Indian-owned shows its growing
integration with China. But China’s soft cooperation with India has
facilitated its grand strategic goal of encircling and containing it
through a naval “string of pearls” in order to reach the Arabian Sea
without relying on the Straits of Malacca. Once part of colonial India,
Burma is now entrenched in China’s orbit, with India’s proposed
east-west gas pipelines dropped in favor of north-south pipelines to
China. Where India has built a fence to prevent Bangladeshi migration,
China has built a modern Bangladesh- China Friendship Conference Center
in Dhaka. While India threatens to divert the Brahmaputra River (on
which Bangladesh depends) into the Ganges, China has muscled in, since
it is the source country of the Brahmaputra. Against Indian wishes,
China has become an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC), while Indian influence in the evolving East Asian
Community is marginal. “Nobody in the region really cares what India
thinks,” confided a Malaysian diplomat involved with regional
diplomacy. India is big but not yet important. Outsourcing has made it a
leading back office for Western firms, but except for a few segregated
twenty-first-
third-world, most of its billion-plus people living in poverty.24 In
Mumbai (once known as Bombay), which accounts for over one-third of the
national economy, some residents pay among the world’s highest rents
while the city’s slums of over ten million inhabitants are also the
world’s largest. Clogged Indian cities still have three-way streets:
Two directions for automobiles, with pedestrians and stray cattle
meandering in between. India’s bonanza of IPOs, impressive corporate
profits, and billionaires galore show the dynamic potential of its
private sector, but its growth will remain spectacularly uneven until
the government catches up—perhaps over the next two decades—with its
promises of infrastructure development. India’s continued high
population growth ensures that even with high economic growth it will
remain the poorest large country in the world for decades to come.
Though agriculture constitutes only 30 percent of the economy, seven
hundred million people depend on seasonal monsoons and harvests—yet
India’s groundwater is depleting rapidly. Unable to pay their debts,
many farmers have committed suicide, while indentured servitude
continues in many backward areas. Most of India’s population growth is
occurring in the northern states, which have the weakest infrastructure,
the worst governance, the poorest education, and the highest rate of
HIV/AIDS infection, all while also being the epicenter of a resurgence
of the polio epidemic. China has order and may one day have democracy.
India has democracy but achieves less because it is chaotic. The link
between trade and development that China exemplifies is almost absent in
India. Relative to its geographical and population size, India’s
government is almost invisibly weak, with a federal budget the size of
Norway’s. Unlike China, unified India is a British creation, and its
unity often appears more geographical than psychological; it is a
cramped peninsula where Tamils and Assamese have nowhere else to
go—yet still they try. It could also be argued that China is a freer
country than democratic
India: Literacy is far higher, the poverty rate far lower. Also, it
takes longer to start a business in India, one-third as many Indians
have Internet access, and only one-fifth as many have cell phones.
India’s democracy may never have experienced a famine, but over half
of India’s children are malnourished. Because most Indians lack
economic freedom, other freedoms are that much more difficult to enjoy.
The difference between India and China is thus not just the time lag
between the advents of their current economic reform eras but also a
fundamental matter of national organizational ability. Even if India
rises, it will be according to Chinese rules. ?
Note: The mistake liberal internationalists make is to imagine that
human beings are interchangeable and that culture counts for nothing. In
reality, human beings speciate by culture. RH
Daily Telegraph
China is not like us
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 03/
Graham Hutchings reviews China: A Wolf in the World by George Walden
It used to be difficult to find a decent book on China in the typical
British bookshop. It sometimes still is, despite China's growing clout
in international affairs and the approach of the Olympic Games - the
country's long-sought 'coming out' ceremony. There are exceptions and we
should be grateful for what we can get: the need for enlightenment about
China is overwhelming - especially since 'overwhelm' is exactly what
many people think China threatens to do to us. George Walden first
encountered China in the mid-1960s, just as Chairman Mao was plunging
the country into the Cultural Revolution, a decade of upheaval,
persecution, bloodshed and destruction. Sent to Hong Kong in his early
twenties to learn Chinese and then posted to the British mission in
Peking, shortly after Red Guards had burnt it to the ground, he saw
China at its most revolutionary, isolated, dangerous and unpleasant. Mr
Walden says that his current views on China have not been poisoned by
this initial encounter, and that they have also been formed by many
visits to the country since - as Tory MP, minister (for higher
education) and journalist. On these occasions, he has rightly had a
sense of being in another country and of encountering a different
people. Yet are these people, whose material lives - along with much of
the entire fabric of China - have been transformed by 30 years of
capitalist-style reforms, really very different from those he met in an
earlier era? Are 'the semi-crazed faces and chants of the Maoist
marchers, the transformation of millions of human beings into
malignant-eyed robots' that he observed in the 1960s related in some way
to the millions who now enliven China's bustling, open and increasingly
prosperous cities? It is very much his view that they are. The past
casts a long shadow over the observations in this book, and Walden's
conclusion - 'that the behaviour of a rich renascent China is unlikely
to be quiescent' - is not very comforting. There is a clue to what is
coming in the title of the book. It evokes, not the overworked image of
the 'dragon', with its generally benign, auspicious connotations in
Chinese culture, but the 'wolf', an animal of a very different kind.
Walden derives the image from a somewhat controversial interpretation of
Wolf Totem, a Chinese novel by sociologist Jiang Rong, which last year
won the first Man Asian Literary Prize and has been a sensation in
China. The novel describes the vanishing of the Mongolian grasslands and
the demise of the much respected, if feared, wolves. The story seems to
speak of impending ecological disaster, but Mr Walden prefers another
take. He dwells on Jiang Rong's implication that the Chinese people have
been far too sheep-like in the past, and that they must acquire
wolf-like courage and cunning if they are to triumph over their
adversaries (ie 'us' or the West) in a highly competitive world. Wolf
Totem, Mr Walden says, 'reads like a eulogy of nationalism and raw
power'. His book is as much to do with opinions about China (many of
them, he says, erroneous) as it is to do with China itself. To this
extent, it will probably be enjoyed more by those with some knowledge of
the country than those keen to understand what is going on in the lives
and minds of ordinary Chinese people. The author probably feels that he
is better off concentrating on getting China 'right', so that we are
better prepared to understand something of its future. He has a point.
And he is relatively even-handed in his contempt for those down the
centuries who have got China 'wrong'. He is as hard on Westerners who
saw in Mao's repressive China a model for their own democratic societies
as he is on current observers who imagine that, since China has
abandoned socialism for a peculiarly rapacious form of capitalism, it
must also be destined for democracy. In the course of these arguments he
asserts that: 'Handing over a democratic Hong Kong to the Mainland was
always a non-starter, a fantasy indulged by the Governor and the British
media to save British "face".' There is much to this view. Yet he
overlooks the fact that Britain's belated campaign for a modest
expansion in the franchise in Hong Kong raised the bar for political
development in the territory after 1997 and set expectations of
accountability that Beijing has, grudgingly, partially taken into
account. Hong Kong is, though, a mere footnote when it comes to the
important questions about China's internal development and its relations
with the wider world. And here Walden's absence of illusion is much to
be prized. His approach is grounded in the realities of China's size,
its past, its national traumas (both real and perceived) and the
traditional attitudes of its people and government towards the outside
world. That China is convulsed by change and that life is very much
better for nearly everyone than ever before is beyond doubt.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the notion that the country's
instincts, sentiments and self-perceptions have changed accordingly.
This suggests that political authoritarianism is likely to persist in
Beijing for some time - despite the fact that China's entry into the
global economy seems to have made it more 'like us' - and that nothing
and no one will be allowed to get in the way of the drive for national
development. All this does not mean that conflict between a resurgent
China and Japan, or China and America is inevitable. But it does suggest
that in many areas of life, living with China is going to be difficult.
In vividly pointing this out, Mr Walden's book provides a welcome if
sobering dose of reality about one of the most important and perplexing
countries in the world.
Extract from my IQ and Society
11. Speciation by culture
Objections have been raised to the conclusions of Everrett and
Gordon, primarily in terms of their interpretation of their
observations, but assuming there is a fair degree of objective truth
about their data, it is reasonable to ask are the Pirana teetering on
the edge of what counts as fully human if behaviour is the defining
criterion? It is the wrong question to ask. The right question
to ask is can homo sapiens be meaningfully designated a species as a
species is defined for every other organism?
Because Man is differentiated profoundly by culture, the widely
accepted definition of a species - a population of freely interbreeding
organisms sharing a common gene pool - is unsatisfactory, for
clearly Man is more than an animal responding to simple
biological triggers. When behavioural differences are perceived as
belonging to a particular group by that group as differentiating
members of the group from other men, they perform the same role as
organic differences for they divide Man into cultural species.
It is worth adding that the concept of a species is far from a secure
concept. It is a man-made classification which is often found wanting.
For example, the North American Ruddy Duck and the European
White-Headed Duck are classified as separate species. The introduction
of the Ruddy Duck to Europe has resulted in widespread interbreeding
between the supposedly separate species to the extent that
conservationists now fear for the survival of the White Headed Duck. It
is also true that a growing amount of traditional taxonomic
classification is being overturned by DNA analysis.
Another interesting trait is that members of a species will have
different breeding propensities across its distribution, that is,
members of the supposedly single species will breed differentially with
different parts of the total species population. For example, take an
animal which is common to Europe and bring individuals from different
geographical parts of the continent together and it may be that those
found in the East of the distribution will be less likely or refuse
altogether to mate with the those in the West.
Even at the most fundamental biological level of breeding, I wonder if
Man is quite as discrete as he imagines. To the best of my knowledge
no one has tried to create a cross between a human and a chimpanzee
or a bonobo - I sincerely hope no one ever does. But putting aside
any natural revulsion, would it be so surprising if such a cross
was possible? Would it be any more of a intra-species leap than say
the production of a mule or a liger (lion/tiger) through the mating
of different species? I would not wish to bet against it.
As for the future, genetic engineering may break down distinctions
between species, for example, by genes from one species being
implanted into another. Lastly, genetics and/or cybernetics may lead
to modifications of human beings so substantial to create what are to
all intents and purposes unambiguously separate species of Man with
vastly differing abilities.
Note: Mao defined everything as propaganda on the principle that what
is not said is as important as what is said. For example, two peasants
going to the paddy field discuss football. That is propaganda because
they could have been doing something socially useful such as discussing
how to improve the rice crop. RH
Daily Telegraph
Beijing Olympics: China casts off a century of shame If the Beijing
Olympics are all about propaganda, one thing is certain: the propaganda
works.
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 10:09AM BST 02 Aug 2008
A Chinese gardener smiles to the camera as he works outside the National
Olympic Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest in Beijing Photo: AP
Children have their hair cut with the Beijing Olympic Games emblem at a
school in Beijing Photo: GETTY/AFP
A police buggy on patrol in Beijing Photo: EPA
On Wednesday evening this week, as dusk fell, the roads around China’s
National Stadium went into a familiar lockdown. Traffic ground to a halt
as the police barricades went up, siphoning cars away along Beijing’s
many other ring roads and dual carriageways. The masses on foot, though,
kept coming, lining the pavements, climbing fences, storming footbridges
until the members of the chengguan, an auxiliary police force, were
called in to keep order, holding hands to control the throng. There was
nothing to see other than the brightly lit outside of the stadium, the
playful steel Bird’s Nest. But a rehearsal of the opening ceremony was
scheduled for 8pm, and those who could not wait any longer came in their
hundreds and thousands just to gawp as the excitement unfolded,
invisibly, inside. Many had the national flag, with its yellow stars on
a red background, painted on their cheeks. I met one man who had brought
his son from Lanzhou, on the other side of China: they could not stay
for the Games, but young Haopeng, eight, would nevertheless witness
history. “It’s a kind of education, about sport and about
patriotism,” Xu Haitong said. “It’s to show him the country is
powerful and strong again.” The Games are nothing short of a sacred
ritual for this atheist state, and it is hard to exaggerate the
enthusiasm. When the organisers advertised for volunteers to deal with
baffled foreigners unused to local ways, a million people applied. Most
of the 100,000 selected came from universities around the country, such
as Wang Wenjia, a 21-year-old medical student who has trained eight
hours a day for two weeks. “First of all, it’s a great opportunity
to be part of the Games,” he said, switching back and forth between
Chinese and nervous but enthusiastic English, which he has been
practising for this moment. “This is a once-in-a-hundred-
Though I can’t compete in the field as an athlete, I can give my heart
as a volunteer, give my passion. To offer my service to the spirit of
the Olympics is very important.” He defined that spirit as being based
around “peace and unity”, which is the official line. But it is Mr
Xu’s “powerful and strong” that resonates abroad, and in the guts
of a billion Chinese. These Games, as everyone knows, are not about
synchronised swimming, or inspiring teenagers to take up volleyball or
weightlifting. They are about China standing up, in all its
controversial glory. To those in the West who regard this as a threat,
the response is at worst hostile, at best puzzled. “We are owed this
chance to show the result of our endeavours to the world,” says
Volunteer Wang. “It is to show the progress we have made.” The Games
have been described, to the point of tedium, as a “coming-out
party”, a quaint term suggesting a shy debutante from a privileged but
sheltered background. This could not be further from China’s
self-image, which is rooted in poverty, shame and suffering, inflicted
both from without – as the history books insist – and from within.
As Susan Brownell, an American athlete, anthropologist and author of
Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China, puts it: “They are
collective redemption for the national suffering of the past century.”
It is easy to put this down to the Communist Party’s manipulation of
Chinese emotions. After the famines and purges of the Mao years, the one
residual claim to legitimacy that the party can make is that it has
unified China, after it came close to falling apart from colonial and
Japanese occupation and then civil war. The message is rubbed in
constantly in history books, in newspaper articles, on endless period
dramas on television: before the revolution, China was hopelessly
reduced, largely by malevolent foreigners – the same foreigners who
now criticise the country for its record on human rights, its rule over
Tibet and its lack of democracy. This is why it has proved so hard for
the West’s governments and human rights groups to use the Olympics as
leverage to bring progress. For a decade, world leaders claimed that
engagement with China would bring political reform. Three years ago,
Tony Blair declared the momentum unstoppable. Jacques Rogge, the
president of the International Olympic Committee, has been more
circumspect, but he has also interwoven his insistence that the Games
are above politics with assurances that they would change China for the
better. Yet in many ways the reverse is true: the Games have been an
excuse for the party to assert control over an increasingly disparate
society. It has knocked down hundreds of thousands of homes, many
private, and relocated their inhabitants as part of its building
programme. Less tolerance than ever has been shown towards dissent, with
the police and assorted thugs saying little more than “Olympics” as
they beat and threaten lawyers and writers. The single-party state is
more entrenched than ever – and while a successful Games would make it
seem invincible, one beset by protests and complaints might also serve
only to unite party and people in a defensive laager. The nationalist
mood reaches its extreme in bloggers such as Sima Nan, a television
celebrity turned writer who lambasts the few liberal newspapers here for
selling out to America. Mr Sima says that China is not ready for
personal freedom, nor suited to one man, one vote. Liberals, he claims,
want to do away with “Chineseness” and turn the country into a pale
imitation of the West. When I asked him whether the Olympics were not
supposed to represent universal values, he said its values were very
different from those we have in mind. “There is no contradiction
between Chinese attitudes and the spirit of the Olympics,” he said,
defining the spirit of the Olympics, very much as Wang Wenjia had done,
as “peace, competition and unity” – in short, a global festival of
mutual honour and indifference to one another’s political systems.
Those who want to use the Games to push other agendas are, he says, like
people who “talk dirty and smash the dishes when they are invited to a
party”. The readiness with which both the young and those who think of
themselves as controversialist freethinkers, such as Mr Sima, mirror the
party line is among the most depressing features of modern China. It
takes an exceptionally beguiled heart not to want to take “peace”
and “unity”, attach them to an Amnesty International banner, and
beat the regime over the head with it. Of course, there is more to China
than the party, and more even to the Olympics. It was as far back as
1907 that a group of young men – who met through the YMCA, of all
places – first expressed the hope that the country might one day stage
the Games. The whole idea was relatively new, and three years before the
Games had been held in America – another country on the rise. This is
at once a reason the Chinese talk of the “hundred years’ dream”,
and a reflection of how much many Chinese – whatever Mr Sima says –
see America as a model rather than a rival. In fact, Prof Brownell
argues that much of the incessant Olympic propaganda has actually been
intended to bring the country closer to the West. She has sat in on
classroom projects where children are taught about the history of the
Olympic movement and its ideals, without the heavy overlay of Communist
theory that is so prevalent in other areas. Likewise, progressives have
organised international exchanges and conferences in a whole range of
fields, as a means of introducing Western standards. “The Cultural
Revolution generation that is now in charge have a sense that they were
not well educated,” she says. “They hope to use the Games to shape
the next generation, so that they are better prepared to take up their
role in the world community.” This is a more optimistic view than the
party’s continued hostility to Western scrutiny might naturally
evince. And Prof Brownell is the first to admit that some of the
pre-Games disasters, in Tibet and elsewhere, have triggered a
conservative backlash. Others believe there are serious tensions inside
the leadership about the whole future of the reform agenda, which will
be increasingly exposed by the simple question: what next? The Games
have been a unifying force for the party, not just the country. Without
them, politics, economics and the environment, the big issues for
China’s future, are a limitless book. The crowds on Wednesday were
impressive, and the packed, passionate stadiums guaranteed when the
gates open will be even more so. Whatever our feelings about the party
that rules them, few of us will begrudge the Chinese people a moment of
triumph. But their passion is also tense; on lesser sporting occasions –
such as Japan’s victory in the final of football’s Asia Cup in 2004
– it has turned actively hostile to perceived enemies from abroad.
After the Games are all over, this feeling may need a new outlet – and
we are entitled to ask of that, too, what next? Where will it be
directed by the all-powerful political force at the top? If patriotic
fervour continues to be directed at rebuilding a still fractured
society, there is little to fear, except our own ability to compete. But
nerves still hang heavy in the air.
Daily Telegraph
China's economic miracle at a crossroads as Olympics start
Last Updated: 10:22pm BST 02/08/2008
After years of double-digit growth China's economy is at the crossroads,
write Richard Spencer in Beijing and Malcolm Moore in Wenzhou In the
yard of Rise Sun Concrete outside Beijing, the trucks are parked up and
the mixers are grinding ever slower. China may be in the middle of the
biggest construction boom in history, but Rise Sun is no longer part of
the action, a victim of pollution controls introduced in a desperate
attempt to clear the city's air before the Olympics. "We will lose about
1.2 million yuan - about pounds 90,000," says sales manager Xiang
Wancheng of his enforced two-month go-slow, and he is not alone: 150
concrete, steel, chemical and other heavy industrial units in Beijing,
and hundreds more across northern China, have been forced to close down
production for the same reason. Building sites have downed tools, while
many other businesses have shut their doors without being told to as the
lorries taken off the roads at the same time no longer provide their
necessary supplies. Nor is the rest of China free of the grip of
"Olympic restrictions"
multinationals looking to buy Chinese products have suddenly found
themselves unable to get a visa. "Lots of my clients used to visit to
source their products directly. A letter of recommendation from me was
enough," said Richard Turner, vice president of Sino Mark, a consultant
to Western buyers. "The trade fairs are empty. Yiwu, the world's biggest
wholesale market, has seen sales drop 70 per cent to 80 per cent," he
said, adding that it is not just Westerners, but also Russians, Arabs
and Africans who are being denied entry. Long-standing business
relationships are being affected by the inability of quality and
corporate responsibility inspectors, all-important nowadays to
multinational brand names, to get into the country and check suppliers.
Importers are finding their raw materials stopped at customs, while
exporters have found their goods subject to stringent checks. More on
economics These steps come at a difficult time for the Chinese economy.
The national export machine, so recently invincible, is shuddering under
the weight of America's collapse in consumer confidence, while some look
at the massive investment that has accompanied Beijing's ultra-ambitious
approach to the Olympic Games - $43bn (£22bn), according to official
figures - and assume any such bubble must inevitably burst. Property
prices are already falling, though notoriously unreliable statistics
make it hard to say by how much. Even President Hu Jintao felt compelled
to admit at a pre-Olympics press conference on Friday that tough times
lay ahead. "Uncertainties and destabilising factors in the international
environment are increasing," he said. "China's domestic economy is
facing increasing challenges and difficulties.
the Olympics, of course. Unlike Athens, which saw a post-Olympics slump,
Beijing is a small part of a large national economy - estimated at 3 to
4 per cent of overall output. The Olympic construction boom is just one,
if the first among equals, of similar building sprees across China. Even
if further pollution controls come in, as threatened, the effects will
be limited in a national context. To take just two examples: Shanghai is
aping Beijing in its enthusiasm to further redevelop the city in time
for the World Expo of 2010, Guangzhou in the south is hosting the Asian
Games in 2010 and has taken the opportunity to construct a second
central business district. Total investment in China last year was $1.6
trillion. Beijing's $43bn, over three years, works out at less than 1
per cent of that. "It's a drop in the ocean," says Stephen Green, head
of research for Standard Chartered in Shanghai. "As for the shutdown,
people knew and saw it coming. The effect of the Olympics on the overall
Chinese economy is zero." Even for individual businesses like Xiang's,
there is reason for optimism. "We increased production 30 per cent in
June and July," he said. "Then it will go higher again in October,
perhaps 40 or 50 per cent higher than October last year." There is
plenty of demand, he said, pointing out that the building sites that are
his market which are now falling silent will be up and running again
once the Olympics are over. But there is more at work than just the
investment numbers: key also is government decision-making. Like
everywhere else in the world, China is caught in a vice between falling
economic growth and inflation. It may sound extraordinary in a country
currently growing at 10.2 per cent a year, but the leadership is under
great pressure to loosen tight monetary controls.
That pressure is coming from its manufacturers. In the face of the
credit crunch, the weak dollar, and rising wage costs, factories are
shutting down across the industrial heartlands of Guangdong and
Zhejiang, south of Shanghai, that have created the Chinese economic
miracle. Export growth fell from highs of more than 30 per cent little
over a year ago to 7 per cent in real terms last month. Green says that
by next year exports may well actually start falling, and predicts this
will shave 2-2.5 per cent off GDP growth, giving readings of well under
9 per cent for next year - his current forecast is 8.6 per cent. To see
this in action, it is only necessary to travel to the coastal city of
Wenzhou, in Zhejiang province south of Shanghai. Wenzhou may be a name
unknown on the British high street, but in the world of international
manufacturing it is legendary. It was here in the late 1970s and 1980s
that entrepreneurs began to experiment with new models of ownership that
evaded strict controls on private business in post-Mao China. The result
was clusters of businesses specialising in low-end production of single
items.
Wenzhou is the birthplace of 70 per cent of all the world's cigarette
lighters and 60 per cent of the world's buttons. In the same province
are the homes of 80 per cent of the world's ties, and 30 per cent of its
socks. Wenzhou businessmen have spread across China, taken over textile
towns in Italy, and are now to be found across the Middle East. But
suddenly, the city is in crisis. "We have cut our staff from 170 to 100
in the last year," said Zhou Zhaoping, sales manager of Lucheng
Huanglong Mite, a clothes manufacturer. "We have seen a 50 per cent drop
in our order books." She blamed the higher cost of raw materials, a
universal problem, and higher wages, propelled by the need to meet
higher inflation. She reckoned that 30 per cent of all businesses in
Wenzhou had gone bust in the past couple of years. Over on the other
side of town, the story with cigarette lighters, the very product which
made Wenzhou famous, is the same. Half the work stations at Yikang,
founded in 1989 and once supplier of between three and four million a
year, lay empty this week. Outside in the streets, ex-employees lolled
around snooker tables set up on the pavements. Xu Peng, its manager, has
cut his workforce from 300 to 100 in two years, saying raw material
costs were up more than 30 per cent, wages 15-20 per cent, while the
rising yuan was hitting exports. One extra problem was that in its
effort to control inflows of speculative "hot money" into a rising but
still not freely tradable currency, the government was imposing extra
controls. The export checks have also delayed Xu's cigarette lighters.
The threat of an industrial downturn gives Chinese policy-makers two
recurring nightmares. Joblessness, the government believes, equals
instability, which is an existential threat to the Communist party. The
long-held mantra is that the economy has to grow by at least 7 per cent
every year in order to provide jobs for the millions of new arrivals to
the job market. The second worry is that collapsing businesses will
trigger a run on China's opaquely-run state-owned banks. China's
unchecked growth in the 1990s led to the build-up of huge bad loans,
which eventually had to be bought out by the government. The exuberant
years since China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 have seen
another enormous pile-up of loans: in theory they have not gone bad at
the moment, but the banks could be fragile in the face of any major
slow-down. "How much damage could there be to the banking system?" asks
Arthur Kroeber, director of Dragonomics, a China economics consultancy.
"The banks are sitting on big profits and can probably ride it out, but
it's a risk." GDP growth of 8-9 per cent might be a figure other
countries dream of, but China was getting used to double-digit success.
And herein lies the real danger, according to Kroeber. Compared to its
neighbours, China's use of bank loan restrictions to tame inflation,
currently running at 7.1 per cent, have had some effect. Yet while food
prices may have peaked, underlying inflation still threatens,
particularly via the rise in factory gate costs. The long-term danger to
the Chinese economy remains that of overheating. Instead, the government
may be tempted to loosen the purse strings too soon. "The main risk
actually is that the government panics too early," Kroeber says. "We
used to hear that 7 per cent was a necessary growth rate for China," Mr
Kroeber says. "Now it seems to be 9 per cent - the bar has been raised
for no good reason?.?.?. They have got wedded to this higher rate. But
if they loosen up, the flood gates open to inflationary risk." Many
analysts, including China's own, say consolidation of low-end
manufacturing may be just what is needed to improve productivity, send
industry higher up the value chain, and maintain China's long-term high
growth through another cycle. Rising wages - and peaking demographics -
suggest unemployment may no longer be the problem it once was. "The fact
that wages are still rising across the board and migrant workers still
do not have any problems finding jobs suggests to us the situation is
not as bad as that," said Standard Chartered's Stephen Green in a recent
report. Consolidation is certainly the aim of Zhou Dewen, head of the
government's small and medium size enterprise committee for Wenzhou. He
believes that the crisis will impel the city's businessmen to turn their
attentions to higher-tech, and thus more profitable products, in line
with government intentions. "There are over three million small
businesses in Wenzhou, and there is only a small proportion of large
businesses," he says, adding that the government wanted the small
businesses to consolidate in order to form companies with enough money
to invest in their industries' futures. Companies that did not merge
would find it increasingly hard to compete and would find no sympathy
from the authorities. "People in Wenzhou are too innovative to allow
their companies to go bust. The companies here have £44bn of cash,
apart from their fixed assets, which they made during the good years.
That money will help them to survive now," he said. On a national level,
$1.8 trillion of foreign exchanges reserves are a similarly healthy
cushion. Nevertheless, the central authorities may already be answering
to business. In the same press conference on Friday, Hu said fast growth
remained a priority, a comment interpreted by the markets as a sign of
government support. At the same time, leaks suggested the lending limits
on the state banks would be raised 5 per cent. On Thursday, increases
had already been announced in tax rebates to exporters. There is little
doubt that the fundamentals of the Chinese economy remain sound: the
miracle will continue, at least for the time being. Although its export,
high investment and low consumption rates are disturbingly reminiscent
of Japan's once fearsome model: Beijing is still where Tokyo was in the
1960s or 70s, rather than the 1980s turning point. There are still
hundreds of millions more people to be accommodated in expanding cities,
huge productivity gains to be made: China's productivity is perhaps a
tenth of America's. Yet the speed of change makes the tightrope act
tougher. On Beijing's railway stations in recent weeks, streams of
migrant workers have been sitting waiting for trains to take them back
to their villages across China. Laid off during the shutdown, they fully
expect to be back in two months' time. If not, said a Mr Fang from Hubei
province, sent home by the construction site where he was building
luxury villas for China's new rich, he would try his luck elsewhere.
"One thing's for sure," he said. "There's no shortage of building sites
in China." With China now the main driver of world economic growth, we
are all depending on him being right.???il/
Note: China are very wisely not playing the free trade game. Instead,
they do what every country which has industrialised successfully has
done, from Britain onwards, adopted a mercantilist stance of prote4ction
at home and aggressive exporting. RH
Daily Telegraph
China sticks by tariffs as Doha stalls
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 1:56am BST 28/07/2008
Hopes of a last minute breakthrough on the Doha Round of world trade
talks are fading after China refused to cut tariffs on key farm goods
and India damned the proposals as unacceptable. Peter Mandelson, the EU
trade commissioner, said it was far from clear whether the 35-odd states
gathered in Geneva for the final phase of the negotiating marathon could
bridge their differences before the deadline expires on Wednesday.
"There are a number of potential potholes in the road, including India
and others with large populations depending on subsistence agriculture
who are holding out. There is no guarantee the fragile package that
began to emerge on Friday night will survive," he said.
China warned negotiators yesterday that it would not cut duties on
imports of rice, sugar, and cotton. "China is becoming a major problem.
It is going back on a lot of its promises," said one diplomat to the
news agency AFP. Trade experts fear that a deal will prove impossible
once the US election campaign shifts into high gear. A Democratic
landslide in Congress would give Capitol Hill a decidely protectionist
complexion. The party's labour allies, the AFL-CIO, said they are
"implacably opposed" to any deal unless it allows the US to block
imports from any country that abuses worker rights. More on economics
Support for free trade is slowly withering in Europe as well as the
strong euro and cheap goods from Asia erodes the region's industrial
base. The leaders of both France and Italy expressed "deep concern" over
the EU offer put forward by Mr Mandelson to slash the limits on EU farm
subsidies by 80pc, though they did not undercut his negotiating mandate.
It will be hard to rescuscitate global trade talks if the round
collapses in acrimony after seven years. Indian's commerce minister
Kamal Nath said the proposals would lead to a flood of imported food,
devastating Indian farmers.
Daily Telegraph
BHP warns Australia of risks in refusing Rio takeover
By David Litterick
Last Updated: 11:32pm BST 20/07/2008
The chairman of BHP Billiton has issued a veiled warning to the
Australian government that its natural resources could end up being
owned by the Chinese if regulators do not allow the miner to take over
Rio Tinto. In a plea to authorities to wave the hostile bid through, Don
Argus said that unless the company was allowed to remain competitive,
Australia could follow Canada, which has seen most of its resource
companies snapped up by foreign buyers. "Many large resource companies,
such as BHP Billiton, are based in home-grown resource positions," said
Mr Argus. "Australia's position in the global resource industry is not
guaranteed. Our current natural resource champions could fall into the
hands of overseas consolidators.
Australia's competition authorities could stifle growth. Just weeks
after Chinese steelmaker Sinosteel secured a controlling stake in
Australian miner Midwest, Mr Argus suggested the greatest threat was
China. "The world has state-owned or state-supported players from Russia
and China and Brazil and private companies. I don't believe it's in
anyone's interests not to have a global countervailing force against
state-sponsored resources majors." He said the Rio plan was "on track",
adding: "We're pleased to have effectively cleared the US competition
approvals process and moved into the second phase of the European
Commission's process."
China becomes biggest net nation
China now has the world's largest net-using population, say official
figures.
More than 253 million people in the country are now online, according to
statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
The figure is higher than the 223 million that the US mustered in June,
according to Nielsen Online.
Net penetration in the US stands at 71% compared to 19% in China
suggesting it will eventually vastly outstrip the US.
The development is significant because the US has had the largest net-
using population since records of how many people were online started to
be kept.
"This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United
States, becoming the world's number one," said a statement from the
CNNIC, the nation's official net monitoring body.
The 2008 figure is up 56% in a year, said CNNIC. Analysts expect the
total to grow by about 18% per annum and hit 490 million by 2012.
About 95% of those going online connect via high-speed links. Take up of
broadband has been boosted by deals offered by China's fixed line phone
firms as they fight to win customers away from mobile operators.
China's mobile phone-using population stands at about 500 million
people.
Despite having a greater number of people online, China's net economy
still has a long way to go to match or exceed that of the US or even
that of South Korea.
Figures from Analysys International said China's net firms reported
total revenues of $5.9bn (£2.96bn) in 2007. By contrast net advertising
revenue alone for US firms in 2007 stood at $21.2bn (£10.6bn).
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.
Published: 2008/07/28 09:12:15 GMT
Daily Telegraph
China and Britain ready to exploit Tibet's natural resources
Last Updated: 10:14pm BST 26/07/2008
Despite political tensions in the country, its huge deposits of gold and
other metals are proving too big a temptation for foreign miners, David
Eimer reports from Beijing While Britain's athletes are eyeing gold
medals at the Beijing Olympics, British mining companies are setting out
to claim a share of China's vast gold deposits. The resource-rich,
soon-to-be superpower has been increasingly attracting the attention of
foreign miners in recent years. Now, British firms are leading the race
to develop the country's mineral deposits. They are doing so a long way
from the shiny new Beijing that will be on display to the world next
month. While China has spent an estimated £20m readying the Chinese
capital for the Olympics, it is to Tibet, one of China's least-developed
regions, that foreign mining companies are now looking. Despite having
one of the most hostile environments imaginable, as well as a serious
lack of infrastructure, the "roof of the world" is a treasure trove of
minerals.
Central China Goldfields (CCG) is the only British miner operating in
Tibet. Despite the recent protests against Chinese rule, it is adamant
it has made the right decision. "We're not a political organisation - we
don't take sides. But whoever is in charge will develop these deposits,"
Jeff Malaihollo, the managing director of CCG, told The Sunday
Telegraph. "It is how you do it that is important - whether you do it in
an environmentally sustainable way and by working with the local
community. Ultimately, though, if we don't do it, someone else will."
More on mining There is no doubt about that. The once under-developed
and under-funded Chinese mining sector is undergoing a revolution that
in the next few years seems certain to have a profound effect on
commodity markets worldwide. China is on its way to becoming
self-sufficient and ultimately one of the world's major exporters of
commodities, as vast new mineral deposits are discovered. Last year,
China overtook South Africa to become the world's leading gold producer.
Leyshon Resources, listed on Aim and the Australian Securities Exchange,
is developing a gold mine in north-eastern Heilongjiang province. "China
had a unique combination of untapped exploration potential and
established infrastructure,
of Leyshon. "Because of that, China has become the world's largest gold
producer in less than a decade."
British mining firms led the way into China. In 1997, the London-based,
Aim-listed Griffin Mining became the first foreign company to be granted
an exploration licence since the founding of the People's Republic of
China in 1949. Now, British companies are operating across China and
most are watching developments in Tibet, mining's new frontier.
The Chinese name for Tibet, Xizang or "western treasure house", makes
clear how valuable the volatile, politically sensitive region is to
China. In 1999, the Chinese embarked on a secret, seven-year geological
survey that found 16 major deposits of copper, iron, lead, zinc and
other minerals. Tibet is believed to hold as much as 30m-40m tons of
copper, 40m tons of lead and zinc and more than a billion tons of
high-grade iron ore.
China's steel-hungry construction and car industries imported 386m tons
of iron ore in 2007, an 18 per cent rise on 2006, almost half of the
world's total imports of iron. That figure will be drastically reduced
if the iron in Tibet can be extracted. In all, the total value of
Tibet's minerals is estimated at £64.8bn by the Chinese government.
CCG decided in 2006 that Tibet was too tempting an opportunity, despite
the threat of protests from groups opposed to China's treatment of the
Tibetans. Established in November 2004, in response to the opening up of
China's gold sector to overseas companies in 2003, CCG first focused on
developing gold projects, including a mine in Inner Mongolia it hopes to
have in production by next March. But for the past year, CCG has been
exploring for copper in Nimu, close to Tibet's capital, Lhasa.
Nimu lies on the Gangdese copper belt, which runs from the south-western
Chinese province of Yunnan all the way to Afghanistan. CCG is still at
the exploration stage, but Chinese companies are already constructing
mines along this belt, including Yulong, which will be China's largest
copper mine. Later this year, the Vancouver-based Continental Minerals
is expected to be granted a licence for the first foreign-owned mine in
Tibet.
"There's a lot of copper in that belt. Geologically, it's very similar
to the Andean belt in South America and it's only a matter of time
before more people start hitting copper," says Malaihollo. Like all
foreign mining companies in China, CCG has had to set up a joint venture
to operate - CCG works with the Sichuan Bureau of Metallurgy and
Geological Exploration.
The fact that foreign companies must work with Chinese partners in Tibet
has led Tibetan exile and pressure groups, such as the Free Tibet
Campaign, to criticise the way such companies have rushed to take
advantage of the opening up of mining.
In 2003, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, used an open
letter to voice his concern, saying: "I appeal to all foreign mining
companies and their shareholders thinking about working in Tibet to
consider carefully about the ethical values when embarking on such a
venture." There have been reports of clashes between Tibetans and
Chinese mine workers.
Such opposition has made many British companies wary. "We have looked at
projects there but, rightly or wrongly, it does create issues back in
the West if you do invest in Tibet. So we are steering clear for the
moment," says Roger Goodwin, Griffin Mining's finance director. Instead,
it is concentrating on expanding its Caijiaying zinc-gold mine in
China's Hebei province.
The precious metals sector is proving the most attractive option for
British companies in China. "It's usually easier to get a quicker
payback from precious metals development than base metals, which
typically have a longer development profile and require a greater
capitalisation,
Mining Group (CIMG), a non-profit forum that represents overseas miners.
However, foreign companies are increasingly faced with newly cash-rich
companies attracted to the mining sector by the soaring price of
commodities. "A lot of real estate companies are getting into mining and
the more speculative of them are just throwing money around and we can't
compete with that," says Malaihollo. Overseas companies also have to
deal with five different levels of bureaucracy, from the state level, to
the provincial, municipal, local and village levels, and many find they
do not have the patience to succeed in China. "One has to understand and
respect how business is done in China and appreciate that the only deals
to be made in China will be those according to Chinese laws, rules and
regulations,
established, China seems set to be the new El Dorado for years to come.
Daily Telegraph
Panic sets in over Beijing pollution a week before Olympic Games Beijing
has announced new restrictions on car usage and said it could close
hundreds more factories as panic set in over pollution levels ahead of
the Olympics.
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 9:32AM BST 01 Aug 2008
Chinese policeman guards a road to an Olympic venue shrouded with smog
on July 27, 2008 in Beijing, China Photo: GETTY
China's National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, is seen through
pollution in Beijing Photo: AP The fresh curbs to tackle smog will come
into force if the air quality continues to fail Beijing's "safe
standards" when the Games commence after an opening ceremony next
Friday. A list has been drawn up of 222 chemical, construction, and
coal-fired factories in Beijing, the neighbouring city of Tianjin and
the surrounding province of Hebei which will be temporarily shut down.
Swathes of northern China's heavy industry, particularly concrete and
chemicals firms, are already on an enforced two-month holiday in an
attempt to improve air quality. In addition, more vehicles will be taken
off the roads. Currently, most lorries are banned in the city while cars
with odd-numbered licence plates can only drive on odd-numbered dates,
and even plates on even dates. Under the new rules, no car would be able
to drive on a date that shared the same last number as its licence
plate, while the existing rules might also be extended to Tianjin and
Hebei. Along with the threat of doping, and a bitter row among members
about China's censorship of the internet in Olympic venues and
accommodation, pollution will be a major focus of the last session of
the International Olympic Committee before the opening ceremony. Jacques
Rogge, the president, arrived at the start of what has already proved
the most controversial Olympics for two decades without speaking to
reporters. He has previously said that endurance races may have to be
postponed should air quality be poor, though it has since been confirmed
that this is a decision that will be taken by the Beijing organisers.
Since the current restrictions came into force on July 20, air quality
has failed Beijing's own standards on four days out of 12, even though
city officials say that the measures have reduced overall pollutants by
20 per cent. Beijing's standards are themselves more lax than those
recommended by the World Health Organisation. Yesterday's overall
reading was 69, or "good", where "excellent" is for a reading under 50
and anything over 100 is a "fail". Some national teams have already
complained of feeling the effects of the air since arriving in the city.
"Some of our guys have inherent breathing issues, and to put them in
this environment ... it's worrisome for sure," said Terrry Schroeder,
coach of the American water polo team. This week has seen clearer skies,
thanks to rainstorms, but on sultry and dry days the smog builds up
quickly again. On Wednesday, both Beijing's environmental protection
bureau and an IOC representative tried to play down the problem, saying
that just because the sky was grey and hazy did not mean that it was
necessarily polluted. "Most of the people see the fog, they say it's
pollution," said Gilberto Felli, the IOC's executive director for the
Games. "But we know here it's not pollution. It's mist, a fact of the
nature." However, Beijing does not currently release statistics for
ozone, one component of a polluted rather than a misty haze. In
addition, a website that gave a district breakdown of pollution readings
in the city has had public access denied since a link was displayed on a
Telegraph website. In the other major row, Kevan Gosper, the IOC member
who heads the press commission, said he had been kept in the dark about
conversations between IOC officials and the Beijing organisers when it
was confirmed that sensitive websites would remain blocked to
journalists and other visitors to Olympic venues. "This certainly isn't
what we guaranteed the international media and it's certainly contrary
to normal circumstances of reporting on Olympic Games," he said. Mr
Rogge previously promised uncensored access. "I would be surprised if
someone made a change without at least informing him," Mr Gosper said.
Daily Telegraph
Beijing Olympics 2008: Chinese fashion police crack down on style
horrors Fashion police at the Beijing Olympics have ordered men to steer
clear of white socks with black shoes and advised women to shun leather
skirts.
By Jessica Salter
Last Updated: 10:38AM BST 01 Aug 2008
Residents of the city should also shirk embarrassing public displays of
affection and fighting over who settles the bill after dinner and avoic
garlic. Rules produced by Chinese officials on what to wear and how to
behave stretch out over 36 pages in official booklets and cover nine web
pages. They go from general tips, like combing hair appropriately for
age to minutiae details such as women with thick ankles wearing darker
stockings to disguise their imperfections. Women get specific fashion
advice to avoid common fashion faux-pas, such as matching the length of
their skirt to their age and not wearing more than three colours in
their oufit. Men on the other hand seem to get more basic advice,
including not sporting pyjamas in public, not going out with a bare
chest and not rolling up their trouser legs. While some style
recommendations do not need explanations - fat people should avoid
horizontal stripes - other tips have their reasoning spelt out: "Clothes
should not be too small, otherwise this makes people feel you are
unreliable" . The how-to in the style stakes has been handed out by the
Capital Spiritual Civilisation Construction Commission. Beijing will be
under the spotlight during the Olympic Games and the Commission are keen
that the city's 15 million residents dress and act impeccably.
Authorities say that campaigns in the past to improve the city's
behaviour, including stopping people spitting in public and learning how
to queue properly, have been successful. Rules are also already in place
to try to control taxi drivers' bad breath. They have been ordered to
cut down on their garlic consumption and watch what they eat for
breakfast. Zheng Mojie, deputy director of the commission, said: "The
level of civility of the whole city has improved and a sound cultural
and social environment has been assured for the success of the Olympic
Games." The campaign involves nearly a million volunteers giving
etiquette tips in schools, universities and government offices. Some
university students have been encouraged to educate rural villagers
about the new code of conduct.
???Finally, a couple of examples of the primitive nature of much of
India:
Daily Telegraph
Indian temple stampede: 145 pilgrims killed
At least 145 Hindu pilgrims, including 40 children, were killed in a
stampede at a mountaintop temple in northern India.
Last Updated: 7:16AM BST 04 Aug 2008
At least 145 people have died in northern India, following a human
stampede during celebrations to honour a Hindu goddess.
More than 50,000 devotees, wearing colourful clothing and singing, were
visiting the Naina Devi Temple in the Bilaspur district of Himachal
Pradesh state when the stampede occurred, said C P Verma, the Bilaspur
deputy police chief. Mr Verma said it was thought that the stampede was
sparked by false rumours of a landslide. As hundreds of people panicked
and squeezed on to the narrow path leading to the temple, several were
crushed against the balustrade along the mountain edge. The railing then
gave way, sending dozens of people plummeting down the mountain, many to
their deaths. Others died after a mass of pilgrims toppled down the
steep staircase. "Many children and women were shouting for help and I
saw people tumbling down the hillside," said Dev Swarup, 48. "There were
rumours of boulders coming down on us and we all ran like the others."
"There were too many rumours, and we tried our best to keep things under
control, but it went out of hand," one police officer said. Television
channels showed blurred pictures from the shrine of the bodies of
several small children, apparently lying at the bottom of the path. Mr
Verma said the dead included at least 40 children and 38 women, with at
least another 40 injured. Most died from suffocation. Police used a
cable car to ferry down the dead and wounded, and helicopters were flown
in to help with rescue efforts at the remote temple in the foothills of
the Himalayas. At the Bilaspur hospital, rescue workers unloaded bodies
wrapped in brown blankets from a truck and laid them in rows so that
they could be identified by relatives. "At the moment our efforts are
focused on rescue. Once that is compete we will investigate the cause,"
said Anurag Garg, another senior police officer. Around 50,000 people
were expected to visit the area each day during the week-long festival,
but many more arrived yesterday. Temple crushes are common during
festivities in India. Six people died in a similar accident at a popular
Hindu festival in July in the eastern state of Orissa, where about a
million people had gathered in Puri town for an annual celebration.
Today is the second day of the festival and authorities sought to
reassure other pilgrims. "There is no need to panic, everything is
normalised now," Mr Verma said.
Daily Telegraph
Dog appears in Indian court charged with biting
A seven-year old mongrel has appeared in a local court in India's
eastern Bihar state charged with breaching the peace by barking at
passers-by and even biting some of them.
By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
Last Updated: 7:26PM BST 28 Jul 2008
Chotu, the model of docility when he appeared in court last week, was
sentenced to death five years ago for a similar offence in its home town
of Purnea, 140 miles east of the state capital Patna, but was rescued by
animal rights activists. Accompanied by owner Rajkumari Devi, a
childless widow, the dog quietly heard the charge sheet against him
being read out with due solemnity and his paws crossed. "The court was
compelled to issue a summons to the dog since the police found that it
was a threat to peace and feared that it might create a law and order
problem," district magistrate Rajiv Ranjan said. Chotu's lawyer, Dalip
Kumar Deepak, defended his client, pointing out that, despite the
presence of many people in the courtroom, the dog did not bite or bark
at anyone. Rajkumari inherited the dog from her mother, who picked it up
off the street and considers the animal her protector. She claims Chotu
has bitten only people trying to break into her one-room hut. She
claimed the aggressors were jealous neighbours trying to steal her land
deeds in order to seize her property. Chotu's next court appearance is
August 5. Dogs have featured frequently in Indian courts, on both sides
of the law. India's most notorious bandit, Veerappan, relied on his
mongrel, Itappa, to sniff out rare sandalwood trees for him in thick
jungles which he then cut down and sold. But when the master was hauled
in, so was the 13-year-old mongrel, which spent nearly 10 years in
custody. Three years ago, Itappa was released on 2000 rupee (£24.40)
bail for good behaviour in southern India. India's Supreme Court also
recently acquitted a man convicted of murder on the basis of a sniffer
dog's "evidence", ruling that a human's life and liberty cannot depend
on "canine inference".
It acquitted Dinesh Borthakur, an engineer who spent four years in jail
after a trial court in north-eastern Assam state found him guilty of
murdering his wife and six-year old adopted daughter in 1999 because a
police dog had "fingered" him at the crime scene.
"Since it is manifest that the dog cannot go into the box and give his
evidence on oath and consequently submit itself to cross-examination,
the dog's human companion must report the dog's evidence and this
clearly is hearsay," the two-judge bench declared.
And though the Court conceded that the services of sniffer dogs may be
used to investigate crimes, their faculties "cannot be taken as evidence
to establish the guilt of the accused". There is a feeling that in
criminal cases, the life and liberty of a human being should not depend
on canine inference, the judgement concluded.
Robert Henderson
Blair Scandal website: http://www.geocitie
Personal website: http://www.anywhere
Sean Gabb
Director, The Libertarian Alliance
sean@libertarian.
Tel: 07956 472 199
http://www.libertar
http://www.seangabb
http://www.hampdenp
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