MEA refuses to show Shastri papers

Indians are not entitled to know what has happened to their late Prime Minister. It would jeopardize the relations with Soviet Union, says the MEA. Very sad!




Communications from Moscow after Shastri's death confidential
PTI, New Delhi,
October 11, 2009
The External Affairs Ministry has refused to disclose the 45-year-old correspondence the Indian Mission in Moscow had with it over the death of former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, saying it will "prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity" of the country and its international relations.
Three months after saying it does not have any document with regard to the death of Shastri in Tashkent in 1966 but the medical report of the attending doctor, the MEA has also adopted silence over whether any correspondence between India and erstwhile USSR on the issue exists.
Anuj Dhar, moderator of transparency website 'www.endthesecrecy.com', in his RTI application has sought correspondence between the MEA and Indian Embassy in Moscow and between foreign ministries of both the countries after the death of Shastri, if there was any, and asked to specify if there was no such correspondence.
Dhar also sought the medical report filed by Dr R N Chugh, Doctor-in-attendance to the PM, which is public domain as claimed by Shastri's grandson and BJP spokesperson Siddarth Nath Singh.
The Ministry did not say whether such correspondence exists and replied that all the information sought could not be "disclosed under Section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act.
The section exempts disclosure of information which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of the country, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, relation with foreign State or lead to incitement of an offence.
The Ministry did not explain the reasons for seeking exemption which is mandatory as per the directives of Central Information Commission.
After the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, Shastri had gone to Tashkent in erstwhile USSR in January 1966 for a summit meeting with the then Pakistan President Ayub Khan. He died under mysterious circumstances, hours after signing the joint declaration.
"The doctor's report is in public domain. I have a copy.
A doctor concluding it (death) 'may be' considered that he died due to... some word is used which means heart attack. You cannot be 'considering' the death of a prime minister, you need to be 100 per cent sure," Singh told PTI.
Dhar says death of a sitting Prime Minister abroad would have created a lot of flutter and the Indian Embassy in Moscow would have been into a lot of activity.
"There would have been a number of telephone calls and telegrams over the incident but MEA is not ready to disclose anything about it.
"They had earlier said that only document with the Embassy of Moscow is Dr R N Chug's report. Now they are saying they cannot part with these calls and telegram details which indicates that these records exist but were denied earlier," says Dhar.
Singh says disclosure could "shake some political organisation" if the country comes to know the truth as Shastri was even "more popular" than Nehru. He plans to take up the issue again with President Pratibha Patil.
"I do not understand how it will affect relationship with a country that does not exist. The era of cold war is over so why should one worry about it. I think the government is hiding the truth behind Shastri's death as they had done in many other cases," he said.
RTI applicant Dhar, who is running a campaign for declassification, feels that the disclosure of doctors' report would have sparked discussion about its veracity.
"The two-page report cannot fully answer the questions that have been raised since 1966 when Shastriji's family demanded a post mortem to rule out the suspicions of poisoning," he said.

'China's fully awake today, should we tremble?'

Last week, Claude Arpi explored the rise of the People's Republic of China to its projection as a soft superpower.

China: A full circle 60 years later

Here, he analyses for Rediff.com if China has what it takes to be recognised as a true superpower in the modern world.

'Two Faces' of Deng Xiaoping

Why to attack Vietnam during Vajpayee's visit?



Yesterday, I wrote about the two sides of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Later, I came across this article published by Radio Free Asia which shows this not-too-well known aspect of Old Deng. It explains many things, particularly the failure of the negotiations between the Dalai Lama and the Communist leadership in Beijing in the early 1980's.



Radio Free Asia
December 29, 2008
Deng Xiaoping saw himself as a man set apart from the common herd, and his only aim was to save the Chinese Communist Party, according to a former top official.
In the third part of a series commemorating 30 years of economic reforms in China, Bao Tong, former aide to ousted late premier Zhao Ziyang, attacks the image of Deng Xiaoping as the architect of China's economic reform era, saying he had no interest in a market economy, nor in the Chinese people:
In October 1984, a group of university students spontaneously unfurled a banner that read "Hello Xiaoping" and marched in an ebullient mood towards Tiananmen Square. This was an expression of the public mood. Five years later, countless students coralled in their dormitory buildings smashed "little bottles" (xiaoping) in an expression of their indescribable anger and grief. This, too, was an expression of the public mood. Both expressions gave voice to the two-faced nature of Deng Xiaoping.
Deng's two-sidedness was like a pendulum. One minute he wanted reforms, the next he was resolutely upholding the four basic principles of socialism. One minute he wanted to escape from a political dead end, the next he had returned to it.
Deng was like that. You could criticize him for logical inconsistency, but you couldn't say he said one thing and did another. Both his words and his deeds were in earnest. He was a genuine supporter of reforms, and yet also a staunch protector of the very things we were supposed to be reforming.
Ouster of Hua Guofeng
Deng's consistency lay in his two-sidedness. When Hua Guofeng was being attacked for the "Two Whatevers" [promising to follow whatever policies Mao Zedong had laid out and whatever instructions he gave], he joined in. A few months later, to fill the vacuum, he came up with his very own "Four Whatevers," in the form of his reiterated support for the four basic principles [of socialism].
He criticized Hua Guofeng for allowing "too much concentration of power," but soon after he had designated himself as the "core" of the Party leadership. He admitted that the Cultural Revolution was a disaster without parallel in history, but at the same time advocated "holding high the banner of Mao Zedong Thought, today and in the future." He styled himself a "son of the people," but at the same time he sent the army to effect a bloody suppression of students and citizens [in 1989].
If he had been in primary school, his teacher would have suggested he spend a little time studying logic. If he had been an ordinary person, he would have been the subject of ridicule or of patient explanations. But because he was a leader of the Communist Party who commanded dignity and respect, he was above the worldly concerns of the common herd, able to dismiss the general public: He was above both debate and the demands of logic.
Bound up with Party
People are often bemused by his lack of consistency. But Deng's own sense of himself was in good shape. He thought he was doing fine, because he was set apart from other people. After Mao died, China was in great danger, and people were calling for someone to save the country. Actually, people were saying all sorts of different things—some were calling for someone to save the people, others for someone to save the Party.
At the time when Deng made that brief utterance "Not introducing reforms will take us down a blind alley," he wasn't trying to convince the people. That was hardly necessary. No, Deng was aiming to educate some of those within the Party who resisted reforms and who didn't really have a grasp of what was going on, saying: "If you don't reform, the people will dump the Party, and we will be finished as a political force."
So you could say that the essential thing about Deng was that he believed strongly in saving the Party. He was the embodiment of the Party; he carried its spirit. Louis XIV said "L'etat, c'est moi." Well, Deng was the Party. His identity, his fate, his personal fortunes, his vision, his sense of mission, and his emotional life were to be found not with the far-off and rather blurry Chinese people, but in the highest organs of Party leadership.
As for the people, it didn't matter whether it was political struggle or productivity that was the order of the day: As far as they knew, the Party ruled everything.
Cat and mouse
Once you grasp the logic of saving the Party, it is possible to get a basic understanding of Deng Xiaoping's logic. Everything he did was done to save the Party. Saving the Party required boosting productivity. So to catch the "mouse" of saving the Party, we needed the "cat" of the market economy.
It was for this reason that Deng Xiaoping supported economic reforms with all his might. He deserves to be credited as a supporter of economic reforms, even though he didn't care much for economics and didn't understand the market; and he was their most powerful supporter. However, his goal was still to save the Party, and for that reason he was a fierce protector of Party power and status. Just 18 months after the inception of economic reforms, he was quick to stamp out any small green shoots of "liberalism" in a thorough attack, lest they take root and flourish in a change in climate and strike at the heart of the Party.
He knew very well that the only system that would prevent a recurrence of the Cultural Revolution was a democratic one; but he resolutely opposed the separation of powers in order to preserve the Party's monopoly on power. He would occasionally speak some high-flown talk of democracy, but that was just to keep up his image as a man of the people, to win the affection of the people on behalf of the Party. But the charade was never to become a reality. Behind his apparent double-sidedness was a single-mindedness that was pure Party spirit, a clear guiding principle that ran through the apparent confusion.
Anti-liberalism campaign
But what about the rest of us?
We, you, me, the students, even Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, are all ordinary people. To fit in with Deng's doublethink, Zhao Ziyang came up with "two basic points" to reiterate the Deng Xiaoping line. Initially, Deng seemed to agree, saying it was a good summary. Zhao told me later he thought summarizing it to two points was better than one, because it avoided one-sidedness.
As I recall, Zhao never once used the four principles to restrict reform and opening up. On the contrary, he often used reform and opening up to dilute, weaken, and restrict the four principles. No sooner would Deng use one "basic principle" to stamp out signs of liberalism, than Zhao would remind everyone in the Party without delay that Deng also had another basic principle, that of "reform and opening up," which had "building a modern China" at its core!
At times, before 1988, this proved to have a vigorous effect, especially in the dangerous times that followed Deng's toppling of Hu Yaobang from power, when the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalism campaign spearheaded by Deng Liqun and that crowd looked set to overwhelm the country. Not only did it enable that political campaign to die of natural causes, it also sped up the progress of reforms and opening up at every level of command, and gave rise to a document called "Tentative Plans for Reforms to the Political System," which had gained a consensus at the 13th Party Congress, and whose real aim was the dilution of Party leadership in all things.
Political reforms never an option
While the new slogan, "One core, two basic principles," won Deng's support and solved the contradiction inherent in the "two basic principles," it didn't change the basic nature of Deng: Deng, who had lived and worked in France, but who never absorbed the principles of human rights and who had a terror of democratic politics.
His rising career led him to fixate upon one particular relationship out of all human relationships, that between the bureaucracy and the military. Looking back today, I think his "two basic principles" can be summarized like this: 1. We absolutely must carry out economic reforms. 2. We absolutely must not carry out political reforms. His "one core" should be expressed as: Always uphold the Party's right to rule. His whole aim in supporting economic reforms was to breathe new life into a dying Party, not to weaken it.
A lot of observers seem to think that free economic competition will naturally bring democratic politics in its train, that economic reforms will not just call for but will inevitably push forward political reform. But Deng Xiaoping made his calculations on a different abacus. He planned to strengthen the Party's political power through developing the economy.
The price of economic reforms was the sacrifice of any hope for future political reform. I believe that this was Deng's bottom line, and to cross it was to walk the path of liberalism and the road to chaos; it was no less than treason. This made it inevitable that he would fall out with Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang eventually, and this should therefore come as no surprise.
Original essay in Chinese by Bao Tong, aired in six parts on RFA's Mandarin service. Director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and produced for the Web by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

The Dalai Lama is now a burden on India!

Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s economic liberalization is also the Chinese leader who initiated the dialogue with the Dalai Lama who had taken refuge in India in 1959.
A meeting between Deng and Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama’s brother is often cited as the first step towards a rapprochement between Beijing and Dharamsala.
The encounter took place in Beijing on March 12, 1979. Deng immediately blamed the Gang of Four for the difficult situation in Tibet. It was then the standard excuse for all that had gone wrong in China (and in Tibet) since the mid-sixties. Deng said that he was however keen to improve the lot of the Tibetan population. He told Thondup that he would like to invite the refugees in India and abroad to return to Tibet, “It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times”.
It was during this meeting that Deng Xiaoping said: “The door is opened for negotiations as long as we don’t speak about independence. Everything else is negotiable”.
On his part, the Dalai Lama was keen to send fact-finding missions from Dharamsala to visit Tibet and get first-hand information on the situation on the Roof of the World. This was accepted by Deng.
It is in these circumstances that three delegations visited their native land in 1979/1980, after a gap of 20 years. These events marked the beginning of 30 years of contacts between Dharamsala and Beijing.
Deng’s meeting with Thondup brought a new hope for the Tibetan Diaspora. Was the end of the tunnel in view? Deng’s offer was certainly sincere, they thought.
Indian Foreign Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s visit to China in February 1979 (it occurred a few weeks before Gyalo Thondup’s meeting with Deng), showed another face of Deng. True, the paramount leader had introduced an ‘open-door economic policy’ and taken the initiative to invite the Indian Foreign Minister to China; he was keen to reestablish at the highest level the contacts between Delhi and Beijing (interrupted after the 1962 Sino-Indian war). But India discovered another facet of Deng when China suddenly attacked Vietnam, an ally of India in the midst of Vajpayee's visit. The Indian Foreign Minister had to be recalled. This incident already shows Deng’s double-dealing methods.
Some other hints tend to prove that Deng was not a great lover of Tibet. In December 1975, the US president Gerald Ford visited China and met Deng Xiaoping, then Vice-Premier of the State Council. Deng brought some ‘small issues’ to the attention of the US President. One was the fact that the Dalai Lama had opened ‘a small office in your country [in New York]’.
The US President told his interlocutor: “Let me assure you, Mr. Vice Premier that we oppose and do not support any governmental action as far as Tibet is concerned. “
Though Ford insisted that the opening of the Office in the US was a private initiative, and not a government decision, Deng insisted: “Things might be easier if you refused them visas.” Kissinger intervened and jokingly said: “When they become Communists, then we have a legal basis to refuse them visas.”
They all had a good laugh as the Communists were still being harried by the US Administration. Deng commented: “After [the Dalai Lama] went back to Tibet he staged a rebellion and left, fled the country [in March 1959]. At that time actually it was possible for us to have stopped his leaving the country. It was entirely within our capacity to stop him from leaving. But Chairman Mao said it is better to let him go. [The Chinese all laugh.]”
As the talk ended, Ford told Deng: “I may just add that we do not approve of the actions that the Indians are taking as far as Tibet is concerned”, the Chinese leader retorted: “We do not pay much attention to that because it is of no use. And to put it in more explicit terms, the Dalai Lama is now a burden on India”.
The Chinese burst out laughing. The Chinese Vice-Premier added that if the Dalai lama wanted to return to Tibet, Beijing “might even welcome him back for a short visit” to see the progress made. Deng spoke of the “progress wrought by the serfs that he [the Dalai Lama] had so cruelly ruled.”
Ford joked: “I do not think you want to relieve India of any extra burdens that it has.”
In the same mood, the Chinese replied: “We do not want to. Let them carry it for 100 years! We will think about it after that. The Dalai Lama must be in his 30’s, at the most 40. He was very young at that time. He might still live another 60 years, to 100. So let India carry that burden for another 60 years at least.”
At the end, Deng told the US President: “So, no matter what the Dalai Lama can boast about himself, he cannot affect the prospects of Tibet.”
President Ford retorted: “He should stay in India”.
Deng concluded showing once again his disregard for the Dalai Lama: “Yes, and we wish him a long life and a long stay there. [Laughter]”
This is one of the several such anecdotes retold by Claude Arpi, in his The Negotiations that never were, which tend to show that the Chinese leadership, whether in the 1970’s or today, has never been in a hurry to accommodate the more-than-reasonable demands of the Dalai Lama.

Another interesting document quoted by Arpi is a letter from the Dalai Lama to Rajiv Gandhi in September 1987. As the Tibetan leader was leaving for the United States to present his famous Five-Point Peace Plan, he decided to fully brief the Indian Prime Minister on his new proposals: “In the second week of September I am planning to visit the United States. I will be in Washington for about two days and will be having the opportunity of meeting with some of the U.S. Senators and Congressmen who have been very supportive of the Tibetan issue. I intend to use the occasion to make an announcement incorporating the following points:
(1) That the transfer of large numbers of Chinese into Tibet must stop.
(2) That discrimination and human rights abuses in Tibet must stop.
(3) That Tibet be declared a ZONE OF PEACE and that Chinese military forces be withdrawn for the sake of peace and stability, particularly in this part of the world. And,
(4) That the Chinese should stop destroying the Tibetan ecology, stop using Tibet as a nuclear base and stop dumping their nuclear wastes in Tibet.”
A fifth point was later added about the necessity to start negotiations at the earliest in order to find a reasonable settlement between Dharamsala and Beijing. The Dalai Lama explained to Rajiv Gandhi: “As an introduction to these points I will briefly explain the case of Tibet being historically an independent nation. An immediate solution to the Tibetan issue may not be possible, but I am sure Your Excellency will agree with me that at least the Chinese must heed to the above demands if the Tibetan people as a race and a cultural entity are to survive.”
It is not known if the Indian Prime Minister ever replied to the Dalai Lama, though The Negotiations that never repeatedly show that the Sino-Indian talks on the border dispute as well as the Indo-China relations at large are deeply linked to the Tibetan issue.
This book will help the student of foreign relations to understand the way the Chinese diplomacy functions and often (not to say always) gets the best of its opponent.

Learning To Live With China

Learning To Live With China
Indrani Bagchi ,
Times of India
3 October 2009,

There was a surprise in store this week for those who chose to brave Arunachal Pradesh's damp cold and the three-hour rough ride from Tawang up to Bum La Pass, on the border with Tibet. They were greeted by "happy" arches erected by Chinese soldiers on the other side, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in power . The Chinese were preparing to receive Indian soldiers for a celebratory lunch - and some unfinished business on border management.
Most of this bonhomie is likely to evaporate in just over a month's time when the Dalai Lama reaches the 400-year-old Tawang gompa (monastery) to offer prayers. Historically, this region has had a close relationship with the Tibetan people. The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, for example, was born in Tawang. So, it's not unnatural for the current Dalai Lama (the 14th) to want to pay obeisance at the Tawang gompa. Still, anything that's seen to accommodate the breakaway Tibetans gets Beijing's hackles up, especially when it's on land claimed by the Chinese.
And so it alternates - blow hot, blow cold - in the uncertain relations between India and China: one day, it's jaw-jaw , another day it's claw-claw . The inscrutable Chinese and the argumentative Indian find each other equally indecipherable. It's not surprising, therefore, that India's China policy rides a trough-peak roller coaster.
New Delhi has been playing down media reports of Chinese "incursions" in an apparent bid not to ruffle feathers in Beijing. Almost simultaneously, the ministry of external affairs was lashing out at China for stapling not stamping visas to the passports of Kashmiri Indians, a signal that J&K was disputed.
The rise and rise of China represents one of contemporary history's tectonic shifts. For an India that fancies itself as an emerging superpower, learning to live with an assertive China is one of its greatest foreign policy challenges, especially as its ambitions are sometimes aligned with the Chinese and sometimes at odds. A People's Daily commentary (Sept 15) points out, "India is still a lesser power than China in terms of its economic and military might, both conventional and non-conventional ."
How can New Delhi and Beijing achieve a steady state of equilibrium that gives both sides the comfort of predictability, and a resultant confidence in each other? That's a question nagging not just India's foreign policy mandarins, but students and practitioners of diplomacy worldwide. As one of the architects of India's China policy (who will be unnamed as will be many interviewed for this story) says: "For India, coping with the rise of China is not a luxury; they're right next door."
Indian policy makers find China's approach to India quite mystifying. On the border, China has vastly superior military machinery. Its economic muscle is much bigger. And yet it appears keen to avoid any confrontation along the 4,056-km undemarcated border. But on many issues of bilateral import, China takes a far more belligerent stand - like seeking to nix India's bid for a place at the UN Security Council; mounting a last-minute scramble to stop the nuclear deal in Vienna; trying to keep India out of an Asian economic community ; blocking ADB from giving Arunachal money for a water project; and denying Arunachal residents Chinese visas.

BULLY ON THE BORDER?
Indian officials will tell you China's assertiveness is there for all to see - in Australia, in Japan, with the US. Susan Shirk, former diplomat and author of China: Fragile Superpower , tempers the growing unease about Chinese aggressiveness. "I don't see China as being very assertive ," she told TOI Crest. "Its influence has certainly grown. But China makes a great effort to avoid being seen as aggressive , especially in international organisations and in diplomacy. With neighbours, China has been trying to prevent clashes, but that seems to have changed with India recently."
Shirk is possibly referring to the contrast between Chinese attitude with, say, Russia, with which it has speedily worked out border problems, and its tardiness with India on border issues. In a conversation with TOI Crest, Ashley Tellis, author of Interpreting China's Grand Strategy, described China's reaction to India as "atypical" . "China has generally been muted with the countries on its periphery . Except India."
That's not sinking hopes. Said a senior Indian diplomat, "The last thing China wants now is an aggravation of a dispute with the only other rising power in Asia. They have a greater stake than us in de-escalating problems." China analyst, Claude Arpi, offers a more nuanced view: "While the official stand is still the 'peaceful rise of China' , some PLA generals believe 'China cannot emerge in the midst of nightingale songs and swallow dances' . The official line is to avoid a confrontation that will lead nowhere for China."
A greater symmetry on the border, where India is still at a severe disadvantage , would probably give more traction to this official line. "While China has mobilized huge resources to develop its side of the border , our policy has been to keep the border areas underdeveloped because we believed the inhospitable terrain would deter the Chinese from trying to get to Arunachal Pradesh, where China claims 90,000 sq km of territory," says a senior government official. It's only as recently as five years ago that India woke up and started beefing up both military hardware and border infrastructure.
In 2007, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran in a report proposed a big ramp-up of border infrastructure: for instance, two inter-basin roads spanning four rivers in Arunachal, crossed by seven north-south aligned roads at precisely the points where there is a "perception difference" with the Chinese. In Sikkim, where the Chinese have "activated" what was believed to be a "settled" border, India has only one roadlink (NH-31 A), no railhead or airport.
The pace of construction has been maddeningly slow, often impeded by objections from the environment ministry, understandably hyper-sensitive about anything that threatens to unsettle the delicate eco-system of the eastern Himalayas. The glacial pace has meant that officials have had to think of innovative solutions. In Arunachal, where road building is painfully slow, one official said that entire construction teams were airlifted to the line of actual control (LAC), so that the road could be built backwards ! In any case, India believes it is in its interest now to keep things quiet along the LAC as long as it is hamstrung by sloppy infrastructure and defences.

GLOBAL SWEEPSTAKES
In the global sphere, the story is somewhat different. Despite the pretence that the world is big enough to accommodate the rise of both India and China, the competition remains intense - over markets, construction orders, minerals , land banks - you name it.

Where were the People?

The parade was great.
The New York Times agrees: “The celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was immense, powerful and flawless, down to the crystalline skies that, just a day earlier, had been laden with smog.”
Sixty years earlier, Dr Li Zhisui, Mao Zedong’s private physician was on the rostrum of Tiananmen Square to attend the ceremonies of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. He later wrote of “the crisp, clear, and chilly day that makes autumn in Beijing the most magnificent season”. The organizers of the 60th anniversary couldn’t afford not to have a ‘crystalline sky’ in 2009.
But let us come back to 1949. The Great Helmsman appeared on the stage, Dr Li recalled: “Mao was a truly magnetic force. Mao's voice was soft, almost lilting, and the effect of his speech was riveting. ‘The Chinese people have stood up’, he proclaimed, and the crowd went wild, thundering in applause, shouting over and over, ‘Long Live the People's Republic of China!’. I was so full of joy my heart nearly burst out of my throat, and tears welled up in my eyes. I was so proud of China, so full of hope, so happy.”
Though a foreign correspondent described the celebrations as ‘slightly kitschy and indisputably retro’, Xinhua News Agency reported: ‘a total of 52 types of new weapon systems, all Chinese made, including new generation tanks, missiles and warplanes were displayed. Ninety percent of the weapons were paraded for the first time”.
The Second Artillery Force stole the show with a display of five types of missiles, ‘China's core strategic deterrent’. Xinhua affirmed that “the gigantic weapons in camouflage colors rolled by on long-bed trucks, triggering cheers from spectators.” Experts already knew that that the dreaded DF21 medium range ballistic missiles could be well camouflaged and launched from trains (from the Qinghai-Tibet train, for example), but to see them all at the same time was awesome.
It was followed by 151 warplanes which flew over Tiananmen Square, including China's most advanced J-10 and J-11 fighter jets, airborne early warning and control aircraft (AEW&C), bombers and aerial tankers.
Though Dennis J. Blasko in the last issue of the China Brief of the Jamestown Foundation had warned: “No judgment about Chinese military capabilities can be rendered simply by watching this parade. And more importantly, based on the weapons on display no judgment can be rendered as to the Chinese intention behind the deployment of these weapons,” but one can guess what the probable targets are.

If there was Glamour Award, it would have gone to the ladies (said to be a female militia unit) clad in red miniskirts with white jackboots carrying the latest submachine guns (probably making our antediluvian-equipped AK47 NSG, jealous).
The kitsch part of the grandiose parade was President Hu Jintao reviewing the troops in an open roof 12-cylinder Red Flag limousine dating from Mao’s times. For the occasion Hu was dressed in a high-collar Mao-style jacket (while other members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and former President Jiang Zemin wore ordinary suits and ties). During the review, the President stood stiffly in front of four microphones fixed on the limousine, shouting “Greetings, comrades!” with the troops answering “Serve the people!”
In his speech, Hu proclaimed that the Chinese people “cannot be prouder of the development and progress of our great motherland,” however observers noted the main absentees at the celebrations, the People of China. Apart from a few thousands apparatchiks, some foreign diplomats and journalists and 100,000 extras, where were the Chinese People?
They were told to remain inside their homes and not emerge. To make sure that the Party’s instructions were followed to the letter, some 800,000 ‘volunteers’ had been engaged. Such tight security had not been seen in 60 years (it is said to have been even tighter than during the Olympics). Does it mean that the Party is scared of its own people?

What else to conclude? Sixty years after its foundation, the ‘Republic’ (from the latin res publica or ‘public matter’) is not for the ‘public’, but for a Party. China is still not a ‘republic’.
This is the tragedy of modern China.
This is visible at all levels of the State, even at the highest level such as the Standing Committee of the Politburo.
It is probably the most serious failure of the Middle Kingdom which has been unable to introduce a modern system of governance. Though the word ‘people’s’ is recurrent in all State organs, the nation is run by a single Party since 1949. Ordinary people have no say in State affairs.
National People’s Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo recently declared that China will ‘never go down the devious path’ of ‘Western institutions’. But whether Beijing agrees to it or not, human rights, basic personal laws or universal suffrage are today values accepted by all non-rogue nations.
Supreme opacity adds to the undependability of the system; glasnost (transparency) has never been a Chinese forte.
This issue is so serious that China’s stability could be endangered. It has recently been reported that Xi Jinping, the Chinese Vice-President was not elevated (as expected) to the all-powerful Central Military Commission. Nobody knows what happened; it can only be guessed that Hu Jintao does not see eye to eye with Xi.
The Chinese heir-apparent is the son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the senior-most leaders of the First Generation of the CCP. In 1962, he fell out of favour, accused of disloyalty to Chairman Mao. Is Old Xi’s son following the same road?
Interestingly, some of the opacity was lifted by Zhao Ziyang, the former General Secretary of the CCP. In his secretly recorded memoirs, he explained that he once wrote to Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader about ‘perfecting the system of the central leadership’ and ‘how to really establish democratic centralism within the Central Committee, especially within the Politburo and its Standing Committee’; in other words, to have a tested and accepted system to succession.
Zhao told Deng: “Maintaining the stability of the fundamental laws of the nation is certainly one aspect; however …I believe that fundamentally and most importantly, we must tackle the system of the Party leadership.” He proposed “to establish a much-needed system of leadership for our Party and then to personally inspect and seek compliance so as to make it a custom and culture that will not shift according to the changing of individuals, so it will pass on through the generations.”
We know what happened to Zhao during the Tiananmen incidents in 1989. He was unceremoniously removed and kept under house surveillance for the rest of his life; he had tried to listen to the students’ grievances.
Today, China has become a Power to reckon with. Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor is supposed to have pronounced the famous sentence: “When China awakes, the world will tremble”
Certain aspects of the Middle Kingdom’s rise to a Superpower are indeed scary. We see it everyday in the Indian press.
It was been exacerbated by Beijing’s new nationalism fueled by the economic rise of China and the success of the Beijing Olympics Games.
But before wanting to teach others lessons, it is perhaps time for the ‘people’s republic’ to look inside and integrate its ‘people’ into its system of governance and succession.

China is awake, the world is trembling

The New Indian Express has published in its op-ed page my article China is awake, the world is trembling. Click here to read.

China: A full circle 60 years later

My article on the rise of China (Part 1) is online on Rediff.com. Click here.

New Kashmir Policy?

The PRC authorities have introduced a new Kashmir visa policy!
This will not help creating an atmosphere of friendship and brotherhood between Delhi and Beijing.


THE HINDU, OCTOBER 1, 2009
Delhi upset over separate Chinese visas for Kashmiris
Siddharth Varadarajan
In a move that has puzzled and annoyed South Block, the Chinese embassy in New Delhi has begun issuing visas to Indian passport holders from Jammu and Kashmir on a separate sheet of paper rather than stamping them in their passports as is the norm with other Indian citizens. Though it is not clear when the new Chinese policy started or what prompted Beijing to adopt it, immigration authorities at Delhi airport first started noticing the standalone visas a few weeks ago. The Bureau of Immigration, which is run by the Ministry of Home Affairs, initially assumed these visas to be fake and turned the unfortunate travellers – all of them Kashmiri students or businessmen – away. But when some of them returned with letters from the Chinese embassy declaring the visas to be genuine, the matter was referred to the Ministry of External Affairs.
With the Chinese issuing “stapled visas” to the handful of Indian passport holders from Arunachal Pradesh who have travelled to China since 2007, the MEA saw in Beijing’s latest move an attempt to question the status of Jammu and Kashmir. The immigration authorities were told to treat any visa that is not stamped on a passport as invalid for the purposes of travel. Simultaneously, the issue was taken up with the Chinese authorities, MEA officials told The Hindu.
Although the People’s Republic of China embassy in Delhi said it would not officially comment on the matter, Chinese diplomats told The Hindu that the practice of issuing visas on a separate piece of paper is not new. “This kind of visa is one category of Chinese visa. It is valid. This has been practised for many years. Upon the implementation of this, a note was sent to your immigration authorities. All the visa holders of this kind have not met any problem in the past in your custom/border control,” an embassy official said on condition of anonymity.
The MEA denies the contention that India has only now started objecting to some pre-existing Chinese practice of issuing Kashmiri domicile passport holders visas on a separate sheet of paper. “What the Chinese are doing is definitely new and we have taken a serious view of it,” an MEA official said.

A Full Circle

Dr Li Zhisui, Mao Zedong’s Private Physician was a privileged man. On October 1, 1949, he was allowed to stand on the rostrum of Tiananmen Square to attend the ceremonies of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.
It was a ‘crisp, clear, and chilly day that makes autumn in Beijing the most magnificent season’ recalled the doctor.
He continued: “The Square was already swarming with people, carefully chosen from all walks of life. …The crowd was shouting slogans ‘Long Live the People's Republic of China’, ‘Long Live the Chinese Communist Party’ and singing revolutionary songs. The enthusiasm was contagious, and everyone grew more excited with every new slogan and song.”
Then the Great Helmsman appeared on the stage: “Mao had been my hero, he was China's messiah …Mao was a truly magnetic force. Mao's voice was soft, almost lilting, and the effect of his speech was riveting. ‘The Chinese people have stood up’, he proclaimed, and the crowd went wild, thundering in applause, shouting over and over, ‘Long Live the People's Republic of China!’. I was so full of joy my heart nearly burst out of my throat, and tears welled up in my eyes. I was so proud of China, so full of hope, so happy.”
This was 60 years ago, a full circle in the Chinese calendar.

Economic Power
In many ways, the dreams of Dr. Li and hundreds of millions of Chinese have come true. Take the economic field: much has been written about the Chinese prowess in this sector, but a quick look at the post-financial crisis situation is telling. The Financial Times in London on August 24 explained: “With its quick and overwhelming response to the crisis, Beijing appears to have engineered a powerful V-shaped recovery. …Official readings of industrial production, fixed investment, power consumption and gross domestic product all show a strong revival, while equity and property prices have soared in recent months. There have even been signs of a recovery in exports, although these are still about one-quarter below the levels of a year ago.”
Beijing knows it and wants the world to be aware of it. On July 30, The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China (CCP) proudly announced: “Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the people in China brace up to cope with the financial crisis and have scored marked successes to the worldwide attention. [The West] …envy China’s superb performance …as well as ‘China’s spirit’ — the kind of solid, unbreakable ‘Great Wall’ at heart to ward off the financial crisis.”
Willy Lam of the Jamestown Foundation in an essay entitled China's Quasi-Superpower Diplomacy: Prospects And Pitfalls, affirmed: “Seeing itself as a quasi-superpower, Beijing is no longer shying away from frontal contests with the United States, China’s strategic competitor.”
When at the end of the 1960’s, Mao decided to economically overtake the United Kingdom, everybody thought that it was another mad dream. Sixty years after the parade of October 1, 1949, this dream has become true. This year, China’s GDP will surpass that of Japan, taking the second slot after the US. Thirty years ago Deng Xiaoping began to promote an open door policy with the same dream.
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University recently told Xinhua, the Chinese news agency: "We all believe, at least I believe, that China will ... relatively soon, within the next three decades perhaps ... become the world's largest economy… So, I think China has a unique position in the world. It's not only the most populous country but it will become the largest economy in the world, and that's rather natural because it's such a large size."
Nobody can doubt today that China is a super economic power.

Infrastructure
A domain in which China has done exceedingly well is infrastructure. The Communist regime in Beijing started to invest heavily in roads and airports in remote parts of its new Chinese empire (for example in the Aksai Chin with a road cutting across the Indian territory) in the 1950’s, but this development was limited in scope. The purpose was ‘to defend the borders’.
It is only relatively recently that China has made tremendous progress in the field of infrastructure; but whoever today visits Shanghai, returns flabbergasted; in this domain, India is 30 or 40 years behind its Asian rival.
Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Southern China in 1992 was instrumental in revitalizing the coastal areas and developing the infrastructure seen today.
Many believe that Deng's southern tour changed the face of China for ever. His slogan ‘To Get Rich Is Glorious’ helped to create a wave of entrepreneurship which has driven China's economy since. The new open economic policy announced by Deng in 1978 brought its first results in the early 1980’s with the establishment of Special Economic Zones. It was the beginning of the Chinese economic miracle.
Soon after the beginning of the world crisis in September 2008, Wen Jiabao the Chinese Premier declared: “What we can do now is to maintain the steady and fast growth of the national economy and ensure that no major fluctuations will happen. That will be our greatest contribution to the world economy under the current circumstances.”
This signaled a new massive investment in infrastructure.
On October 21, 2008, China’s State Council announced a new economic stimulus package. Two weeks later, Beijing confirmed that it would put in place a two-year $586 billion package, mainly dedicated to infrastructure projects. This financial package would finance schemes in 10 major areas, including affordable housing, rural infrastructure, water, electricity, transport, the environment, technological innovation and rebuilding areas hit by disasters.
India can only look with awe at China’s infrastructure development.

The New Rise of the People’s Liberation Army
Defence is another sector where China has taken giant strides since the Revolution days. It is definitely linked with the infrastructure boom. On July 24, an article of the People’s Daily carried the following title: “Hu Jintao stresses the importance of the fusion of military and civilian development at a Politburo collective study session.”
One detail demonstrates the new self-confidence of the Beijing mandarins: a White Paper (WP) entitled China's National Defense in 2008 was released in January 2009; and not on any odd date. The Chinese, always found of symbols, chose the day of the swearing-in ceremony of President Barak Obama. Pundits will also point out that it was Martin Luther King Day, a Day dedicated to non-violence: the choice of the State Council was certainly not fortuitous.
Though it was not a ‘breaking news’ type of publication, many interesting trends emerge while going through the 14 chapters of the WP. Amongst these, ‘informationization’ and modernization are the most important aspects.
The WP is an exercise in public relations for the People’s Republic of China which wants to project a new image: that of a responsible nation, fully involved in global issues facing the planet and ready to help find solutions to these problems.
The Cultural Revolution days, when Mao Zedong did not care about what the rest of the world thought of China, are gone. This is certainly a progress, though some of the old thinking is still present in today’s China. For example, strategist Jin Yinan, who teaches at the National Defense University in Beijing recently wrote: “China can not emerge in the midst of nightingale songs and swallow dances.” It sounded like Mao for whom ‘revolution was not a tea party’. For Jian, if China is to reach its objectives, it had to “hack out a path through thorns and thistles”. He added: “When a country and a people have reached a critical moment, the armed forces often play the role of pivot and mainstay”. The fact that Jin was invited in July to give a lecture to the Politburo on military strategies, tends to show that Modern China is not rising with nightingale songs (peaceful rise) alone.
In April, Huang Kunlun, another analyst, commented on ‘the boundaries of national interests’ in the Liberation Army Daily. He argued that China’s national interests had now gone beyond its land, sea and air territories. It included areas such as the oceans used by Chinese oil tankers and even outer space: “Wherever our national interests have extended, so will the mission of our armed forces …given our new historical mission, the forces have to not only safeguard the country’s ‘territorial boundaries’ but also its ‘boundaries of national interests’.
For the purpose, the PLA plans to build four aircraft carriers in the coming decade and several nuclear submarines. One understands the statements of the former Indian Navy Chief and the present Air Chief, India is far behind as far as the equipment of its armed forces is concerned.
It is not the ‘swallow dances’ of the Indian diplomacy which will counter a quasi-superpower neighbour.

Assertiveness and Soft Diplomacy
For many years, Chinese diplomacy was limited in its scope to nearby regions such as the ASEAN bloc, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or international bodies such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Later, for economic reasons this extended to Africa and Latin America.
Willy Lam in his essay of quasi-superpower diplomacy says: “The financial crisis that was precipitated by the collapse or near-bankruptcy of several American multinationals in September 2008 has provided China with a new platform to boost its clout as a champion of a new international financial architecture.”
In April, The Financial Times mentioned that Zhou Xiaochuan, China’s central bank governor published a paper, “neatly timed to appear just before the Group of 20 developed and emerging nations summit, in which he proposed replacing the dollar with an international reserve currency. In a detailed and serious analysis, he suggested expanding the scope and function of special drawing rights, a unit of account used by the IMF.”
The FT added that “Mr Zhou’s proposal did not emerge from thin air” More than 70% of the 2 trillion dollars foreign reserves are held in green curency.
Today, China dares taking on the US in international fora.

Other fields too
China’s projection of itself as a soft superpower is visible in many other fields too. Beijing has earmarked $ 6.62 billion for ‘overseas propaganda’.
Xinhua News Agency and CCTV will enhance its programs in different languages for the West, Asia, Middle East and even Africa. An English news channel modeled on Al Jazeera will beam the latest news (or propaganda) from China.
Beijing will also set up some 350 Confucius Institutes patterned on the German Goethe Institute, around the planet. It should help to spread Chinese culture and enhance ‘the overall attractiveness of the China model’.
This at a time when France has not enough funds to finance its Alliance Française. Can India dream of 350 Tagore Institutes in Asia and elsewhere around the world?
Several more examples could be cited to show that the dream of the PRC’s founders, the emerging of new, strong, self-reliant and modern China has become true. The question remains: does this make of China a Superpower?

Should the world tremble?

Sixty years after Mao proclaimed the birth of the PRC from Tiananmen Square, China has become a Power to reckon with. No doubt about it. Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor is supposed to have pronounced the famous sentence: “When China awakes, the world will tremble”
China being fully awake today, should the world tremble?

Acerbated Nationalism
Certain aspects of the Middle Kingdom’s rise to a Superpower are indeed scary. Listen to this: “The Chinese are different from other races on earth. …Hitler’s Germany had once bragged that the German race was the most superior race on Earth, but the fact is, our nation is far superior to the Germans.”
“…Will the center of the world civilization shift back to China? As we all know, Nazi Germany also placed much emphasis on the education of the people, especially the younger generation. The Nazi party and government organized and established various propaganda and educational institutions …all aimed at instilling into the people’s minds the idea that German people are superior, and convincing people that the historical mission of the Aryan people is to become the ‘lords of earth’ that ‘rule over the world’. Nonetheless, Germany was defeated in utter shame, along with its ally, Japan. Why? We reached some conclusions at the study meetings of the Politburo [of the CCP], in which we were searching for the laws that governed the vicissitudes of the big powers, and trying to analyze Germany and Japan’s rapid growth. When we decide to revitalize China based on the German model, we must not repeat the mistakes they made.”
Thus spoke General Chi Haotian, former Chinese Defense Minister and Vice-chairman of China’s all-powerful Central Military Commission. Can you imagine any other Defense Minister in the world speaking such a language?
He is not alone in China. Wan Tao, the ‘Godfather’ of Chinese computer hackers, explains the distinction between foreign hackers and the famed Chinese Red Hackers: “Chinese hackers coined the word ‘Red Hacker’, which means a patriotic hacker. Unlike our Western counterparts, Chinese hackers tend to get more involved with politics because most of them are young, passionate and patriotic.”
Scott J. Henderson, the author of The Dark Visitors, a remarkable study on the Chinese hackers says: “One of the unique aspects of the Chinese hacker organization is their nationalism, which is in stark contrast to the loner/anarchist culture many associate with the stereotypical Western hacker. They are especially active during periods of political conflict with other nations.”
This nationalism has been exacerbated by the economic rise of China and the success of the Beijing Olympics Games. The leadership conveniently uses this sentiment for its own purposes. But if China is to play a leading role in world affairs, ultra-nationalism is definitely an impediment. A more altruistic and ‘internationalist’ attitude will have to emerge in the corridors of Beijing for it to earn a respected place on the international scene. The mantra of China über alles does not rhyme with modern civilized society.

A Totalitarian RegimeFor the past sixty years, the People’s Republic of China has failed to introduce a modern system of governance. Though the word ‘people’s’ is recurrent in all State institutions in China, since 1949 the nation is run by a single Party. Ordinary people have no say in State affairs.
Laws or rights which are acknowledged as universal by world bodies remain unimplemented by the leaders in Zhongnanhai. Beijing pretends that they are irrelevant to modern China as being a Western invention.
But democracy is not a concept confined to the West. Is Mr Hu aware that democracy (from the Greek demokratia, ‘power to the people’) existed in Asia and particularly in India, long before it was introduced in Greece. National People’s Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo has however recently declared that China will ‘never go down the devious path’ of ‘Western institutions’. Whether Beijing agrees to it or not, human rights, basic personal laws or universal suffrage are today values accepted by all non-rogue nations.
The Chinese economy faces a similar problem: it remains controlled by the lone Communist Party: there are 150 Party–run monopolies in sectors as diverse as petroleum, steel, banking or telecommunications in China today.
Beijing may open 350 Confucius Institute the world over, but which type of culture or civilisational values does Beijing pretend to ‘export’?
Li Xiguang, a scholar of Tsinghua University pointed out China’s difficulties in marketing its ‘values’: “the soft power of a country manifests itself in whether it has the power to define and interpret ‘universal values’ such as democracy, freedom and human rights. …we must let the whole world hear the stories that Chinese citizens have to tell about their democracy, liberty, human rights and rule of law.”
But when intellectuals speak up, they are immediately arrested.
In 1979, Wei Jingsheng wrote about China’s Fifth Modernization on the Democracy Wall in Beijing. Thirty years later progress seems to have gone in reverse gear in the Middle Kingdom. While Wei advocated individual liberties; (‘freedom’ was the only ‘modernization’ which mattered, improvement of living standards could come later), the fact is that in 2008, hundreds of known writers, intellectuals and professors who signed a manifesto called Charter ’08 (asking the CCP leadership to allow the People of China to enjoy civil rights enshrined in United Nations covenants), have been harassed, some even arrested. Liu Xiaobo, the leader of the Charter ’08 movement has himself been incarcerated by CCP authorities. As long as this issue is not tackled, China can not rise to the top. In such cases, it appears that it is the Communist leadership which is trembling.

Tibet and Xinjiang
Another issue which makes Beijing tremble is the ‘unrest in nationalities areas’. Unless this problem is solved to the satisfaction of all concerned, China will be not able to take the place of a respected Power on the world scene.
One remembers that in March/April 2008, the Tibetan Autonomous Region as well as the Tibetan inhabitants regions of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan witnessed the worse unrest and riots in 50 years.
In July 2009, it was the turn of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang to be in the news. Violence erupted, resulting in at least 200 people dead and some 1,000 wounded. A parallel with Tibet was immediately made.
As on the Roof of the World, tensions have not been a new phenomenon in a Muslim province which has been flooded (like Tibet) by millions of Han settlers over the past decades. The Uyghurs have sporadically demonstrated their resentment against Han colonization.
The Communist Party’s local satraps were quick to blame the incident on a ‘foreign’ hand. Xinjiang CCP boss and Politburo member, Wang Lequan declared that the riot in Urumqi showed the violent and terrorist nature of the separatist World Uyghur Congress leader Rebiya Kadeer. In March 2008 in Tibet, the Dalai Lama was similarly called a ‘wolf in monk’s dress’ by Zang Qingli, the Tibet Party Chief.
The regime in Beijing seems incapable of striking the right note.
A report prepared by a group of Chinese lawyers, the Beijing Gongmeng Consulting on the 2008 riots in Tibet is an eye-opener. It entirely contradicts the Party’s official version, but who is ready to listen?
The lawyers first point out ‘major errors in government policy’ after the March–April 2008 protests. One was encouragement of racist sentiment towards Tibetans: “The excessive response of the government all over Tibet was to regard every tree and blade of grass as a potential enemy soldier.”
According to them, this further strained the relations between the local Tibetans and the Han migrants. One of their conclusions is: “Understanding is a precondition for discussion, unity and development. …There must be a change in thinking and an adjustment in thinking behind the current nationality theories and policies.”
The Report found that in Tibet, the difficult terrain has created “locally fixed power networks, which inevitably lead to a high incidence of corruption and dereliction of duty. …‘Foreign forces’ and ‘Tibet independence’ are used by many local officials as fig leaves to conceal their mistakes in governance and to repress social discontent.”
The final conclusions are not far from the Tibetan Diaspora’s views: “Earnestly listen to the voices of ordinary Tibetans and on the basis of respecting and protecting each of the Tibetan people’s rights and interests”.
For the past 50 years the Party has been unable to deal with these problems. The negotiations with a good-willed Dalai Lama have never even taken off.

Several other aspects make China unstable
Sixty after its foundation, it appears that the PRC is pulled towards an ever greater authoritarian way of functioning.
Take the post economic crisis situation: with the huge expenditures to be incurred on infrastructure, the State enterprises only will benefit, thereby reinforcing the Party and in particular the Politburo Standing Committee.
The PLA’s role is also constantly reinforced (allowing people like General Chi Haotian to get away with his declarations). Today, the PLA plays a role not only in China’s external defence, but has become indispensable to suppress some 100,000 protests, riots and unrest which occurred annually in the mainland due to environmental issues, corruption or unemployment problems. This does not take into account the restive situation in Tibet or Xinjiang.
Willy Lam in his paper on ‘quasi-superpower diplomacy’ has remarked: “The CCP leadership’s refusal to give up Maoist norms such as the ‘party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces’ …has dented the global appeal of the China model — and detracted from the viability of Beijing’s quasi-superpower diplomacy.”

Support to Rogue States
A superpower is usually able to help sorting out regional, if not international issues. Beijing has tried its hand in the Korean imbroglio. One of the reasons why Beijing has not been successful so far, is that the Communist authorities are reluctant to be tough on North Korea when required.
Further, in several cases, the Chinese leadership has sided with rogue States such as Myanmar, Sudan, Angola or Zimbabwe.
Despite its long-friendship with Teheran or Islamabad, Beijing has never been able to convince these States to follow the rules accepted by all other nations.

Mergers and Acquisitions
China is rich. Several Chinese State corporations are on a ‘going out’ scheme to buy strategic assets the world over. It is not too difficult in Africa or Latin America where bribing a few political leaders helps, but it is less easy when it comes to Western multinationals.
These mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have usually been related to oil and other raw materials. Chinese moves are watched by a trembling West. Is a return of the Yellow peril being witnessed?
Petrochina, Sinopec and CNOOC, China’s oil monopolies have already been involved in overseas M&A worth $12 billion in the first half of 2009 (80% more than during the same period in 2008).
China’s Aluminum Corporation (Chinalco) tried recently to acquire 18% (worth $19.5 billion) of the British-Australian mining corporation Rio Tinto. Shivers were felt around the world. If Beijing had succeeded, China would have had to access to most of the iron-ore and copper mines in Australia.
It is a good reason for the world to tremble.

Drawing Red Lines
Beijing’s diplomatic assertiveness is well known. The Communist leadership uses a term: ‘Red-line Diplomacy’. Beijing ‘draws red lines’ around issues it considers vital to its core interests. Strangely, it often uses the Panchsheel principles for its purpose, particularly ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries’ (even giving the paternity of the formula to former Premier Zhou Enlai).
This principle are quoted not only for Tibet, Xinjiang, or when the Dalai Lama is to visit a foreign country, but also when India wants to deploy troops in Arunachal Pradesh or when a world body wants to question Beijing on human rights. The spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs then barks so loudly, that the interlocutor starts trembling and generally backs out (this even happened to President Sarkozy of France after he ‘dared’ to meet the Dalai Lama in Poland last year).
This Red-line ‘barking’ diplomacy may be a ‘Chinese characteristic’, but it is certainly not the attribute of a mature State, a Super-power to be.
During the next 60 years, China has a lot of progress to make in these fields and many others.

Xi did not make it

In an article in the China Brief of the Jamestown Foundation, Willy Lam reports that Xi Jinping, the Chinese Vice-President did not make it to the all-powerful Central Military Commission.
Why? Nobody knows.
In April 1989, Gorbachev preached glasnost (transparency) on the Tienanmen square, but twenty years later, it seems that 'transparency' has not permeated as yet the opaque leadership of the CCP who is busy with the preparations of the 60th anniversary of the Republic's foundation.
Jinping is the son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the senior-most leaders of the First Generation of the CCP. He was very close to the late Panchen Lama and wrote a report for the Party on the famous 70,000 character petition from the Panchen Lama to Premier Zhou Enlai.
In 1962, like many other leaders , Xi Zhongxun fell out of favour; he was accused of disloyalty to Chairman Mao. Was he not tough enough with the Tibetan people? Who knows?
Xi was however rehabilitated in the 1980's; he later participated to the setting up of one of the first Special Economic Zones in Southern China.
Is his father's past catching up with Young Xi?



CCP 17th Central Committee Plenum Skips Xi Jinping and Inner-Party Democracy
China Brief Volume: 9 Issue: 19, September 24, 2009
Willy Lam

The biggest piece of news to have come out of the Fourth Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 17th Central Committee is what that did not happen: the induction of Vice-President Xi Jinping into the policy-setting Central Military Commission (CMC). This is despite widespread reports by several domestic and foreign media that Xi, who is also a Politburo Standing Committee (SPC) member and President of the Central Party School, would be made a CMC vice-chairman in order to buttress his position as heir apparent to President and CMC Chairman Hu Jintao (The Associated Press, September 16; Ming Pao [Hong Kong], September 19; Straits Times [Singapore], September 11). More importantly, however, the Xi episode has thrown into sharp relief a major concern of the Central Committee plenum: the expansion of “intra-party democracy” and reform of the cadre system so as to raise the “governance ability” of party-and-government officials.

Glimpses on Tibetan History

Our exhibition Glimpses on History of Tibet is now available online.
These 25 snapshots demonstrate that in the past Tibet was an independent nation and though for sometime it lived in isolation, during most of the last 4000 years Tibet had constant contacts and interactions with the neighbouring nations. In some cases, Tibet was influenced by other cultures; in some others it spread its messages to other nations.
Click here and read.

Obama`s China: Money talks

My article on the visit of President Obama's Special Envoys to Dharamsala is posted on Sify.com

The Negotiations that Never Were

My new book The Negotiations that Never Were — Dharamsala and Beijing published by Lancer Publishers will be released in October.
To know more and order, click here.

Simulation or simulations?

There is a debate around the nuclear scientist K. Santhanam's declarations whether the Pokhran II nuclear tests were a success or not. Though I am a dummy in this field, I think it is a wrong debate. The only question is: did the Indian scientists get enough information to be able to continue their work in labs in simulation? It seems though difficult to get enough data with one or two tests (successful or not).
Remember the French in Mururoa (and the Rainbow Warrior episode).
The question seems to be: what is the quality of the bomb and its degree of the miniaturization.
The National Security Advisor should read the article of Thomas C. Reed, The Chinese Nuclear Tests 1964-1996 in Physics Today, he will learn a lot about tests.


In September 2007, I wrote in Rediff.com: "In an interview with India Today, Anil Kakodkar, chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, surprisingly said that 'testing' has 'nothing to do with the deal.' His remarks were, however, rather vague: 'The 1998 tests, although the number was five, in terms of configuration and ideas, a very large number of them were tested out. And the most important thing was that everything that was tested worked. That did provide us with a fairly high degree of confidence. So in terms of building deterrence we had said that time itself it was adequate.' Deterrence only! Bharat Karnad, the nuclear expert, is probably closer to the truth: 'The 1998 tests raised some grave doubts about the thermonuclear and 'boosted fission' devices that were exploded. These prototype weapon designs need to be reworked and tested and re-tested in order for them to acquire credibility as operational weapons which can perform reliably and with safety.'
With an 'arsenal quality frozen at a relatively primitive level,' it means India has only two alternatives today: Either to conduct new tests (and the 123 Agreement will be terminated) or do simulations for which very powerful computers are needed. After the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had declared a moratorium on the tests following Pokhran II, it is doubtful if any government can risk the ostracisation of the past. The solution is therefore computer simulation. And it is probable that New Delhi hopes to get access to sophisticated equipment which will allow Indian scientists to proceed with their military research. Has the Manmohan Singh government already signed a deal behind the deal to get the required equipments? It is very possible. And in any case, once the 123 deal is through with the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, computer merchants will be flocking to Delhi to do business."

Borderline amnesia

Here is the link to my article on the McMahon Line published yesterday in the New Indian Express

Obama kowtowing to Beijing

It was before....




While the controversy over the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang still rages in India, another visit has received rather low media coverage. The US President Barack Obama's emissary, Valerie Jarrett flew to Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh where she called on the Dalai Lama. Jarrett, a Senior Obama’s Advisor and an Assistant for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison was accompanied by Maria Otero, Under Secretary in the State Department and the Special Coordinator-designate for Tibetan issues. The fact that Ms Otero is only a designate-Coordinator more than 9 months after President Obama assumed office as the President of the United States shows the little importance given to Tibet.
According to the press release from the Dalai Lama’s Private Office, Ms Jarrett “conveyed the [US] President's greetings to His Holiness and informed him that she was sent to brief him about the Obama Administration's approach to the Tibetan issue.”
After the Dalai Lama gave his assessment on the current relations between Dharamsala and Beijing, Jarrett talked about “the best way the United States could assist in the resolution for the Tibetan issue, particularly in the light of the first visit by President Obama to China in November.”
Here is the trick.
Obama decides not to offend the Chinese leadership two months before his visit to Beijing; but as it does not befit a great champion of oppressed people to refuse to meet with the Tibetan leader during his forthcoming to the United States, he preempts critics by rushing the two ladies to ‘brief’ the Dalai Lama and explain the situation.
Even though the US President’s Envoys said that Obama could meet the Dalai Lama at a later date, the present move is called kowtowing in Chinese.
As the Wall Street Journal puts it: “The Obama Administration may think its decision to cold shoulder the Dalai Lama on the Tibetan leader's upcoming trip to Washington is smart politics. But if the leader of the free world doesn't stand up for religious freedom, who will? The news broke earlier this week when an Obama aide told the Tibetans that the President wants to meet Chinese leaders before he meets the Dalai Lama. This is par for the course for an Administration that gave only lackluster support to Iran's democrats and has made conciliatory overtures to Putin's Russia and Kim Jong Il's North Korea.”
Obama’s advisors will learn one day that it is not smart policy to kowtow to a totalitarian regime like Beijing. Even the habitually back-bending Indian diplomats know this very simple truth.
When Chhime Chhoekyapa, the Dalai Lama’s Secretary, announced the Tibetan leader’s plans to visit the State of Arunachal Pradesh during the second week of November, the Indian officials were in two minds, especially after the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu stated: "We firmly oppose the Dalai [Lama] visiting the so-called Arunachal Pradesh".
The question was “should India appease China and accept Beijing’s diktat?” Jiang Yu had also stated that the visit "further reveals the Dalai clique's anti-China and separatist essence". South Block remained firm. External Affairs Minister SM Krishna said that the Tibetan leader could go anywhere in India: "Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India and the Dalai Lama is free to go anywhere in India."
Contrary to the relatively new team of Barak Obama, the ‘old China hands’ in Delhi are aware that if you once accept a ‘protest’ from Beijing, there will be no limit to new demands or complaints. India has experienced this when the Indian Prime Minister visited Arunachal, with any new infrastructure development in the State or with deployment of armed forces.
Though Washington does not have the same stakes and compulsions as Delhi, the US has remained active in the Tibetan issue in the past, trying to promote contacts, if not negotiations, between Dharamsala and Beijing.
Under Section 611 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, 2003 (Tibetan Policy Act of 2002), a report on the state of the negotiations between Dharamsala and Beijing has to be regularly presented by the White House to the US Congress.



According to the 2007 Report: “The Dalai Lama can be a constructive partner as China deals with the difficult challenges of regional and national stability. He represents the views of the vast majority of Tibetans and his moral authority helps to unite the Tibetan community inside and outside of China. China’s engagement with the Dalai Lama or his representatives to resolve problems facing Tibetans is in the interest of both the Chinese Government and the Tibetan people. At the same time, the lack of resolution of these problems leads to greater tensions inside China and will be a stumbling block to fuller political and economic engagement with the United States and other nations.”
The last US Administration, though not appreciated for its policies (and actions) in world affairs regularly raised the Tibet issue with the Chinese leadership. Unfortunately, when Hillary Clinton went to China soon after taking up her job as Secretary of State, she did not utter a word about Human Rights or Tibet; a great change from the Bush Administration.
The 2007 US Report explained that since he assumed Office in January 2001, President Bush had consistently urged the Chinese Government “to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives, and to respect the unique cultural, linguistic, and religious heritage of the Tibetan people”.
On November 9, 2005, President Bush received the Dalai Lama at the White House. The President is said to have reiterated the strong US commitment “to support the preservation of Tibet's unique religious, cultural, and linguistic identity and the protection of the human rights of all Tibetans”. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Paula Dobriansky, the then Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues attended the meeting.
The report also asserted that during a visit to China in November 2005, President Bush urged President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to engage in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. He is supposed to have specifically told the Chinese leaders: “It would be wise for the Chinese government to invite the Dalai Lama to China so that he can tell them exactly what he told [the President] in the White House…that he has no desire for an independent Tibet.”
According to the same Report, the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “consistently raised the issues of human rights and religious freedom at the highest levels, including in meetings with the Chinese President, Premier, State Counselor, and Foreign Minister.” She is said to have regularly highlighted the need of progress in the Sino-Tibetan dialogue and to have encouraged the Beijing leadership to work with the United States “toward a resolution of some of the structural issues in human rights and religious freedom” in China and in particular, “reach out to the Dalai Lama, a man who is, for Tibet, a man of considerable authority and considerable moral authority, but who really is of no threat to China.”
In October 2007, when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour the legislature can bestow, President Bush and his wife attended the event by the side of Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker.
A few months later when she visited Dharamsala, Pelosi affirmed: "The United States must continue to be committed to meeting the challenge that Tibet makes to the conscience of the world."
It seems that the Obama’s Administration, which has been elected to ‘change’ the US and the world, is not aware of this very basic notion.
Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, the Tibetan Prime Minister rightly laments: "Even the US government is doing some kind of appeasement… today economic interests are much greater than other interests."
Money makes the world go round, where is the Change?