NIGHTWATCH: China-India-Russia Confer on Afghanistan

02 China, 03 India, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Peace Intelligence

China-India: Chinese media reported that India and China have agreed to start a dialogue on Afghanistan. An “in-principle” agreement on official-level dialogue has been reached and dates for the first meeting are being worked out.

Earlier this week, Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon travelled to Moscow for the first three-way dialogue between India, Russia and China on Afghanistan in an effort to build on common security concerns. At present, India has an institutionalized dialogue on Afghanistan only with the US.

Comment: The news commentary noted that China first offered India a wider dialogue on South Asia in general. India declined to hold talks about what it considers its sphere of influence with its primary competitor.

Afghanistan is different because India and China share an interest in preventing the return of the Taliban or another extremist Islamist regime. India was a primary backer of the Northern Alliance tribes that fought the Pashtun Taliban before the US intervention in late 2001.

As for China, Mullah Omar's Taliban regime allowed terrorism training for Uighur Islamic separatists from Xinjiang, China, and rejected Chinese inducements to terminate it. China is Pakistan's most important ally, but Pakistan also did nothing to stop the Uighur training by the very Taliban regime that Pakistan supported.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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Ho Ho Ho: Unhappy Neighbors — South China Sea as Flash Point, Indonesia and Viet-Nam Seek Solutions — China’s U-Shaped Line and String of Pearls

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Energy, 08 Wild Cards, Government, Military
Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh

Unhappy Neighbors

Ngo Vinh Long

The Cairo Review of Foreign Affairs, February 10, 2013

Speaking to diplomats, businessmen and journalists at the British Foreign Office in November, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia emphasized the need for “norms and principles” in resolving disputes in the South China Sea. Why did President Yudhoyono, who was spending a week in London at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II as the first leader to visit Britain during the year of her Diamond Jubilee, feel that he had to bring up the South China Sea disputes at such a time?

After a member of the audience asked what Indonesia, the leading nation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) could do if China did not share his views, President Yudhoyono recalled what he had said to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at a summit conference in Bali and again to Chinese President Hu Jintao at a meeting in Beijing: without forward movement on a Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea, the whole region could “easily become a flashpoint.” He added that the two Chinese leaders had concurred with his assessment.

President Yudhoyono added, however, that he had become quite concerned after ASEAN foreign ministers failed to reach a CoC agreement at a meeting in Cambodia in July 2012. He did not mention the role played by China in getting the Cambodian government to sabotage the pact. He only said that since then, Indonesia has done its utmost to bring about a consensus among ASEAN nations on the issue. He also did not mention the fact that at an international conference on “Peace and Stability in the South China Sea and the Asia Pacific Region” held in Jakarta in September, most of the participants expressed pessimism as long as China continued to exert military and economic power in area within the U-shape line demarcating its self-declared zone of sovereignty.

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SmartPlanet: High-Speed Rail — Teaching Governments, Mobilizing All Eight Tribes to Press Forward on High-Speed Rail and Localized Everything

02 China, 03 Economy

smartplanet logo“The Morning Briefing” is SmartPlanet’s daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we’re reading about high-speed rail.

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Click on Image to Enlarge

1.) Protests bring Italian high-speed rail mega-tunnel to its knees. High-speed rail has garnered a lot of praise recently. The U.S. has a new national high-speed network map. China has unveiled the world’s longest high-speed line. Japan is beginning construction of their long-anticipated Maglev train line. But not all the news surrounding high-speed rail is so rosy.

2.) India and France to strengthen cooperation in railway sector. India and France have singed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen cooperation in the railway sector.

3.) Is there hope for high-speed rail In Austin? A California transit company recently proposed a map of a national high speed rail network that places Austin as a major hub on the east/west southern rail lines. As KUT News reports, Austin would be mere hours away from major cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, not to mention Dallas and Houston.

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Yoda: Organization of American States Dead? Chile Playing Both Sides Cuba to Lead the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)?

01 Brazil, 02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Spanish, Force Speaks.  English Not.

CELAC Rising: The Monroe Doctrine Turned on Its Head?

Last Monday, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (CELAC) met for its second summit in Santiago, Chile, one year after its founding meeting in Caracas, Venezuela in 2011.  The Summit is the culmination of roughly a decade of efforts to create a viable mechanism for greater integration in the Americas, and particularly a year of planning by a “troika” of representatives from, believe it or not, Chile, Venezuela and Cuba.  They were able to pull it off successfully, despite their obvious differences, and all 33 presidents or heads of state from the region attended, with the exception of Hugo Chavez from Venezuela, who sent a letter with his Vice-President Nicolás Maduro.

CELAC explicitly excludes the US and Canada, a historic first for a hemispheric organization with huge symbolic importance, because it answers a long-standing dream for unity of the subcontinent that harks back to Simón Bolívar and the struggles for independence from the European colonial powers.  Beyond the symbolism, however, it is strategically crucial:  It means that there is now a subcontinent bloc of developing nations that can speak with one voice,, and also serve as a counterweight to US political and economic hegemony.

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Yoda: China — A Focal Point

02 China, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 11 Society, Earth Intelligence
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.

–YODA, Dark Rendezvous

China's Urban Air Kills Rural Plants

As people in Beijing and northern China struggle with severe air pollution this winter, the toxic air is also making life hard for plants and even food crops of China, say researchers who have been looking at how China's plants are affected by air pollution.

china pollutionBeijing's extreme smog event this week has made headlines, with the American Embassy calling the pollution levels “hazardous” and Beijing writer Zheng Yuanjie blogging that “the air smells like sulfur perfume, as the capital city currently looks like a poisonous huge gas can,” according to a report on Al Jazeera.
BLOG: 7 of 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities Are in China

“In the last 50 years there has been a 16-fold increase in ozone pollution” in the Beijing area, said Hanqin Tian of Auburn University in Alabama, who studies the effects of China's pollution and climate change on plants. He said the soup of pollutants, including harmful sulfur and nitrogen compounds “is definitely expanding into new areas; into the countryside.”

Read full article.

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NIGHTWATCH: Chinese Using Senkaku Islands Dispute to Experiment with Managing “Total War” Across All Domains

02 China, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, 11 Society, IO Sense-Making

Japan-China: Bloomberg has published an excellent report that describes the economic consequences of Japan's dispute with China over ownership of the Senkaku Islands. No other news outlet has published a comparably insightful and detailed account.

The first point the journalists made is that trade relations between China and Japan multiply the costs of a territorial dispute. Japan's trade with China is valued at more than $300 billion per year, which is potentially at risk.

A Chinese boycott of Japanese imports would hurt China but might already have resulted in a reduction of GDP, according to Bloomberg citing JPMorgan Chase, because of reduced Chinese purchases of Japanese goods.

Ripple effects in China from boycotts of Japanese manufactures put at risk the jobs of millions of Chinese who work in Japanese industries in China. Japanese auto sales declined. Air travel cancellations increased in both countries. One Japanese department store retailer closed 60 of 169 stores because of anti-Japanese vandalism and threats.

Comment: The key point is that global economic integration magnifies the consequences of international disputes. Interdependency means both sides seriously suffer economically, although security incidents result in no casualties. Japan might have sustained a .5 per cent decline in GDP in the last quarter of 2012, essentially because of Chinese hostile, nationalistic responses to the islands dispute.

Both sides got hurt, but China can absorb the consequences more than Japan.

Another key point is that the dispute shows how the Chinese fight in every kind of battle space – at sea, in the air, on the land, in cyber space, in international political space and in economic space. Total warfare means total to the Chinese. They are experimenting with that in the Senkakus dispute.

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Yoda: China Thinking — Rifkin Rising — Not Enough

02 China, 05 Energy
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Free, energy is.  Corrupt, governments are.

The London Times: China Embraces Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution

The London Times reported that members of the twenty-four person Politburo and senior party officials are reading and actively discussing Jeremy Rifkin’s New York Times bestselling book, The Third Industrial Revolution, on the eve of the National Party Congress on November 8th that will usher in the new leadership of China– see attached article from the November 3rd edition of The London Times

According to The Times of London, the Chinese leadership is taking up Rifkin’s vision of linking internet technology with renewable energies, to prepare China for a dramatic shift into a sustainable post-carbon Third Industrial Revolution economy in the 21st century. The Third Industrial Revolution has been the number one bestselling economics book in China for more than four months.

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