Suicide Ruling in China Official’s Death Draws Ridicule

By Ng Han Guan

In this May 4, 2009 photo, a Chinese petitioner wears a hat with the words “Officials Corrupt, Changed Judiciary” in Beijing. 

Suspicions about the death of a government official in a rural Chinese county have only grown since local authorities ruled the death a suicide. While Chinese government officials are no strangers to suicide, several details surrounding the death of Xie Yexin, an anti-corruption official working in Gong’an County in central China’s Hubei Province make it seem rather unlikely that he took his own life.
 For one, Mr. Xie, who was found dead in his office on Saturday, appears to have been stabbed.
Eleven times.
Police in the Hubei city of Jingzhou came to the conclusion that he had committed suicide after a “meticulous investigation” involving multiple departments, the Beijing News reported Tuesday, citing a statement posted on the Gong’an County website.
 Mr. Xie, wounded in the chest, neck, abdomen and both wrists, died from the rupture of a major vein near the heart, the newspaper quoted a Jingzhou public security official as saying.
The Gong’an County website was inaccessible Wednesday afternoon.
A woman in the county propaganda office who would not give her name confirmed Wednesday that Mr. Xie’s death had been ruled a suicide and that authorities had found 11 wounds on his body, but would not answer any further questions on the case.
“We think he committed suicide. It is not a criminal case and we have no obligation to investigate,” Wang Jianping, a vice director of the Gong’an Security Bureau, was quoted as saying in a report on the English website of the Global Times. 
 Police found a knife (wrapped in tissue paper) on the floor of Mr. Xie’s office that matched the description of a knife missing from his home, the Global Times said, citing the Gong’an County statement.
Mr. Xie’s family members have refused to accept the verdict, arguing in interviews with various newspapers that he was in a good mood the day of his death and had no obvious reason to end his life.
They’ve also questioned why someone who was going to stab himself to death would find it necessary to wrap the knife in tissue paper, or to cut himself so many times.
“If it was a suicide, why would there be such a long cut on his neck and also a wound on his wrist?” one unidentified family member was quoted by the Beijing Post as asking.
Mr. Xie had previously been part of a corruption investigation involving Gong’an County’s deputy Party secretary but was taken off the case a month before his death, the Global Times said.
The suicide verdict — the No. 3 topic on Chinese search engine Baidu Wednesday — was widely mocked online.
Among the thousands of comments about the news on the Net East news portal, almost none appeared to take the verdict at face value.
“Very harmonious,” commented one Net Ease reader from Liaoning Province, while another reader from Guangdong Province wrote: “If this counts as suicide, there’s going to be a lot of ‘suicides’ in the future.” Users of popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo were likewise disbelieving.
“What kind of suicide is this? Has to be a Guinness record,” remarked a user writing under the name Sanfu Liangchao.
“If what the family members say is true, then [the authorities] are spouting nonsense while averting their eyes,” wrote Querytown.
“After this, who will be willing to do anti-corruption work?”

India Measures Itself Against a China That Doesn’t Notice

By VIKAS BAJAJ

China is acknowledged as being many kilometers ahead of India when it comes to infrastructure. In Mumbai, millions of commuters use the state-run railway system.
MUMBAI, India — It seems to be a national obsession in India: measuring the country’s economic development against China’s yardstick.
At a recent panel discussion to commemorate the 20th anniversary of India’s dismantling parts of its socialist economy, a government minister told business leaders to keep their eye on the big prize: growing faster than China.
“That’s not impossible,” said the minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, who oversees national security and previously was finance minister.
“People are beginning to talk about outpacing China.”
Indians, in fact, seem to talk endlessly about all things China, a neighbor with whom they have long had a prickly relationship, but which is also one of the few other economies that has had 8 percent or more annual growth in recent years.
Indian newspapers are filled with articles comparing the two countries.
Indian executives refer to China as a template for development.
Government officials cite Beijing, variously as a threat, partner or role model.
But if keeping up with the Wangs is India’s economic motive force, the rivalry seems to be largely one-sided.
“Indians are obsessed with China, but the Chinese are paying too little attention to India,” said Minxin Pei, an economist who was born in China and who writes a monthly column for The Indian Express, a national daily newspaper. (No Indian economists are known to have a regular column in mainland Chinese publications.)
Most Chinese are unconcerned with how India is growing and changing, because they prefer to compare their country with the United States and Europe, said Mr. Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College near Los Angeles.
He says he has tried to organize conferences about India in China but has struggled to find enough Chinese India experts.
Liu Yi, a clothing store owner in Beijing, echoed the sentiments of a dozen Chinese people interviewed in Beijing and Shanghai, in dismissing the idea that the two countries could be compared.
Yes, he said India was a “world leader” in information technology but it also had many “backward, undeveloped places.”
“China’s economy is special,” Mr. Liu said.
“If China’s development has a model, you could say it’s the U.S. or England.”
It might be only natural that the Chinese would look up the development ladder to the United States, now that it is the only nation in the world with a larger economy, rather than over their shoulders at India, which ranks ninth.
And while China is India’s largest trading partner, the greatest portion of China’s exports go to the United States.
So for India, China represents the higher rung to strive for.
Like India, China traces its civilization back thousands of years and has a population of more than 1 billion people.
And China has lessons to offer because, under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s and early ’80s, it started the transition to a more open and competitive economy more than a decade before India.
Before Deng took power, India’s economy was bigger on a per-capita basis than China’s.
Whatever the reasons, Indians compare virtually every aspect of their nation with China.
Infrastructure (China is acknowledged as being many kilometers ahead).
The armed forces (China is more powerful).
Universities (China has invested more in its institutions).
The software industry (India is far ahead).
Proficiency in the English language (India has the historical advantage, but China is catching up).
Evidence of the Indo-Sino interest disparity can be seen in the two countries’ leading newspapers.
The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s house organ, had only 24 articles mentioning India on its English-language Web site in the first seven months of this year, according to the Factiva database.
By contrast, The Times of India, the country’s largest circulation English-language newspaper, had 57 articles mentioning China — in July alone.
There are other big gaps.
Indian cities, large and small, are filled with Chinese restaurants that serve a distinctly ultraspicy, Indian version of that cuisine.
But there are few Indian restaurants in Beijing or Shanghai, let alone in smaller Chinese cities.
In 2009, more than 160,000 Indian tourists visited mainland China, according to the Chinese government. Barely 100,000 Chinese tourists made the reverse trek, according to India’s government.
Prakash Jagtap, who owns a small engineering firm in the western Indian city of Pune, has been to China five times.
Like many Indians, he loves Chinese food (of the Indian variant) and he sings the praises of Chinese diligence and persistence.
“They have more discipline,” he said.
“Here in our country, people don’t look for the long term. Instead, they look for short term, both the management and labor. We have to change our work culture.”
Mr. Jagtap’s statement reflects a widely held view among Indians that China has outperformed their country in large part because the Chinese one-party system is more “disciplined” than India’s vibrant, but messy, democracy.
In early July, The Economic Times, India’s leading financial newspaper, ran a photo slide show on its Web site titled “How China builds these, and why India never does.”
The slide show is a series of photographs of large infrastructure projects in China, including the a new 26-mile-long bridge linking Qingdao and the Huangdao district across the Jiaozhou Bay on the northeastern coast.
India’s views have also been shaped by a 1962 war that ended with China seizing a chunk of the northern India state of Kashmir.
The countries still have an unsettled border, and China claims a large piece of territory controlled by India.
Raghav Bahl, an Indian media executive who has written a book about the economic rise of both countries, said Indians “nursed a severe feeling of humiliation” from the 1962 war that was compounded by China’s economic rise.
“There is a sense that this is one race that we could have done much better in,” said Mr. Bahl, author of “Superpower? The Amazing Race Between China’s Hare and India’s Tortoise.”
But he added that Indians had regained confidence recently as a result of their country’s strong economy. Many, like Mr. Chidambaram and The Economist magazine, have suggested that India could soon grow at a faster pace than China.
Its economy, at $5.9 trillion, is about three and a half times as big as the Indian economy, but with a much older population than India.
In China, however, India does not register as a threat, economically or otherwise.
Mr. Pei, the economist, said Chinese officials, executives and even many intellectuals did not have a nuanced understanding of India.
Communist conservatives maintain that “democracy is hindering India’s development,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese liberals argue that democracy makes India more stable and its government more accountable — an impression that appears to ignore India’s frequent electoral turmoil and deep-rooted corruption.
But Indian fascination with China’s economic success is also simplistic, Mr. Pei said.
While one-party rule may have helped the country build infrastructure and factories in recent decades, it was also responsible for big failures under Mao Zedong.
They include the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, when millions of people were killed, starved or persecuted.
Even now, China’s leaders are struggling to quell public outrage over a recent high-speed train disaster, for which many Chinese blame corruption and cronyism in the railways ministry.
“In both countries, the level of knowledge about the other is relatively low,” Mr. Pei said.
But at least several people interviewed in China acknowledged an inherent competition between the countries, given their size and fast growth.
Ideally, they said, it will be a healthy rivalry.
“Competition exists between any two nations,” said Hu Jun, a 40-year-old teacher in Shanghai.
“That’s a good thing. If we compete in the areas of high-tech and energy saving, I think that will benefit everyone.”
In India, Shrayank Gupta, a 21-year-old student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, echoed those sentiments: “There will definitely be a race, because we are both naturally competitive, and the world will depend on both of us.”

China confronts Indian navy vessel

By Ben Bland in Hanoi and Girija Shivakumar in New Delhi

A Chinese warship confronted an Indian navy vessel shortly after it left Vietnamese waters in late July in the first such reported encounter between the two countries’ navies in the South China Sea.
The unidentified Chinese warship demanded that India’s INS Airavat, an amphibious assault vessel, identify itself and explain its presence in international waters shortly after it completed a scheduled port call in Vietnam, five people familiar with the incident told the Financial Times. 
This latest example of China’s naval assertiveness has irked defence officials in India and Vietnam.
China claims the South China Sea in its entirety, rejecting partial claims by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines over the resource-rich region.
“Any navy in the world has full freedom to transit through these waters or high seas,” said one Indian official familiar with the encounter.
“For any country to proclaim ownership or question the right to passage by any other nation is unacceptable.” Vietnam’s foreign ministry acknowledged that the INS Airavat visited the country from July 19-22, but said it had no information about the incident.
The Chinese defence and foreign ministries declined comment, as did the Indian government.
China’s projection of maritime power, especially into the Indian Ocean, has raised national security concerns in New Delhi, which has raised the incident with Beijing.
Hanoi is also upset by what it believes to be a deliberate provocation by Beijing, according to foreign diplomats, who said the implication of the naval challenge was that China believes it is entitled to police the South China Sea.
China and Vietnam have been trying to mend fences ever since Hanoi claimed in May that Chinese patrol boats had sabotaged Vietnamese oil exploration vessels.
On Monday Vietnam’s deputy defence minister, Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, concluded a high-profile visit to Beijing, where he met General Liang Guanglie, China’s defence minister.
Both sides agreed to increase military co-operation and set up a military hotline.
An unprecedented series of anti-China protests broke out in Hanoi in June, with the clear acquiescence of Vietnam’s omnipresent security officials.
The government only recently cracked down on the demonstrations.
Rising tensions have also attracted the attention of Washington.
Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, angered Beijing last year by insisting that the South China Sea was of strategic importance to the US and offering to act as a mediator.

Water is the new weapon in Beijing’s armoury

By Brahma Chellaney

The Xiaowan dam in Yunnan is affecting the diets and incomes of 200 million Cambodians, Vietnamese, Laotians and Thais who live in the Mekong delta 
China has aroused international alarm by using its virtual monopoly of rare earths as a trade instrument and by stalling multilateral efforts to resolve disputes in the South China Sea.
Among its neighbours, there is deep concern at the way it is seeking to make water a political weapon.
At the hub of Asia, China is the source of cross-border river flows to the largest number of countries in the world – from Russia to India, Kazakhstan to the Indochina peninsula.
This results from its occupation of the ethnic minority homelands that make up 60 per cent of its land mass and are the origin of all the important international rivers flowing out of Chinese territory.
Getting this pre-eminent riparian power to accept water-sharing arrangements or other co-operative institutional mechanisms has proved unsuccessful so far in any basin.
Instead, the construction of upstream dams on international rivers such as the Mekong, Brahmaputra or Amur shows China is increasingly bent on unilateral actions, impervious to the concerns of downstream nations.
China already boasts both the world’s biggest dam (Three Gorges) and a greater total number of dams than the rest of the world combined.
It has shifted its focus from internal to international rivers, and graduated from building large dams to building mega-dams.
Among its newest dams on the Mekong is the 4,200 megawatt Xiaowan – taller than Paris’s Eiffel Tower. New dams approved for construction include one on the Brahmaputra at Metog (or Motuo in Chinese) that is to be twice the size of the 18,300MW Three Gorges – and sited almost on the disputed border with India.
The consequences of such frenetic construction are already clear.
First, China is in water disputes with almost all its neighbours, from Russia and India to weak client-states such as North Korea and Burma.
Second, its new focus on water mega-projects in the homelands of ethnic minorities has triggered tensions over displacement and submergence at a time when the Tibetan plateau, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have all been wracked by protests against Chinese rule.
Third, the projects threaten to replicate in international rivers the degradation haunting China’s internal rivers.
Yet, as if to declare itself the world’s unrivalled hydro-hegemon, China is also the largest dam builder overseas.
From Pakistan-held Kashmir to Burma’s troubled Kachin and Shan states, China is building dams in disputed or insurgency-torn areas, despite local backlash.
Dam building in Burma has contributed to renewed fighting, ending a 17-year ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Army and government.
For downriver countries, a key concern is China’s opacity on its dam projects.
It usually begins work quietly, almost furtively, then presents a project as unalterable and as holding flood-control benefits.
Worse, although there are water treaties among states in south and south-east Asia, Beijing rejects the concept of a water-sharing arrangement.
It is one of only three countries that voted against the 1997 UN convention laying down rules on the shared resources of international watercourses.
Yet water is fast becoming a cause of competition and discord between countries in Asia, where per capita freshwater availability is less than half the global average.
The growing water stress threatens Asia’s rapid economic growth and carries risks for investors potentially as damaging as non-performing loans, real estate bubbles and political corruption.
By having its hand on Asia’s water tap, China is therefore acquiring tremendous leverage over its neighbours’ behaviour.
That the country controlling the headwaters of major Asian rivers is also a rising superpower, with a muscular confidence increasingly on open display, only compounds the need for international pressure on Beijing to halt its appropriation of shared waters and accept some form of institutionalised co-operation.

Anti-China protesters get the message

By M Goonan

SAIGON -- This past Sunday morning was the first in 12 with no reported anti-China protests in Hanoi. After arresting over 40 protesters last week, earlier warning about reprisals for protesters, the government has sent the message that they will no longer be tolerated.
The United States has criticized the arrests, despite a slow warming of military ties.
Eleven weeks can be a long time.
For protesters in Hanoi it was an unprecedented stretch.
Anti-China protests began in May after the Vietnamese press reported that Chinese ships had cut the cables of a Vietnamese survey vessel in the South China Sea, an area where both nations claim sovereignty.
They continued until last week with crowds of no more than a few hundred gathering first near the Chinese Embassy then by central Hoan Kiem Lake to march with banners and chants decrying China's actions in the disputed South China Sea.
The protests, organized near the Chinese Embassy that had a hefty security presence, were at first allowed by the government, then stopped, then allowed again and then finally stopped last Sunday, seemingly once and for all.
According to reports, neighborhood loudspeakers -- most often used to play the odd revolutionary song and read local news most afternoons and mornings -- advised citizens to stay away from the Sunday morning protests in previous days.
Of those who did attend, some 40 were dragged to buses.
Most have now been released after questioning, though some still remain in detention.
Protests in Vietnam are not common; however consensus among most analysts is that the government mostly allowed them as a way to "send a message" to China and also to let public anger have some outlet.
Patriotism is also seen as a more legitimate pursuit than, say, attacking corrupt officials.
As with previous arrests of those seen as unfriendly to the regime, the United States has called on the government to release these few score of peaceful protesters.
An embassy spokesperson told Agence France-Presse: "We call on the Vietnamese government to release all individuals detained for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms."
It voiced alarm at the detention of people for "peaceful expression of their views".
Hanoi maintains that "hostile forces", a mainstay phrase used to describe people and groups the government dislikes, were hijacking the patriotic demonstrations.
The endorsement of them by Viet Tan, an overseas pro-democracy organization that is banned in Vietnam, may not have helped matters.
When dissidents or government critics have been arrested or sentenced previously the US has voiced its concern (though it's important to see the difference between the recent anti-China protesters and others calling for multi-party democracy, even if the government is less keen to do so of late).
Though the US openly criticizes these arrests and jail sentences, it does not sanction Vietnam explicitly, such as by cutting aid to the nation.
Last year, a US diplomat did however get into a scrap with government officials.
When trying to visit frail "dissident" priest Nguyen Van Ly, his legs were reportedly slammed with a car door.
The assault was widely reported.
The US has taken a keen interest in the goings-on in the South China Sea and disputes between Vietnam and China, and China and the Philippines.
It also very recently sold Hanoi another warship.
This will go with the six submarines on order from Russia; another sign of Vietnam trying to beef up its presence in the contested area in light of China's more aggressive stance.
Vietnam expert Carl Thayer at the Australian Defense Force Academy says that "US interventions on human rights are routine. The US only has a strong bargaining hand when the Vietnamese want something."
Dissident Tran Khai Thanh Thuy was released recently after being tried then sentenced in 2010 to three years on an assault charge she called a "total fabrication".
The US quickly issued her a visa and the release seemed an appeasement by an Hanoi eager for US support during its protracted South China Sea spat.
Despite the bumps in the road when it comes to human rights, the military relationship between the two nations is slowly growing.
However, experts such as Thayer have noted that it's important not to read too much into recent events such as the visit by US Navy ship USNS Richard E Byrd, the first visit by a ship to former US port Cam Ranh since the Vietnam War.
It was there for a week for routine maintenance, said the local press.
Cam Ranh opened for business for foreign ships not long ago.
"The development of military ties is moving forward at a slow pace," said Thayer.
It was advisable not see the recent repair as evidence of an actual military relationship, he said.
Vietnam has yet to engage with the US military by conducting joint exercises by land, naval or air forces. However, last month saw 'joint activities' off the central coast that irritated China.
Any advance in military-to-military ties was dependent on an improvement in human rights, former US ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak noted in televised remarks on the 15th anniversary of diplomatic relations, echoing remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Both nations have an interest in maintaining harmony in the sea and will look to cooperation to further that. However, the form and extent of concessions granted on both sides will remain of interest.

Dissident Chinese Artist Calls Life in Beijing a ‘Constant Nightmare’

By ROBERT MACKEY

In a photograph posted on his Twitter feed earlier this month, Ai Weiwei, right, seemed to peer through the lens at his 100,000 followers on the social network.
In an angry, despairing essay for Newsweek, Ai Weiwei, a prominent Chinese artist and dissident who was released from detention two months ago, described life in the Chinese capital as a Kafkaesque “nightmare.”
Mr. Ai, who still faces charges the Chinese authorities claim are related to tax evasion, not his outspoken criticism of the government, was arrested in April and held for three months.
As Evan Osnos explained in a New Yorker blog post, Mr. Ai’s experience in prison does sound like something from Kafka:
"According to various accounts, after being detained and fitted with a black hood, he was driven to a secluded location where he was watched twenty-four hours a day by shifts of two uniformed military police sergeants, who stayed less than three feet from his side, sometimes inches away, while he slept, showered, and used the bathroom. They reportedly required that he sleep with his hands in view, on top of his blanket."
That sort of treatment, Mr. Ai told my colleague Keith Bradsher in a brief telephone interview earlier this month, “is designed as a kind of mental torture, and it works well.”
In his Newsweek essay, the artist writes that, even outside prison, life in Beijing seems like a bad dream from which he cannot awake:
"My ordeal made me understand that on this fabric, there are many hidden spots where they put people without identity. With no name, just a number. They don’t care where you go, what crime you committed. They see you or they don’t see you, it doesn’t make the slightest difference. There are thousands of spots like that. Only your family is crying out that you’re missing. But you can’t get answers from the street communities or officials, or even at the highest levels, the court or the police or the head of the nation. My wife has been writing these kinds of petitions every day, making phone calls to the police station every day. Where is my husband? Just tell me where my husband is. There is no paper, no information….
This city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare."
Although the terms of Mr. Ai’s release from detention reportedly prohibit him from making public statements, he has already tested the limits of that ban on Twitter.
Earlier this month, the artist returned to the social network with a series of brief updates and humorous, enigmatic self-portraits, before using the platform to directly criticize the detention of four of his business colleagues and two other dissidents.
In his new essay, Mr. Ai, who helped to design the Olympic stadium known as the Bird’s Nest, also suggested that Beijing’s modern buildings only serve to mask the harsh reality of life for its residents, writing:
"Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city, that we have the same sort of buildings: the Bird’s Nest, the CCTV tower. Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business. But they deny us basic rights. You will see migrants’ schools closed. You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches—and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence.
The worst thing about Beijing is that you can never trust the judicial system. Without trust, you cannot identify anything; it’s like a sandstorm."

Dĩ vãng cuộc chiến Việt - Trung

Cheng Yinghong 程映红

Khi chiến tranh biên giới giữa Trung Quốc và Việt Nam nổ ra năm 1979, tôi chỉ mới là anh sinh viên đại học.
Là những "thanh niên yêu nước", chúng tôi rất phấn khích vì sau thật nhiều năm, quân đội của chúng tôi hình như đã tìm ra đối tượng để biểu dương khả năng của mình.
Chúng tôi chờ đợi tin chiến thắng từ chiến trường, nhưng truyền thông nhà nước im lặng trong nhiều ngày như thể chẳng có gì xảy ra giữa hai nước, cho đến khi quân đội Trung Quốc chiếm Lạng Sơn.
Truyền thông nhà nước [Trung Cộng] ca ngợi chiến thắng và rồi tuyên bố vì quân ta đã hoàn thành sứ mạng "dạy một bài học" cho kẻ "bá đạo", Trung Quốc nay sẽ lui quân.
Sự im lặng đó thực sự cho chúng ta biết nhiều điều vào ngày hôm nay.
Nó lờ đi lo ngại của người dân quanh một cuộc chiến với nước láng giềng, cách hành xử đặc trưng của một chính phủ kiểm soát và lung lạc thông tin cùng dư luận.
Ngoài ra, nó hé lộ sức kháng cự mà quân Trung Quốc gặp phải từ đối phương, một điều mà sẽ làm chính phủ Trung Quốc mất mặt.
Ngày hôm nay, chúng ta đã biết thêm nhiều chi tiết quanh cuộc chiến.
Ví dụ, một số cựu chiến binh đã viết bài trên mạng về một kế hoạch quân sự gây sốc: viên tướng Trung Quốc chỉ huy cuộc xâm lăng đề nghị tiến đánh Lào, nước đồng minh với Việt Nam, để phân cắt Việt Nam làm hai và bao vây quân Việt Nam ở miền Bắc.
Mục tiêu là hủy diệt một phần lớn quân Việt Nam, với khả năng chiếm luôn Hà Nội.
Kế hoạch đó không được chấp nhận vì nó gây hại cho hình ảnh quốc tế của Trung Quốc.
Chính phủ Trung Quốc cũng để ý đến miền bắc của mình -- Liên Xô sẽ không cho họ đi quá xa.
Nhưng một mục tiêu lớn của kế hoạch đó -- hủy diệt Việt Nam thật nhiều để nước này không còn có thể thách thức Trung Quốc -- đã được thực hiện.
Bài báo này tự hào nói quân Trung Quốc đã nã đại bác không thương tiếc trên đường tấn công, và khi lui quân thì cũng phá hủy không thương tiếc.
Bài báo viết: "Còn nhiều hơn những gì bọn Mỹ làm với Việt Nam."
Tổng Bí thư Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam Lê Duẩn bị sốc không nói nên lời khi ông ta nhìn thấy những thiệt hại do quân Trung Quốc để lại.
Dĩ nhiên, những câu chuyện này không hoàn toàn mới cho tôi, nhất là phần nói về sự phá hủy.
Nhưng điều làm tôi không thoải mái là giọng điệu các bài viết trên mạng: nó phấn khởi nhưng cũng tiếc nuối rằng đã không phá đủ và vì thế mà Việt Nam một lần nữa đang làm Trung Quốc giận dữ, thách thức Trung Quốc ở Biển Nam Trung Hoa.
Những bài viết này không đại diện cho toàn thể nhân dân Trung Quốc, nhưng chừng nào đa số còn im lặng, chúng sẽ còn lan tỏa và lây nhiễm vào con người.
Với vai trò cường quốc toàn cầu gia tăng của Trung Quốc và tình cảm dân tộc chủ nghĩa đi kèm, việc thiếu vắng tiếng nói đối lại thật đáng ngại.
Sau nhiều năm, hai câu hỏi về cuộc chiến vẫn chưa được trả lời.
Thứ nhất, vì sao Trung Quốc xâm lược Việt Nam năm 1979?
Câu trả lời của chính phủ Trung Quốc là Việt Nam khi ấy đang xâm lấn lãnh thổ Trung Quốc, Việt Nam đang hành hạ người Việt gốc Hoa, Việt Nam đồng minh với Liên Xô chống lại Trung Quốc, Việt Nam xâm lược Campuchia để lật đổ một chính phủ thân Trung Quốc.
Nhưng không có lý do nào ở trên thuyết phục chúng tôi về một cuộc chiến tàn khốc.
Một giải thích, mà tôi có xu hướng tin tưởng hơn, là Đặng Tiểu Bình muốn có cơ hội thiết lập sự lãnh đạo tối cao thông qua việc điều động quân đội và đạt thành tựu quân sự.
Câu hỏi thứ hai gây thắc mắc hơn: các xung đột biên giới không phải là hiếm, nhưng vì sao người Trung Quốc bộc lộ sự thù ghét người Việt như vậy trong một cuộc chiến biên giới?
Trong hai thập niên, họ đã là "đồng chí và anh em", và bỗng dưng được mô tả là kẻ thù xấu nhất.
Nhưng với Trung Quốc, điều này cũng đã từng xảy ra.
Người Nga được bảo là "anh em của chúng tôi" trong thập niên 1950 và rồi trở thành kẻ thù số một của Trung Quốc trong cuối thập niên 1960.
Ấn Độ là bạn thân của Trung Quốc trong thập niên 1950 nhưng Trung Quốc cũng đánh nhau với Ấn Độ vào đầu thập niên 1960.
Chính sách ngoại giao của Trung Quốc bị lung lạc bởi nhu cầu chính trị của chính thể độc đảng, và ngày nay, nó cũng gần như y như vậy.

Thăm Hà Nội
Gần đây tôi có chuyến thăm Hà Nội.
Tôi gặp nhiều trí thức và người dân bình thường.
Hiện là một giáo sư người Mỹ gốc Hoa, tôi được tiếp xúc với góc nhìn của người Việt về câu chuyện, đặc biệt là những câu chuyện nhớ về sự tàn nhẫn của quân Trung Quốc trong cuộc chiến, mà ban đầu tôi không muốn tin vì chúng quá tàn nhẫn.
Nhưng tôi, từ kinh nghiệm sống ở đất nước Trung Hoa cộng sản, đã học được rằng dù sốc và vô lý đến đâu, nhiều câu chuyện về chính thể này sau đó trở nên đáng tin và rồi trở thành một phần sự thật lịch sử.
Đây là một ví dụ, mặc dù nó hơi cách xa năm 1979.
Tôi quan tâm làm thế nào Trung Quốc của Mao áp đặt nhiều chính sách lên Bắc Việt Nam, đặc biệt là cải cách ruộng đất, cải cách tư tưởng, và nhiều chính sách trí thức - văn hóa trong thập niên 1950.
Tôi lờ mờ nhận biết rằng trong nhiều trường hợp, các chính sách của Trung Quốc bị bắt phải thực hiện. Nhưng như thế nào và trong những vụ cụ thể nào?
Trong chuyến thăm, có người giới thiệu với tôi cái tên Nguyễn Thị Năm.
Bà Năm từng là nhân vật nữ thuộc hàng lãnh đạo trong công cuộc tranh đấu chống Pháp.
Gia đình bà giàu có nhưng bà tham gia cách mạng, dùng tiền gia đình hỗ trợ cách mạng.
Nhưng sau khi có độc lập, chính sách cải cách ruộng đất của Trung Quốc ở Bắc Việt cần có nạn nhân.
Bà bị đưa ra, và các cố vấn Trung Quốc cố gắng thuyết phục Hồ Chí Minh rằng cần xử bắn bà để làm gương cho phong trào.
Có nhiều người giống bà đã tham gia cách mạng dân tộc, nhưng nay họ trở thành vô dụng, hoặc có ích theo một nghĩa khác.
Hồ Chí Minh rất miễn cưỡng, nhưng các cố vấn Trung Quốc thúc ép.
Và bà Nguyễn Thị Năm đã bị tử hình như người Trung Quốc muốn.
Trong cải cách ruộng đất ở Việt Nam, hàng trăm, hàng ngàn "phú nông" và những người ủng hộ họ đã bị bắn, bị tù hay đơn giản là bị đánh chết -- một thói tục phổ biến trong cải cách ruộng đất của Trung Quốc trước đó.
Là sử gia viết về chính thể dạng này, người ta phải sẵn sàng cho việc đụng mặt, vào bất kỳ lúc nào, những hành vi con người như thế mà vốn thật khó giải thích nếu chiếu theo lý tính thông thường.

Japan's New Leader Noda Sparks Wariness in Chauvinistic China

By MALCOLM FOSTER

Yoshihiko Noda, new president of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, bows after Japan's lower house elected Noda as the country's new prime minister, at the parliament in Tokyo Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2011.
TOKYO -- Yoshihiko Noda was elected Tuesday as Japan's sixth prime minister in five years, facing such a staggering array of domestic problems that the last thing he needs is a sour relationship with China, his  country's biggest trading partner.

Yet Noda is being viewed warily in China, whose media are playing up his comments supporting a Tokyo shrine honoring World War II dead, and that Beijing's military buildup is creating regional unease.
"'Hawk' to become Japan's new prime minister," said the nationalistic Global Times.
Regarded at home as a smart but bland fiscal conservative from humble roots, Noda replaces the unpopular Naoto Kan, who quit amid widespread criticism over his administration's handling of the tsunami and nuclear disasters.
A former finance minister, Noda will likely focus on those immense challenges, as well as reviving the stagnant economy and reducing Japan's massive national debt.
But in China, the media is portraying Noda as a right-wing nationalist and has predicted a rocky period for China-Japan relations.
Even more liberal newspapers highlighted his comments, first made in 2005 and reiterated earlier this month, that Japanese wartime leaders enshrined at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine should no longer be seen as criminals.
Yasukuni visits by postwar politicians have often enraged chauvinistic Chinese, who see the shrine as a glorification of militarism and a symbol of Tokyo's failure to fully atone for its past imperialism.
When former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi used to visit the shrine it triggered rage and a five-year chill in relations with China.
Japan, long used to being the region's dominant power, has been unsettled by China's fast-accelerating power over the past decade, even as the countries — now the world's second- and third-largest economies — built thriving commercial relations.
In this rivalry, Beijing has often appeared to test Tokyo's mettle, at times taking advantage of political transitions in Japan.
On Monday, after Noda was elected head of the ruling Democratic party, setting up Tuesday's parliamentary vote, China's official news agency warned him not to ignore Beijing's "core interests."
In a harshly worded editorial, Xinhua demanded Noda not visit Yasukuni and said Tokyo must recognize China's claim over Japanese islands in the East China Sea known as Senkaku.
Ties between the countries deteriorated sharply last year when a Chinese fishing boat captain was arrested
— and later released — by Japan after his boat collided with a Japanese patrol boat in Japanese waters near the islands.
The territorial dispute could flare again.
Last week, two Chinese fisheries patrol boats sailed into contested waters near the islands, drawing a rebuke from Tokyo.
Noda made a veiled reference to China in comments Saturday during a joint news conference by the five candidates for the prime minister's job: "Among our neighboring countries, there is a nation that is mixing up economic growth and nationalism."
He added that Japan "has instilled a weak image when it comes to territorial issues. We do not need to make advances, but we should be prepared in case something happens."
Noda, 54, and the rest of Kan's Cabinet chose not to visit Yasukuni this year, and analysts in Japan believe Noda is unlikely to do so as prime minister, or make any statements about Japan's wartime past.
"There's no way he is going to take some action on this," said Naoto Nonaka, a political science professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo.
"There's too much else to do."
Koichi Nakano, political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, said Noda is likely to play down his past comments.
"A lot of people learned a lesson from the Koizumi 'ice age,'" Nakano said.
"He has no interest in complicating his situation by creating an acrimonious atmosphere when he needs to cooperate with Asian nations to get out of Japan's economic quagmire."
China has overtaken the U.S. as Japan's biggest trading partner, doing $176 billion worth of trade for
the first half of the year.
As China's middle class grows, the country's burgeoning market holds vast potential for Japanese exporters. 

Japan also is striving to draw more Chinese tourists.
Liang Yunxiang, a Japan "expert" at Peking University, said historical and territorial issues have been perennial sore spots, and so personalities and attitudes of leaders matter in whether these problems affect the broader relationship.
"Yoshihiko Noda has not been friendly to China, so it's not a good start," he threatened.
As is standard practice, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao sent a formal telegram congratulating Noda and
urging that both sides work together to promote cooperation.
The mass circulation Asahi newspaper in Japan noted Tuesday that his past comments "that the "A-class war criminals" are not legally guilty of war crimes is causing some waves in China as he is taking the helm."

Chinese tycoon seeks to buy tract of Iceland

By Andrew Ward in Stockholm and Leslie Hook in Beijing

A Chinese tycoon plans to buy a vast tract of Icelandic land for a $100m tourism project which critics fear could give Beijing a strategic foothold in the North Atlantic.
Huang Nubo, a real estate investor and former Chinese government official, has struck a provisional deal to acquire 300 square kilometres of wilderness in north-east Iceland where he plans to build an eco-tourism resort and golf course.
Opponents have questioned why such a large amount of land – equal to about 0.3 per cent of Iceland’s total area – is needed to build a hotel.
They warned that the project could provide cover for China’s geopolitical interests in the Atlantic island nation and Nato member.
While home to just 320,000 people, Iceland occupies a strategically important location between Europe and North America and has been touted as a potential hub for Asian cargo should climate change open Arctic waters to shipping.
The deal has been agreed with private landowners but must still be approved by the Icelandic government, which owns part of the land, which is known as Grímsstadir á Fjöllum.
Ögmundur Jónasson, the Icelandic interior minister, who would be responsible for the decision, signalled concern over the plan.
“China has been very active in buying up land around the world so we need to be aware of the international ramifications,” he told the Financial Times.
In addition to its proximity to potential deepwater ports, the land also includes one of Iceland’s biggest glacial rivers.
Mr Huang, who previously worked at China’s Central Propaganda Department and the Ministry of Construction, has sought to reassure Icelanders over his intentions by pledging to renounce all rights to water running through the land.
People familiar with the deal said that Mr Huang had agreed to pay almost IKr1bn ($8.8m) for the land and planned to invest IKr10bn-IKr20bn in the tourism project.
The Icelandic foreign ministry said it “welcomed foreign investment and strengthening of tourism,” but cautioned that a thorough study would be needed before the project could go ahead.
Reykjavik is keen for inward investment as it battles to recover from its 2008 banking crisis.
Mr Huang is ranked by Forbes as China’s 161st richest man, with a net worth of $890m.
His company, Zhongkun Group, owns resorts and tourist facilities across China.
He describes himself as a poet and adventurer, having climbed Mount Everest and reached the north and south poles.
People close to him say his interest in Iceland is motivated by his love of nature rather than geopolitics.
Mr Huang has had ties with Iceland since sharing a room with an Icelandic student, Hjorleifur Sveinbjornsson, at Peking University during the 1970s.
Mr Sveinbjornsson, whose wife is a former Icelandic foreign minister and Reykjavik mayor, is acting as Mr Huang’s informal representative in Iceland.
China last year agreed a $500m currency swap deal with Iceland which was widely viewed as a sign of Beijing’s desire to build links with Reykjavik.
The two countries are already discussing co-operation on Arctic shipping as part of Beijing’s broader interest in the potential to ship goods to Europe and the US east coast across the North Pole as Arctic ice recedes.
The land that Mr Huang intends to buy is in the vicinity of a deepwater port, although the land itself does not include any coastline, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Chinese general's sensitive spy talk leaked online

Video of general talking about cases kept secret because they were too embarrassing to make public appears on YouTube
Associated Press

Footage of General Jin discussing sensitive spy cases was leaked on to YouTube and posted on Chinese websites. 
Footage of a Chinese general discussing sensitive spying cases has been leaked on to YouTube in what appears to be an embarrassing failure of secrecy for the usually tightlipped military.
It was not clear when or where Major General Jin Yinan made the comments and China's defence ministry did not respond to questions about the video.
Calls to the National Defence University, where Jin is a lecturer, went unanswered.
While some of the cases had been announced before, few details had been released, while others involving the military had been entirely secret.
Among those Jin discussed was that of former ambassador to South Korea Li Bin, who was sentenced to seven years for corruption.
Jin said Li had been discovered passing secrets to South Korea that compromised China's position in North Korean nuclear disarmament talks, but the allegations were too embarrassing to make public and graft charges were brought instead.
"In all the world, what nation's ambassador serves as another country's spy?" Jin said.
Similar treatment was handed out to the former head of China's nuclear power programme, Kang Rixin, who was sentenced to life in prison last November on charges of corruption.
Jin said Kang had in fact peddled secrets about China's civilian nuclear programme to a foreign nation that he did not identify, but that was considered too sensitive to bring up in court.
Kang, a member of the ruling Communist party's powerful central committee as well as its disciplinary arm, was one of the highest-ranking officials ever to be involved in spying, Jin said.
His arrest dealt a huge shock to the party leadership, Jin said.
"The party centre was extremely nervous. They ordered top-to-bottom inspections and spared no individual," he said.
Jin also talked about Tong Daning, an official from China's social security fund, who was executed in 2006 after being convicted on charges of spying for rival Taiwan.
Jin said Tong had passed information to the island's leaders about China's currency regime, allowing them to avoid massive losses due to exchange rate changes.
Among the cases involving military personnel, Jin said that of Colonel Xu Junping, who defected to the US in 2000, did not involve the loss of any technical secrets.
Instead, Xu relayed to the Americans his knowledge of the military leadership's personalities, attitudes and habits gleaned from many years accompanying the top brass on trips abroad, Jin said.
The video was also posted on Chinese websites, and while it was removed from most locations, screen shots, audio files and transcripts of Jin's comments could still be found on sites such as Sina Weibo's popular microblogging service.
Jin's presentation, complete with explanatory slides, was typical of how such cases are discussed at private sessions as a warning to Communist party cadres not to be lured into espionage or corruption.
The leaked video appeared to have been from an official recording rather than filmed by a member of the audience.
Authorities heavily police the Chinese internet but can only remove objectionable content after it is posted and have no control over what appears elsewhere.
While the Chinese are enthusiastic users of social media, YouTube and Facebook are blocked inside China and their Chinese equivalents are required to inspect all content and remove politically sensitive material before being ordered to do so.

China's Nuclear-Power Chief: A Spy?

By Evan Osnos

When Kang Rixin, the head of China’s nuclear-power program, was sentenced to life in prison last November for taking bribes, it was a troubling enough piece of news.
Given the speed, scale, and ambition of China’s nuclear program—it has more plants in the planning stage than the rest of the world combined—it did not project reassuring evidence that China has shielded this crucial program from the kind of construction-corruption that has dogged the high-speed rail system.
Today brought startling news.
Midway through a video leaked on the Chinese Web, a senior military official explains previously unknown details about major spying cases uncovered in recent years, including the fact that bribery was hardly the most serious accusation against Kang.
He is accused of selling secrets about China’s nuclear power industry to foreign countries.
“Kang’s case can’t be made public because the damage he has done by selling secrets was a lot more devastating than economic losses,” Major General Jin Yinan said in the video.
If true, it would make Kang one of China’s highest-ranking figures to be accused of spying. (Before his downfall, he was a member of the Communist Party’s elite Central Committee and the Central Disciplinary Committee.)
Before we start conjuring images of a Chinese A. Q. Khan, it’s worth remembering that Kang had no (known) involvement with the weapons programs, and that selling secrets is a flexible notion in China; accusations that might lead to charges of simple bribery one day can be upgraded to divulging “business secrets” the next.
But the reason for concern is what this says about the technical and management rigor surrounding the world’s most ambitious nuclear program.
If the boss—a man who has already gained access to the highest ranks of political and economic power—was willing to sell access, what were the frustrated staff beneath him willing do to do?
Related: The Guardian is reporting this week that a leaked U.S. cable out of Beijing says that China “has ‘vastly increased’ the risk of a nuclear accident by opting for cheap technology that will be 100 years old by the time dozens of its reactors reach the end of their lifespans.”

Ai Weiwei attacks China over justice and human rights

Recently freed artist breaks his silence after his release, attacking Beijing in Newsweek article
Reuters

New pictures of Ai Weiwei in his Beijing studio. Ai has criticised the Chinese government in a Newsweek article.
The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has launched a scathing attack on the Chinese government after his release from secretive detention in late June, accusing officials of denying citizens their basic rights.
In a strongly worded commentary published late on Sunday on the website of Newsweek magazine, Ai – whose detention prompted an international outcry – branded the capital, Beijing, as "a city of violence".
He criticised the government for rampant corruption, the judicial system and its policy on migrant workers, all issues that have inflamed social tensions in China.
Ai's commentary signals his growing impatience with the strict terms of his release from 81 days in captivity in late June.
It also presents Beijing with a direct challenge on how to handle the country's most famous social critic.
"Every year millions come to Beijing to build its bridges, roads, and houses… They are Beijing's slaves," Ai wrote.
"They squat in illegal structures, which Beijing destroys as it keeps expanding. Who owns houses? Those who belong to the government, the coal bosses, the heads of big enterprises. They come to Beijing to give gifts – and the restaurants and karaoke parlours and saunas are very rich as a result."
Under the conditions of Ai's release, he is not allowed to be interviewed by journalists, meet foreigners, use the internet or interact with human rights advocates for a year, a source familiar with Ai's detention told Reuters.
Despite this, the artist has spoken out on his Twitter account on behalf of detained dissidents and his associates who were also held during his incarceration.
They have since been released.
"Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city… Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business," he wrote in Newsweek.
"But they deny us basic rights."
When contacted by Reuters on Monday, Ai confirmed he had written the commentary, saying it was one based on his impressions of living in Beijing, adding that he did not know what the consequences, if any, would be.
He declined to elaborate, saying he was still restricted from speaking to journalists under the terms of his release.
The 54-year-old endured intense psychological pressure during his detention and still faces the threat of prison for alleged subversion, according to the source.
In the commentary, Ai alluded to his time in detention, saying "the worst thing about Beijing is that you can never trust the judicial system".
"My ordeal made me understand that on this fabric, there are many hidden spots where they put people without identity," Ai wrote.
"Only your family is crying out that you're missing. But you can't get answers from the street communities or officials, or even at the highest levels, the court or the police or the head of the nation.
"My wife has been writing these kinds of petitions every day [while he was in custody], making phone calls to the police station every day. Where is my husband? Just tell me where my husband is. There is no paper, no information."
Ai's detention provoked an outcry from many western governments about China's tightening grip on dissent that started in February, when dozens of human rights activists and dissidents were detained and arrested.
The artist, famed for his work on the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium in Beijing, was the most internationally well-known of those detained, and his family has repeatedly said he was targeted for his outspoken criticism of censorship and Communist party controls.
When Ai was released on bail, Beijing said he remained under investigation for suspicion of economic crimes, including tax evasion.
Ai told Reuters earlier that he had not received a formal notice from the authorities to explain the allegation.
In the Newsweek article, Ai wrote that none of his art represents Beijing.
"The Bird's Nest – I never think about it," he wrote.
"After the Olympics, the common folks don't talk about it because the Olympics did not bring joy to the people."
He wrote about the "secretive way" people came up to him in a park last week, giving him a thumbs up or patting him on the shoulder.
"No one is willing to speak out. What are they waiting for? They always tell me, 'Weiwei, leave the nation, please.' Or 'Live longer and watch them die,'" Ai wrote.
He previously had said he would never emigrate, but the latest article left that in question.
"Either leave, or be patient and watch how they die," he wrote.
"I really don't know what I'm going to do."

China's Economic Sword

By Jed Babbin

According to a new Pentagon report, the Beijing regime thinks the first two decades of the 21st Century are a “strategic window of opportunity” in which China’s “comprehensive national power” can be enhanced.
A close reading of that report reveals that the continuing US economic crisis is a principal reason for that belief.
The facts that our economic slump has gone on so long is, in China’s view, a validation of China’s strategy of conventional and asymmetric force buildup at a time when China is a rising power and America is apparently in decline.
The prolonged weakness of the US economy is a double-edged sword for the Communist Chinese.
Though they are advantaged by the Obama administration’s increasing unwillingness to fund our defense, our economic instability threatens one of the foundations of the regime.
As the Pentagon report says, continued economic development is, to Beijing, a “bedrock of social stability” as well as the means of underwriting the rapid expansion of Chinese military power.
They believe that any economic slump could undermine their hold on domestic power.
Though we believe that China’s population would not likely be as dangerous to Beijing as its Egyptian equivalent was to the Mubarak regime, the Chinese rulers – and those likely to succeed them soon -- are of the opposite opinion. (We have to keep in mind that Hu Jintao, and his contemporaries, were young leaders at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Hu was the first party official stationed abroad to congratulate the men who ordered that slaughter. Their view of the regime’s instability is almost certainly shared by their likely successors.)
According to House Armed Services Committee sources briefed by the Pentagon, any threat to the continued growth of the Chinese economy is considered of ultimate strategic importance to Beijing.
China’s economy -- threatened by our economic weakness and Europe’s -- faces a rapid contraction caused in part by a diminution of trade.
But the other side of China’s economic sword poses a great danger to the United States.
China watchers have, for nearly a decade, observed Beijing’s enormous military buildup with concern.
It’s been more than 500 years since China built a deep-water navy, and it’s well on the way to having a force that can effectively block US intervention in defense of allies such as Taiwan and Japan.
China’s air forces are also building to an effective area denial force.
The Chinese chose to unveil their new stealthy J-20 fighter while then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates was visiting China, a gesture timed to cause Gates – and the United States – to lose face.
The Chinese see themselves as a rising power and America as a global has-been.
And they believe that is true in both the military and economic spheres.
However great China’s conventional military buildup is (and we don’t really know because their military spending is well-concealed) China’s dedication to the development of asymmetric weapons is even more intense.
In cyberwar, China is probably the world leader and is, as the report cites, responsible for a massive cyberespionage effort.
Though the Pentagon report alludes to the likelihood that China is behind major cyberattacks (principally espionage) against the US and other nations, other sources have told me repeatedly that China is clearly behind those and other cyberattacks – some successful – which were aimed at disrupting of destroying US classified computer networks.
China is also developing more exotic weapons such as “kinetic kill” weapons designed to destroy satellites and even directed-energy weapons intended for the same mission.
It is in these areas – cyberwar and anti-satellite weapons, among others -- that American economic weakness may be having the greatest effect.
As one source told me, the Pentagon is enormously concerned that we are on the wrong side of the economic equation: it’s far more expensive to defend satellites and computer networks against the weapons China is developing than it is for China to develop them.
Because defense is a lot more expensive than offense, our weak economy and President Obama’s affinity for continued military spending cuts threaten our ability to build the defenses we need.
The president, months ago, credited the departing Bob Gates with $400 billion in defense cuts and set the goal of another $400 billion in cuts over ten years.
Secretary Panetta is now conducting a study on how to achieve those cuts.
Panetta’s study suffers the same defect that Gates’ earlier work did.
It begins with the number to be cut rather than with an assessment of the threats the armed forces are expected to deter or defeat, including China’s cyberwar threat and its development of anti-satellite weapons.
The direct effect of further US defense cuts is the validation of China’s asymmetric warfare strategy.
Their offensive capabilities are affordable while our defensive capabilities are not.
To the extent we abandon those capabilities, we also abandon the battlefield to those who choose to oppose us.
The latest administration action seems to push the Pentagon harder for the new round of cuts.
OMB Director Jacob Lew, in an August 17 letter to all department heads, said “Unless your agency has been given explicit direction otherwise by OMB, your overall agency [budget] request for 2013 should be at least 5 percent below your 2011 enacted discretionary appropriation. As discussed at the recent cabinet meetings, your 2013 budget submission should also identify additional discretionary funding reductions that would bring your request to a level that is at least 10 percent below your 2011 enacted discretionary appropriation.”
The Defense Department, according to congressional sources, has not received any “explicit direction otherwise” and is preparing multiple options for the White House to consider in meeting those goals for further defense spending cuts.
In about ten days, President Obama will return from his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard to deliver another speech on the economy.
From many leaks to the press and trial balloons floated by the White House, Obama’s “new” policies are likely to be little more than more “stimulus” spending, small tax cuts and nothing to restore growth to America’s economy.
Beijing will be listening closely.
They will not hear anything to dissuade them from the view that this century -- or at least the first two decades of it -- is theirs, not ours.

China's plan for secret detentions alarms rights activists

China proposes a change in its criminal code that would allow authorities to detain suspects for up to six months in a secret location. Such a measure will increase the risk of torture
By Barbara Demick

Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei waves from the entrance of his studio after being released on bail in Beijing.
A proposed change in the Chinese criminal code that would allow authorities to detain suspects for up to six months in a secret location is a dangerous step backward for the country, activists charged Saturday.
The change would effectively enshrine what has become a common practice for silencing dissidents, many of whom have disappeared for months without formal charges being filed.
Under the change, the suspects can be held without notice to their family members or lawyers.
The proposed change in the law was disclosed earlier in the week in the Legal Daily.
"This new amendment will legalize 'forced disappearance,'" Beijing attorney Liu Xiaoyuan tweeted Saturday. Liu was briefly detained himself around the same time as his friend and client Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist whose disappearance earlier this year made international headlines.
Under current law, a person suspected of a crime but not formally charged could be put under house arrest for six months.
The amendment would allow the "residential detention" to be moved to an undisclosed location in "special cases involving national security, terrorism and major bribery, if detaining the suspect at his home will put an obstacle on solving the case," the legal newspaper reported.
The location would not be a "regular detention center or police station."
"If you are taking somebody elsewhere than a lawfully supervised place of detention without notice, it greatly increases the risk of torture," said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch.
Among the most notorious cases, Ai was held for 2-1/2 months without charge, most of the time without his family knowing his whereabouts.
His case didn't involve national security or terrorism, but tax evasion.
China is in the process of revising its criminal code, which has not had a major overhaul since the mid-1990s. Bits and pieces have been leaked to the media in recent days, some of them winning praise from human rights advocates.
For example, another revision would ban the use of evidence obtained by torture in criminal cases.
Family members of defendants also would not be compelled to testify against them.
"Rapid economic and social development, the public's growing awareness of democracy and the rule of law as well as an increase in the number of cases means that the law must be revised," Lang Sheng, an official drafting the revisions, told a committee of the National People's Congress during a hearing Wednesday, the state press reported.
Bequelin speculated that there might have been a political deal under which the Public Security Bureau swallowed the ban on torture on the condition that it be allowed the secret detentions.
"There are supposed to be some substantial improvements in the law," he said, "but this particular one [on detentions] seems to be a big step backwards, and a dangerous one at that."

China State TV Deletes Video That Led to Hacking Fears

By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — The main Chinese state television network has deleted from the Internet a video that some foreign military and Internet security analysts say implies China has engaged in hacking attacks on Web sites in the West.
The video was the July 16 episode of a program on China Central Television 7 called “Military Science and Technology.”
The episode, called “The Internet Storm is Coming,” was about cyberwarfare.
Western analysts this week began publicly scrutinizing a sequence that a narrator on the program says shows “many Internet attack methods.”
There is then a demonstration of one method: on the screen, what appears to be a human-operated cursor chooses a target Web site address, then hits a button that says “attack.”
Using a software application on screen, the cursor chooses a target Web site under a pull-down menu for “Falun Gong Web sites in North America.”
Falun Gong is a spiritual group that underwent persecution in the late 1990s in China and is now outlawed in the country.
In the CCTV program, the cursor selects an IP address of 138.26.72.17 as a target.
It is a defunct IP address at the University of Alabama.
But a screenshot of the page linked to that address that was archived on the Internet in 2000, shows an informational page associated with the Falun Gong.
It is unclear who set up the page.
An online article published on China SignPost on Wednesday by two military analysts, Andrew Erickson and Gabe Collins, said there were questions as to whether the television program was using a mock-up to demonstrate cyberwarfare, or whether it revealed real hacking software and an actual cyberattack.
The technology shown was at least a decade old, the authors wrote.
But “it is significant that an official Chinese state television channel showed even a symbolic representation of a cyberattack, particularly one on entities clearly located in a foreign sovereign nation,” they wrote.
Chinese officials deny repeated assertions by foreign cybersecurity experts and foreign governments that China is the source for many prominent and ambitious attacks.
The discussion among Western analysts over the July 16 episode and its significance began earlier this week, when links to screenshots of the episode circulated on the Internet.
By Friday, a video of that episode had been removed from a CCTV Web site that still has other recent episodes of “Military Science and Technology.”
CCTV has declined to comment.
There has been at least one notable example of the network using fake footage in a report on the military: In January, it tried to pass off a scene of a fighter jet getting blown to bits in the 1986 American action movie “Top Gun” as footage of a military training exercise done by the People’s Liberation Army.

China Announces New Top Official for Tibet

By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — Chinese leaders have appointed an ethnic Han official with political experience in central and eastern China to govern the vast region of Tibet, which remains a tense place because Tibetans bridle at rule by the Han.
Tibet is also an abiding flashpoint for criticism of China’s human rights record by Western nations.
The appointment of the official, Chen Quanguo, was announced Thursday by the Central Committee in Beijing.
Mr. Chen replaces Zhang Qingli, who had served about five years in his position, an average length of time for provincial officials.
Mr. Chen’s appointment appeared to be part of a standard reshuffling of senior provincial leaders ahead of a leadership succession in late 2012.
Mr. Zhang managed policies that led to protests and rioting by Tibetans in March 2008, and he oversaw, at the behest of the central government, a harsh crackdown afterward in which monasteries were shuttered, monks and other Tibetans were put into “patriotic re-education” classes and camps, and paramilitary police were posted throughout Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
The official news reports on Mr. Chen’s appointment did not give any details on Mr. Zhang’s new job.
Mr. Zhang is ethnic Han, like all party secretaries since the Communists first invaded Tibet in 1951.
The second-ranking official in Tibet, the governor, is usually an ethnic Tibetan.
Scholars of modern Tibet say some central government policy directives that worsen ethnic tensions accelerated under Mr. Zhang, leading to the rioting of 2008.
One policy encourages the heavy migration of ethnic Han to the Tibetan plateau to look for jobs; the Han often reap profits in shops, restaurants and other businesses during the warmer months, then go back to their lowland homes during the harsh Tibetan winters.
Another policy has been a tightening of religious practice and an intensified vilification of the Dalai Lama.
It was the suppression of a peaceful protest by monks against religious policies in March 2008 that led to the wider, violent rioting that swept through central Lhasa.
Mr. Chen gave a long speech Thursday afternoon in Lhasa to a gathering of party cadres from across the region, according to Tibet Daily, the official newspaper of the regional branch of the Communist Party. Perhaps somewhat notably, he did not mention the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet.
Chinese officials often publicly blame the Dalai Lama for the constant simmer of ethnic tensions in central Tibet and ethnic Tibetan areas in Sichuan and Qinghai provinces.
Around the time of the 2008 rioting, Mr. Zhang famously said the Dalai Lama was “a jackal clad in Buddhist monk’s robes.”
“I will resolutely carry on the central party committee’s instructions and policies regarding Tibet,” Mr. Chen said in his speech, according to Tibet Daily.
"I will be loyal to the leadership of Communist Party of China, to the communist system, to regional ethnic autonomy policies and to the development path with Chinese and Tibetan characteristics.”
He added: “The central task is economic development; the foundation is ethnic unity; the two priorities are development and stability; the focus is to improve livelihood.”
Mr. Chen is a native of Henan Province, graduated from Zhengzhou University in the provincial capital, and served most of his career in various posts around the province.
Mr. Chen was vice-governor of Henan during years when Li Keqiang was acting governor and governor there; Mr. Li is expected to become the prime minister of China next year.
From 2009 to his appointment this week to Tibet, Mr. Chen served as acting governor and governor of Hebei Province, which surrounds Beijing.
He also served as the deputy secretary of the party committees in both Henan and Hebei.

Chasing Rare Earths, Foreign Companies Expand in China

By KEITH BRADSHER

Flames leaping from an oven where phosphors are roasted for more than 20 hours at an Intematix plant in China.

White phosphors being prepared in small cups before they are baked.

A chemical engineer worked on creating an additive for phosphors at the Intematix Company.
CHANGSHU, China — China has long used access to its giant customer base and cheap labor as bargaining chips to persuade foreign companies to open factories within its borders.
Now, corporate executives say, it is using its near monopoly on certain minerals — in particular, scarce metals vital to products like hybrid cars, cellphones and energy-efficient light bulbs — to make it difficult for foreign manufacturers of high-tech materials to build or expand factories anywhere except China.
Companies that continue making their products outside the country must contend with tighter supplies and much higher prices for the materials because of steep taxes and other export controls imposed by China over the last two years.
Companies like Showa Denko and Santoku of Japan and Intematix of the United States are adding factory capacity in China this year instead of elsewhere because they need access to the scarce metals, known as rare earths.
“We saw the writing on the wall — we simply bought the equipment and ramped up in China to begin with,” said Mike Pugh, director of worldwide operations for Intematix, who said the company would have preferred to build its new factory near its Fremont, Calif., headquarters.
While seemingly obscure, China’s policy on rare earths appears to be directed by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself, according to Chinese officials and documents.
Mr. Wen, a geologist who studied rare earths at graduate school in Beijing in the 1960s, has led at least two in-depth reviews of rare earths this year at the State Council, China’s cabinet.
During a visit to Europe last autumn, he said that little happened on rare earth policy without him.
China’s tactics on rare earths violate global trade rules, according to governments and business groups around the world.
A panel of the World Trade Organization, the main arbiter of international trade disputes, found last month that China had broken the rules when it used virtually identical tactics to restrict access to other important industrial minerals.
China’s commerce ministry announced on Wednesday that it would appeal the ruling.
No formal case has yet been brought concerning rare earths because officials from affected countries are waiting to see the final resolution of the other case, which has already lasted more than two years.
Karel De Gucht, the European Union’s trade commissioner, cited the industrial minerals decision in declaring last month that, “in the light of this result, China should ensure free and fair access to rare earth supplies.”
Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the commerce ministry, reiterated at a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing that China believed that its mineral export policies complied with W.T.O. rules.
China’s legal position, outlined in W.T.O. filings, is that its policies qualify for an exception to international trade rules that allows countries to limit exports for environmental protection and to conserve scarce supplies.
But the W.T.O. panel has already rejected this argument for the other industrial minerals, on the grounds that China was only curbing exports and not limiting supplies available for use inside the country.
China mines 94 percent of the world’s rare earths and accounted for 60 percent of the world’s consumption by tonnage early this year.
But if factories continue to move to China at their current rate, China will represent 70 percent of global consumption by early next year, said Constantine E. Karayannopoulos, the chief executive of Neo Material Technologies, a Canadian company that is one of the largest processors in China of raw rare earths.
For the last two years, China has imposed quotas to limit exports of rare earths to about 30,000 tons a year. Before that, factories outside the country consumed nearly 60,000 tons a year.
China has also raised export taxes on rare earths to as much as 25 percent, on top of value-added taxes of 17 percent.
Rare earth prices have soared outside China as users have bid frantically for limited supplies.
Cerium oxide, a rare earth compound used in catalysts and glass manufacturing, now costs $110,000 a metric ton outside China.
That is more than four times the price in China, and up from $3,100 two years ago, according to Asian Metal, an industry data company based in Pittsburgh.
For most industrial products that are manufactured in China using rare earths and then exported, China imposes no quotas or export taxes, and frequently no value-added taxes, either.
Companies do that math, and many decide it is more cost-effective to move to China to get cheaper access to the metals.
“When we export materials such as neodymium from China, we have to pay high tariffs,” said Junichi Tagaki, a spokesman for Showa Denko, which announced last month that it would sharply expand its production of neodymium-based magnetic alloys, used in hybrid cars and computers, in southern China.
The company saves money by manufacturing in China instead of Japan because the alloys are subject to no Chinese export taxes or value-added taxes, he said.
Big chemical companies are also shifting to China the first stage in their production of rare earth catalysts used to refine oil into gasoline, diesel and other products.
They are moving after Chinese state-controlled companies grabbed one-sixth of the global market by offering sharply lower prices, mainly because of cheaper access to rare earths.
Chemical companies are also working on ways to cut the percentage of rare earths in catalysts while preserving the catalysts’ effectiveness.
Production of top-quality glass for touch-screen computers and professional-quality camera lenses, now done mostly in Japan, is also shifting to China because it requires rare earths.
Factories are moving despite worries about the theft of trade secrets.
Intematix takes elaborate precautions at a factory completed last month here in Changshu, 60 miles northwest of Shanghai, where the company manufactures the rare earth-based phosphors that make liquid-crystal displays and light-emitting diodes work.
While Intematix hired Chinese scientists to perfect the industrial processes here, only three know the complete chemical formulas.
China’s timing is excellent, said Dudley J. Kingsnorth, a longtime rare earth industry executive and consultant in Australia.
Mines being developed in the United States, Australia and elsewhere will start producing sizable quantities of rare earths in the next few years, so China seems to be using its leverage now to force companies to move.
“They’re making the most of it, and they’re obviously having some success,” he said.
Until Western governments, business groups and media began pointing out the W.T.O. issues, Chinese officials had repeatedly stated that the rules were intended to encourage companies to move production to China.
They switched to emphasizing environmental protection as the trade issues became salient.
China stepped up enforcement this summer of mining limits and pollution standards for the rare earth industry, which has reduced supplies and pushed up prices in China, although not as much as for overseas buyers.
The crackdown may help China argue to the W.T.O. that it is limiting output for its own industries.
But other countries are likely to say that the crackdown is temporary and that previous crackdowns have been short-lived.
Charlene Barshefsky, the former United States trade representative who set many of the terms of China’s entry to the W.T.O. in 2001, wrote in an e-mail that one problem was that W.T.O. panels did not have the power to issue injunctions.
So countries can maintain policies that violate trade rules until a panel rules against them and any appeal has failed.
Even then, the W.T.O. can order a halt to the offending practice, but it usually cannot require restitution for past practices except in cases involving subsidies, which are not directly involved in the rare earth dispute.
China is offering carrots as well as sticks to persuade foreign companies to move factories to China.
Under China’s green industry policies, the municipal government of Changshu let Intematix move into a newly built, 124,000-square-foot industrial complex near a highway and pay no rent for the first three years.
Intematix pays $400 to $500 a month (2,500 to 3,000 renminbi) for skilled factory workers like Wang Yiping, the 33-year-old foreman on duty on a recent morning here.
It pays $500 to $600 a month (3,000 to 3,500 renminbi) for young, college-educated chemical engineers like Yang Lidan, a 26-year-old woman who examined rare earth powders under an electron scanning microscope in a nearby lab.
It was also relatively cheap to buy the factory’s 52-foot-long blue furnaces, through which rare earth powders move on extremely slow conveyor belts while superheated to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
With many Chinese suppliers competing, Intematix paid 10 to 20 percent of American equipment prices, said Han Jiaping, the factory’s vice president of engineering.
Still, Mr. Pugh said that the company’s decision to build the factory in China was based not on costs but on reliable access to rare earths, without worrying about quotas or export taxes.
“I think this is what the Chinese government wanted to happen,” he said.

An Investor's Guide to Buying Influence in China

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

BEIJING — Chinese are masters of “guanxi,” or connections, using the art of relationships — and its close companion, corruption — to secure everything from safe childbirth to a prestigious burial, taking in education, jobs, a fancy home and a Porsche Cayenne S.U.V. along the way.
That’s the popular wisdom, held by many Chinese and non-Chinese alike.
“Chinese people are good at guanxi,” said the novelist Fu Shi, whose real name is Hu Gang.
“Of course, it’s not just a Chinese speciality. It exists in the West, in the United States, too. But in China, it’s just deeper.”
So why did Mr. Fu write “Chinese Guanxi,” an advice book that teaches people how to cultivate social connections with dinners, expensive gifts and “red packets,” or cash-filled envelopes?
Don’t they already know?
“Some people are real masters at it, and some aren’t. Not everyone is an expert,” the novelist said by telephone from his home in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province.
“I want to help the weak ones advance and take away the oxygen from the experts,” he said.
For Mr. Fu is no mere peddler of corrupt ideals, with a dystopic solution to a serious problem.
His goal is to create a new kind of level playing field, where everyone benefits from an unfair arrangement by exploiting it equally.
In other words: Fight fire with fire, and corruption with ... more corruption.
The approach reflects what experts say is widespread cynicism about the chances of curbing corruption, in the absence of independent monitoring agencies or free news media.
“Corruption is growing all the time, because people and the country are growing richer,” said Liao Ran, program officer for China and South Asia at Transparency International, a nongovernmental anti-corruption organization based in Berlin.
Despite real efforts by the government, which include regular anti-corruption drives, detailed legislation and, in December, its first anti-corruption white paper, corruption is just part of the system, Mr. Liao said.
“The Communist Party can mobilize human and financial resources to do something. It has the institutional capacity to mobilize or to suppress,” Mr. Liao said by telephone.
“If it wanted to control corruption, it could do it.”
Yet, far from fearing corruption, he said, officials and businessmen “are afraid if you are not corrupt. They want you to be corrupt. If you don’t join in, if you want to be a good person, then you highlight their badness.”
Mr. Liao’s quixotic conclusion: Because of government involvement, “corruption in China is very serious and very rampant. And under control.”
Mr. Liao singled out the 2008 economic stimulus plan, which pumped 4 trillion renminbi, or $625 billion, into the economy, as a key source of rising corruption.
At least 700 billion renminbi went to the high-speed rail system in 2010 alone, with “no independent oversight or regulation,” he said.
The rail project may be “the biggest single financial scandal not just in China, but perhaps in the world,” said Mr. Liao.
Mr. Fu’s first piece of advice: Don’t be shy.
“You can use people at any time and any place. And they can use you, too,” he writes.
Chapters include: inviting powerful people to dinner (do not get your guest too drunk, he might forget what you talked about); giving red packets (de rigueur in hospitals); and giving gifts (present in person, shut the doors and windows first).
The book was published in June, and people flocked to book signings in Changsha in July, according to ent.changsha.cn, an entertainment news portal.
Mr. Fu’s first novel, “Green Porcelain,” released in 2006, about guanxi in an auction house, sold more than a million copies and was serialized by the Web portal Sina.com, earning Mr. Fu nearly 4 million renminbi, he wrote.
Corruption is morally ugly, Mr. Fu warned.
It also increases costs.
“A society that relies on guanxi to get things done is a scary place,” he said.
“When guanxi becomes stronger than rules, it’s dangerous to everyone. Why? Because if you use your guanxi, I’ll use my guanxi, and in the end the price of everything rises. When there are no rules, then everything is a competition, and those with more power win,” he said.
“Guanxi is alive and kicking,” said Sarah Köchling of Whatif, an innovation consulting company in Shanghai.
As China’s economy expands and becomes globalized, she said, people ask, “Is it going to reduce in importance?”
“I think it’s going to grow,” said Ms. Köchling, who has lived in Asia for more than 20 years.
Wrote Mr. Fu: “Everyone knows that 10 years ago, success was 30 percent guanxi and 70 percent talent. Today, to succeed, you can reverse the ratio. Seventy percent guanxi and 30 percent talent will do.”
Mr. Fu sees himself as both perpetrator and victim.
A former philosophy student, he left his job in the human resources department of his alma mater, Xiangtan University, in 1992.
“Had I remained a bureaucrat, I’d definitely have become corrupt,” he wrote.
“The reason is simple”: Virtually everyone offered bribes.
“You can resist temptation once,” he wrote, “but not a hundred or a thousand times.”
He went into business, eventually becoming the legal representative of an auction company, which he declined to name.
Bribing officials was part of the job.
By 2003, Mr. Fu had become enmeshed in a major corruption scandal involving justice system officials. “Friends” sold him out to the authorities. Jailed for 300 days, he thought up his first novel, he said. He has since published another, “Red Sleeve,” and plans two more — a guanxi quartet.
Each has a color in the title: green, red, black or white. Together, the words form a Chinese expression meaning “right and wrong.”
For now, absent real solutions, he says, the only hope is to publicize guanxi’s tricks. That way the socially skilled lose their advantage over the socially inept.
“Build a new set of rules,” he wrote. “Make these things more open, transparent, and, in this way, more free, equal and fair.”