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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2012
international
India, China to resume joint military exercises NEW DELHI: India and China announced yesterday they would resume joint military exercises after a four-year gap, a move designed to build trust in the often prickly relationship between the world’s two most populous nations. After Indian Defense Minister A K Antony hosted talks with his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie, the pair told reporters they had debated some of the main sources of friction between the two sides and agreed a series of measures. “We have decided that (to restart military exercises),” Antony told reporters after his meeting with Liang, the first Chinese defense minister to visit the Indian capital in eight years. “We covered a lot about the situation in the South Asia, Asia-Pacific region,” Antony said. “We had a very frank and heart-to-heart discussion on all the issues... including in the border areas.” The disputed border between India and China has been the subject of 14 rounds of fruitless talks since 1962, when the two nations fought a brief, bloody war over the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. China’s buildup of military infrastructure along the frontier has become a major source of concern for India, which increasingly sees Beijing
as a longer-term threat to its security than traditional rival Pakistan. The two Asian giants have had an
often fractious relationship over their shared border, and they halted joint military maneuvers after 2008 due to a
NEW DELHI: Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie (left) talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi yesterday. The defense ministers of India and China agreed yesterday to resume joint military exercises frozen two years ago, signaling a thaw between the Asian giants even as regional relations are tense over the disputed South China Sea. —AP
series of diplomatic spats including over visa issues. But Liang confirmed that there was now a mutual desire to move forward. “We have reached a consensus on high-level visits and exchange of personnel, maritime security... and cooperation between the two navies,” Liang said after yesterday’s talks. “I had candid and practical discussion with the defense minister,” he added. Liang’s four-day visit also comes amid Indian fears about increased Chinese activity in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh which New Delhi sees as within its sphere of influence. The presence of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in India is another cause of tensions between the two nations. While in Sri Lanka before arriving in India, Liang stressed that China sought only “harmonious co-existence” with other countries. Ian Anthony, an analyst with Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank, said improved ties between India and China would benefit the international community as a whole. “We have two countries which are emerging as important players in the international scene,” Anthony said by telephone from Stockholm. “Both have significant military capacities and both are going to play an important role in
the future in determining global security and stability and so it is for everybody’s benefit they have a positive and friendly bilateral relationship.” However SD Muni, a strategic analyst with the Singapore-based Institute of South Asian Studies, said that Beijing was reluctant to resolve its border disputes with India in a hurry. “The Chinese do not seem to be in a hurry to resolve the border issue and they have not moved much except for exchanging some maps so far as there seems to be a broad understanding to go slowly on the dispute,” he said. The first Indian and Chinese exercises were held in China’s Kunming region in 2007, and the second in India in 2008 but the third round was put off over claims that Beijing refused a visa to an Indian commander stationed in disputed Kashmir. Indian defense ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar said the two ministers had also agreed on measures designed to help combat rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia. “The two defense ministers agreed to work together to enhance mutual trust in the security field and continue to maintain peace and tranquility in the India, China border areas,” Kar said. —AFP
China Communist Party battles image problem Abuse, corruption scandals hit ruling party BEIJING: China has suspended an army officer after reports he assaulted a flight attendant spread like wildfire on the Internet, fuelling growing outrage against the misbehavior of some government and Communist Party officials. China’s leaders want to project a good image ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition later this year, but the Party is being hurt by
like microblog Sina Weibo, sparking a storm of angry comments. “Fang Daguo, you have shamed China in front of the world,” wrote one blogger. After the photos published by Zhou spread online, the local government was investigating further and had suspended the official, Xinhua said. The Global Times, a popular tabloid owned by the
unchecked and such things might have happened quite a lot without us knowing, but now people post things all the time... so a lot of things get revealed very quickly,” said Chen Minglu, a lecturer at the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre. “Civil society is slowly being formed in China... I think the people are learning more and more to be critical, they are learn-
BEIJING: Ling Jihua, a loyal aide and confidante to President Hu Jintao (top left) sits near Chinese President Hu Jintao (right) and Premier Wen Jiabao (left) as they attend a plenary session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. —AP reports of officials abusing their position. A series of corruption scandals, a reported orgy as well as incidents involving the offspring of senior leaders have not helped. On Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency said Fang Daguo, a military official from the southern city of Guangzhou, had been suspended after he and his wife, both smelling of alcohol, had an altercation with flight attendant Zhou Yumeng over the couple’s carry-on luggage. Xinhua initially said a preliminary investigation found Fang had apologized but not assaulted Zhou. The flight attendant published photos of her bruised arms and torn uniform on the Twitter-
Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, said reports of such incidents were spreading like wildfire online as conflict between citizens and local officials was increasing. “It’s hard to improve officials’ public image if they fail to stand up to public scrutiny and remain passive in communication with the people,” the paper said on Sunday. The party has always been image conscious, air brushing photos and strictly controlling the media to send the right message. However, the rise of the Internet and microblogs like Sina Weibo have posed a major challenge to the party’s control. “A lot of times in the past, power might have gone
ing how to criticize the power (holders) and they are more and more keen to do so.” LEADERSHIP CHANGE David Zweig, a Chinese politics expert at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the Communist Party has always been more sensitive to public opinion around times of leadership change. “The key question is whether this is a revolution where websites and microblogs will change China forever or whether it is something that only works around the time of the Party Congress,” he said. Unfortunately for the party, officials are giving plenty of ammunition to
China’s Internet users, who are quick to paint them as callous and out of touch with the people. This year was already shaping up to be a rough one for the Communist Party’s image, with the escape from illegal house arrest and flight into exile of blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng and the downfall of Politburo member Bo Xilai, whose wife was found guilty of murdering a British businessman. Last month, an official at the Shaanxi province’s work safety department was caught on camera smiling broadly at the scene of a fiery bus crash that killed 36 people. China’s net surfers have since turned up the heat on him over a collection of luxury watches noticed on his wrist in photos. Luxury sports cars also have made ready targets, after a deadly Ferrari crash in March was said by some sources to have involved the son of a senior official and two young women. Sensitive to perceptions that children of top party officials live privileged lifestyles, the details of the crash remain shrouded in mystery. Last month, a county government in Anhui province had to deny that participants in photos of an orgy posted online were local officials. Another incident that has received much attention online is the abuse and threats hurled at a traffic policeman by a man identified by Weibo users as a local party official in the northeastern province of Liaoning who was pulled over. “F-k your mother! You dare check my car? If you aren’t killed today I will have joined the Party for nothing,” the official was quoted as saying in posts accompanied by pictures of a crowd supposedly witnessing the incident and a policeman with his shirt ripped. The online reaction has been vehement. “If (the official) doesn’t die, the party just might,” said Weibo user MingJun3488. Chen Ziming, an independent scholar of politics in Beijing, said newspapers were frightened to publicize these incidents for fear of punishment, but Internet users aren’t affected in the same way. “Local governments haven’t caught up. If they think they can suppress it, they are going to try. But Internet users increasingly won’t tolerate this,” he said. —Reuters
ORISSA: An Indian coal worker’s child carries his younger sibling as he stands near coal dust at a coal factory near Chandikhol in Orissa, India. —AP
India police raid coal companies NEW DELHI: Indian police yesterday opened a probe into five coal companies after raiding premises across the country over the alleged misallocation of lucrative mining rights. Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) spokeswoman Dharini Mishra said that 30 premises had been visited as detectives examined whether coal companies were guilty of cheating in a scandal that has rocked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “ We have registered an FIR (First Information Report) after conducting raids in 10 cities,” Mishra told AFP, adding that coal company offices in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata had been targeted. The FIR, which is a written report representing the first stage of a police enquiry, says the companies are being investigated for cheating and criminal conspiracy. Mishra declined to name the companies involved but local TV channel NDTV said two of the firms named in the report had links with a Congress parliamentarian from the western state of Maharashtra. The CBI is set to probe whether some of the firms were set up only to win the coal blocks allocated by the government before selling them on to a third-party at massive profit. An official auditor ’s report last month criticized the gifting away of coal blocks, instead of auctioning them to the highest bidder, and said the process of selecting companies “lacked transparency and objectivity”. Private operators who won coal blocks without competition enjoyed “financial
gains to the tune of 1.86 trillion rupees ($33.4 billion)” since 2004, some of which should have gone to the government, the auditor claimed. Singh’s coalition government, led by the left-leaning Congress party, has been beset by a string of corruption cases since re-election in 2009 and the latest allegations of mismanagement have led to renewed pressure on him. The coal scandal implicates the 79-year-old directly because he served as coal minister as well as prime minister from 2004-2009. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other opposition parties have forced parliament to be adjourned daily over the issue and have demanded the prime minister’s resignation. The BJP welcomed yesterday’s raids while insisting that allocations of all the coal blocks should be cancelled immediately. “It is a good development. Taking a cue from this, the government should also cancel the coal block allocations,” BJP leader Gopinath Munde told reporters after a meeting of the party’s top brass in New Delhi. Singh has strongly rejected charges over the coal scandal, saying the auditor’s findings were not supported by facts. His office refused to comment on the latest development, but the coal minister said the move by the CBI should put an end to speculation over the impartiality of the probe. “Those who allege CBI works on government instructions, they should answer now how they feel about the CBI action,” said Jaiswal. —AFP
Students protest over ‘brainwashing’ classes HONG KONG: Hong Kong students and teachers protested yesterday for a sixth straight day against plans to introduce Chinese patriotism classes, as political tensions rise days ahead of legislative polls. Protesters at the government headquarters said they would not vote for parties that supported “national education”, which they say is a bid to brainwash children with Chinese Communist Party propaganda. “I feel national education is an important issue because it could affect many generations of children’s education,” second year university student Cheung Nga-lam said at the demonstration, which began on Thursday.
“The new Legislative Council members will definitely have an influence on the issue because whatever they say affects society.” The former British colony goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a new 70-seat legislature, but power will continue to reside with the pro-Beijing executive appointed by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Leung has ignored protesters’ calls for a meeting and refused to abandon plans to implement the new education policy, which schools can adopt voluntarily from this week and will become compulsory by 2016. “We are willing to talk to the anti-national education parties, but the prerequisite of the dia-
logue cannot be either to withdraw or not to withdraw,” Leung told reporters. Most schools have said they will not introduce the subject this year and want to see more details about how it should be taught. The government says the curriculum is important in fostering a sense of national belonging and identity, amid rising anti-Beijing sentiment in the semi-autonomous southern city of seven million people. But critics say the lessons extol the virtues of one-party rule and gloss over events like the bloody Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989, and the mass starvation and extrajudicial killings of Mao’s Cultural
Revolution. The protests have swelled in number from a few hundred in the mornings when students are in class, to several thousand at night. Up to 40,000 joined the rally on Saturday despite heavy rain, organisers said. It was the second mass demonstration against the education policy in two months, after up to 90,000 people took to the streets in July. A handful of students and teachers have gone on hunger strike to drive home their opposition to the plan. One woman was hospitalized yesterday after refusing to eat for several days. There have also been calls for teachers and students to boycott classes. “People are extremely interested in this
issue so it is impossible for it to be discussed behind closed doors by a small representative body,” said hunger striker Wong Hak-lim, a 56-year-old high school vice-principal. Democratic Party lawmaker James To called on Leung to “immediately withdraw the package”. “It’s my view that the government isn’t genuine and really wants to brainwash children because they think the Hong Kong people aren’t patriotic enough,” he said at an election forum on Monday. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but maintains its own independent legal system which guarantees civil liberties not seen on the mainland.—AFP