Why the global consultants want to see more Asian megacities

The urbanisation-mongers say that more than 20 of the world’s top 50 cities ranked by GDP will be located in Asia by the year 2025, up from 8 in 2007.

The mantra of urbanisation has been at the forefront of the exploitative and socially destructive economics of the last 20 years.

In recent years it has been chanted loudest by the global consulting firms – the same ones which audit the books of the banks that collapse, taking small savers’ money with them, and the books of the Wall Street firms, which destroy jobs and abet the plunder of resources the world over.

Why are they saying this? Let’s look at what one of these firms, McKinsey, has been saying about urbanisation (this firm has concentrated heavily on pushing urban finance, and is lobbying hard with Asian governments to do as it recommends).

“Asia’s growing economic power manifests itself in many ways,” McKinsey has said. “Back in 2007, for example, only 8 of the top 50 urban areas (by GDP) were located there. Half of global GDP came from the developed world’s top 380 cities, with 20-plus percent from just 190 North American ones.”

The urbanisation-mongers say that in this new landscape of urban economic power, Shanghai and Beijing will outrank Los Angeles and London, while Mumbai and Doha will surpass Munich and Denver.

Over the next 15 years, McKinsey has said, the urban centre of gravity will move south and east. In the geography of globalisation, South means South Asia and India, East means China.

By 2025, this forecast posits that Asia will have upward of 20 of the top 50 cities, and Shanghai and Beijing will have GDPs higher than those of Los Angeles and London, according to this city-obsessed firm.

Why are they saying this? Pushing urbanisation means getting into one administrative unit more workers and more consumers at once. It means markets for goods and services (think finance, insurance, health, education) that are easier to reach and easier to shoehorn into uniform regulations.

The urbanisation-mongers say that the implications for companies’ growth priorities, countries’ economic relationships, and the world’s sustainability strategy are profound. They're right, and we must beware.

It also means creating nuclei for rural migrants, who will be gradually but inexorably pushed out of their villages as the costs and burdens of smallholder farming become more unbearable, and as the levels of rural food and fuel inflation become more unendurable.

The success of the urbanisation that McKinsey and its peers and the collaborators in government want depends on the steady depopulating of the rural districts of our countries, the abandoning of land that will then be taken over by corporate and industrial agriculture which will then supply crop monocultures to the food processing industries and retail systems designed to feed the miserable millions in crammed, unlivable cities.

Hu Jintao on 90 years of the Communist Party of China

Here follow extracts from the keynote speech made by Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), at a grand gathering marking the 90th founding anniversary of the CPC at the Great Hall of the People. This speech is an important document for not only Asians but also for those who follow socialism in all its variety in various parts of the world.

Facts have shown that neither the mission of striving for national survival nor the historic task of fighting imperialism and feudalism could be accomplished by reformist self-improvement movements which did not touch the foundation of feudal rule, old-style peasant wars, revolutions led by bourgeois revolutionaries, or other attempts to copy Western capitalism. To find a way of achieving China’s development and progress, one must, first of all, find an advanced theory that can guide the Chinese people in their revolution against imperialism and feudalism, and an advanced social force must rise that can lead social changes in China.

[You can get the full text in this document.]

With the founding of New China, the Chinese people became masters of their country and society and determined their own destiny. China achieved a great transition from a feudal autocracy that was several thousand years old to a people’s democracy. Great unity and unprecedented solidarity of all ethnic groups were realized in China. The history of old China being a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society which was like a heap of loose sand was brought to an end once and for all. The unequal treaties imposed on China by imperialist powers and all the privileges they had in China were abolished. The Chinese people stood up, and the Chinese nation entered a new era of development and progress.

[More on the 90th anniversary of the CPC from China Daily.]

Comrades and Friends, we owe all our achievements over the past 90 years to the tenacious struggles waged by Chinese Communists and the people of several generations. The Party’s first generation of central collective leadership with Comrade Mao Zedong at the core united with and led the entire Party and the people of all ethnic groups in achieving the great victory of the new-democratic revolution, establishing the basic socialist system and creating the fundamental political prerequisite and institutional foundation for all development and progress in contemporary China.

The Party’s second generation of central collective leadership with Comrade Deng Xiaoping at the core united with and led the entire Party and the people of all ethnic groups in starting the great march toward reform and opening up, sounding the bugle of the times for building socialism with Chinese characteristics and ushering in a new period of socialist development. The Party’s third generation of central collective leadership with Comrade Jiang Zemin at the core united with and led the entire Party and the people of all ethnic groups in steadfastly carrying out reform and opening up, advancing with the times, guiding reform and opening up to move in the right direction, and successfully ushering the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics into the 21st century.

A review of its 90 years of development shows that the following are essential for our Party to preserve and develop its advanced nature as a Marxist political party: The Party should free up the mind, seek truth from facts, advance with the times, take a scientific approach toward Marxism, use Marxism as an evolving theory to guide practice in new realities, uphold truth, correct mistakes, blaze new trails, and maintain the motivation that enables the Party to forge ahead in a pioneering spirit. It should serve the people, rely on them, work for their benefit with heart and soul, draw on their wisdom and strength, and always maintain close ties with them. The Party should appoint officials on their merits, attract as many talents as possible, use our cause to inspire, train, and cultivate high-caliber personnel, constantly absorb new blood, and maintain its vitality at all times.

The Party’s growth over the past 90 years shows that theoretical maturity is the basis for political conviction, advancing with the times theoretically is a prerequisite for forging ahead in action, and unity of thinking is an important guarantee for the whole Party to march in step. We Chinese Communists believe that the basic tenets of Marxism are an irrefutable truth and that Marxism must be constantly enriched and developed as practice changes, and we never take Marxism as an empty, rigid, and stereotyped dogma. For Marxism, practice is the source of its theory, the basis for its development, and the criterion for testing its truth. Any actions that stick to dogma, ignore practice, or overstep or lag behind real life will not succeed.

[More on the 90th anniversary of the CPC from China Daily.]

China’s economy and its vulnerability to weather events

A woman washes clothes as her son collects drinking water on an almost dried-up irrigation canal leading from Honghu Lake in central China's drought-stricken Hubei province. on May 29, 2011. Photo: Reuters/David Gray

What is the impact of the drought in China on the country’s economy and its growth rate? A Reuters news feature has attempted to provide a few answers. China’s economy is big enough to absorb this drought without slowing overall growth. But experts said the tenacious dry-spell has bigger lessons. After it passes, there are sure to be new floods and new droughts, and China’s economy will increasingly be affected by the country’s limited and unevenly spread water sources. “A single drought this year won’t lead to the collapse of China’s economy but this will have an impact, one that shows the threat that China faces from water stress,” said Xia Jun, a hydrologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing told Reuters.

The months-long drought parching middle and lower parts of the Yangtze River basin is the latest reminder of the risks that China’s limited and heavily used water sources pose for the world’s second-biggest economy. Even before this drought, smaller lakes around Lake Honghu were disappearing, taken over for fields and fish farms.

Water from the Yangtze will be diverted to Beijing and other thirsty northern cities, but the Danjiangkou Dam that will deliver that water in coming years along the vast South-North Water Transfer Project is at its lowest for over a decade. Victims of the latest dry spell also range from the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project, to millions of poor farmers like Wang and Xiao, an elderly couple.

“I’m 70 and it’s never been this bad,” Xiao, a browned and balding man, said of the 348-sq-km (134-sq-mile) lake in central Hubei province. “You can walk across and it only comes up to your knees.” The lake has shrunk to about 207 sq km of water and is mostly no deeper than 30 cm or so, according to the China News Service — at a time of year when residents said the water should be up to their chins. “We used to always worry about floods, not droughts,” said Xiao. “Not ones as bad as this.”

A woman shovels mud at her house after a landslide triggered by heavy rainfalls in Linxiang, Hunan province June 11, 2011. Photo: Reuters/Darley Wong

That sentiment is echoed by many residents on the middle and eastern stretches of the Yangtze, which is China’s biggest river and an the artery feeding much of China’s farming and industrial heartlands. Officials have said those parts are enduring their worst drought in 50 years, and rainfall has shrunk by 40 to 60 percent of normal. Around Lake Honghu, thousands of farmers risk losing more crops, fish farms, and even drinking water if big rains fail to arrive soon. Many rice fields in the surrounding countryside are yellow or barren. Farmers use scarce water for keeping alive fewer fields or for the ponds used to raise lucrative fish, crab and shrimp. Dry lotus ponds with wilted plants dot the landscape. In other areas near the Yangtze, there is still enough water to sustain swathes of green rice stalks.

China has six percent of the globe’s fresh water resources but a fifth of the world’s population. Global warming could stoke pressures, said Xia and other experts. “There have been even worse droughts before, but now these episodes can be increasingly serious, because economic development is bringing increasing pressure on water resources, and the effects of disaster spread out wider and are felt in more ways,” said Xia.

AlertNet has reported that torrential rains battered central and southern China. Quoting local reports, AlertNet said the rains led to floods and landslides that killed more than 100 people, turning areas enduring drought just over a week ago into scenes of muddy destruction. Forecasters warned that intense rain was likely to keep striking some areas through Monday and beyond.

In Yueyang in Hunan province in the south, weather stations recorded more than 200 millimetres (eight inches) of rain in six hours, the kind of downpour that hits once every 300 years, the China News Service reported, citing local officials. In Maojiazu Village in Yueyang, the pelting downpours triggered a mudslide that crushed 24 homes and killed at least 20 residents, with another seven missing under boulders and dense mud, most likely dead, the Xinhua news agency reported.

“The concentrated scope, intensity and short duration of these recent rains have caused grave casualties and damage to property in some areas,” said Chen Lei, the Minister of Water Resources who also oversees the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, according to a report on its website.

The office warned that heavy rains along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River basin could trigger floods in an area gripped by drought less than two weeks ago. By late Saturday, the floods across parts of 13 provinces had killed 94 people with 78 missing, damaged 465,000 hectares (1,800 square miles) of crops, and toppled 27,100 houses and other buildings, the flood and drought office said. By later on Sunday, Hunan province lifted the number of people killed by floods and mudslides there to 36, up from an estimate of 19 given on Saturday, meaning the updated nationwide death toll could have reached at least 111.

Fukushima nuclear emergency, Japan

08 February 2017: A month short of six years after the 11 March Fukushima disaster began unfolding, the situation at the nuclear power plant has entered a new phase of danger, one which modern industrial civilisation has no experience with and very little knowledge about.

The highest radiation level at Fukushima is now much higher than the highest ever measured at Chernobyl, which was 300 sieverts per hour, an inconceivably high dose which can kill a person almost instantly. Radiation is usually measured in thousandths of a sievert, called millisieverts. For example, most people receive around 2.4 millisieverts per year from background radiation, or only 0.0002739726 per hour.

But a radiation level of 530 sieverts per hour has just been measured at Fukushima’s number 2 reactor. This new record at Fukushima is 70% higher than that of Chernobyl. (The highest level previously measured at Fukushima was 73 sieverts per hour, in March 2012.) The leakage of highly radioactive water has been continuing every day, a daily flow of radioactively contaminated groundwater into the ocean. The estimates are of about 300,000 litres per day of relatively low-level radioactive waste water. But there are storage tanks with 800,000 tons of highly radioactive water, as every day about 100 tons of water are poured on the three melted down cores.

18 December 2011: You will find the Updates archive, info links, video clips and pictures on the Japan emergency page.

Street lights shine in the abandoned town of Iitate, outside the 20 kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, in northeast Japan. Residents were forced to evacuate the town after radiation levels from the leaking plant exceeded those inside the exclusion zone. Nov. 20, 2011. Photo: Mainichi Daily News / AP Photo / Greg Baker

More than nine months have passed since the 11 March earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan and triggered a still-unresolved disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. This set of news reports, news features and editorial in the Mainichi Daily News reveals the chronic deception and criminal corporate irresponsibility that continue to hinder all meaningful effort to mitigate the meltdown, and to obstruct at all costs the truth.

Mainichi Daily News has said that the government has declared a stable “cold shutdown” at the plant, representing a major milestone in its handling of the disaster. The public has keenly waited for the nuclear reactors to be brought under stable control, but Japan is still standing on thin ice and is miles away from a situation where it can really declare that the crisis is under control.

In the meantime, rebuilding the lives of residents near the crippled plants has been an urgent critical challenge. On the occasion of its latest political declaration, the government needs to renew its resolve to settle the crisis and achieve regional recovery. The disaster-hit reactors are certainly now in a more stable condition. However, the phrase “cold shutdown” usually refers to suspension of a sound reactor. The fact that the government is attempting to apply this term in a severe accident in which three reactors have suffered core meltdowns should be called into question. The government should rather explain in detail the possibility of any additional explosions and whether a recriticality accident has been ruled out.

Police on duty at a roadblock at the edge of the 20 kilometre exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, at Namie, in northeast Japan. Nov. 20, 2011. Photo: Mainichi Daily News / AP Photo / Greg Baker

Simulations suggest that nuclear fuel has melted inside the reactor containment vessels, eroding their concrete floors. Although Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken nuclear plant, has indicated that melted fuel has also been cooled down by water, this is nothing but speculation. We urge the utility and the government to find a way to ascertain the precise condition of the fuel.

Mainichi Daily News has reported that conditions at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are far worse than its operator or the government has admitted, according to freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki, who spent more than a month working undercover at the power station. “Absolutely no progress is being made” towards the final resolution of the crisis, Suzuki told reporters at a Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan news conference on Dec. 15. Suzuki, 55, worked for a Toshiba Corp. subsidiary as a general laborer there from July 13 to Aug. 22, documenting sloppy repair work, companies including plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) playing fast and loose with their workers’ radiation doses, and a marked concern for appearances over the safety of employees or the public.

An earthquake-damaged grave is seen at a cemetery in the abandoned town of Katsurao, outside the 20 kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, in northeast Japan. The town was abandoned when radiation levels became unsafe for long term exposure. Nov. 20, 2011. Photo: Mainichi Daily News / AP Photo / Greg Baker

For example, the no-entry zones around the plant – the 20-kilometer radius exclusion zone and the extension covering most of the village of Iitate and other municipalities – have more to do with convenience that actual safety, Suzuki says. The situation at the plant itself is no better, where he says much of the work is simply “for show,” fraught with corporate jealousies and secretiveness and “completely different” from the “all-Japan” cooperative effort being presented by the government.

“Reactor makers Toshiba and Hitachi (brought in to help resolve the crisis) each have their own technology, and they don’t talk to each other. Toshiba doesn’t tell Hitachi what it’s doing, and Hitachi doesn’t tell Toshiba what it’s doing.” Meanwhile, despite there being no concrete data on the state of the reactor cores, claims by the government and TEPCO that the disaster is under control and that the reactors are on-schedule for a cold shutdown by the year’s end have promoted a breakneck work schedule, leading to shoddy repairs and habitual disregard for worker safety, he said. “Working at Fukushima is equivalent to being given an order to die,” Suzuki quoted one nuclear-related company source as saying.

At a Tokyo market, a smartphone shows radiation test results by the grower of a package of Maitake mushrooms, showing them as free of radioactive contamination. Many consumers worry about the safety of food from Fukushima and surrounding prefectures, although produce and fish found to be above government-set limits for contamination are barred from the market. Mushrooms, for example, harvested in and around Fukushima are frequently found to be contaminated and barred from the market. Sept. 12, 2011. Photo: Mainichi Daily News / AP Photo / Shizuo Kambayashi

Kenichi Oshima is currently a professor at Ritsumeikan University. After long years of nuclear power research, he had learned that the actual cost of maintaining nuclear power in Japan was twice as high as what government and electric power companies had publicly announced, the Mainichi Daily News has reported. In March 2010, published his findings in a book, but found himself under fire at a time when pro-nuclear energy was becoming even stronger. In September the same year, during a meeting of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, his comments were rejected and even mocked. “Do you call this research?” he was told and few even cared to look at his findings.

Following the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Oshima’s situation drastically changed. He was selected as a member of two expert governmental committees to serve as a critical analyst of Japan’s current nuclear power stance. The group will openly release all internal debates and documents, Oshima says. He is now more optimistic than ever that the time to destroy the “cheap and safe” nuclear power myth will eventually come.

Workers in protective suits and masks wait to enter the emergency operation center at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Japan. Nov. 12, 2011. Photo: Mainichi Daily News / AP Photo / David Guttenfelder, Pool

A sober and critical editorial in the Mainichi Daily News has said that Britain has already abandoned developing fast-breeder nuclear reactors, and is set to give up nuclear fuel reprocessing as well. Moreover, its planned construction of a facility to dispose of radioactive waste including plutonium is likely to materialize even though it is still at a planning phase.

In contrast, there are no prospects that Japan can build a disposal facility. However, for Japan to call for operations at the Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor in Fukui Prefecture and the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the Aomori Prefecture village of Rokkasho to be carried out as planned, would be like putting the cart before the horse as it appears the country is incapable of building a disposal facility.

Plutonium is directly related to security issues. The U.K. possesses nuclear weapons but Japan does not. One may wonder whether Japan’s independence will be threatened if it abandons nuclear fuel recycling and loses its ability to produce plutonium. Even though it is an important point of contention the issue should not be used as a reason to underestimate the harm of plutonium.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano who is in charge of energy policy, Goshi Hosono, state minister for handling the nuclear crisis, and Yoshito Sengoku, second-in-command in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s Policy Research Committee, have been hearing the views of experts on the issue. It is not enough for the government to talk only about the dream of “prosperity” built on dependence on nuclear power. Japan’s ability to overcome the mess that follows such prosperity is now being tested.

More updates, info links, video clips and pictures on the Japan emergency page.

恭禧發財 for the Year of the Monkey

Monkey-themed stamps are being issued by postal services all over the world to welcome the Year of the Monkey; Chinese television audiences are angry that a popular monkey king actor hasn’t been invited to big broadcaster CCTV’s Spring Festival gala; but they may be mollified by plans to release the fantasy epic ‘The Monkey King 2’ in 100 cities in 30 countries on or around 8 February; amidst the many festivities for the lunar new year, monkey-themed designs are found on stamps to commemorative coins, fashion and handicrafts; it is also the start of spring in the P R of China and there’s a lot to learn; folk artists are making traditional paper-cut monkeys to celebrate the new year (red paper, always red) as the paper cuts symbolise best wishes for the new year; figurines made out of dough of popular Chinese opera characters have been made to welcome the New Year; and Chinese ink painting masters have made monkey portraits in techniques that use few colors (black, yellow, and a bit of red) in a calligraphic manner; and if you are one of the 100,000 waiting for your train at the Guangzhou railway station, let’s hope you’re on your way home in time for the many new year activities. Welcome to the Year of the Monkey.

A renminbi world

Passengers carrying their luggages prepare to get on the train in the railway station of Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. Photo: Xinhua/Ju Huanzong

The finding that China has loaned more money to developing countries than the World Bank in the past two years is being widely reported worldwide. Using phrases like “the economic might of the world’s most populous country will only grow stronger in the years to come” the daily news media has reported on the new reach of the yuan in two distinct tones.

One, from China itself, by its news agencies and news media, is a pragmatic tone which discusses the use of loans and financial aid as a primary tool of international relations. Two, from the West, is a simultaneously fascinated and worried tone, which does not hide an alarm over the growing influence of China on the developing South, and which bemoans the helplessness of western governments and financial systems to counter Beijing’s effortless reach.

Hu Jintao: General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the People's Republic of China, Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission and Chairman of the Central Military Commission of PRC

The BBC The BBC has a news video on the subject, and news blogs such as 24/7 Wall St have discussed it in as much detail as possible based on the data available.

What is the data? The China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank agreed to lend at least US$110 billion to governments and companies in developing countries in 2009 and 2010, according to an AFP story citing research from the Financial Times. From 2008 to 2010, the World Bank handed out US$100.3 billiion in response  to the global economic crisis.

The brief FT report says: “The volume of overseas loans by the two banks indicates how Beijing is forging new patterns of China-led globalisation, as part of a broader push to scale back its economic dependency on western export markets. The financial crisis allowed Beijing to push the commercial interests of its energy companies by offering loans to producer countries at a time when financing was hard to come by. The agreements include large loan-for-oil deals with Russia, Venezuela and Brazil, as well as loans for an Indian company to buy power equipment and for infrastructure projects in Ghana and railways in Argentina.”

“The statistics were collected by examining public announcements by the banks, the borrowers or the Chinese government. An adviser to CDB said the volume of lending suggested by public statements understated the real level of the bank’s new loan commitments to developing countries. CDB and EximBank provide more preferential terms than the World Bank and other lenders for certain deals that are strongly supported by Beijing, but offer terms that are closer to international standards for less politically sensitive deals. They also tend to impose less onerous transparency conditions.”

A passenger walks in front of the Harbin Railway Station in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Photo: Xinhua/Wang Jianwei

There has been evidence enough over the last five years that Chinese investors turn into bargains everything from distressed US real estate to African and Brazilian oil fields to European debt. China’s foreign exchange reserves stand at US$2.85 trillion (more than double that of the country with the second largest reserves, which is Japan).

The bottom-line is that China has lent more money to other developing countries over the past two years than the World Bank, as the FT is reporting, a fact that underlines the scale of Beijing’s economic reach and how it is forging new patterns of global trade and development. China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank gave loans of at least US$110bn to other developing countries in 2009 and 2010. The equivalent arms of the World Bank made loan commitments of US$100bn from mid-2008 to mid-2010.

How does this activity fit in with the news, usually filtered and sometimes misunderstood, that China will progressively make its currency convertible on the capital account in the next five years amid its push for the deeper internationalization of the yuan? “The overall strategy for the reform of China’s foreign exchange management system is to achieve the convertibility of the yuan on the capital account progressively, as this will make trade and investment more convenient and boost the development of the foreign exchange market,” said Yi Gang, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchanges (SAFE), in a signed article published on the SAFE website.

An example of China’s yuan reach is the reporting, from Angola in November 2010, of vice-president Xi Jinping’s visit there. The China Development Bank is to follow the official visit and “further strengthen cooperation” with Angola in mineral prospecting, staff training and municipal planning. “In addition, CDB will unleash its leading role in developmental finance to step up fostering and development of Angolan markets and finance for the country’s post-war rehabilitation, rendering substantial financing support in the process”, as Xinhua News Agency reported on 21 November 2010. During the Angola visit the CDB entered into a US$400 million loan agreement with the Ministry of Finance of Angola to address food security issues and promote urban infrastructure construction in the country. Moreover, the CDB and Angola’s African Investment Bank signed a US$100 million SME loan agreement.

Great Game – the Karakoram Corridor

The Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief provides more input to the new Great Game theme.Writing in the latest China Brief is Vijay Sakhuja who describes the Karakoram Highway and its importance to China.

In China’s quest to secure raw materials, resources and markets, writes Sakhuja, Beijing has laid out a sophisticated blueprint to develop a region-wide transit corridor throughout the subcontinent. In the Himalayas, it has built rail, road and air networks that can support the Chinese military’s logistic supply chains and showcase its capability to overcome the tyranny of geography.

The transportation network through the Karakoram mountain range is particularly noteworthy. Notably, the corridor provides Chinese access to Pakistan that can be extended in the future to provide connectivity to the Indian Ocean and to the energy rich Persian Gulf, particularly Iran. Furthermore, the modernization of the regional transit infrastructure will be conducive to stronger connectivity between South Asia and the Central Asian Republics, yet at the same time it will expose China’s borders to the region’s growing security challenges.

The 1,300 kilometer-Karakoram Highway (National Highway 35 or N35), also dubbed “Friendship Highway,” links Islamabad with Kashgar in Xinjiang. It is the highest metalled road in the world and it took nearly two decades to build. In 2006, Pakistan Highway Administration and China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) agreed to widen the highway from 10 to 30 meters and upgrade it to make it accessible by motor vehicles during extreme weather conditions. China completed the widening of the highway on its side but Pakistan could not raise the funds, which delayed the project. As a result, China agreed to give Pakistan a soft loan for the project.

Main pier at Gwadar port. Satellite image from Google Earth

The joint China-Pakistan project to link Kashgar in Xinjiang to Havelian near Rawalpindi in Pakistan through the Khunjerab Pass in the Karakoram Range through a rail corridor is indeed ambitious. It has been noted that the rail track running nearly 700 kilometers “will transform the geopolitics of western China and the subcontinent”.

At the southern end of the Karakoram corridor is the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea. The port offers several strategic advantages to China. In economic terms, it can potentially link Xinjiang to the global trading system through the Karakoram Highway.

Pakistan has urged China to use and “take maximum benefits from the Gwadar port”. The Gwadar port was built with Chinese financial assistance (80% of its initial US$248 million development costs) and was offered to the Ports of Singapore Authority (PSA) to conduct shipping operations in February 2007 for 40 years.

Blowing hot and cold in Beijing

The science of understanding climate change has long given way, among two big Asian governments, to the politics of nationalism. This was evident in December 2009, even through the rubble of the ruined Copenhagen summit on climate change, and it was just as evident months earlier when both India and China, separately, said that they would not subscribe to any form of emission controls that would jeopardise their economic growth trajectories.

That’s the main act, which the countries of the western world like not at all. In the forefront of the finger-wagging western club are the USA accompanied by Britain and Australia (its ready allies), Germany and France (whose moralising manner and hypocritical practice deserve all the scorn they receive and then some) and sundry others from north America and western Europe. They have charged India and China with sabotaging the Copenhagen talks, and their allegations have turned up anew in a tape recording obtained by the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

“Secret recordings obtained by Spiegel reveal how China and India prevented an agreement on tackling climate change at the crucial meeting,” said Der Spiegel. “The powerless Europeans were forced to look on as the agreement failed.” The German magazine, whose editorial instincts are about as sophisticated as the Spice Girls’ taste in clothes, lashed its reportage with large helpings of dime-novel suspense. “A hush came over the room. Even the mobile phones stopped ringing. It was Friday, Dec. 18, 2009, at about 4 p.m. That was the moment when the world leaders meeting in Copenhagen abandoned their efforts to save the world.”

India's GHG emissions 2007, in million tons CO2

Laboured drama apart, Der Spiegel was only repeating instructions given to a supine western media from the ruling cabals in Berlin, Paris, London and of course Washington. Of course. Blame it on those upstart Asians, whose economic growth and global ambitions now threaten western civilisation. It’s a tiresome re-run of how easily development patronage can become scolding xenophobia. But what really happened at Copenhagen (and its entertaining versions) is only the background to a more interesting opera that has swung merrily on, between New Delhi and Beijing, and with unrelated cameos from scientists and economists, two tribes usually disconnected from one another by both design and inclination.

First, the government of India announced with some fanfare a report, ‘India’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2007’ which is the work of the new Indian Network of Climate Change Assessment. Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister for environment and forests, heaped praise on the Network and on India’s climate related ‘achievements’. “More than 80 scientists from 17 institutions across India have contributed to this Assessment,” he said, and added that they did so in “record time” (which is definitely not good from a science point of view).

He went on: “India has become the first ‘non-Annex I’ (developing) country to publish such updated numbers. We will be the first developing country to do so.” (Some Asian one-upmanship there.) “Interestingly, the emissions of USA and China are almost four times that of India in 2007. It is also noteworthy that the emissions intensity of India’s GDP declined by more than 30% during the period 1994-2007, due to the efforts and policies that we are proactively putting in place.” Ramesh went on in such vein, but the report served to underline India’s basic stance on the subject: no, we will not cap or control our emissions based on your standards and recommendations for as long as we are a developing country.

Second, Jairam went to Beijing. There he became very much more the manager rather than the politician, and made a number of plain-speaking statements. “Chinese do not talk as much as Indians, but Chinese perform better, they do much more. I am full of admiration for the way that China just gets to work, whereas [in] India [we] talk and talk and keep on talking,” he was quoted by Xinhua as saying on May 7. Next, he said that India’s Ministry of Home Affairs should not be paranoid about China and take a “much more relaxed” approach to Chinese investments and remove “needless” restrictions. This won him all sorts of applause from the media in China, but provoked instant ripostes from red-faced and bristling Home ministry mandarins in New Delhi.

Ramesh thereby earned the rare distinction of being praised in the lead editorial of the ‘China Daily‘, which together with the Xinhua news agency (Ramesh gave them an interview) sent out the signal to Chinese media that there was a ‘Copenhagen spirit’, South-South teamwork to counter western powers and a sound model to strengthen India-China friendship. “I see climate change as an opportunity to change the political climate between China and India,” Ramesh had told Xinhua. Typically, as soon as Ramesh returned to New Delhi there were furious outbursts and calls for his resignation, which is a distinctly Indian political pastime, the overuse of which recently resulted in Shashi Tharoor being booted out of his ministerial post.

Third, far more serious and quite unnoticed in New Delhi (although Beijing I’m sure has) was the release of what is quickly being called the ‘Hartwell paper‘, a political economy statement on current climate policy of emissions targets, and an effort funded in part by the London School of Economics. The authoring group says that international agreements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions are doomed to failure and must be replaced by a drive towards low-cost green energy. “The bottom line is that there will be little progress in accelerating the decarbonisation of the global economy until low carbon energy supply becomes reliably cheaper and provides reliability of supply,” says the paper. Which effectively means, the successors to the failed Copenhagen summit are doomed, and we should now pay great attention to the Ramesh doctrine of climate change management.