How egoistic can people be?
A video showing two motorcyclists who got entangled on a busy highway in China... Nobody seemed very eager to help...
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Picture of the Day: Green versus Desert
China is creating a 4,500 km (2,800 mi) long forest belt to control sandstorms pushing forward the sands of the Gobi desert. (More)
More Pictures of the Day on The Road.
Picture courtesy Biopact Read the full post...
Climate change: 20% of China is now desert.
Sean Gallagher is a photojournalist living in China. With the support of Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to highlight the impact of desertification in China.
Almost 20% of China's land is now desert, affecting 400 million people. In Western China over one million acres of fertile land turn into desert. Per year. Last year they suffered a peak drought.
Climate change, wind and water erosion, industrialization, agriculture, untimely policy changes, you name it.
China's desertification is not only a problem for the Chinese. It impacts the world as a whole. I am not talking about what 1,000,000 acres of desert mean to the world's climate, alone: the more fertile land turns into sand, the more China is looking for agriculture land abroad, competing with European biofuel companies and Arab countries trying to secure their food production too. And money buys land in Africa. Easily. Even if this means they need to reduce their own food production.
Video courtesy Sean Gallagher. Discovered via Resolve and Duckrabbit
Picture of the day: On the move
Found on Oddee, who has loads of them.
More Pictures of the Day on The Road
The Dalai Lama and the power of China in Africa
In a previous post, we talked about the economic powers China is deploying in Africa. But with that comes also the expansion of its political power.
Some of it has well known. The best example is China's documented circumvention of the UN Security council's arms embargo against Sudan on one hand, and on the other hand Big Red's veto power leashing the Council's ability to lash out against Sudan.
But this week, it went a little more undercover. Earlier this week, the South African government denied issuing the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a peace conference. As a result several other key figures pulled back in a sign of protest, and in the end the whole conference was cancelled.
Today, the South African government admitted it decided to bar the Dalai Lama from attending, to avoid undermining relations with China.
A cabinet statement said that while South Africa had not acted on a specific demand from Beijing, it was not prepared to "jeopardise" ties nor allow itself to be used as a political platform in the run-up to the hosting of next year's football World Cup. (Full)
Picture courtsey From Sandton to Shanghai
China in Africa: The Future?
This video gives an excellent snapshot of the economic development in Angola, a country I have not been to since 1995, and its business with China.
Angola, just like DRC, is one of Africa's mineral richest countries, so no wonder there is quite an interest for its natural resources, only to be challenged by logistical nightmares.
There is a lot to be said about the deals China makes all over the world, securing oil, buying or leasing agricultural land and concluding massive hybrid aid/business contracts. Just today, I stumbled upon the following two press articles:
From the Chinese Press Agency:
China provides US$600,000 of humanitarian aid to DR Congo.
From Reuters:
Congo to push forward with $9 bln Chinese mining contract.
Says enough, I think. Two views, two perspectives, two sides to probably the same story. As government to government aid has clearly failed in the past decennia (read 'Dead Aid'), maybe the business deals are the only true form of development for Africa.
If only the economic profits would also benefit the less fortunate in Africa.
Video discovered via Time of the Leopards
Grass-mud horses and Chinese censorship
A YouTube children’s song about "a grass-mud horse" has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A "grass-mud horse" cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more. Stores are selling "grass-mud horse" dolls. Chinese intellectuals are writing treatises on the "grass-mud horse’s" social importance. The story of the "grass-mud horse’s" struggle against the evil "river crab" has spread far and wide across the Chinese online community.
Why?
Well "The Grass-Mud Horse" is a mythical creature whose name in Chinese sounds like "f*** your mother". Its relative "the invading river crabs" sounds like "harmony", which in China's cyberspace has become a synonym for censorship.
Censored bloggers often say their posts have been "harmonized" — a term directly derived from President Hu Jintaos regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious society.
So, in short, a children's song and two mythical animal characters have become a collective attempt to criticize Chinese censorship, and are now treated as such in China. BLOCKED! (Full) Read the full post...
Should China bail out the West?
A provocative thought from "Good" Magazine:
Bailing out the West could prove the final capstone in China’s global ascendancy, signaling, like the United States’s dominance of the post-WWII globe, that Beijing has arrived as a power—and even has lessons to teach other nations.Read the full post...
A rescue would show that Beijing’s model of development—one that doesn’t involve messy things like democracy—can stand up to the Western democratic gospel preached since World War II.
And once shy of promoting its model, China now may be ready to play the leader. In recent years, Beijing has started touting its success to other nations through annual training programs for thousands of officials from across the developing world. (Full)
Picture of the Day: Record drought in China
A riverbed in Zhengzhou, in Henan province (China).
Winter rainfall levels have been as much as 80% lower than normal in China's wheat-growing provinces, causing the worst drought in 50 years. Amid economic unrest in rural areas, the government pledged US$13 billion support for wheat growers. (Full)
More Pictures of the Day on The Road.
Picture courtesy AFP/Getty Images
Rumble: China in Africa: Slavery or Development?
In a thought provoking article, Peter Hitchens describes his first hand experiences of the unsavoury practices of Chinese businesses in Africa. BUT at the same time, he asks the question if all the aid and good intensions in the world have not helped in the past forty decades, maybe the "Chinese" approach might...
China offers both rulers and the ruled in Africa the simple, squalid advantages of shameless exploitation.
For the governments, there are gargantuan loans, promises of new roads, railways, hospitals and schools - in return for giving Peking a free and tax-free run at Africa's rich resources of oil, minerals and metals.
For the people, there are these wretched leavings, which, miserable as they are, must be better than the near-starvation they otherwise face.
Persuasive academics advised me before I set off on this journey that China's scramble for Africa had much to be said for it. They pointed out China needs African markets for its goods, and has an interest in real economic advance in that broken continent.
For once, they argued, a foreign intervention in Africa might work precisely because it is so cynical and self-interested. They said Western aid, with all its conditions, did little to create real advances in Africa, laughing as they declared: "The only country that ever got rich through donations is the Vatican." (Full)
More posts on The Road about China.
Picture courtesy Getty Images Read the full post...
News: Richard Gere driving from Hollywood to Tibet. Fiat ad upsets China.
This month, The Road we have Italy in the spotlight. Italy as in "the place I live in", as in "the place I love", but also as in "the place that makes me chuckle".
Here is an example why:
Italian car maker Fiat apologised to China for a television commercial starring US actor Richard Gere. Fiat acknowledged it "could disturb the sensibility of the Chinese people".
The ad shows Gere, a long-time supporter of the Tibetan Independence Movement, drive the group's new Lancia Delta model from Hollywood to Tibet, where he and a child dressed as a Buddhist monk plunge their hands into fresh snow.
The slogan that runs with the ad is "The power to be different".
The Italian car maker stressed that its advertising had "never been driven by or based on political choices or by a desire to interfere with the internal political system of any country, especially the People's Republic of China".
More posts on The Road about Italy.
Video via autoblog.com Read the full post...
Picture of the day: Survivor
A quake survivor tries to make the most of what is left of his home in Yinghua, China. The earthquake on May 12th killed 65,000 people and left 5 million homeless.
More Pictures of the Day on The Road.
Picture courtesy Oded Balilty (AP/Times) Read the full post...
News: Humanitarian airlift to China
The boys and girls from the UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) have been busy the past weeks.
There were several airlifts of relief goods into Myanmar, and since a week, relief agencies requested for the shipment of humanitarian goods to China, in support of the earthquake disaster.
Yesterday and last night, an Airbus 310 from Skycargo (Emirates Airlines) was loaded with relief goods from the Italian Civil Protection. Contrary to the normal practices, the plane was parked on the civilian side of Brindisi airport, so all goods had to be trucked to other side of the airport. All stuff is fixed on special pallets before being weighed and loaded onto the plane.
The cargo consisted of family tents and a full field hospital from the Italian Civil Protection, one of the agencies that stores their goods at the UNHRD depots in Brindisi.
The loading crew was ready at 2 am and the plane took off a few hours later. Next stop: China earthquake zone.
Pictures courtesy Lucien Jaggi (WFP/UNHRD) Read the full post...
Picture of the Day: Trapped in China
A rescuer holds the hand of a trapped student at Wudu Primary School on the outskirts of Mianzhu, in Sichuan Province, China.
Rescue workers across southwestern China struggle to reach the tens of thousands of people who remain buried in the aftermath of the earthquake, as the death toll climbs above 13,000. (Full)
More "Pictures of the Day" on the Road.
Picture courtesy of Chen Jianli (Xinhua via Reuters) Read the full post...
News: Chinese Media Report Darfur To Be "Stable and Natural"
Continuing their four-day official visit, the delegation also visited a refugee camp with 14,000 people in Nyala, South Darfur province, and met provincial governor Al-Haj Atta al-Mannan Idris. Idris said the general situation was "stable and improving".
Yeah, right! Read the full post here
News: China, the West and Darfur: Why Do We Still Buy This Shit?
April 8, 2007.
Warning: This piece is opinionated.
1. Darfur According to the Chinese State Media: "Stable and Natural" Reuters Alertnet reports:
"A Chinese government delegation visited refugee camps and met officials in western Sudan's strife-torn Darfur province to "get acquainted" with the situation there, Chinese state media reported on Sunday.
More than 200,000 people are believed to have died in Darfur and some 2.5 million have been driven from their homes into squalid camps since ethnic tensions erupted into revolt in 2003.
The United States and other Western powers have sought to authorise U.N. peacekeepers to quell violence in Darfur, where government-backed militia have been fighting rebel forces. African Union troops have failed to stop massacres.
China, which buys much of Sudan's oil and wields veto power over U.N. resolutions, is facing rising criticism from Western governments and rights campaigners for having rejected U.N. forces without Khartoum's agreement.
On Saturday the delegation, lead by Beijing government envoy Zhai Juan, went to Abu Shouk Camp, in North Darfur province, and met provincial governor Youssef Kibir, Xinhua news agency said.
"Administrative officials said that life of some 50,000 internally displaced people (at the camp) was stable and natural," Xinhua reported.
Continuing their four-day official visit, the delegation also visited a refugee camp with 14,000 people in Nyala, South Darfur province, and met provincial governor Al-Haj Atta al-Mannan Idris.
Idris said the general situation was "stable and improving", but "sporadic fighting" had occurred between rebel factions and tribes in the recent period, Xinhua added.
Last week Chinese Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan offered visiting Sudanese Joint Chief of Staff, Haj Ahmed El Gaili, stronger military cooperation while also urging that Sudan consider a peace proposal put forward by the now retired U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan.
"
2. Sudan and China: an "OW"-relationship: "Oil out, Weapons in."
(Also called a "win-win relationship"...)
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, "China takes 64 percent of Sudan's oil exports". The same report states that "China has sold the Islamic government in Khartoum weapons and $100 million worth of Shenyang fighter planes, including twelve supersonic F-7 jets. Experts say any military air presence exercised by the government—including the helicopter gunships reportedly used to terrorize civilians in Darfur—comes from China."
China is one of Sudan's major sources of weapons, says a BBC report.
3. So, we in the West, get good scores on this one?
Nah, don't think so.. The media reports cited above might be allied to the West and Western politics, and are all to happy to report China's debatable interest in oil import from and weapons export to Sudan. Because... well, because it is China who gets the oil and the business, and not the West... So let's relativate it a bit:
When last year, the UN Security Council is debated a US draft resolution on the Sudan crisis, based on colliding views whether a genocide is or is not happening in Darfur, the issue of Sudan's oil is became a key factor. If an oil export embargo was approved, China and India would have lost their influence over Sudan's vast oil reserves and a Khartoum regime change would open up these resources to the West. The US is in favour of sanctions (hey I wonder why!), China is against (surprise!).The population of Darfur is presently, as the UN puts it, suffering from "the world's worst humanitarian crisis." It is well documented that the Khartoum government bares much of the responsibility for this suffering, which the UN calls "ethnic cleansing" and the US called "genocide". It is however also well documented that the US through its closest African allies, helped train the SLA and JEM Darfuri rebels that initiated Khartoum's violent reaction. (source: Afrol News)
[Just something that crossed my mind: Remember the Taliban used to be backed by the US (through the Pakistani Secret Service) in their fight against the Mujaheddin and Russian influences... That one ran out of hand also, did it not?]
According to the "European Coalition on Oil in Sudan", here is a list of the companies who have oil interests in Sudan. Or in a map format. Quite a few of non-Chinese (European, North-American) companies have interests also!
Still, China is fast emerging as one of the world’s biggest, most secretive and irresponsible arms exporters, according to a report issued by Amnesty International.
4. So.. What is the conclusion?
So, what should we conclude? The US has Iraq, China has its Darfur for main oil supplies and everyone should be happy? Or should the conclusion be that if we would use more alternative energy sources, the world would be a better place, not only for the environment, but also for the refugees, terrorism and civil unrest? One thing is for sure: the situation in Darfur is "NOT stable and natural" as the Chinese and Sudanese media reported today... Unless if we all accept an ongoing genocide is "stable", because it has been ongoing since so long, and "natural" as... well... as it is in Africa of course... That's where people kill each other naturally, no?
A more recent video by BBC reporter Jonah Fisher:
Pictures courtesy WFP
Read the full post...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
The Road's Dashboard
Log in
New
Edit
Customize
Dashboard