Month: January 2018

Pakistan and China have jointly organized the first international exhibition to showcase the significance of the Arabian Sea Gwadar Port and its economic free zone as an emerging international business hub.

The warm water deep sea commercial port, which overlooks some of the world’s busiest oil and gas shipping lanes, has been built and recently expanded with Chinese financial assistance.

More than 200 companies from both China and Pakistan were present in Monday’s event at Gwadar, while six Chinese provinces also sent their representatives, said Beijing’s ambassador to Islamabad, Yao Jing, while addressing the ceremony.

Foreign diplomats and business leaders were also invited to the opening session of the two-day event.

Chinese operators of the port say the Gwadar Free Zone shall bring extensive economic benefits, like a tax holiday for 23 years and land lease up to 99 years to the upcoming businesses along with other incentives and pro-business policy frame work for general trade, services, manufacturing, logistics, trans-shipment and bunkering business.

Direct benefit for Pakistan

Gwardar port is to be a trans-shipment hub connected to landlocked western Chinese regions, giving Beijing a secure and shorter international trade route through Pakistan.

Gwadar is celebrated as the gateway to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, a flagship of President Xi Jinping’s global Belt and Road Initiative to build a new “Silk Road” of land and maritime trade routes across more than 60 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Under CPEC, networks of road, communications, rail, economic zones and power plants are being built and upgraded in Pakistan with an estimated Chinese investment of $62 billion.

Around $27 billion in projects are underway or completed, including “early harvest” energy projects, adding much-needed electricity to Pakistan’s national grid.

“I would like to say that the Chinese government will continue to invest and send our input to further support the development of this project. Also, we will encourage Chinese companies and Chinese businessmen to join the development of Gwadar,” vowed Chinese envoy Jing.

Wider benefit planned

During the ceremony, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said CPEC is the “most visible part” of China’s of BRI, saying the mega project will cater not only to the needs of his country, but to the needs of the region.

Officials expect Gwadar’s cargo handling capacity to increase to 1.2 million tonnes by the end of this year and it will be able to process about 13 million tons by 2022, making it the largest port in South Asia.

Chinese partners say they would need around 38,000 skilled workers by 2023 for the Free Zone, according to Dostain Jamaldini, Chairman of the Gwadar Port Authority. He says of the 2,500 current workers, around 500 are Chinese nationals and the rest are locals.

An international airport with a 12,000 meter runway is being constructed in the once sleepy town with a Chinese financial grant of around $300 million.

The Arabian Sea port is located in Pakistan’s largest province of Baluchistan where militant groups, including Islamic State, and a low-level insurgency remain key security challenges to CPEC.

Additionally, the corridor runs through Pakistan-controlled portion of the divided Kashmir region, drawing objections from rival India. The United States suspects China may also turn Gwadar into a military base.

But Chinese officials reject those concerns, maintaining “CPEC is merely an economic cooperation project,” and Islamabad dismisses New Delhi’s opposition as politically motivated.
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A high-level U.S. visit to Vietnam followed by plans to send American naval vessels may herald a tougher American policy toward China in Asia’s stickiest maritime sovereignty dispute.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met in Vietnam last week with the host country’s president, Tran Dai Quang, as well as the general secretary of its ruling Communist Party and a Vietnamese military counterpart.

The U.S. Department of Defense website said they shared concerns about freedom of navigation and “respect for international law,” likely references to a six-way dispute over sovereignty of the South China Sea dominated by Beijing. A U.S. aircraft carrier will call in Vietnam in March. Vietnam is the most outspoken rival claimant to China.

“The Mattis visit and the one by the aircraft carrier in March are intended to send a signal to China about its assertive behavior in the South China Sea,” said Murray Hiebert, deputy director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The visits are part of a series of steps by Vietnam and the United States in recent years to bolster their political and security ties as China rises and steps up its activities in the South China Sea,” he said.

An extension of military ties with Vietnam would mark President Donald Trump’s strongest stance on the South China Sea dispute to date following a year of doubt about whether he would challenge the dominance of Beijing in favor of five other governments that contest Chinese claims.

China’s maritime rise

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam vie for control over all or parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea between Hong Kong and Borneo. They resent passage of Beijing’s coast guard vessels and its landfilling of small islets for military installations, hallmarks of growing maritime control by Asia’s chief military power.

China claims about 90 percent of the sea. It cites historical records to document the claims. In mid-2016 a world arbitration court ruled at the request of the Philippines against the extent of the Chinese claim. China rejected the ruling but since then made peace with other claimants by offering aid, investment and joint marine research.

Over the past year, China also built up three islets in the sea’s Spratly archipelago and three more in the Paracel chain, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. Vietnam says the Paracels fall under its flag.

“I think that maybe China is not happy with the U.S. visit, but they have to accept the facts that Vietnam is becoming a big player in the region and Vietnam has its own freedom in maintaining (a) better relationship with the U.S.,” said Trung Nguyen, international relations dean at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Expectations for Trump

Southeast Asian countries with claims to the sea waited in 2017 for Trump to form a clear South China Sea policy.

Trump spent much of the year seeking Beijing’s help containing weapons development in North Korea, muting any challenges to Chinese maritime activities. The U.S. Navy, however, passed ships through the disputed sea four times in 2017 and once this month to show its position that the waterway is free to all.

But Trump did not pick up his predecessor Barack Obama’s policy of arms sales and joint military training for Southeast Asian maritime claimants.

The Philippines befriended Beijing in late 2016. China is helping the country build railways, resist armed Muslim extremists and explore an undersea plateau off the Philippine Pacific coast. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte began in 2016 pushing back against the United States, a former colonizer and staunch military ally since the 1950s.

Malaysia also counts China as its top investor and trading partner, likewise a source of new infrastructure. Trump toyed with stronger Taiwan ties a year ago but stopped after a protest from Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its own.

Mattis’ Vietnam visit this month augurs a “tougher line on Beijing in general” in Washington, said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies consultancy in New York. The shift might come too late, he said.

“Relations with Vietnam are now more vital than ever as we appear to have already lost the Philippines on the South China Sea,” King said. “It may all be too late as Beijing’s hold on the South China Sea appears to have entered fait accompli territory.”

Arms sales

Improved ties could lead Vietnam to buy military hardware from the United States, Hiebert said. In 2016, Obama lifted a decades-old ban on sales of lethal weapons to the Communist country that the United States fought in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Vietnam has clashed before at sea with China, which is militarily stronger.

Vietnam ranked the world’s eighth largest importer of weapons from 2011 to 2015, up from 43rd in the previous five years, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia. Vietnam is looking now for a fighter jet to replace its Russian-made MiG-21 fleet that it retired over a year ago, he said.

Vietnam acquired a former U.S. coast guard cutter in December, according to the the U.S. defense department website.

But officials in Hanoi are expected to move slowly toward warmth in U.S. relations. They value ties with China, too, as neighbors and trade partners. “I’m sure Vietnamese leaders know they will not walk so fast toward improving relationships with the U.S.,” Nguyen said.
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A group of at least five insurgents launched a pre-dawn raid Monday on an Afghan army unit near a military academy in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, killing two soldiers and wounding ten more. 

“The attack is against an army unit providing security for the academy and not the academy itself,” said Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry. 

Witnesses say the fighting near the Marshal Fahim National Defense University continued after daybreak. 

Waziri said the attack began with a suicide bomber and that two insurgents were killed in the ensuing gunbattle. One attacker was arrested. He added that soldiers are looking for another possible suspect. 

Reuters reports that the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack. 

Kabul has been hit with several insurgent attacks recently. 

Sunday, Afghanistan held a national day of mourning, the day after insurgents used an explosives-laden ambulance to carry out a deadly suicide attack outside a government building in Kabul. 

Officials said Sunday the death toll has risen to 103 people, while 235 were wounded in the assault. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak, while releasing the latest casualty figures at a news conference in Kabul,said “many policemen” were among the dead. But he gave no figures and said 30 police officers were also among those wounded.

Masoom Stanekzai, the head of the Afghan intelligence agency, told reporters authorities have arrested four people in connection with Saturday’s bombing and an investigation is still ongoing.

He dismissed criticism of his National Directorate of Security, or NDS and other Afghan security institutions for their failure to prevent repeated militant attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in the country. 

Earlier this month, five heavily armed Taliban suicide bombers stormed Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel in a highly secured part of the city. That attack killed at least 22 people, including 14 foreigners. At least four Americans were among the dead. 
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Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono expressed hopes for improved relations with China during talks Sunday in Beijing that also touched on joint efforts to counter North Korea’s nuclear program.

 

In opening remarks to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, Kono said that as the world’s second and third largest economies, China and Japan “have a major responsibility in safeguarding the stability and prosperity of Asia and the world at large.”

 

Wang said China had noted positive remarks about the relationship from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but that difficulties still remain.

 

“At present, the Sino-Japanese relations are at a crucial stage. There is positive progress, but many disturbances and obstacles remain,” Wang said.

 

Japan has pushed for stricter measures against North Korea, which fired a ballistic missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido in August. In his remarks, Kono stressed the need for a united front against Pyongyang.

 

“Not only do we need to manage our bilateral relations, but we also need to work together to deal with issues facing the entire globe, in particular the issue of North Korea, which is the matter at hand for the international community as a whole,” Kono said.

The sides were working to arrange a trilateral summit in Tokyo between leaders from China, South Korea and Japan, followed by a visit by Abe to China and a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Japan, said Norio Maruyama, a spokesman for Japan’s Foreign Ministry.

Following the talks, Kono met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and senior foreign policy adviser State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

 

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Yang as saying the sides should “set aside interferences, consolidate and expand beneficial factors and further the continued development and improvement of China-Japan relations.”

 

China and Japan experienced a major break in relations in 2012, after Beijing responded furiously to Japan’s nationalization of uninhabited East China Sea islands that Tokyo controls but which China claims.

 

They moved toward normalization with Abe’s visit to Beijing in 2014, however, mutual distrust continues to run high, especially over the islands, known in Japan as the Senkakus and in China as the Diaoyus. Taiwan also claims the islands, referring to them as Diaoyutai.

 

Maruyama said Kono stressed the importance of a coordinated approach to North Korea, but said japan also raised the issue of recent Chinese incursions into its territorial waters.

 

“We don’t want to see anything that can undermine the improving relationship,” Maruyama said.

 

Earlier this month, Tokyo expressed concern when a Chinese nuclear powered attack submarine was found operating just outside Japan’s territorial waters. The sub later surfaced in the high seas flying the Chinese flag.

 

Japanese media quoted Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera telling reporters after the incident that Japan was “seriously concerned over acts that unilaterally raise tensions” and would “respond swiftly if a similar incident happens.”

 

Also this month, three Chinese coast guard vessels passed through what Japan considers its territorial waters surrounding the East China Sea islands in the third such intrusion this month.

 

Both incidents have been viewed as attempts by China to probe Japan’s ability to patrol the area and detect intrusions.

Animosity between the sides owes largely to Chinese resentment over Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of large parts of China. Many Chinese feel Japan has never shown adequate contrition for its acts, a sentiment fueled by the ruling Communist Party’s use of heavy-handed nationalistic propaganda in schools and entirely state-controlled media.

 

Yet, the Japan-U.S. military alliance remains stronger than ever and Japan has responded to China’s territorial claims by recently opening a museum in Tokyo to present evidence intended to support its position.

 

China’s generally positive relationship with South Korea, another close U.S. ally, has also soured over Beijing’s demands that Seoul remove a sophisticated anti-missile system intended to counter the threat from Pyongyang.

 

South Korea has refused to do so and Beijing has lately softened its position by accepting a commitment to not expand the system, known as THAAD.

 

Hopes for further reconciliation rose in November when officials from Japan, South Korea and China met in the Philippines to discuss the possibility of again holding a trilateral summit between them. The last one was held in 2015.
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Why has Mumbai’s largest slum, which packs some one million people in about two square kilometers, emerged as an unlikely stop for foreign tourists? The draw is not images of squalor and poverty in the heart of India’s largest city, but a place where thriving entrepreneurship and stories of hope and success break many stereotypes of a slum. Anjana Pasricha reports.
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