New York Times senior writer Howard French, in addition to being a real journalist, has a beautiful blog, if not an RSS feed (grrr). (Thanks to the amazing Alex Steffen for the link.)

French's latest trip is to the famous Shaolin Temple, which turns out to be in Dengfeng in China's Henan province and not on Staten Island, New York.

Says French:

The boys loved it, getting a kick (ha ha) in particular from the demonstrations of the temple’s masters, hanging out with the abbot, who heads the temple, and visiting some of the many extraordinarily large kung fu schools that line the road leading to the temple.

Too bad he didn't write more, but he did manage to get a few nice photos. There are lots of other interesting posts and photographs on his site.

From the Asia Times Online's Sergei Blagov (under, ironically enough, a blinking banner ad for $250 gas cards..)

MOSCOW - The Kremlin's decision to approve the East Siberia-Pacific oil pipeline and pump its Siberian crude toward Japan has come as a blow to China's hopes of securing its own slice of Russia's hydrocarbon riches. And Moscow's energy overtures toward Beijing as a consolation prize are not much by which to set store.

On New Year's Eve, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov approved the Taishet-Nakhodka oil pipeline blueprint, the government said in a statement. The annual capacity of the East Siberia-Pacific pipeline system would eventually reach 80 million tons, the statement said. ...

Russia's decision to build a Siberian oil pipeline to the Pacific port of Nakhodka will please Tokyo, but upset Beijing. Japan backed the Nakhodka route, while Beijing favored an alternative pipeline that would have brought the oil to Daqing in northwest China. Russia has been toying with both options, but in March 2004 indicated that it could favor the Japanese-backed project.

Tokyo has been lobbying for an oil pipeline route to the Pacific. To back up its lobbying, Japan reportedly promised up to $14 billion funding of the pipeline as well as $8 billion in investments in the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 oil and gas projects, according to Russian media reports. The estimated cost of the oil pipeline from eastern Siberia to Nakhodka could reach $11-12 billion. The Taishet-Nakhodka route is seen as a strategic asset for Russia, allowing it to funnel crude not only to Japan but to Korea, Indonesia, Australia and the US west coast as well.

I suppose it's probably too much to hope that all this new oil will mean a new look at the wonders of central heating on the part of the Japanese (I spent about half my time there on a visit last winter scorching my leg hair off under one of these things), but this is still good news for Japan all the same. China, which has its own energy needs to feed, is probably not going to be so happy:

Russia had been discussing a China-bound oil pipeline for nearly a decade. In June 2002, Russian officials pledged to invest $2 billion to fund the construction of the 2,247 kilometer pipeline from the Russian city of Angarsk in the Irkutsk region to Daqing in northeastern China, which was scheduled to begin in 2003 and commissioned by 2005. ...

In the past, Russian and Chinese officials have raised the possibility that a branch of Russia's Pacific pipeline could eventually be diverted to China. However, the December 31 announcement mentioned no China-bound branches of the proposed pipeline. As consolation, on December 30, Russia said it would offer China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) up to a 20% stake in a new state-owned entity that would control Yuganskneftegaz, the main asset of the collapsing Russian oil company Yukos.

I haven't studied Chinese energy and resource consumption as a topic in itself, so I can't offer much speculation on how this particular development will impact it in concrete terms. You never know — maybe all those tens of thousands of Chinese engineering students being trained in their university system will end up devoting themselves towards coming up with some of the clean energy alternatives Matt's looking for.

Edit: China better find something to keep the lights going soon, though. As the UN Population Fund's China representative warns, "China will get old before it gets rich." The one-child policy, while still not enough to prevent China's population from increasing by 8 million per year, is now firmly entrenched within the urban population, presenting China with a looming demographic crunch.

The desire for a son has also so skewed the gender balance that there are now 117 males for every 100 females. To round off the China articles for this evening, we learn that in this corner of China, though, daughters are seen as a valuable commodity for sale in the Southeast Asian sex trade. Those that find success "working outside" bring great wealth to their impoverished homesteads, but also, inevitably, further exacerbate China's HIV and AIDs problem. As a solution to prostitution within China:

the government has set up "re-education centres" in every province. Much emphasis in these centres is put on educating women on the "social evils" of prostitution but they usually only provide limited information about sexual health and how the prostitutes can protect themselves. A study amongst prostitutes in China found that only a few knew that condoms could be protective (14-30%). They all mentioned abstinence as much more protective. Very few (2-30%) perceived themselves at risk of contracting HIV.

Sadly, that's exactly the style of sex education that George W. Bush and his supporters like to see, so I don't suppose there's much hope of the US pressuring the Chinese to get their act together on this front any time soon.

As coastal China's wealth rises, so too does its skyline, its shopping malls, and its number of reconstructed luxury French castles (unfortunately gone behind the NYT archive barrier by now, but a great article if you happened to have caught it) Edit: LJ in comments offers this reprint from the Gainsville Sun, which carries the original article (though not the NYT's photos of the castle). Thanks!
From the LAT article today:

In the public sector, decisions are often made by Communist Party officials who see impressive buildings as key to a promotion. Then they assign a few bureaucrats with limited knowledge of contracting, cost control, project management, aesthetics or problem solving to carry out those decisions.

Some of this happens with government projects anywhere, but critics say the problems in China are compounded by the lack of democracy or taxpayer scrutiny under its top-down governing system. ...

Not to mention the absence of property rights, meaning the government (or well-connected officials like the fellow described in the NYT piece) can comandeer land with considerable impunity.

... China's building spree has also spurred an ongoing debate over preservation. Although the country arguably invented city planning thousands of years ago, as evidenced by the well-ordered grids of its ancient capital cities, its headlong impatience to become world class overnight often results in messy patchworks, as traditional courtyard homes are razed, the faster the better, to make way for skyscrapers as flashy as possible.

"It's not the first time the whole nation has suffered from a bout of overconfidence," says Zhou Rong, assistant dean of the architecture school at Beijing's Qinghua University. "In the 1950s, you had the Great Leap Forward, as China argued it could catch up with Britain in five years, the U.S. in 10. Now they're trying to do that all over again."

It seems to me there is sort of a precedent for this kind of development.

Surprisingly, the Chinese government has released a white paper outlining its national defense strategy. From a quick perusal it's clear that China's priorities are Taiwan and a Chinese version of the "revolution in military affairs." Here is how China views its regional context:

Meanwhile, complicated security factors in the Asia-Pacific region are on the increase. The United States is realigning and reinforcing its military presence in this region by buttressing military alliances and accelerating deployment of missile defense systems. Japan is stepping up its constitutional overhaul, adjusting its military and security policies and developing the missile defense system for future deployment. It has also markedly increased military activities abroad. The foundation for the Six-Party Talks is not solid enough as uncertain factors linger in the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. The threat posed by terrorism, separatism and extremism is still grave. Such transnational crimes as smuggling, piracy, drug trafficking and money laundering are rampant. Many countries are confronted with the formidable task of eliminating poverty, achieving sustainable development and enhancing security in the area of public health.

The situation in the relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits is grim. The Taiwan authorities under Chen Shui-bian have recklessly challenged the status quo that both sides of the Straits belong to one and the same China, and markedly escalated the "Taiwan independence" activities designed to split China. Incessantly trumpeting their separatist claim of "one country on each side," they use referendum to engage in the separatist activities aimed at "Taiwan independence," incite hostility among the people on the island toward the mainland, and purchase large amounts of offensive weapons and equipment. They have not given up their attempt at "Taiwan independence" through the formulation of a so-called "new constitution for Taiwan." They are still waiting for the opportune moment to engineer a major "Taiwan independence" incident through the so-called "constitutional reform." The separatist activities of the "Taiwan independence" forces have increasingly become the biggest immediate threat to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as peace and stability on both sides of the Taiwan Straits and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. The United States has on many occasions reaffirmed adherence to the one China policy, observance of the three joint communiqués and opposition to "Taiwan independence." However, it continues to increase, quantitatively and qualitatively, its arms sales to Taiwan, sending a wrong signal to the Taiwan authorities. The US action does not serve a stable situation across the Taiwan Straits.

China's national security environment in this pluralistic, diversified and interdependent world has on the whole improved, but new challenges keep cropping up. The vicious rise of the "Taiwan independence" forces, the technological gap resulting from RMA, the risks and challenges caused by the development of the trends toward economic globalization, and the prolonged existence of unipolarity vis-a-vis multipolarity - all these will have a major impact on China's security. Nevertheless, China is determined to safeguard its national sovereignty and security, no matter how the international situation may evolve, and what difficulties it may encounter, so as to join hands with the people around the world in advancing the lofty cause of peace and development for mankind.

A lot of talk about bilateral military exercises and regional security consultation and cooperation and so forth. Russia figures prominently as the number one strategic partner. BTW, did you know that China had people in Haiti?

In 2004, China has sent 59 policemen to East Timor, Liberia, Afghanistan, Kosovo of Serbia-Herzegovina and Haiti, and a 125-member organic police detachment to Haiti to serve with MINUSTAH at the request of the UN.

I think there's also some serious BS in there, notably with regard to China's commitment to non-proliferation, which has been dubious at best IMHO. Overall, I'd say the document reads like it is intended more as an internal plea for boosting defense spending and as PR for the international community rather than as the outline of some kind of grand strategy. China is very focused on economic development, and claims it "will never go for expansion, nor will it ever seek hegemony."

Swallowing Taiwan would not count as expansion, apparently:

Should the Taiwan authorities go so far as to make a reckless attempt that constitutes a major incident of "Taiwan independence," the Chinese people and armed forces will resolutely and thoroughly crush it at any cost.

Good thing Taiwan is rejecting the separatists. The status quo works just fine for now.

One other expansion note: does energy count? Throughout history, there have been conflicts between great powers over resources. How comfortable are we that the U.S. and China won't butt heads at some point? I'm not quite as sanguine as, say, Thomas Barnett on this point. But maybe that's because I'm in the middle of a book about imperialism. China is talking a good game about renewable energy and so forth, but meanwhile they're building relationships with old-fashioned energy producers in our sphere of influence.

But alll told, not too scary.

Jeffrey Lewis has a take here.

UPDATE: Holy Crap! I was vaguely aware that China was undergoing some domestic upheaval, but from this amazing Times article it sounds much more widespread than I had imagined.

Police statistics show the number of public protests reached nearly 60,000 in 2003, an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2002 and eight times the number a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops are commonly needed to restore order when the police lose control. [...]

Last month, as many as 100,000 farmers in Sichuan Province, frustrated by months of fruitless appeals against a dam project that claimed their land, took matters into their own hands. They seized Hanyuan County government offices and barred work on the dam site for days. It took 10,000 paramilitary troops to quell the unrest. [...]

Also in November, in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province, in central China, two policemen were killed when enraged construction workers attacked a police station after a traffic dispute. Days later, in Guangdong Province, in the far south, riots erupted and a toll booth was burned down after a woman claimed she had been overcharged to use a bridge. In mid-December, a village filled with migrant workers in Guangdong erupted into a frenzy of violence after the police caught a 15-year-old migrant stealing a bicycle and beat him to death. Up to 50,000 migrants rioted there, Hong Kong newspapers reported.

Those are some serious numbers. Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention? So I wonder if China will try to deflect that anger outwards, diffuse it by opening up political space, or simply try to squelch it in the usual way?

I have come very late to the field of South Asian studies in my college career (prior to Prof. Haqqani's arrival at the university, I don't believe anyone was really teaching any courses specifically related to either India or Pakistan, which is kind of unbelievable when you think about it.. I think European and Russian studies are still a little over-represented in our IR department right now, but hey, to each his own turf).

The more I learn the more interested I am in the region, so it's interesting when my studies to date, which have mostly focused on China and East Asia, overlap — as they did in my Uyghur paper and as they do in these articles about recently increased Sino-Pakistani cooperation here, here, and here (all coinciding with a visit by Pakistani PM Shaukat Aziz to Beijing and Shanghai) which recieved little attention in the U.S. press (even though Hu's diplomatic efforts in Latin America, East Asia, and Africa have caught a good bit of notice as China becomes increasingly assertive) but which look to have been a big deal in Dawn, the establishment newspaper of Pakistan.

It's my understanding that the military alliance between Pakistan and China actually dates back several decades — I think Steven Cohen's The Idea of Pakistan may cover it somewhat, but does anyone have a recommendation for a book specifically on Sino-Pakistani relations, military or otherwise? — since you have the whole border war between India and China from the 60s as well as the Sino-Soviet split playing out there. I believe Cohen makes the point that in the absence of real committed American support, Pakistan has frequently turned towards other regional powers such as China, especially after the Bangladesh crisis and when we departed after the Afghan jihad in the 1980s. Since Pakistan under Musharaff post-9/11 has been shedding most of its overt support for the training of Islamic guerrillas in the Kashmir region (which China had previously complained was bleeding over into Xinjiang and riling up the Uyghurs) and since China is content to participate in the war on terror to the extent that it legitimizes its own moves in Central Asia, increased cooperation between the two countries is not surprising now.

With that in mind, Timothy Dunlop's relating of the reaction of Indian officials (via Drum and Pandagon) to a visiting U.S. Congressional delegation — "We consider ourselves as in competition with China for leadership in the new century. That's our focus and frankly, you have made it very difficult for us to deal with you." — strikes me as very interesting indeed. TJ in Pandagon comments has CIA factbook figures for India, China, and the US that suggest to him India may actually be the most dynamic of the three major powers for the future. I don't know anything about the Indian economy to judge whether that's true or not, but China certainly has its share of structural problems yet to be confronted for the future. Right now the U.S. is engaging both the Chinese and the Pakistani regimes, but it's not clear to me to what extent (since the Bush administration hasn't made much of a priority of anything besides a professed commitment to counter-terrorism) or how long that will last (since American relations with Pakistan have generally been utilitarian and limited, and its as yet unclear how deep our cooperation is outside the current hunt for Al Qaeda — one reason Pakistan should be in no rush to deliver, by the way). I really don't think we want to see some sort of Sino-Pakistani vs. India-American face-off in South Asia at any point in the future, but India's dismissal of American efforts is not a particularly encouraging sign either, since with its current political and economic ties (of varying degrees of strength) to all major parties in the region the U.S. would presumably be in the best position to uphold a peaceful status quo between them.

And to conclude this bout of semi-informed speculation, let me just add that if I were an apocalyptic science fiction writer these days, I would totally start it all off with Kashmir.

Even a close China-watcher can be impressed sometimes.

Simon marvels at China's metamorphosis from an impoverished Maoist backwater to a quasi-capitalist dynamo:

China is a unique economy and in many ways justifies the oft-abused tag of "economic miracle". Some signs of this? Japan will no longer send aid to China after 2006. The World Food Program has said China no longer requires food aid and instead should become a donor to the WFP. And China has responded to worries about the lifting of textile tariffs at the end of this year with new export tariffs - self-imposed protectionism.

Consider: China now holds the second biggest foreign exchange reserves in the world. It is one of the major engines of the world economy. It has done more to alleviate poverty and hunger than any other organisation in the history of mankind. Within a generation it has gone from receiving food aid to giving it. It has gone from receiving Japanese aid to being seen as a potential threat and rival.

China has a long way to go, particularly in the political arena, but its rise has been pretty amazing indeed. Those who think that trade and economic liberalization can't do good should think again.

The KMT and its allies have apparently won the parliamentary elections.

Taiwan opposition wins parliamentary poll

An opposition alliance which favours friendly ties with China defeated a pro-independence grouping in Taiwan's parliamentary election according to official vote count figures quoted by Eastern TV.

As long as Chen is still President it's unlikely the Chinese will loosen up on their refusal to talk with Taiwan. But since the elections were viewed by both sides as a referendum on whether to proceed with amending the Taiwanese constitution, this will hopefully reduce the amount of delicate navigating the US is forced to do.

For an interesting view of the problem for the US, which argues that Taiwan and others, such as Israel and Georgia, can't be allowed to hijack US foreign policy, see Wagging the Dog, by Nikolas K. Gvosdev & Travis Tanner in in the Fall 2004 issue of The National Interest (sub req'd unfortunately).

Revised December 6, primarily illustrations and format

---

Uyghur Separatism and the Politics of Islam in China's Western Frontier

Colin Cookman

From its earliest inception, the modern Islamic terrorist movement has been transnational and pan-Islamic in character. Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network had its origins in the corps of volunteers known as the "Islamic Internationale", or "Arab Afghans": young men hailing from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the whole breadth of the Middle East who flocked under the banner of jihad to the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the training camps of Peshawar. There they gathered to wage guerrilla war in the name of Islam against the godless Soviet Communists, while the American government looked on with grim satisfaction as it covertly supported efforts to bleed the Russians in their own "Soviet Vietnam".

Following the United States' campaign to topple the Taliban and disrupt Al Qaeda's base in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, news reports tracking captured fighters and key figures in the Al Qaeda leadership regularly reiterated, either explicitly or through non-commental labels of ethnicity, the multinational character of the terrorists' network: U.S. President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" was facing off against a stateless, loosely affiliated coalition of the dispossessed, the globally marginalized, and the violently revivalist. Although the biggest names and largest percentage of captured Al Qaeda members continue to be primarily of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin, every now and then reports mention other, more exotic figures in the mix of captured and killed: Chechens from the Caucuses, Uzbeks, Filipino Moros, and, infrequently but not unnoticed, Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang province.

What motivates those small handfuls of anonymous young men to cross the Pamir mountains into Afghanistan and fight alongside the militants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban? In order to attempt an answer, we must examine the origins of Xinjiang's oasis peoples, the Uyghurs, and their aspirations for nationhood; the nature of Chinese rule over them today, and its effects on those aspirations; and the extent to which militant Islamic revivalism may have infiltrated China's western hinterlands, and what implications that holds for the Uyghurs and their region. This paper argues that China's discriminatory policies have, more than any other factor, served to alienate the Uyghurs and increase the appeal of militant Islam, in effect making Beijing's worst fears a reality.
   more »

Not only has the US failed to offer any strong alternative to the madrassas in the wake of the Pakistani public education system's full-scale collapse, we now appear to be ceding ground in Asia without protest:

The center is part of China's expanding presence across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, where Beijing is making a big push to market itself and its language, similar to the way the United States promoted its culture and values during the cold war. It is not a hard sell, particularly to young Asians eager to cement cultural bonds as China deepens its economic and political interests in the region. ...

Over all, China's stepped up endeavors in cultural suasion remain modest compared with those of the United States, and American popular culture, from Hollywood movies to MTV, is still vastly more exportable and accessible, all agree. The United States also holds the balance of raw military power in the region.

But the trend is clear, educators and diplomats here say: the Americans are losing influence.

   more »

Proving once again that the mad mullahs konw how the game is played, Iran pretty clearly inked a gas deal with China in exchange for protection on the the nuclear issue.

In other China news, Beijing is gearing up to host the WTO in November and again in the spring (this time in Shanghai).

Truly, China has arrived on the world stage.