Across the country, China is seeing a resurgence of local ethnicity and culture, most notably among southerners such as the Cantonese and Hakka, who are now classified as Han.

For centuries, China has held together a vast multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nation despite alternating periods of political centralization and fragmentation. But cultural and linguistic cleavages could worsen in a China weakened by internal strife, an economic downturn, uneven growth, or a struggle over future political succession.

The initial brawl between workers in a Guangdong toy factory, which left at least two Uighur dead on 25 June, prompted the mass unrest in Xinjiang on 5 July, which ended with 156 dead, thousands injured, and 1500 arrested, with on-going violence spreading throughout the region.

The National Day celebrations scheduled for October 2009, seeks to highlight 60 years of the “harmonious” leadership of the Communist Party in China, and like the 2008 Olympics, its enormous success. The rioting threatens to de-rail these celebrations.

Officially, China is made up of 56 nationalities: one majority nationality, the Han, and 55 minority groups. The 2000 census revealed a total official minority population of nearly 104m, or approximately 9% of the total population.

BBC

More at the link

Around a dozen cases, 3 deaths, as pneumonic plague kills up its heels in NW China. This is a disease that hygiene can help prevent. Get rid of the rodents and their fleas and plague disappears.

Plague is spread in two main forms, pneumonic – which is the form reported in China, and bubonic. Pneumonic plague is spread like many respiratory diseases, by being coughed or sneezed on by a sick person.

Bubonic plague can be found in the United States, almost entirely in the Southwest. It is spread by the bites of fleas, usually fleas from rats, mice or other rodents. The number of human cases varies with the natural increases or decreases in rodent populations. The NIH reports 10-20 cases of bubonic plague in the U.S. on average each year. 1 of 7 cases is fatal.

Pneumonic plague appears as a rapid onset pneumonia, with all the related symptoms, fever, shortness of breath, coughing and sometimes bloody sputum. It is very contagious for people who have close contact with the patient. The Y. pestis bacteria cannot survive longer than about an hour in open air and sunlight so personal contact is the most risky.

More at Examiner.com

The crowd defended the body against waves of policemen. However, on Saturday, a fire was lit inside the hotel, but the corpse was saved. Tu’s cousin apparently armed himself with two barrels of gasoline and threatened to blow himself up if the body was taken.

The police restored order yesterday, imposed a curfew and took the body to a funeral parlour. Today, the website of the local government has been defaced by hackers.

What’s extraordinary is the speed in which the riot blew up, and the venom directed against the local authorities. Whatever was behind Tu’s death, there’s clearly something rotten in Shishou.

But after months of calm, there have been a spate of reported riots recently. Is this because media restrictions have been lifted, allowing news of riots to spread, or has there been a genuine increase in social tension in the countryside?

It is impossible to tell. China no longer publishes the figures for how many riots take place each year, but most people put the figure at around 80,000 and the vast majority go totally unnoticed.

Telegraph

A Chinese soldier was shot dead outside a military garrison in the south-western city of Chongqing, state media have reported.

The 18-year-old soldier, Han Junliang, was on sentry duty when he was attacked by one or more assailants, who shot him dead then stole his submachine gun.

The police and military have launched a joint investigation, the report said.

Private gun ownership is illegal in China. The government has acknowledged trouble in dealing with armed gangs.

Analysts say there are tens of thousands of smuggled weapons or guns illegally manufactured inside China.

BBC

BBC map of overlapping claims in South China Sea, including the largest, by China.

China plans to step up naval patrols in disputed waters in the South China Sea to protect its interests, Chinese state media quoted an official as saying.

The fisheries administration chief cited an increase in illegal fishing and other countries’ “unfounded claims” in seas that China claims as its own.

China sent a fisheries patrol ship to the South China Sea last week, and said it could deploy more similar vessels.

The patrols come after US and Chinese ships were involved in a confrontation.

“Faced with a growing amount of illegal fishing and other countries’ unfounded territorial claims it has become necessary to step up the fishery administration’s patrols to protect China’s rights and interests,” the China Daily quoted official Wu Zhuang as saying.

BBC

China’s exports fell more than expected in January, down 17.5% from a year earlier, marking the biggest drop in more than 10 years, figures have shown.

Imports were down 43.1% in the month compared with a year ago, as China’s economy continued to be hit by the global economic slowdown.

Analysts say the slowdown could prompt more factory closures and job losses.

China’s global trade surplus widened to $39.1bn last month, after recording a surplus of $39bn in December.

BBC

The Ponzi scheme that is the Chinese economy is gravely threatened. Exports cannot fall for any length of time or the cash flow necessary to keep the economy super stimulated dies. Commodity prices must remain low and supply high. And the tens of millions of rural Chinese who work in the “new” economy must remain content.

We are seeing a variety of challenges to these imperatives. Month to month, the Chinese may be able to manage but if any of these turn into a long term trend, watch out.

As I have predicted in the past, the reaction by the boys in Beijing will be violent. Taiwan and the Russian Far East are most at risk but internal crackdowns will also be in the mix.

Parts of China are experiencing their worst drought in half a century, threatening the water supply of millions of people and putting the winter harvest at risk, state media reported.

The dry spell has spread rapidly across seven key agricultural provinces, triggering calls from President Hu Jintao and other top leaders to step up support for the affected areas.

”The duration, scope and impact of the drought are rare,” said China Meteorological Administration chief Zheng Guoguang.

At least 3.7 million people and 1.9 million head of livestock are affected.

About 9.5 million hectares of farmland, representing 43 percent of the country’s winter wheat supplies, are also affected.

No rain has been forecast for the next 10 days.

The Standard Newspaper

China appears to be the focal point for avian flu [H5N1] cases so far in 2009. Of 9 reported cases, 7 are from China. Nearly all are reported to have had contact with poultry.

In Third World nations, especially rural regions, when livestock become sick, the rush is to slaughter them and perhaps use them before they die. Since H5N1 is primarily transmitted through contact with infected poultry, this means that every sick bird is a tiny hotspot of infection.

Here are the latest two reports from China.

WHO update 3

27 January 2009 — The Ministry of Health in China has announced three new confirmed human cases of H5N1 infection. The first, a 31-year-old female from Urumqi, Xinjiang Autonomous Region had onset of symptoms on 10 January. She received treatment in hospital but died on 23 January. Investigations into the possible source of her infection indicate recent visits to a live poultry market. The local authorities are currently conducting epidemiological investigations and close contacts are being monitored. To date, no clinical symptoms have been reported among the contacts.

The second case is a 29-year-old male from Guiyang city, Guizhou. He had onset of symptoms on 15 January and remains in a critical condition. Investigations into the source of his infection indicate possible exposure at poultry market.

The third case is an 18-year-old male from Beiliu City, Guangxi Province. He had onset of symptoms on 19 January and died on 26 January. Investigations into the source of his infection indicate a recent history of exposure to sick and dead poultry. Close contacts of the case are being monitored and to date all remain well.

Of the 37 cases confirmed to date in China, 25 have been fatal.

WHO update 4

2 February 2009 — The Ministry of Health in China has announced a new confirmed human cases of H5N1 infection. The case is a 21-year-old female from Xupu County, Hunan province. She had onset of symptoms on 23 January and remains in hospital in a clinically stable condition. Investigations into the source of her infection indicate possible exposure to sick and dead poultry.

Of the 38 cases confirmed to date in China, 25 have been fatal.

In 2009, there have been 9 cases reported, with 4 being fatal. Since the disease became contagious to humans, there have been 404 cases with 254 being fatal. WHO table

China faces surging protests and riots in 2009 as rising unemployment stokes discontent, a state-run magazine said in a blunt warning of the hazards to Communist Party control from a sharp economic downturn.

The unusually stark report in this week’s Outlook (Liaowang) Magazine, issued by the official Xinhua news agency, said faltering growth could spark anger among millions of migrant workers and university graduates left jobless.

“Without doubt, now we’re entering a peak period for mass incidents,” a senior Xinhua reporter, Huang Huo, told the magazine, using the official euphemism for riots and protests.

“In 2009, Chinese society may face even more conflicts and clashes that will test even more the governing abilities of all levels of the Party and government.”

Reuters

The mainland said on Wednesday [January 7 2009] that it will continue pushing forward dialogue and consultation with Taiwan in the new year by “firmly holding the main theme of peaceful development of the cross-Straits relations”.

Yang Yi, spokesman of the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office, made the remark at a press conference here.

Yang spoke highly of the recent speech of Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, at a December 31 workshop to mark the 30th anniversary of the mainland’s “Message to Compatriots in Taiwan”.

Hu’s speech summed up 30 years’ experience in developing cross-Straits relations in a comprehensive way, and he made a series of new proposals to develop the relationship, according to the official.

“This important speech is of great significance for us to accomplish Taiwan-related work and open up a new situation in the peaceful development of the cross-Straits relations,” the official said.

Yang discussed progress in developing cross-Straits ties in 2008.

Last year, the ties began entering the track of peaceful development as the pro-independence force failed in a “memorandum” on Taiwan joining the United Nations.

Also, the Taiwan situation showed positive changes, he said, without further elaboration.

Last year, the two sides lifted a decades-long ban on direct trade, mail and transport links; Taiwan compatriots gave selfless support to the quake survivors in the mainland; a pair of pandas arrived in Taiwan as a mainland gift and the mainland announced new measures to deepen cross-Straits cooperation and deal with the global financial crisis, according to the official.

The spokesman said that the mainland has always attached great importance to giving financial assistance to Taiwan-funded companies in the mainland. As of the end of 2007, mainland banks had lent more than 700 billion yuan (102 billion U.S. dollars) to such companies.

Three mainland banks have also agreed to offer 130 billion yuan in new loans to Taiwan-funded companies in the next two or three years.

China Daily

The numbers are huge, but in China they are still a small percentage of the overall workforce. That is, if the reports are accurate and not understated. The potential for a civil backlash is growing.

Nearly 5 million migrant workers had returned home by the end of November, accounting for 5.4 percent of rural migrant workers, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said.

Many of them had lost their jobs as the global financial crisis took its toll across the country.

The 4.85 million migrant workers were mainly from 10 provinces including Sichuan, Hebei, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan.

Meanwhile, employers in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian and Shandong, as well as Shanghai, have sacked 2.45 million people, accounting for 5.2 percent of the workforce in these areas, the ministry said.

Shanghai Daily

A battle is unfolding on the stark mountains and scalloped dunes of northern Niger between a band of Tuareg nomads, who claim the riches beneath their homeland are being taken by a government that gives them little in return, and an army that calls the fighters drug traffickers and bandits.

It is a new front of an old war to control the vast wealth locked beneath African soil. Niger’s northern desert caps one of the world’s largest deposits of uranium, and demand for it has surged as global warming has increased interest in nuclear power. Growing economies like China and India are scouring the globe for the crumbly ore known as yellowcake. A French mining company is building the world’s largest uranium mine in northern Niger, and a Chinese state company is building another mine nearby.

NY Times via Gainesville Sun

It is foolish to accept Chinese economic figures at face value. China remains a centralized communist state. It has no incentive to produce honest data on its economy, nor do the people in the trenches have any incentive to report the economic truth up the line to their superiors. Everything about the economy of China should be treated with suspicion.

As the risk of deflation looms large on top of weaker exports and declining private real estate investment, China’s economy may continue to slow down in the quarters immediately ahead but regain growth momentum in the second half of next year, according to a Morgan Stanley report released on Wednesday.

In its China Economics Outlook for 2009, the Hong Kong-based Morgan Stanley Asia forecast China’s baseline GDP growth would be around 7.5 percent next year, with the bull and bear scenarios projected at 9 percent and 5 percent respectively.

The projection came after the country’s economic indicators showed that the impacts from the global financial crisis on China’s tangible economy have become much severer.

The exports totaled $115 billion last month, down 2.2 percent year-on-year in the first monthly decline since June 2001, the General Administration of Customs said on Wednesday. The previous decline, a much smaller 0.6 percent, reflected slumping US demand after the tech bubble burst.

The producer price index (PPI), a measure of inflation at the factory level, decelerated sharply to an annual rise of 2 percent in November. It was also slowest rise for the PPI since May 2006, which prompted worries about the fast-slowing economy and rising deflation risks.

Late last month, the World Bank has revised down its forecast for China’s GDP rise of next year from 9.2 percent to 7.5 percent.

Wang Qing, Morgan Stanley Asia chief economist on the Chinese economy, said that three factors, namely the cooling-down in real estate investment, a massive de-stocking of raw material inputs in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of international commodity prices and the weakening external demand, had caused China’s economy to slowdown rather sharply.

The “triple-whammy impact” however could barely maintain its full force throughout 2009, although the ravage would likely continue to be felt though in the first quarter of next year, he said. “We believe that China’s economic outlook for next year is best characterized as getting worse before getting better, laying the foundation for a firmer recovery in 2010.”

As the fiscal stimulus package came much faster this time than that during the Asia financial crisis, Morgan Stanley expected the effect to be apparent by mid-2009. Besides, the slow recovery of the G3 economies — the United States, European Union and Japan– after the unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy actions might have led to an improving external demand by the second half of next year and thus would contribute to a modest recovery of the Chinese economy.

China Daily

A TWO-year-old boy was orphaned in the southwest Chinese city of Chongzhou when his parents drank pesticide after a nasty row.
The tragedy, reported in the state media last month, bears testimony to the dark side of reform – suicide rates that are now among the highest in the world.

On average, a Chinese person takes his or her own life every two minutes, giving the world’s most populous nation a dismal record as it prepares to celebrate 30 years of otherwise spectacular economic reform.

“With the reforms, society has become more complicated,” said Huo Datong, the first psychoanalyst to practise in China.

“Individualism has become more pronounced and psychological problems have become more and more serious,” he said from Chengdu, a city in the southwest.

Since reform kicked off in 1978, the Middle Kingdom has been through enormous upheavals and so has the psyche of its 1.3 billion people.

Society has been uprooted as traditional family and clan structures have disintegrated, straining social relations and putting the individual under immense stress, experts say.

In just one generation, China’s millennia-old civilisation has become one dedicated almost entirely to profit, with profound consequences.

In the overall rush to get rich, a culture of competition places huge pressure not least on children, who usually have no siblings and face almost impossible expectations from their parents to be successful.

In a country where three or even four generations used to live under one roof, the elderly are now abandoned – once an almost unthinkable crime – while rural migrants go to the cities to work, leaving their children behind.

“We see more patients in psychiatric hospitals who are there because the economic development has caused old family bonds to dissolve. People are more isolated from others,” said Dr Huo.

It is a time of unprecedented possibilities for education, leisure and travel and more people are allowed to climb the social ladder than ever before.

But at the same time many Chinese succumb to a frightening sense of insecurity.

In the past, the Communist Party regulated everyone’s lives, guaranteeing the “iron rice bowl” of government support from cradle to grave.

This is no longer the case and many Chinese have lost their footing.

The Australian

China on Sunday announced a massive USD 2.61 million military assistance package to Nepal in its bid to checkmate India’s influence over the Himalayan country.

The liberal assistance includes USD 1.45 million for procurement of military equipment apart from USD 1.16 million promised by Beijing during Nepal Defence Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa’s visit two months ago.

Chinese deputy Chief of Staff Lt Gen Ma Xiaotian, who is currently in Nepal on a five-day visit, announced the package of 18 million Chinese Yuan (USD 2.61 million) as part of its plans to boost defence cooperation with Kathmandu.

An agreement was signed with Nepal today by a 10-member military delegation, led by Ma, after meeting Nepal Defence Minister Thapa, the Defence Ministry said.

The Chinese military delegation that arrived here yesterday is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and Nepal Army’s chief Rukmangad Katuwal during his stay in Kathmandu.

Three major Chinese delegations have come to Nepal within a month, as exchange of visits between the two countries have increased following the formation of the Maoist-led government.

Zee