28. At the time of writing in 2012, China is the only country that has built dams on the main Mekong river. The other countries in the region have been carrying out studies into the construction of hydroelectric projects on the river since the 1970s, and these studies have increased in recent years. The most advanced project is the Xayabouri Dam, an infrastructure project planned for northern Laos with a capacity to generate 1,260 megawatts. Other studies are underway into the construction of eleven more dams along the river in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Viability reports indicate that the impact of these projects would be disastrous, leading experts to request a ten-year moratorium on the construction of any new dams on the river.
China also plays an important role in the dams that have been planned downstream. On the one hand, the construction of Chinese dams has broken the taboo that once surrounded the development of any projects on such an important river. On the other hand, Beijing is an important investor, as it is estimated that, if the plans are approved, around 40 percent of the hydroelectric projects downstream on the Mekong and its tributaries would be undertaken by Chinese companies. Sources: “Strategic Environmental Assessment of Hydropower on the Mekong Mainstream, Final Report,” International Center for Environmental Management, October 2010; “Cascade Effect,” Philip Hirsch, Australian Mekong Resource Center: http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/4093-Cascade-effect.
29. China has built at least twenty dams and plans to construct another forty on the eight main rivers which begin in the Himalayan mountains. Source: “Water Wars? Thirsty, Energy-Short China Stirs Fear,” Denis Gray, Associated Press, April 16, 2011.
30. A Sino-Indian River War: How Serious Is the Threat? Jonathan Holslag, (BICCS, 2008).
31. China has built fifteen reservoirs on the tributaries of the Ili river and a 22-meter-wide, 300-kilometer-long channel on the Irtysh river to supply water to its oil industry located in Karamay in Xinjiang province. Source: “The Upstream Superpower: China’s International Rivers,” E. James Nickum, in Management of Transboundary Rivers and Lakes, eds. Olli Varis, Cecilia Tortajada and Asit K. Biswas (Springer, 2008), p. 239.
32. Less than 1 percent of China’s total water resources originate outside the country’s borders. Ibid., p. 230.
33. Ibid.
34. Approved in 1997 by 103 votes in favor, 27 abstentions and 3 votes against, the Convention attempts to lay the foundations for the resolution of potential water conflicts. He Deming explained to the authors why China continues to oppose this agreement, to which it still refuses to subscribe: “It is an unfair text because it considers the priorities of downstream regions. It establishes restrictions on hydroelectric projects further upstream in order to protect the environment, but by doing so it restricts the development of ‘upstream’ countries.” See also “The Upstream Superpower: China’s International Rivers,” op. cit., p. 231.
35. It is only fair to point out that this environmental sensibility is improving in China. This is mostly a consequence of the pressing need to reverse a catastrophic and unsustainable environmental situation caused by thirty years of brutal development.
36. The industrialization of China, which began in 1949 when the Communist Party came to power and gained momentum after the economic reforms of 1978, has had a profound impact on the environment. While China’s transformation into the world’s factory—a result of the relocation of Western industry—has played a very important role, it is important not to underestimate the effect of the authorities’ lack of attention to protecting the environment over the last six decades.
Consequently, China is home to twenty of the thirty most contaminated cities in the world as well as thousands, or even tens of thousands, of so-called “cancer villages,” where unrestrained industrial dumping in lakes and rivers has sent levels of the illness rocketing among the local population. Furthermore, estimates suggest that 26 percent of the water in Chinese rivers and lakes is unsuitable for human use, while the remaining 62 percent is barely drinkable. Only 1 percent of the 560 million Chinese city-dwellers breathe safe air, according to European Union standards.
In a report published in 2007—which was rumored to have been censored by the Chinese government, who demanded a reduction in its shocking figures—the World Bank estimated that 760,000 Chinese people die annually as a result of pollution. Sources: Cost of Pollution in China: Economic Estimates of Physical Damages (World Bank, 2007); “Transboundary Water Pollution Management: Lessons Learned from River Basin Management in China, Europe and the Netherlands,” Xia Yu, Utrecht Law Review, 7 (1), January 2011.
37. In Chapter 3 we saw how Shougang Hierro Peru, a company operating in Peru’s Marcona mines amid grave criticism of its environmental standards, was considered one of the most polluting companies in China.
38. In May 2011, a court in Fujian gave Zijing Mining Group, one of China’s biggest gold producers, a $4.62 billion fine in response to toxic dumping that poisoned thousands of fish in a river in Fujian and left 60,000 people without their water supply.
39. Erdos took over the rights to exploit bauxite in the mining concessions in the eastern Mondulkiri region after announcing an investment of $3 billion, which included the construction of two (carbon energy) power stations and the running of a controversial project on Boeng Kak lake in Phnom Penh. Approximately 3,000 families were forced from their homes beside the lake in return for very little compensation so that the company could build lucrative luxury housing with the support of the local political elite. Sources: Interviews with sources who asked not to be named; “Thousands Displaced As Chinese Investment Moves into Cambodia,” Prak Chan Thul, South China Morning Post, April 7, 2011.
8 THE PAX SINICA OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
1. In autumn 1950, a year after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong sent thousands of troops into Tibet to suppress its people. Resistance to the invader reached its peak in March 1959, when a cruelly repressed uprising in Lhasa led the Dalai Lama to flee and seek exile in India, where he remains to this day. Since then, Dharamsala has been the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile.
2. According to the Tibetan government in exile, there are approximately 100,000 Tibetan people living in India, with 12,000 of them based in Dharamsala. Nepal is home to the second biggest Tibetan community outside Tibet, with at least 20,000 Tibetan immigrants.
3. A WikiLeaks cable from the American embassy in New Delhi showed that a total of 87,096 Tibetan refugees were registered at the Reception Center in Dharamsala between 1980 and 2009. For years the annual influx of refugees was around 3,000. Out of these, approximately 600 were children whose parents had forced them to escape to prevent them from being educated under Chinese rule. For these parents, getting their children out of Tibet means investing around $1,000—their life savings—to pay for Nepalese guides over the Himalayas. Many of these children never see their parents again.
4. On March 14, 2008, just months before the celebration of the Beijing Olympic Games, a protest led by monks in Lhasa against Chinese domination and the lack of religious liberties spread into other areas and monasteries across Tibet over the following days. Many Tibetan people took part in the violence, which involved attacking people of Han Chinese ethnicity and their businesses. The response of the Chinese police and army was ruthless, both in suppressing the uprising and in the repression that followed. The Western press was not authorized to cover the events, and the official version therefore differs significantly from the Tibetan sources. According to these sources, at least 220 Tibetans died and another 7,000 were arrested. Meanwhile, Beijing assured the world that the Tibetan violence had resulted in just nineteen deaths, all of them Chinese. Human Rights Watch chronicles the abuse carried out by Chinese security forces in Tibet between 2008 and 2010 in the report “I Saw It with My Own Eyes,” published in 2010.
5. Lobsang Sangay, who was born in India and studied law at Harvard, was elected as the Tibetan prime mi
nister in April 2011 after securing 55 percent of the votes of Tibetan people living abroad. He will take on the political role which was previously carried out by the Dalai Lama, who will continue as the Tibetan spiritual leader.
6. In an interview with the Chinese academic Ma Jiali, a leading expert in China–India relations as well as deputy director of the think tank China Reform Forum, he pointed out that in the “probable” event of a radicalization of the Tibetan movement after the death of the Dalai Lama, “China will ask India not to allow exiled Tibetans to carry out political activities against China, because Tibet is the most sensitive issue for the Chinese government.” When the authors asked him whether Beijing hoped that India would co-operate as Nepal is currently doing, he answered, “Yes, exactly, like in Nepal.” This could potentially cause conflict in democratic India where the Tibetans are popular with public opinion, the media and the political classes. If the Indian government has to try to accommodate this feeling with Chinese demands, this could lead to tensions between China and India.
7. This is a reference to the direct relationship between the Tibet issue and India’s dispute with Pakistan, a traditional ally of Beijing. The pacification of Tibet—or, alternatively, the escalation of tensions in the area—would have related repercussions for India in Pakistan.
8. During a visit to Delhi in 1956, Zhou Enlai, the Chinese prime minister during the Maoist era, warned Nehru of the consequences of giving asylum to the Dalai Lama. In 1959, in the midst of disagreements between the two countries over the demarcation of the border, including China’s construction of a strategic road uniting Xinjiang with Tibet through the disputed region of Aksai Chin, Nehru gave asylum to the Tibetan spiritual leader and granted permission for Dharamsala to become the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile. In Beijing’s eyes, Nehru had crossed the line.
9. After the exile of the Tibetan people, the CIA supported and financed the guerrilla operations of hundreds of Tibetans who were trained in camps in Nepal and India to undermine Beijing’s power in Tibet. United States support of this secret guerrilla army lasted until the 1970s, when China and the United States established diplomatic relations. Source: La actualidad de China [China Today], Rafael Poch-de-Feliu (Critica, 2009), pp. 538 ff.
10. “The fact that China’s leaders saw Indian efforts as attempts to ‘grab Tibet,’ to turn Tibet into ‘a buffer zone,’ to return Tibet to its pre-1949 status, to ‘overthrow China’s sovereignty,’ or to cause Tibet to ‘throw off the jurisdiction of China’s central government,’ does not necessarily mean that those perceptions were accurate. In fact, this core Chinese belief was wrong. This belief which Chinese analysts explain underpinned China’s decision for war in 1962 was, in fact, inaccurate. It was a deeply pernicious Chinese misperception that contributed powerfully to the decision for war in 1962.” “China’s Decision for War with India in 1962,” John W. Garver, in New Directions in the Study of Chinese Foreign Policy, eds. Robert S. Ross and Alastair Iain Johnston (Stanford University Press, 2006).
11. Nehru was naively convinced that China would not react to the border incursions of his troops and, therefore, that there would be no large-scale Chinese offensive. When this did in fact occur, the Indian troops were consequently not expecting the attack and were not duly prepared. China’s advance was therefore unstoppable.
12. Relations continued to deteriorate after the war as a result of China’s support of Pakistan during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani conflict, as well as the signing of a co-operation treaty with the Soviet Union in 1971 which brought New Delhi under Soviet influence, and several border skirmishes which lasted well into the 1980s.
13. Co-operation between India and China has gone beyond matters of trade. For example, the two countries tend to agree on multilateral issues, whether at the G20 or on questions of climate change or the so-called “South–South co-operation.” However, the two countries still do not see eye to eye on other matters: the issue of shared water resources, the frequent anti-dumping actions which India has filed against China at the World Trade Organization, India’s trade deficit, Beijing’s lack of enthusiasm in supporting New Delhi’s aspirations to a seat on the UN Security Council, and China’s provocative policy on visa concessions in the disputed border zones, which India sees as an insult, among other issues.
14. India has claimed an area the size of Switzerland from China for the Ladakh region on its northern border. To the east of the country, China has claimed an area three times as large from India, including much of Arunachal Pradesh, an area of great significance for Tibetan Buddhists. Beijing does not recognize the so-called “McMahon Line” marking the border between India and Tibet, which was established in 1914 by the British colonial power and the leaders of a de facto independent Tibet. This dispute overlaps with the dispute between India and Pakistan over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in which Beijing has openly given its support to Islamabad.
15. While there is widespread support for the Tibetan cause in India, there is no shortage of commentators who question New Delhi’s policy on the region. One of these is Madhav Das Nalapat, a professor at Manipal University and a highly influential expert in the country, who, despite being openly critical of China’s policy towards India, told the authors that “India has paid a very high price in geopolitical terms for its support of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people.”
16. As well as the six divisions currently in position, India has also deployed its border police and is apparently forming two more divisions of mountain troops to reinforce Arunachal Pradesh. Meanwhile, estimates suggest that China has deployed 500,000 men in Tibet, where it has the capacity to mobilize twelve divisions in less than a month, thanks to infrastructure it has built in the region to facilitate the movement of troops. These include the railway running to Lhasa across the roof of the world, five airports and a network of roads covering a distance of 41,000 kilometers. “Consolidating Control: Chinese Infrastructure Development in Tibet,” Monika Chansoria, CLAWS, Spring 2011.
17. The planned schedule included an interview with the Chinese directors of Huawei’s Indian headquarters in New Delhi and a visit to the company’s R&D Center in Bangalore. Despite the cancellation of the meeting in Delhi, the authors’ appointment in Bangalore still went ahead. All the executives interviewed in Bangalore were Indian nationals. The authors were not able to interview a single Chinese executive at the company.
18. That year Huawei became the second biggest world player in the sector after Ericsson. Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-02/01/content_11953774.htm.
According to sources at the company, 10 percent of its turnover is reinvested in R&D Centers, where the company has 51,000 employees (46 percent of its total staff). A “Telco” professional with ten years’ experience earns an annual salary of around $40,000 at Huawei India, which is three to four times less than a professional with the same profile would earn in the United States or Europe.
19. In theory, the ban was extended to all providers of foreign equipment, but the government’s action was clearly directed towards Chinese companies. Sources at Huawei told the authors that the circular “was relaxed” in August 2010 when the company agreed to demonstrate its transparency by revealing its source-code, the so-called DNA of its technology. Huawei’s competitors refused to do the same, leading the Indian government to limit the effects of its security measure, explained those same sources.
In April 2012 the Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) asked New Delhi to be cautious in its dealings with the Chinese firm Huawei, in the belief that the company has links with the Chinese Army. Suspicions about Huawei’s links with China’s State-security agencies seem also to explain why, in March 2012, the Australian government blocked the Shenzhen-based company from bidding for contracts, valued at $38 billion, to improve the broadband network of the country.
20. With respect to the composition of its shareholders, Huawei will only say that the
company “is 100 percent the property of its employees and nobody holds more than 2 percent.” Until the publication of its 2010 annual report, practically nothing at all was known about who was who in the company’s executive team. Ren Zhengfei does not grant interviews to the press and the company has no plans to list itself on the stock exchange, which would oblige it to become more transparent.
21. In August 2010 the New York Times revealed that Beijing had deployed between 7,000 and 11,000 men in the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in Pakistan-administered Kashmir with the aim of securing the overland route that would connect Xinjiang to the Indian Ocean. India claims this territory as its own.
22. In accordance with a bilateral agreement signed in July 2010, China will build another two nuclear reactors for civilian use in Pakistan, at a cost of $2.4 billion. China had previously built two other reactors at the same plant. The agreement represents a violation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group directives, which prohibit nuclear trade with countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as is the case with Pakistan. To justify its involvement, China has suggested that its nuclear sales will contribute to stability in southern Asia, echoing Pakistan’s claims that the nuclear pact between India and the United States has caused a nuclear imbalance in the region.
Several experts interviewed by the authors in India showed their concern about the “inappropriate use” that Pakistan may be making of the dual-purpose nuclear technology supplied by China. These suspicions are not only based on Islamabad’s desire to achieve balance in the region by keeping the nuclear threat alive, but also on China’s historical role in Pakistan’s nuclear program. The invaluable assistance offered by Beijing to Islamabad in the 1980s and subsequent years became evident after the revelation of the nuclear trade plot masterminded by the famous Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who provided details of China’s connection to Pakistan’s military nuclear program. China’s assistance played an invaluable role in helping Pakistan to quickly gain access to the atomic bomb. Beijing has never admitted its involvement in this proliferation. “The Americans have turned a blind-eye to China’s nuclear proliferation,” claimed a former Indian diplomat in Pakistan.
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