Sizing up the dragon's 'miracle'
- From: cnw <cnw@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:17:15 +0800
Sizing up the dragon's 'miracle'
Rangzen Magazine[Sunday, August 27, 2006 10:53]
“The only thing rising faster than China is the hype about China.”
Minxin Pei, a senior associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Overview:
On May 10, 1869, a hastily arranged, Golden Spike Ceremony at Promontory
Summit, Utah, marked the opening of the World’s First Transcontinental Railroad
in the United States that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. The
culmination of this movement, which required enormous feats of engineering and
lobor in the crossing of plains and high mountains of America was regarded as
one of the crowning achievements of the presidency of Abrahim Lincoln, completed
four years after his death.
The building of the 1,776 miles of rail took four years involving mostly Irish
and Chinese workers of whom hundreds lost their lives to avalanches, accidents,
and illness during the construction. The building of the railroad was motivated
in part to bind the Union together during the American Civil War. However it
primarily accelerated the populating of the West by the whites while
contributing to the decline of the native Americans in these regions. Today the
Indians, who are obliterated into an absolute minority, attribute the tragic
demise of their civilization and the race largely to the Goden Spike Movement.
Infact the Golden Spike Movement had changed the entire face of America.
Similar historical devastation follow the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway
that connects Moscow and European Russia with the Russian Far East provinces,
Mongolia, China and the Sea of Japan etc.
The Railway Networking had, since then, become a vital strategic project
undertaken by the occupying forces to colonize the vast territories under their
control. The high-capacity transportation systems effectively facilitate mass
demographic resettlement and ease political control and economic exploitation in
their colonies. And the Gormo-Lhasa Railway is no different.
Historians note that, throughout the twentieth century, successive regimes
governing China employed railway lines to consolidate their control in China. In
1859 Li Hungchang, Viceroy of Jiangsu, objected to the construction of a
proposed British railway from Suzhou to Shanghai. “Fearful of western
imperialist intentions, the government ordered the removal of the
Shanghai-Wusung line, the first railway ever built in China, in 1877. The
British undertaking was viewed as a national security threat that would
encourage ‘invasions of Chinese territory’ and threaten its ‘independence as a
nation.’”
China’s Manchu rulers first built railways in their home territory to counter
growing Russian and Japanese military threats in the 1880s and 1890s. But in
doing so, they opened the floodgates of Chinese settlers in the region, who were
earlier generally restricted from venturing north of the Great Wall. The process
of Chinese migration was actually expedited by over a decade of furious rail
constructions by the Japanese occupiers in 1930s. Over the years, massive Han
immigration had turned Manchuria into a Chinese dominated region.
Erling Hoh illustrates in his article titled, “Train heads for Tibet” in San
Francisco Chronicle, February 25, 2005, “The Han Chinese population of Inner
Mongolia increased fivefold after the completion of a railroad from Zhangjiakou
to Hohhot between 1912 and 1949. By 1949, Han Chinese outnumbered Mongolians 11
to 1.” Today merely 3 million Mongolians live with the 18 million Chinese
immigrants in Inner Mongolia. Likewise, the arrival of the rail line in
Xinjiang, at the close of the Great Leap Forward, facilitated the complete
integration of the entire region with China. The Uighurs are now a minority
among Xinjiang’s 19 million people.
True to the policies of Communist Party of China, Chang Kia-ngau, former
Minister of Railways of China, earlier said, “The colonization of Mongolia and
Chinese Turkestan would be greatly encouraged by the construction of this
system, colonization and railroad construction being dependent upon each other
for their success.” Earlier on, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaopeng tries to
justify the influx of Han Chinese into Tibet as a necessary step to promote
economic development in the region.
Today the apocalypse threats loom large over yet another great civilization of
the world at the threshold of the Gormo-Lhasa Railway. Although long before the
laying of the tracks, Han Chinese immigrants were streaming into Lhasa through
highways and air routes overwhelming Tibet’s 6 million Tibetans with over 8
million Chinese. So the Gormo-Lhasa Railway will simply accelerate that ongoing
process with a projection of over 20-30 million Chinese deployment into Tibet as
a final solution of the ‘Tibetan Problem’.
The idea of Railway to Tibet was formally raised by Sun Yat-sen in the early
1900s and in 1940s by Chairman Mao. But when the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) occupied Tibet, they initially laid the tracks from Xining to Gormo in
1979 which was completed in the late 1980s. This segment of the line, from
Xining to Gormo, was said to be built with large numbers of prisoners. Before
the advent of railway, Gormo was just open steppe with wandering Tibetan
herdsmen. But today Gormo is home to over 200,000 people, almost all of them
immigrants from the eastern China and the Tibetans, the natives, account for
less than 5% of the population.
"Essentially it is to do with political and strategic integration," says the
independent Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya, author of ‘Dragon in the Land of
Snows’. "Tibet's natural economy faces westwards towards South Asia; Beijing
wants to tie it firmly eastwards with China and to encourage more migration from
the [Chinese] interior.”
The Chinese Government does not deny the political and strategic objectives of
the Gormo-Lhasa Railway. Senior politburo member Li Ruihuan, in tune with Hu
Jintao’s statement in New York Times, said: "Expanding Tibet's economy is not a
mere economic issue, but a major political issue that has a vital bearing on
Tibet's social stability and progress. This work not only helps Tibet, but is
also related directly to the struggle against the Dalai Lama's splittist
attempts.”
Echoing his predecessor Chen Kuiyuan’s commitment to extinguish everything
Tibetan, Zhang Qingli, the new TAR Party Secretary, declared recently, plans to
step-up Communist Party's patriotic education campaign in Tibet, beyond
monasteries and nunneries to the wider population. He said it was a
"fight-to-the-death struggle" with the Dalai Lama, who was "the biggest obstacle
hindering Tibetan Buddhism from establishing normal order.” The Chinese
Government had accordingly launched a renewed and intensified campaign to
prosecute Tibetans in the name of religion and their professed loyalty towards
His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tibet.
Hints for coming ‘prosperity’
Despite Chinese Government’s claim of prosperity, Tibetans inside Tibet lived
the deception and declared, "It is not that we are against development or
against a railway to Lhasa and given the opportunity, we may have even decided
to build one ourselves, the problem is that we never got to make that decision”.
Recently, a Tibetan from Tibet, in his interview to the Voice of Tibet, radio
service, after the advent of the hyped Gormo-Lhasa Railway, said, “the Railway
will take away all the precious minerals and wealth of Tibet and bring in all
the unemployed, beggars, thieves, murderers and Aids to Tibet. This is not for
us.”
Likewise, Peter S Goodman in his recent reports from Shanshan in Xinjiang
titled, “China’s Westland” said, “Most projects under the ‘Develop the West
scheme’ transport vital resources from the west to the East to fuel development
there. Almost none of these plans aim at developing manufacturing industry in
the Western regions.”
China’s rigorous hullabaloo over developing Tibet were easily taken to task by
many analysts who found that most of the money invested in Tibet so far has gone
into the development of strategic roads and railways instead of public welfare
facilities like schools, hospital, water and electricity etc. For example,
despite great claims of development and modernity, the Chinese Government has
failed to lighten up the house of over 30 million people in China over the past
half a century although it has send men into space. And a 2002 December report
by US Embassy in Beijing revealed, “Over 1,374,000 (52.8%) Tibetans leave in
darkness and has no electricity facility. Tibet’s is the worst of condition in
the entire China.”
Gabriel Lafitte in “Fast Tracking Tibet” further explained, “Though China speaks
of Gormo--Lhasa Railway bringing development and prosperity to the local
Tibetans, Yet the three million Tibetans half the total- who live in Inner Tibet
have little to show for the advent of modernity. Little wealth has trickled out
of Chinese urban compounds onto the pasture of the nomadic yak herders and
farmers. Resource extraction enclaves situated along strategic railroads have
brought capital, technology and Chinese settlements to areas endowed with
minerals, while the vast Tibetan rangelands get little by way of basic human
services such as health or education.”
At US $4.2 billion, the Gormo-Lhasa Railway is almost triple the amount Beijing
has spent in the Tibet Autonomous Region on healthcare and education for the
past five decades.
China spent huge funds on grandiose projects like the present ‘Engineering
Marvel’ while poverty in Tibet remains widespread. And experts question the
rational of, “building an expensive railroad in a region where the illiteracy
rate is four times that of neighboring Sichuan province and the number of
vocational schools per capita one-fourth that of the rest of China may not be
the best allocation of resources.”
Throughout the construction and afterwards, China strongly assert that the
railway is aimed at the economic interest of the Tibetans. And the billboards
erected on the Railway, proclaim, "Build the Qinghai-Tibet railway, create
prosperity for people of all nationalities.” Likewise, the Chinese officials had
announced earlier that 65 percent of railway workers would be locals. But
according to Zhu Zhensheng, the Railway Ministry's project chief, “Of the
roughly 100,000 laborers who built the $4.2 billion Gormo-Lhasa stretch, only 10
percent were ethnic Tibetans”. Mr Wang Dianyuan, head of Tibet's planning
development committee further confirmed the grim truth, “most of the work units
on the railway come from inland but we do employ some local people to do manual
work, like digging.”
And the people travelling on the ‘Sky Train’ witnessed further truth. “ We were
actually really surprised that there was no Tibetan staff on the train”, said
Lawing, 23, a Tibetan student, who was headed home on the first train after
graduating from a college in Beijing.
The tales of the construction of the Gormo-Lhasa Highway, built in 1954 as the
primary artery into Tibet was a tale of deaths and sufferings. It was reported
that more than 3,000(official figure) people died and several hundred crippled
during the construction of the Gormo-Tibet Highway. "The Qinghai-Tibet Highway
was paved by blood and life. Every one km of advance meant there would be three
workers falling down,” Said Wu Weizhou, a chief coordinator of the Qinghai-Tibet
Railway recently.
The tales of the construction of the Gormo-Lhasa Railway were no less gory.
Although according to Chinese officials, none of the 100,000 workers died since
construction began in 2001, Locals say at least 100, maybe many more, were
killed in accidents. "A dozen or more people died here in 2004," said a worker
named Ma at one of the clinics lining the road across the plateau. Observers
believed that several hundred could have died and many maimed for life to built
this fateful railway.
Implications a’la ‘Miracle’
His Holiness the Dalai Lama while supporting developments -expressed
reservations over the Gormo-Lhasa Railway, "Cultural genocide is taking place,”
he said last year. "In general, a railway link is very useful in order to
develop, but not when politically motivated to bring about demographic change.”
David Lague, in his report, “The Human Tide Sweeps Into Cities,” in Far Eastern
Economic Review, revealed, “In all, 200 million Chinese rural dwellers will move
to the cities between 2000 and 2010, according to the United Nations report.
This represents the largest movement of people in history, challenging the
stability of China’s social, political and economic landscape, and that of
Tibet’s.” And a large portion of them is expected to venture into Tibet through
the Railway network and all.
The strategic implications of the Railway for India and Asia as a whole is so
immense that it made the Indian Government to announce, though belated, a
massive road construction programme along the Indian border on ‘war footing’ on
29th June, reports DNA daily.
P Stobdan, a Senior Fellow with Institute for Defense studies and Analysis
(IDSA), New Delhi, in his article “Flattening the Himalayas” analyze, “China’s
Western Development Policy has a lot to do with Tibet's strategic location,
which is also a factor in Sino-Indian relations. China aims to achieve a
strategic capability vis-เ-vis India through this railway project. Though China
does not pose a direct military threat to India today, its strategic
infrastructure in Tibet will enhance its military capability and would
potentially enable it to coerce India on the border dispute.” This was confirmed
by the China's Qinghai Daily description of the railway as the "political
frontline in consolidating the south-western border of the motherland" in other
words, India's border.
“Militarily, 360 railway wagons built with Bombardier’s assistance will help
China’s second artillery bring ICBMs, the DF-31A and other tactical mobile
nuclear missiles 1,000 kms closer to the Indian border. It will also facilitate
quicker mobilization of heavy military hardware and weapon stockpiles to the
roof of the world and build Tibet as a strategic depth and second-strike
capability vis-เ-vis US/Taiwan”, Mr. Stobden added.
Experts further believed that China would accomplish three major strategic
objectives, which will have profound implications in the trans-Himalayan zone.
The opening of the Gormo—Lhasa railroad, the new Nyingtri Airport near the
tri-junction of Tibet, India and Myanmar and a land route access to Bay of
Bengal through Nathu La, will mark the success of China’s long-drawn political,
military and economic strategies to deal with domestic and external challenges.
"With even a single (rail) line, the Peoples' Liberation Army could move about
12 infantry divisions to central Tibet in 30 days," said U.S. defense expert
William Triplett. The most precise location-tracking system GSM-R digital
wireless communication network and surveillance system acquired from Canadian
Nortel Networks Corp for the railway is believed to be meant for other strategic
purposes.
The railroad poses myriad threats to Tibet's fragile environment. Included among
these are the escalation of the ongoing natural resources exploitation, damage
to wildlife, disruption of migration patterns, deflation and soil erosion, and
contamination of water bodies including the Yangtse, Salween and Mekong rivers.
And yet during the ceremony launching of the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet
Railway project on 29th June 2001, when speaking of environmental protection,
Premier Zhu Rongji suddenly stood up and solemnly declared: "Nobody can destroy
a single plant and grass during the work”.
Such unsubstantiated statements are unveiled by the massive destruction of the
environment of Tibet through systematic colonial exploitation of its resources
over the last half a century. And Beijing’s pompous announcement of closing down
several of the over-exploited and drained-out gold mines etc as an environment
preservation drive, would do little to obscure the past and the ongoing gross
environment destructions in Tibet.
Beijing’s green commitment is also evident from the following instance; Beijing
Youth Daily, on January 5, 1994, reports of the success of the anti-poaching
Wild Yak Brigade, being credited with contributing to a reported 70% reduction
in poaching since they started work in Kekexili area of Qinghai Province in
1992. The founder Jeesang Sonam Dhargye and Dakpa Dorjee were later killed due
to lack of proper support from the Government. To add to the woe, the highly
successful local Tibetan effort for environment preservation was shattered when
the Government finally disbanded the Wild Yak Brigade.
Just the other day, Beijing again demonstrated its duplicity over environment
preservation. The Beijing Youth Daily reports that The Chinese government is
inviting bids from foreign tourists for the right to hunt endangered species
under a kill-to-conserve campaign. In the first auction, which will took place
on Sunday, the 13th of this month, in Chengdu, capital of the south western
province of Sichuan, the starting price for a permit to shoot a wild yak, of
which there are few remaining in Tibet, is $40,000 (ฃ21,000). Bids to bag an
argali (wild sheep prized for their massive spiral horns) begin at $10,000.
Wolves - the only predator on the list - may go for as little as $200. The
campaign would be yet another Chinese Government’s destructive onslaught on
Tibet’s environment.
Furthermore the government’s approval of a plan to build 25 new townships, many
along the railway, is a revelation of the major strategic and political
objectives of the Railway that threatens to erode the Tibetan traditional
lifestyle and the environment.
Nonetheless, Chinese Government assured that ‘Railway Won't Bring Influx of
Settlers in Tibet’. Xinhua News Agency on July 12, 2006, reported of TAR
vice-chairman Wu Yingjie’s response to an Austrian reporter's question whereby
he said, “The newly opened railway that has linked Tibet with the rest of China
will not bring an influx of permanent settlers to the plateau. Tibet's unique
natural conditions make it impossible for the Han people and other ethnic groups
to settle down here," He further said, “Tibet is a vast land of ‘1.2 million
square’ kilometers, so tourists won't overburden the local ecology in the short
run” he said.
The contradictions in the Statements within the Government officials are stark
reminder of the unreliability of the assurances. Pan Yue, the deputy minister of
the environment, earlier said, “The Qinghai Plateau and the western region of
China are so ecologically stressed that they can no longer support their current
populations. Because there is not enough space for them all to be resettled
quickly.” Notwithstanding these assertions, the forthcoming obliteration of the
Tibetan as a race and the civilization, through massive demographic transfer,
would be the greatest strategic turning point of the 21st Century.
Costs be damned!
Xinhua News Agency reported the first fatal collision of two locomotives on the
Gormo-Lhasa Railway Line on January 21st, 2006. The accident, which occurred
near a railway station some 127 km away from Lhasa, left one dead and several
seriously injured (official figure). But future collisions do not promise to be
so less drastic with the railway service in full swing and thousands travelling
each day through the tightrope.
The fear for the future of the Gormo-Lhasa Railway network is clear from the
Government’s reaction on the very first day. Security was beefed up at the
opening of railway accompanied by elite armed corps on the maiden journey. Of
the 870 passengers on the first two-day journey from Beijing to Lhasa, about 300
are working staff, including a number of uniformed police.
For the smooth operation of the Railway, the conference on 'The Judicial
Response to the Opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad' in Lhasa on June 15
chaired by Vice President Zhang Jun of the Supreme People's Court, asserted the
need for the legal system to support "striking hard against illegal activities
along the railroad and assuring Tibetan political and social stability.
Other Analyst notes that operating costs under the inhospitable conditions are
also bound to be significant, regardless of traffic flow. Routine maintenance of
tracks, switches, tunnels, bridges and other structures will be difficult due to
permafrost freezing, global warming, seasonal soil dynamics, and localized
hazards created by landslides, thunder strike and sandstorms etc.
Experts regards earthquake, among other natural hindrance, as one crisis that
seriously threatens the railway. It is an earthquake prone region where an
earthquake measured at 8.1 rocked the region in 2001, - ripping a 7km crack
through the earth. Any critical infrastructure failure would cause traffic
stoppage and possible loss of life. Responding to any such emergency could be
hampered over much of the route due to the remote and inaccessible nature of the
areas the railway passes through.
Abrahm Lustgarten notes in “Next stop, Lhasa” June 5th2006, Fortune Magazine,
“No doubt, railroads and oil pipelines have been built on permafrost since the
early 1900s in Russia, Alaska, and Canada. But those projects--including the
Russian railway that Chinese researchers modelled their engineering on--have
required extensive maintenance. The Russian railway experienced a 30% failure
rate, Chinese permafrost experts say, meaning that nearly a third of the track
had to be reconstructed every few years.”
Other studies point out that the great permafrost-engineering marvel (Elaborate
system of refrigeration on permafrost) has never been used for a railway
although it has been tried on foundations of houses. Besides, all the permafrost
engineering is based on an assumption that the rate of climate change, and thus
the rate that the ground will melt on the plateau, is predictable. If one is
wrong and change happens faster than one thinks, the train could be inoperable
in a decade, notes experts.
Mr David Wolman, a popular writer and traveller who recently visited the site
and boarded the ‘Miracle Train’ spoke to the man in charge of the permofrost
management in Gansu Province, Mr Wu Ziwang of The Cold and Arid Regions
Environmental and Engineering Research Institute.
Mr Wolman said that Mr Wu is worried that the precarious condition of the
permafrost beneath the railway is being overshadowed by the government’s
post-construction celebrations. He points to a stack of copies of letters he has
sent to the Ministry of Railways over the past few years. The general theme: a
sometimes pleading, sometimes stern call for better permafrost monitoring and
maintenance along the Qinghai-Tibet. “Every day I think about whether the
railway will have problems in the next 10 to 20 years,” he says. The government
has thus far only ignored or chafed at his warnings. “When I express concerns to
the media,” Wu says, “the ministry and construction companies call to say, ‘Why
did you say this? Everything is OK with the railway, so why did you say
otherwise?’
"The Siberian Railway has been running for over 100 years, yet stability
problems remain," said Professor Valentin Kondratiev from Russia. "It is little
wonder the magnificent Qinghai-Tibet Railway would suffer some problems”.
Similarly American permafrost engineering expert Max Brewer said that the Alaska
Railway, which also runs over permafrost was built in 1923. "It is naive to
expect such a long railway not to encounter problems," he said.
“But Mr Wu Ziwang has good reason to worry. The ground under this railway is
what could be called barely permanent permafrost. Unlike the terrain in Alaska
and Siberia, where frigid temperatures typically keep permafrost well below the
thawing point, the subsoil on the Tibetan plateau is just a few degrees from
turning into a muddy, unstable mush” laments Mr David Wolman.
On July 29,2006, AFP report from Beijing confirms the fear that China's
railway to Tibet, opened with great fanfare, is developing cracks in its
concrete structures while its permafrost foundation is sinking and cracking.
“The frozen ground that forms the foundation of the railway is sinking and
cracking in some sections, making the railway unstable in some places," the
Beijing News quoted railway ministry spokesman Wang Yongping as saying.
Wang added that shifting sands in the region were also causing greater harm to
the railway than expected. Tunnels were built under elevated sections so that
the endangered Tibetan antelope could pass by without danger. But planners have
failed to cope with a far less timid and more numerous beasts - the yak,
thousands of which graze along the tracks and wander across them. Engineers of
the ‘Miracle Train’ had still not figured out how to keep herds of yaks off the
tracks. "These form dangers to passengers on the train,” he said.
After all, it is believed that it was always likely to be harder to maintain
than to build a ‘miracle’. Besides it should be noted that Gormo-Lhasa Highway
too has suffered the impact of a hostile climate and is pocked with potholes and
other damages. Despite several reconstructions, it was clear that trucks
remained a grossly inefficient way to transport anything, even in good weather.
And experts wonder how a railroad would fare any better.
But all the engineering in China can’t halt global climate change.“I’m worried
about money for maintenance in the coming 10 to 20 years” said , Mr Wu Ziwang of
The Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute.
Already Hong Kong Standard newspaper on, July 25, 2006, reports China’s Ministry
of Railway seeking alternative funds for the operation and maintenance of the
‘Sky-Train’.“ It is now forming joint ventures with local and provincial
governments, seeking loans and allowing asset sales to overcome a potential
shortfall as revenues fail to meet the cost of its expansions,” said John
Scales, senior transportation specialist with the World Bank in Beijing. "There
will be a lot of capital expenditure over the next 14 years on the railroads,
something like US$12 billion or US$15 billion a year and it's at a level that
has never occurred before” he added.
Despite the opening of the Gormo-Lhasa Railway with great hype, the train-rides
were an extraordinary bumpy for the passengers. In an article, “Tibet train line
no vacation for some travellers” Fu Yingqing mentions difficulties faced by the
travellers into Tibet. Jenny An, a local saleswoman, was hospitalised on a trip
to Tibet due to acute altitude sickness, and billed for more than 2,000 yuan.
She was turned down by her insurance company saying altitude sickness is not an
accidental injury.
Fears of 'miracle' train going up in smoke is expressed by experts as Chinese
officials gear up for the danger of banned cigarettes in the railway cars, where
oxygen is pumped into the sealed
cars as they reach high altitudes. Geoffrey York reports in The Globe and Mail,
last month, “Officials refused to say what kind of combustion could occur if
someone lights a cigarette once the cars are oxygenated -- a definite risk in a
country where two-thirds of men are addicted to smoking.”
Associated Press also reports of pens spitting ink and packaged foods bursting
in the low pressure as the "Sky Train" climbed the 16,640-foot Tanggula Pass.
Laptop computers and digital music players reportedly failing, the tiny air bags
that cushions their moving parts broken at high altitude. Many passengers threw
up even while popping Diamox and Tibetan herbs or breathed oxygen from tubes to
counter breathing difficulties.
Above all, the smooth disaster-free operation of the ‘Sky Train’ could be only
possible provided there is constant patrolling of the railroad to prevent:
sabotage by humans and nature. And that could be one ‘Miraculous’ task, no
doubt.
That the building of the Gormo-Lhasa Railway was without the adequate
compensation for the uprooted Tibetan farmers is one great achievements of the
Chinese Government. And the resettlement too had been involuntary. Last may,
Radio Free Asia reports of Tibetan farmers along the route of China's
Gormo-Lhasa Railway appealing against eviction from their homes and the paltry
compensation offered by the Chinese Government. “The Tibetan farmers went to
different departments, including the Tibetan Autonomous Region government, to
appeal but nothing really helps”, an elderly woman from the affected area told
RFA. "All this is what they call the great western development plan. We are
victims of these developments" the woman said.
“A Tibetan nun who recently escaped into exile from Tibet reported that her
family had lost land and been denied adequate compensation due to the railway
construction. She said: "We appealed to county-level cadres about our
dissatisfaction over the inadequate compensation for the land used by the State
for the railway track. But none of the authorities pay attention to our
petition. We are helpless”, reports Kate Saunders in “China railroads over
Tibet's suffering”
And for a nation desperate for global glory, the ‘miracle’ will stand whatever,
the human, environment and financial cost.
Chinese President Hu Jintao announced during the opening of the Railway on 1st
July, "The project is not only a magnificent feat in China's history of railway
construction, but also a great miracle of the world's railway history." In fact,
the railway line is primarily aimed at promoting the cause of Chinese
nationalism and great power status.
The ‘Peaceful’ Rising
China’s pursuit of glorious campaign is apparent across the country. For
example, the Three Gorges dam at cost of $24bn, Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl tower,
the highest TV tower in Asia, Lupu bridge, world's longest steel-arch bridge at
cost 2.5bn yuan (ฃ171m), Terminal 3 Beijing Airport, world's largest at ฃ1.2bn,
Beijing's Olympic Stadiums, (early estimates put spending between ฃ17bn and
ฃ22bn, now US $ 40 bn) and Shenzhou Space Mission (October 2003) that made China
the third country to send a human into space, 2007 Shenzhou Moon Mission etc are
some of China's glorious engineering feets. And all these while millions are
homeless, jobless and starving in China.
Current China’s strategic missions and campaign, inevitably draw a relevant
parallel with the Hitler’s Nazi. In 1936, Berlin Olympic Games provided a
perfect opportunity for the infamous dictator Hitler to demonstrate to the
world, how efficient the Nazi Germany was. It was also the perfect opportunity
for the Nazis to prove to the world the reality of the Master Race.
So consequently, Hitler built vast Olympic stadium with a capacity to hold over
100,000 spectators from over 49 countries. 150 other new Olympic buildings were
completed on time for the event. Soft-pedaling its anti-semitic agenda and plans
for territorial expansion, it successfully camouflaged its racist and
militaristic character and exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign
sportsmen, spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant
Germany- anything was done to ensure that the Games went smoothly and caused no
upset. The grand eyewash impressed the visitors so much so that, many including
a director of NBC in America even congratulated the Nazis for the wonderful
hosting.
With the conclusion of the Games, Germany's expansionist policies and the
persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in
World War II and the Holocaust. It was too late for the world to undo the Nazi
misgivings.
Today the tragic history is repeated in China albeit with greater ้lan. The 2008
Olympic is that golden opportunity for the China to culminate its ‘ Peaceful
Rise’. And China is doing, virtually, everything to make the final impression.
It has uprooted thousands of Beijingers to make way for the hosting of the
Magnificent Beijing Olympic and interestingly; the IOC officials are already
fascinated over the preparation (May visit statement). China is spending over US
$ 40 billion for the game, the highest investment ever in the Olympic history.
And for a struggling and impoverished country like China, that is a suicidal and
scandalous.
And why so much haste? a western observer once quipped. “In the U.S. a
construction project (Gormo-Lhasa Railway) that big might have taken 15 years
from start to finish. In China things are happening in different ways than we
are used to,” says Amir Levin, general manager of BSP. A China watcher aptly
quotes, “China simply wishes to achieve in a decade what other countries took
over a century.”
Professor Arthur Weldron of International Assessment and Strategy Center based
in Washington draws four ‘heping jueqi’ moves by China that include dramatic
economic growth, huge increase in military power, prominent role in diplomacy
and international organizations and the continuation, yet unmodified, of a
Communist Party Dictatorship. Mr. Arthur further point out,“With respect to
China's headlong military buildup, I would develop the argument that it is the
product not of any real external threat, but rather of an internal need to
invoke security to justify autocratic rule. I would note how the buildup is
increasing tension and distrust in the region.”
"Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment?
Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing
robust deployments?" said US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The extensive strategic infrastructure developments coupled with extensive
militarization through bloated annual defense budget of over US $ 100 Billions,
proliferation of nuclear technology, fueling regional conflicts with arms supply
and excessive nexus with rogue, dictatorial and undemocratic regimes like Sudan,
Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Uzbekistan, Myanmar and Cuba
etc only authenticate China as another imperialist power in the making,
threatening the peace and stability of the world at large.
In the mean time, while the world wrestle each other over a slice of China’s
economic marvel and all, like any other imperialist state, China whip-up
ultra-nationalism fervour and undertake unparallel military build-up;
campaigning for global accreditation at the same time. Sooner the world would be
treated to a yet another feast of a lifetime, is the apprehension of all and
sundry. And the countdown begins not later than the 2008 Beijing Olympic. Are we
ready for the showdown? And Tibets’ is the pointer to the inevitable.
By Lobsang Yeshi, is the Vice President of Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC)
Dated: Sunday, 20th August 2006
Co-authored Tibetan response to China’s White Paper titled, “ Tibet- The Gap
between Fact and Fabrication”, published in May 2005 by TYC.
This story has been read 1567 times.
.
- Prev by Date: ......inflation as China prices rise
- Next by Date: Re: PAS: Communist party helped secure Merdeka
- Previous by thread: ......inflation as China prices rise
- Next by thread: China's Wealth Woes
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
