Putin heads to China to bolster ties amid Ukraine tensions

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 03 February 2022

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By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

MOSCOW — American and European officials may be staying away from the Beijing Winter Olympics because of human rights concerns, but Russian President Vladimir Putin will be on hand even as tensions soar over his buildup of troops along his country’s border with Ukraine.

Putin’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday will mark their first in-person meeting since 2019 and are intended to help strengthen Moscow’s ties with China and coordinate their policies in the face of Western pressure. After, the two will attend the Games’ opening ceremony.

In an article published Thursday by the Chinese news agency Xinhua, Putin wrote that Moscow and Beijing play an “important stabilizing role” in global affairs and help make international affairs “more equitable and inclusive.”

The Russian president criticized “attempts by some countries to politicize sports to the benefit of their ambitions,” an apparent reference to a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics by the U.S. and some of its allies.

Many Western officials are skipping the Beijing Games in protest of China’s detention of more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. But leaders of the ex-Soviet Central Asian nations, which have close ties with both Russia and China, all followed Putin’s lead and attending.

In an interview with China Media Group also released Thursday, Putin emphasized that “we oppose the attempts to politicize sport or use it as a tool of coercion, unfair competition and discrimination.”

Putin’s meeting with Xi and attendance at the opening ceremony “announces the further promotion of the China-Russia relationship,” said Li Xin, director of the Institute of European and Asian Studies at Shanghai’s University of Political Science and Law.

China and Russia have increasingly found common cause over what they believe is a U.S. disregard for their territorial and security concerns, Li said. Both their governments have also taken to mocking the U.S. over its domestic travails, from last year’s Capitol riot to its struggle to control COVID-19.

“The U.S. and the Western countries, on the one hand, are exerting pressure against Russia over the issue of Ukraine, and on the other hand, are exerting pressure against China over the issue of Taiwan,” Li said, referring to the self-governing island democracy and U.S. ally that China claims as its own territory. “Such acts of extreme pressure by the West will only force China and Russia to further strengthen cooperation.”

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, said that Putin’s visit would mark a new stage in the Russia-Chinа partnership that he described as a “key factor contributing to a sustainable global development and helping counter destructive activities by certain countries.”

He said that Moscow and Beijing plan to issue a joint statement on international relations that will reflect their shared views on global security and other issues, and officials from the two countries are set to sign more than a dozen of agreements on trade, energy and other issues.

Ushakov noted that Moscow and Beijing have close or identical stands on most international issues. He particularly emphasized that China backs Russia in the current standoff over Ukraine.

“Beijing supports Russia’s demands for security guarantees and shares a view that security of one state can’t be ensured by breaching other county’s security,” Ushakov said in a conference call with reporters.

A buildup of more than 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine has fueled Western fears that Moscow is poised to invade its neighbor. Russia has denied planning an offensive but urged the U.S. and its allies to provide a binding pledge that NATO won’t expand to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations or deploy weapons there and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe — the demands firmly rejected by the West.

Some observers suggested that Beijing is closely watching how the U.S. and its allies act in the standoff over Ukraine as it ponders further strategy on Taiwan, arguing that indecision by Washington could encourage China to grow more assertive.

Putin on Tuesday accused the U.S. and its allies of stonewalling Russia’s security demands but held the door open for more talks. He argued that NATO’s expansion eastward and a potential offer of membership to Ukraine undermine Russia’s security and violate international agreements endorsing “the indivisibility of security,” a principle meaning that the security of one nation shouldn’t be strengthened at the expense of others.

The Russian leader has warned that if the West refuses to heed Russian demands, he could order unspecified “military-technical moves.” Other than a full-fledged invasion in Ukraine that the West fears, Putin could ponder other escalatory options, including beefing up already extensive military ties with China.

Russia and China have held a series of joint war games, including naval drills and patrols by long-range bombers over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. In August, Russian troops for the first time deployed to Chinese territory for joint maneuvers.

Even though Moscow and Beijing in the past rejected the possibility of forging a military alliance, Putin has said that such a prospect can’t be ruled out. He also has noted that Russia has been sharing highly sensitive military technologies with China that helped significantly bolster its defense capability.

From Tiananmen to Hong Kong, China’s crackdowns defy critics

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 27 January 2022

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By KEN MORITSUGU

BEIJING — From the deadly crushing of Beijing’s 1989 pro-democracy protests to the suppression of Hong Kong’s opposition four decades later, China’s Communist Party has demonstrated a determination and ability to stay in power that is seemingly impervious to Western criticism and sanctions.

As Beijing prepares to hold the Winter Olympics opening next week, China’s president and party leader Xi Jinping appears firmly in control. The party has made political stability paramount and says that has been the foundation for the economic growth that has bettered lives and put the nation on a path to becoming a regional if not global power.

While many have benefitted economically, the price has been paid by those who wanted more freedom, from ethnic groups in the far western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang to the largely student-led protesters in Hong Kong in 2019. The party leadership was divided when an earlier generation of student protesters took control for weeks of the symbolically important grounds of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. The hardline leaders won and the protesters were crushed rather than accommodated, a fateful decision that has guided the party’s approach to this day.

“The world came up with the assumption that with economic engagement with China, China would thrive, which would give birth to a powerful middle class, which would give birth then to a civil society which would give birth then to a democracy that would make China a responsible stakeholder in the world arena,” said Wu’er Kaixi, who as a university student helped lead the 1989 protests and now lives in exile in Taiwan.

That assumption, he added, proved naive and wrong.

Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics manifested hope that reforms might be on the way, bringing greater space for free speech, independent labor unions and protection of the cultural and religious identities of ethnic groups. Tibetan groups staged protests in China and abroad, disrupting the torch relay.

Nearly 15 years later, on the eve of the Winter Games, the reality is far different. Tibet remains firmly under Communist Party control, and the government launched a fierce crackdown against the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang in 2017 and enacted new laws and loyalty requirements to drive out opposition in Hong Kong in response to massive protests that turned violent in 2019.

Under Xi, who came to power in 2012, the party has clamped down on dissident voices and anyone who challenges its version of events, from a #MeToo movement that flourished briefly to citizen journalists who exposed the crisis and chaos in Wuhan in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xi is now expected to be appointed to a third five-year term as the ruling party’s general secretary this fall, cementing his position as China’s strongest leader since Mao Zedong. With no term limits on the position, Xi could remain leader indefinitely, with no clearly defined rules on succession.

Xi approaches the party meeting bolstered by a strong economy, the ending of separatist violence in Xinjiang and the passage of a sweeping national security law and electoral changes in Hong Kong that have eviscerated the political opposition in the territory.

“Xi Jinping wants to become a leader like Mao,” said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist and veteran Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who now lives in Australia. Mao Zedong founded China’s communist state in 1949 and led the country for more than two decades.

Having maintained relative prosperity and rock-hard political control, Xi and the party face little pressure and see no need to make concessions, Cheng said.

“There are no checks and balances domestically and internationally. As a result, there is an increasingly authoritarian regime,” he said.

The suppression of the Tiananmen protests marked the end of a period of limited political liberalization in the 1980s. The chaos and violence of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and the decline of the Soviet Union had already impressed on the ruling party that political stability should be maintained at whatever cost.

The crackdown carried out with tanks and assault troops was seen as the only way to ensure continued Communist Party rule and what Xi has since termed the realization of the “Chinese dream” of restoring the country’s position in the world. The events of 1989 remain a taboo topic in China to this day.

Future years saw advocates for free expression and civil rights continue to push the boundaries. Beijing responded to some appeals by releasing pro-democracy activists into foreign exile.

At the same time, the party opened new avenues for education and employment, loosened restrictions on the private sector and welcomed foreign investment. A new generation of young Chinese grew up with heightened expectations and little knowledge of the political turmoil of past years.

Despite their misgivings about the crackdown, China’s booming economy was too much of a draw to ignore, and Western democracies swiftly re-engaged with the regime in the 1990s and 2000s.

More recently, the U.S. has turned against China, viewing what is now the world’s second largest economy as a growing competitor as well as an opportunity. China’s policies in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, and on human rights in general, have brought travel and financial sanctions from the U.S. and others on the officials and companies involved.

Beijing has responded with dismissals and disdain. A diplomatic boycott of the Olympics announced by Washington, the U.K. and others was greeted with contempt by Beijing for what it called a meaningless gesture that would change nothing.

China has sought to redefine human rights as improvements in the quality of life, and cites economic growth and poverty reduction as the real determinants. It has written off campaigns by foreign politicians, trade groups and companies to boycott cotton goods and other products from Xinjiang over allegations of forced labor.

China calls such claims “the lie of the century,” although some experts say the bad publicity may have prompted it to shut down its prison-like system of internment camps.

But activists’ calls to move the Olympics out of China have gone unheeded. A diplomatic boycott won’t stop the athletes from competing. Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, said the International Olympic Committee lost all credibility on promoting human rights after choosing Beijing for the Winter Games.

Kaixi, the former Tiananmen protester and an ethnic Uyghur, said China could not have succeeded in its defiance without the acquiescence of the international community.

“China can only get away with all this because the world is giving in,” he said.

Effort to extinguish Turkmenistan’s ‘Gateway to Hell’

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 11 January 2022

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ASGABAT - Turkmenistan’s president has ordered the extinguishing of a huge fire that has been burning for decades in a desert gas crater.

Natural gas crater in the Karakum desert has burned for five decades

Known as the “Gateway to Hell”, the 70m wide and 20m deep crater in the heart of the Karakum desert “is thought to be the result of a botched Soviet drilling operation that released huge amounts of methane”, The Times said.

“Miners are believed to have set light to the gas to stop it from spreading,” inadvertently igniting the endless fire in the process.

However, “mystery surrounds the Darvaza crater’s creation”, the BBC reported, with an examination by Canadian explorer George Kourounis in 2013 concluding that “no-one actually knows how it started”.

An alternate explanation put forward by Turkmen geologists is that the “huge crater formed in the 1960s but was only lit in the 1980s”.

Kourounis, who became the first person to descend into the crater during his assessment, told National Geographic: “The place has always fascinated me. The story behind how it came into existence has been sort of shrouded in mystery, and there’s no other place like it on Earth.

“When you first set eyes on the crater, it’s like something out of a science fiction film. When you go out over, looking straight down, it’s literally like another planet, almost.”

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said that the pit must be extinguished as it “negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby”, continuing that he has instructed officials to “find a solution to extinguish the fire”.

“We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people,” he added in a televised address.

The country is home to “the world’s fifth largest natural gas reserves”, Radio Free Europe reported. But “life for the majority of the country’s six million people remains difficult”.

Berdymukhamedov has ruled since 2006 “with an iron fist, tolerating little dissent while isolating it from the outside world amid an economic crisis that has plunged many citizens into poverty”. This has meant “shortages of basic goods and food are common”.

According to Bloomberg, Turkmenistan is also “one of the world’s worst emitters of the greenhouse gas methane”, with a 2021 study by the International Energy Agency placing it behind Russia, the US, Iran and Iraq in the top five global emissions rankings for the gas.

The crater, which resembles “a supernatural portal to the underworld”, has for decades “​​been a big draw to the handful of tourists that enter the notoriously secretive state”, Sky News reported.

Berdymukhamedov also “hasn’t always had such disdain for the crater”, the broadcaster added, and “was filmed in 2019 speeding around it in an off-road truck”. In 2010, he officially renamed the fire the “Shining of Karakum” in an effort to drum up visitors.

How the crater will be extinguished remains to be seen, with Deutsche Welle reporting that Berdymukhamedov “previously ordered the flames be extinguished in 2010”.