2006 July | Tibet Will Be Free

China’s scale-model of Sino-Indian War land

Posted by buckaroo banzai on Jul 28, 2006 in General | 0 comments

Alan says: “This post at the Sydney Morning Herald describes an military facility in the desert of China which someone spotted in recently released hi-res photos in Google Earth. It’s a 500:1, 700 x 900 meter scale model of the territory China took from India in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. There has been a lot of discussion, and many humorous suggestions, but nobody has figured out its function.”

The Chinese site based in the very remote Huangyangtan region, appears to be a small-scale model of a piece of territory complete with snow-topped mountains, streams and valleys. The find, recorded by a German member of a Google Earth community site, has triggered speculation that the site might have a military purpose.

More from boingboing: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/28/satellite_photos_rev.html

Freedom Fighter Yaks

Posted by philo on Jul 28, 2006 in China Watch, Economic, Environmental | 4 comments

China’s Tibet railway isn’t the engineering marvel it’s cracked up to be. The Guardian’s Jonathan Watts details some of the serious problems the railway is experiencing after less than a month of service.

The safety of passengers on the world’s highest – and newest – railway is threatened by cracks, yaks and shifting sands, the Chinese government has admitted.

Less than a month after the opening of the line across the Himalayas to Tibet, it has become unstable in places because the foundations are sinking into the permafrost, railway ministry spokesman Wang Yongping, told the Beijing News today.
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The line depends on coolants to stop the ice upon which it rests from melting. But global warming has raised temperatures in the mountain region faster than expected. As well as damaging concrete pillars and bridges, it has added to the problem of sand dunes that encroach upon the track.

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 beast – the yak, thousands of which graze along the tracks and wander across them.

“These form dangers to passengers on the train,” Mr Wang said.

Obviously it forms a danger for the yaks, too.

Previous reports from engineers and railroad experts predicted that China’s $4 billion railway would not last more than ten years before it would need a major technical refurbishment. Specifically the cooling systems designed to keep hundreds of miles of permafrost more permanently frozen require intense upkeep.

I was always quite skeptical of the usefulness of tunnels to divert animal traffic away from the railroad tracks. I’m sorry, but unless the Chinese have figured out a way to communicate with Tibetan antelopes and yaks, tunnels won’t be the lone means of crossing the line that bisects a massive swath of the Tibetan plateau. The tunnels are an example of wishful thinking of the highest order. Likewise the destructive nature of the train becomes even more clear as yaks lose access to grazing space and are forced to venture into dangerous positions.

The railway is an enormous intrusion into the lives of Tibetans. Nomads have been displaced, pastoral lands have been ripped up, and no one knows what the environmental impact of building a refrigerator that runs hundreds of miles under the ground will be. The fact that this project is immediately proving to be unsafe and unstable is no surprise. While I take no joy in reading that this railway is now posing dangers to the passengers themselves, I can’t help but think the Chinese government is simply reaping what it has sown.

Hat tip to Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.

Technorati Tags: China’s Tibet railway, Tibet, yaks

Gere: Railroad to Perdition

Posted by philo on Jul 15, 2006 in China Watch, Economic | 4 comments

Richard Gere has a powerful op-ed in today’s New York Times on the launch of China’s Tibet railway.

This railway across the roof of the world will result in an expanded Chinese military presence in Tibet, accelerate the already devastating exploitation of its natural resources and increase the number of Chinese migrants, marginalizing the Tibetan people still further. In the capital, Lhasa, Tibetans are already a minority.
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And even as their culture is undermined by the railway, most Tibetans are unlikely to enjoy any economic benefits from it. With a price tag of more than $4 billion, the Tibet railway is the most ambitious and costly element of China’s current drive to develop its western regions, known as the Great Leap West. But its construction was based upon the Communist Party’s old strategic and political objectives, and its main beneficiaries will be the Chinese military units stationed there, Chinese companies and Chinese settlers. Most Tibetans don’t have access to education that would allow them to compete in the economic environment created by China’s policies, nor are they welcome to share the fruits of its success.

The opening of the railway to Tibet could not have a greater symbolic importance to the Communist elite — it is the achievement of a goal set by Mao more than 40 years ago as part of a strategy to complete Tibet’s integration into China. And sadly, the opening of the railway takes place in an environment of intensified political repression. The new Communist Party chief in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, has said that the party is engaged in a “fight to the death struggle�? against the Dalai Lama and his supporters.

Technorati Tags: China’s Tibet railway

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Someone is getting nervous…

Posted by buckaroo banzai on Jul 5, 2006 in General | 3 comments

From today’s NY Times:

SHANGHAI, July 3 — Chinese authorities have announced their intention to step up their efforts to police and control the Internet and other communications technologies, including instant messaging and cellphones

Step up? Wait, so all this technology you are using to try to stop the Internet from being free isn’t working well enough? Imagine that! Maybe they are getting nervous now that someone’s figured out how to breach the (so-called) Great Firewall.

Speaking at a conference in Beijing last Wednesday, Cai Wu, director of the powerful Information Office of the State Council, or China’s cabinet, said new control measures were needed “because more and more harmful information is being circulated online.”

Another senior official who spoke at the same meeting, Wang Xudong, deputy minister of the information industry, said his ministry’s next target would be developing technologies to regulate Web logs and search engines.”

Now they are saying they will develop their own technologies to regulate blogs and search engines. Isn’t that the business opportunity that Cisco, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al. and others haven’t wanted to get a piece of? I wonder where the ideas for these new inventions will come from? How long until they reinvent through “clean room engineering” technology created by American corporations?

China’s Tibet railway arrives under heavy security

Posted by philo on Jul 4, 2006 in China Watch, Economic | 3 comments

The inaugural run of China’s Tibet railway has arrived in Lhasa. Despite China’s claims of modernization and economic improvement in Tibet, the first trip was marked by the stark visibility of China’s military occupation of Tibet and the environmental damage the railway has already caused. Geoffrey York of the Globe and Mail documents the tragedy well.

The first train from Beijing to Tibet, speeding past thousands of soldiers and policemen in camps and convoys, gave a rare glimpse into China’s massive program of military control over the Tibetan plateau.

Green-uniformed soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, along with police and other agents, were posted at intervals along the high-altitude railway yesterday, sometimes only a few hundred metres apart. They stood at attention intending to intimidate anyone who wanted to disrupt the train.

Huge convoys of military vehicles were visible from the train as it passed through Tibet and the neighbouring province of Qinghai yesterday. One convoy included about 100 troop-carrying trucks, another had 84. A third convoy, with dozens more vehicles, was spotted on the final approach to Lhasa.

Military camps and bases could be seen along the railway tracks, and soldiers stood in rows at the main stations as the train passed.

The train, the first to travel from Beijing to Lhasa on the $4.2-billion (U.S.) line that opened on Saturday, carried large numbers of police and security agents among the 300 “working staff” aboard.

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