GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – “25 words”, a low-budget first documentary by Liu Shen about three sisters who shared Red Cross messages during the second world war, has taken a bronze medal at the WorldFest-Houston International Independent Film Festival, the oldest independent film festival in the world.
He began the film shortly after one of the sisters, a former neighbour of his in northeastern China, died at age 98. Her two sisters were in their 90s and he says in an interview for the Red Cross Resource Centre that he felt the pressure of time as he realized the importance of telling their tale. The three lived in Nanjing, China, Berlin, Germany and Berkeley, California, USA during the war and the messages gradually relay their family tale.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Trafigura, the world’s third largest commodities trading company, announced it will be moving its legal headquarters from Geneva to Singapore, lured by lower taxes and proximity to China.
Trafigura Pte, a Singaporean incorporated entity will become the company’s headquarters for its trading division later this year, with its chief financial officer, Pierre Lorinet, moving to the southeast Asian city. He will join a team of 150 traders already there. The Financial Times reports that the company will maintain its team of traders in Geneva.
Geneva competes with London, Zug, Dubai and Singapore as the world’s largest commodities trading center, due to it low corporate taxes and access to trade financing. But whilst Geneva and Zug offer trading houses rates as low as 10 percent as compared to 24 percent in London, in Singapore those rates could be as low as 5 percent.
Geneva is the base for other major commodity traders including Gunvor, Vitol and Mercuria.
Links to other sources: Reuters
Updated 16:40: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Chen Guancheng, a reknowned blind Chinese human rights activist who had escaped house arrest on 24 April is in the US embassy in Beijing, according to a friend and fellow dissident, Hu Jia.
Hu, who had been detained over the weekend in relation to the escape, told AFP that his interrogators had suggested that Chen had met with US Ambassador Gary Locke. He was asked when had Chen met with the ambassador. “So it seems very clear that he has met with the American ambassador”, Hu said. “I had no way of answering. I do not know what is going on inside”.
Hu had met with Chen following his escape.
There has been much speculation about Chen’s whereabouts since his escape. The United States has not commented till now on Chen’s location. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are scheduled to arrive in Beijing for an annual round of talks with the Chinese government.
A video was released last week following the escape by a US-based Chinese dissident group, Boxun.com, in which Chen addressed Premier Wen Jiabao. He requested that local officials allegedly involved in the beatings of his family members be investigated and prosecuted and that the safety of his family members be assured. He also asked Wen to address and punish those involved in corruption in China.
Chen, known as the “barefoot lawyer” had been in house detention since he was released in 2010 following a four-year jail term. He has been blind since childhood.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – China’s renminbi, which Beijing has begun cautiously promoting as an internationally accepted trading currency, may surprise us, HSBC’s global head of commodity and structured trade finance told a Financial Times conference in Lausanne Wednesday 25 April.
Jean-François Lambert said that ”It’s a huge development and moving faster than many expected, so pay attention”. He noted that the US dollar continues to be the predominant currency for commodities trades despite its recent weakness, but the banker alerted delegates to China’s shifting stance on the renminbi during as the conference focused on China’s role as a global economic powerhouse.
Richard Elman, chairman of Noble Group, believes that the rate of spending on commodities, which in turn effects economic growth, will slow in China. Personal savings in the country’s “one-child” society will be held for old-age spending, and growing commodity costs burdened by expensive investments in infrastructure will reduce spending.
Elman says that energy consumption will decrease as China’s energy use becomes more efficient.
He expects the renminbi to become an international currency in 10 to 20 years. Elman notes that China, the world’s second largest economy, has begun to internationalize the renminbi through bilateral agreements, for its use in international trade and lending.
The Singapore-based Noble Group claims to be “Asia’s largest diversified commodities trading company”.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Beijing reacted calmly to the launching of India’s first long range missile, capable of reaching several major Chinese cities, emphasizing the importance of the two countries’ bilateral relations.
“China and India are both emerging countries, we are not rivals, but cooperation partners”, said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin following the testing of the Agni-V nuclear-capable missile Thursday 19 April.
China’s Global Times, a daily newspaper controlled by the Communist party took a more critical tone, saying that the missile demonstration “does not mean (India) will gain anything from being arrogant during disputes with China” and that “India should not overestimate its strength”.
The locally-built Agni-V, at a cost of $500 million, has a 5000 kilometer range, which would include most of China, including Beijing and Shanghai.
This week’s missile launch places India within a small group of countries holding the capability to launch long-range weapons. Only permanent United Nations Security Council members, the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China, as well as Israel, have this capability. In recent years, India has expressed its interest to gain a permanent seat in the Security Council.
Links to other sources: CNN, Christian Science Monitor, Aljazeera, Wall Street Journal
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Global military spending remained practically unchanged in 2011, but budgets saw strong increases in Russia and China, while military expenditure fell in the United States and in Europe due to austerity measures.
The Swedish think tank, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (Sipri), published the figures Tuesday 17 April.
Overall spending was $1.73 trillion or 0.3 percent above 2010, the group said in its annual review.
The US remains the top military spender at $711 billion, in spite of a 1.2 percent cut, the first reduction since 1998.
Central and Western Europe military spending fell by 1.9 percent, with Germany down 3.5 percent and France 1.4 percent.
China, the world’s second biggest spender at $143 billion, increased its budget by 6.7 percent. Russia’s military budget rose a whopping 9.3 percent in 2011 to $72 billion, overtaking the United Kingdom and France, to make it the world’s third largest spender.
Links to other sources: The Guardian, Voice of Russia, Radio Canada, Washington Post
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – China has ordered the content of Maoist web sites to be censored following the recent removal of a high-level government official, Bo Xilai, the Associated Press reports.
Access to some content on two sites, Utopia and Maoflag, which admired Bo, the fallen Communist party boss of Chongking, is reportedly blocked. Bo, who was widely perceived to be on a campaign to join the nine-member national standing committee, had strongly promoted Mao-era stories and songs, from which the government has distanced itself in recent years.
Bo Xilai’s dismissal, which is seen as part of an ongoing secret power struggle in China, followed news that the Chongqing chief of police sought refuge in a US consulate in late February.
Western media report that Communist party memos have been circulating on the web saying that Bo attempted to sideline the police official, Wang Lijun, after he had warned Bo that a family member was under investigation. Bo’s son, Bo Guagua, who had allegedly attended Harvard and Oxford Universities with full scholarships, has been in the limelight following revelations of his use of a Ferrari.
Bo Xilai was seen in another light in Chinese media as recently as 9 March, when China Daily reported that he was on a cleanup campaign to rid Chinese cities of gangs.
Links to other sites: BBC, China Daily, Financial Times, The Toronto Star
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Apple says Tuesday 20 March that 3 million of its new iPads have been sold since they hit the market Friday, four days earlier. It announced Monday that it will be paying investors dividends later this year, for the first time since 1995. But not everyone is happy. A group of 22 well-known writers in China are suing Apple for copyright infringement, saying their e-book versions of their works have appeared in the Apple store without their permission or involvement.
They are seeking $7.9 million in damages.
EU, Japan and US China officially open trade dispute with China over rare minerals
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The seven-year old battle between the USA and the European Union over possible subsidies for Boeing appears no closer to resolution following Monday’s decision by the WTO (World Trade Organization) to uphold its previous decision that Boeing did indeed receive illegal government subsidies. Both sides are calling the decision a victory and the tussle is widely expected to continue.
The WTO “court” or appellate body, ruled that from 1989 to 2006 the federal government and several states had indeed subsidized aircraft manufacturer Boeing, but it calculated the amount as $5.3 billion rather than the $19.1b that the EU has argued was spent, to the detriment of its own Airbus company. The appellate body reviewed a number of contentious issues that include tax rate reductions and benefits from research for the US Department of Defense and Nasa, the space programme. (WTO: summary of key findings)
Obama argues that China is hoarding essential technology materials
Tuesday 13 March a new trade dispute that has been brewing was officially opened at the WTO in Geneva by the EU, Japan and the US. The three countries separately filed “requests for consultation”, WTO parlance for opening a dispute, covering restrictions on exports from China of various forms of rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum.
US President Barack Obama fired the opening salvo by making a widely publicized speech Tuesday in the White House Rose Garden, addressing the issue of fair trade.
“We’re bringing a new trade case against China – and we’re being joined by Japan and some of our European allies. This case involves something called rare earth materials, which are used by American manufacturers to make high-tech products like advanced batteries that power everything from hybrid cars to cell phones.
“We want our companies building those products right here in America. But to do that, American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials – which China supplies. Now, if China would simply let the market work on its own, we’d have no objections. But their policies currently are preventing that from happening. And they go against the very rules that China agreed to follow.”
China holds a large to very large share of the Earth’s supplies of a number of rare earth materials, several of which are considered essential for technology. AP reported, and it was widely carried by newspapers, that Obama’s speech signals that the new WTO is part of what he sees as a larger field of unfair trade practices by China.
China’s official news agency Xinhua reports that
“the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement posted on its website that it will properly deal with the issue. China, the statement said, has no intention of protecting domestic industries by distorting its foreign trade.
“Earlier in the day, Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei told Xinhua that the Chinese side would prepare to defend itself if a complaint was filed with the WTO. Miao said China’s rare earth export policy is drawn up out of concern for the development of resources and environmental damage. Some rare earth metals would last only 20 years if China does not stop excessive mining, Miao added.
“China’s rare earth export restriction was not targeted at any specific country, nor was it a kind of trade protectionism, the minister said.”
Background, OECD paper for the WTO on limiting exports of strategic raw materials
Wang Shu by Zhu Chenzhou, Pritzker Prize 2012
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Wang Shu, 48, has been named the recipient of the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, to be awarded at a ceremony in Beijing in May.
His architectural practice is based in Hangzhou, China, where he has focused on recycling material from old buildings that removed to make way for the new.
The coveted prize, widely considered one of the highest accolades in the world of architecture, is significant because it goes to a Chinese architect and also to one who mastered his skills outside the usual world of architects. CNN reports that “unlike many of his contemporaries who studied overseas in the United States and Europe, Wang trained in China.He took the unusual step of taking on almost no commissions during the 1990s, instead learning about building materials by working closely with the kind of craftsmen normally shunned by office-bound architects.”
The Hyatt Foundation, which awards the prize, notes in its announcement:
“The fact that an architect from China has been selected by the jury represents a significant step in acknowledging the role that China will play in the development of architectural ideals. In addition, over the coming decades China’s success at urbanization will be important to China and to the world. This urbanization, like urbanization around the world, needs to be in harmony with local needs and culture. China’s unprecedented opportunities for urban planning and design will want to be in harmony with both its long and unique traditions of the past and with its future needs for sustainable development.”
Two of his works:
$35.6 million needed for 85,000 refugees fleeing Mali fighting
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Fighting that flared up in northern Mali 17 January continues and is causing an exodus of refugees, the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) said Friday 24 February in an appeal for funds. It is seeking $36.5 million to cover emergency expenses to July 2012 for the need of 85,000 uprooted people.
“An estimated 130,000 people have been uprooted within and outside Mali since the resumption of clashes between the Malian army and Tuareg rebels of the Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad (MNLA)–breaking the 2009 peace deal that had formally ended the Tuareg rebellion in Mali,” the UNHCR says. “In the surrounding countries, the largest influx has so far been recorded in Niger with 28,858 arrivals. In Mauritania, 22,958 Malian refugees have been registered so far. Another 17,499 Malian refugees have found refuge in Burkina Faso. More daily arrivals are being recorded in the neighboring countries as attacks continue throughout northern Mali, where an estimated 60,000 Malians are also internally displaced and in need of humanitarian assistance.
The funds will be used by the Geneva-based organization “to provide emergency assistance to the displaced in Mali and neighboring countries. The UNHCR is to establish camps further away from the Mali border in all three countries to allow refugees to receive help in safer locations.”
UNHCR seeks solution for small group of N Koreans
The UNHCR also announced Friday that it is in contact with Chinese authorities concerning a group of 25 N Koreans who have been held in China since Februay, without providing details of when or why or where they are being detained. The Geneva organization is working to ensure that China respects the international principle of no forced return.
Tunis conference on Syria goes ahead without China, Russia
Deaths Thursday include 13 members of one family
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Syria’s neighbours, other key countries and international organizations met in Geneva Thursday 23 February at the invitation of Switzerland to resolve a number of issues related to the tough task of getting humanitarian aid into Syria. Today’s meeting was a follow-up to an informal meeting in Berlin 17 February where options for aid were considered.
Bern’s statement on the meeting notes that it
“brought together government representatives from the key countries, including those in the neighbouring region, as well as representatives of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP), and other humanitarian actors strongly involved in the Syrian context.
“The meeting pointed out the urgent need to improve the conditions of humanitarian access to the civilian population of Syria due to the escalating humanitarian needs. The participants came to an agreement on the role of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in this regard. Against this background, the announcement of a visit to Damascus by Ms. Valerie Amos, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, was applauded by the entire assembly.”
The International Red Cross in Geneva has been trying to get both sides to agree to brief daily ceasefires, long enough to allow in humanitarian aid, but their appeal has so far failed to extract an agreement.
Fighting continues, journalists’ bodies and injured foreigners trapped
Meanwhile, the fighting rages on in Syria, with reports that among today’s dead were 13 members of one family who were lined up and killed by security forces. Reuters, in one of the most complete updates today, reports that outrage is growing outside the country and that UN investigators Thursday accused the al-Assad regime of crimes against humanity. Water is scarce and electricity cut drastically in cities under siege by government forces.
The bodies of two Western journalists killed by shelling Thursday remain in Homs and other reporters injured by the same attack are unable to get out for treatment.
Several nations, including the US, are meeting in Tunis Friday to discuss options, but China and Russia have both said they will stay away from the conference, with China arguing that outside intervention will lead to civil war.
Ed. note: Marie Colvin’s last video interview with CNN is a moving and disturbing tribute to her work and to the people of Syria.
St Gallen's red centre is a magnet for tourists
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The tourist industry saw a slight decline in visitors in 2011, final year-end figures show, to 35.5 million overnight stays.
Overall the drop was 2 percent. Decreases were seen only with European tourists, down 7 percent, in terms of overnight stays. The Americas are treated together statistically and while visitors from the US were down by 14,000 overnight stays, Brazilian visitors’ stays rose by 16,000, thus contributing to a rise from the region.
Chinese visitors were up 47 percent, with 191,000 more overnight stays and Indians spend 68,000 more nights in Switzerland.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Some 80,000 police are reported to be involved in the manhunt in China for a man from Sichuan named Zeng Kaigui for robbing and murdering at least seven people in as many years, in Chongqing and Changsha provinces.
The suspect, who always dresses in black for his crimes and who is a former armed police officer, according to Xinhua news agency, is accused stealing 200,000 yuan ($31,700) from a man who had just withdrawn it from a bank in Nanjing’s Dongmen Street 6 January 6. He shot his victim in the head and fled in a car.
Links to other sites: chinadaily_pdf, CNN, Guardian
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Chinese real estate investor’s plans to build a luxury golf club in Iceland were turned down recently by the government there, which said Huang Nubo would own too large a percentage of the country’s land if he bought the Grímsstaðir á Fjöllum stretch in the northeast of the country.
Now the minister of the Industry, Energy and Tourism says she is in favour of leasing the land to him, since this would not fly in the face of ownership issues, and Huang Nubo says he is interested.
But the plans are causing concern over the water in Canada, where suspicions are being voiced that China is interested in the land because of the possibility of a polar water route some day.
Links to other sites: The Globe & Mail, Ice News
Photo: Shangrila Farms, Yunnan Province, China
BERN, SWITZERLAND – “Switzerland’s free trade agreement negotiations with China are in a rather early stage but they are well underway” following the third round of talks between the two countries, Swiss Ambassador and Delegate for Trade Agreements Christian Etter has told GenevaLunch.
Switzerland, which has a trade surplus with China despite the former’s small size, has taken a European lead in working out a free trade agreement (FTA) with Asia’s giant economy since the two signed a Memorandum of Understanding 28 January 2011, says Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey.
“It shows we’re not afraid,” she said, smiling, at a press conference in Geneva 28 November. She was treating it lightly, but Switzerland is keen to keep the negotiations moving, particularly in the wake of a slowdown in negotiations between China and Iceland and China and Norway.
Both sides have said they would like the talks to move swiftly.
EU’s Almunia says stable trade framework is the way forward
The comments come as the European Union’s anti-trust boss called for less bickering and a better trade framework between the EU and China, at the EU-China Forum held in Brussels this week, organized by the Friends of Europe. Joaquın Almunia is quoted by Dow-Jones 29 November as saying that “everything linked with intellectual property rights, innovation, know-how, is not well-solved in our relations, we are discussing with our Chinese partners but I don’t find we have a stable framework to benefit from both sides of our common understanding.” He added that “playing this same kind of game means these pressures, these intensities will increase.”
Swiss-China trade picks up while Swiss-EU trade slows
Switzerland is China’s ninth largest trading partner in Europe, with the smaller country having a trade surplus for 2011 of CHF2.13 billion by the end of October. China is Switzerland’s largest trading partner in Asia. During the first 10 months of the year Switzerland’s exports to China grew by 26.2 percent, while imports from China slipped by 3.3 percent.
China is Europe’s largest trading partner and its trade surplus with Europe is €160-€180 billion in 2011, according to the Wall St Journal.
Trade has been stagnant between the EU and Switzerland during the first 10 months of the year, with exports to the EU down 0.5 percent and imports up 3.1 percent.
Iceland was the first European country to start FTA negotiations with China but its talks have cooled down, with Iceland’s application to join the European Union. Negotiations began formally in July 2010; EU membership would exclude implementing a separate FTA with China.
And talks with Norway have slowed down since China expressed its displeasure over the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Third round of negotiations covered hefty list of topics
The latest round of talks in the free trade negotiations between Switzerland and China took place in Montreux 8-10 November. The talks were launched in Davos in January, with talks held once in Bern and once in Beijing.
The two teams in Montreux held expert level discussions and exchanged information on respective regulatory systems and FTA-practices covering several areas: trade in goods, trade in services, rules of origin, customs procedures and trade facilitation, technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS), trade remedies, intellectual property rights, competition and dispute settlement.
The heads of of the two delegations and experts discussed investment promotion, cooperation on trade and sustainable development, and cooperation on government procurement, and agreed on follow-up work in all areas.
The fourth round of negotiations are expected to take place in China in early 2012.
Background
- World Trade Organization, most recent trade policy review for China, June 2010
- EU / China Partnership and Cooperation Agreement
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The United States will station 250 Marines in Australia starting in 2012, with the number expected to grow to 2,500 at some point, US President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard agreed Wednesday 16 November. The BBC reports that “The deployment is being seen as a move to counter China’s growing influence. But Mr Obama said the US was “stepping up its commitment to the entire Asia-Pacific”, not excluding China.”
The Sydney Morning Herald, in an opinion piece, notes that ”‘It’s absolutely clear that this is all about China,’ says Hugh White, formerly the top strategy planner in the Australian Defence Department. And the real significance of yesterday’s announcement was that Australia’s US alliance is being shaped around the China threat.”
Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, for its part makes no comment in its straightforward English-language news article on the agreement, but AFP/Yahoo, in an article where it refers to China being “rankled”, says “The deployment of US Marines to Australia’s tropical north came as the allies adapted their military posture to face a new security era marked by the rise of China, which sparked an immediate negative response from Beijing. ‘It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,’ China’s foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said.”
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – World headlines include the following, over the weekend:
- Clocks go back in the US, a week after Europe moves from summer to winter time – NPR
- Chinese mine workers, some 200-strong, pulled out 45 miners Saturday who had been trapped for more than 48 hours after an explosion – CBS, Xinhua
- Pakistan charges 7 in Bhutto death in 2007 – Aljazeera, Reuters Canada
- Syria: 553 of some 15,000 prisoners released, but 20 killed Friday – Aljazeera, Xinhuanet
- Colombia: Farc leader Alfonso Cano killed, but now what? – CS Monitor, Guardian, Jakarta Post
Chinese tourists overtake Italians, catching up with French, British
Chinese tourists on Mt Saentis 29 October, next to Switzerland's first mountain peak weather station, commissioned in 1882: on a clear day six countries are visible from this point
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss franc continues to have a strong impact on European and US visitors to Switzerland, with the number of overnight stays by foreigners in September down 6.8 percent compared to the same month a year earlier.
Foreigners accounted for a little more than half of the industry’s 3.3 million overnight stays in September.
The overall figure for the year to date is down 2 percent, but in September overnight stays fell 3.4 percent.
The decline in European stays continued, with Bern attributing this largely to the over-valued Swiss franc against sterling and the euro. Visits by foreigners were down 6 percent, but European visitors’ stays fell by 11 percent.
German tourist numbers were down 13 percent, British 13 percent, Dutch 12 and Italian 11 percent. US visitors are down 9.4 percent, although the number of overnight stays by Canadians rose
Chinese tourists to Switzerland: rapid increase as Alps tug Asians
Mt Saentis 30 October: a popular destination for German tourists, is attracting Chiense visitors
Asian numbers and in particular overnight stays by Chinese tourists continue to rise, with a 12 percent overall increase that includes a 43 percent increase by Chinese visitors, some 20,000 overnight stays. For the year to date, Chinese tourists show a 58.6 percent increase.
Germany remains by far Switzerland’s largest tourist client country, with some 470,000 overnights to date in September. The US was second with 172,000, Britain third with 152,000, France fourth with 100,000 – and then the surprise of China, with 67,000 overtaking Italy, with 65,000.
Wanted: British skiers, snowboarders, holiday fans and winter hikers
The British figures are likely to cause particular concern, with the crucial ski season coming up. Swiss statistics show 1.43 million overnights from January to the end of September, and the fourth quarter tends to be low, but the industry is holding its breath looking at winter ski season reservations.
British statistics register “visits” by its citizens abroad rather than overnight stays, and in 2010 the number of visits was down to 896,000 from a 2008 figure of 1.16 million. The first quarter of the year, with the ski season, saw 294,000 British visitors in 2011, compared to 350,000 a year earlier.
British tourists travelled again in the second quarter of 2011, but with the weakening pound, travel increased to North America, remained stable in the European Union and dropped to countries outside the EU, which includes Switzerland. Travel outside the EU during April to the end of June was at a level last seen in 2009 and before that, iln 2005.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Four miners have died and 50 are missing in a coal mine explosion in Sanmenxia in Henan province. Reports about how many miners managed to escape, but at least 14 men made it out and 7 have been pulled out, injured. It appears that a small earthquake had hit the area shortly before a rock exploded but it’s not clear if the two incidents are related.
The mine is owned by the state.
Safety in mines has been a huge issue in China in recent months and a number of illegal mines have been closed.
Links to other sites: BBC, Winnipeg Free Press (AP)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss companies share first place at the bottom of the list, but for a change this is a good thing: the list is Transparency International’s (TI) rankings of countries most likely to bribe abroad. Russia heads the list, with China close behind. The last two invested $120 billion overseas in 2010.
The Netherlands and Switzerland are the countries whose companies are the least likely to bribe. The report ranks 28 major international and regional exporting countries by the likelihood of their firms to bribe abroad, based on surveys of 3,000 business executives.
The annual report on bribery looks, for the first time, at business to business bribery rather than just bribes paid to government officials. Story continues …
Source: Transparency International, November 2011
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Beijing residents are not only complaining about the city’s infernal early winter smog, but also about how much of it there is and how the government is measuring it. Wiebo-users, China’s microbloggers, have taken to the Internet to vent about the city’s air, asking why the government’s measurements differ significantly from US measurements. Wednesday the city’s government vowed to clean up its act and the city’s pollution problem, which exacerbates the problems provoked by cold wet winters and icy, sandy blasts from the Gobi desert to the north.
Links to other sites: AFP, CNN, China Meteorology forecast for Beijing (Ch), Telegraph
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Double 10 holiday in Taiwan and China, to celebrate the 10 October 1911 Wuchang Uprising that ultimately led to the end of imperial rule in China had a special significance yesterday, as it marked the 100th anniversary of the event and drew a line under a very slight thawing in relations between the two Chinas that sprang up in its wake. Not surprisingly, the day was marked with some differences, with colourful celebrations in Taiwan, which considers this its national holiday and traditionally celebrates it with a flourish, and in a more muted way in mainland China.
The Taiwan community in Denver, Colorado held a special celebration, for Sun Yat-Sen, father of the Republic of China (Taiwan), against whom the Communists fought in the years after the Wuchang Uprising, was actually in Denver the day of the uprising, seeking funds.
Links to other sites: Huff Post-Denver, CNN commentator, Xinhuanet
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Money invested in mental health comes to a global average of only $3 per capita, according to the World Health Organization, and in some developing countries it is as low as $.25, with most funds spent on long-term hospitalization. Only two percent of all health resources are invested in mental health services and prevention is badly underfunded, the Geneva-based group says in its Mental Health Atlas 2011, published Friday 7 October.
The report “finds that the bulk of those resources are often spent on services that serve relatively few people”, with 70 percent of scarce funding going to mental institutions.
A key problem is that “in lower income countries, however, shortages of resources and skills often result in patients only being treated with medicines. The lack of psychosocial care reduces the effectiveness of the treatment.”
Half of the world’s population lives in areas where there is only one psychiatrist per 200,000 people.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – China and Russia used their vetoes in the UN Security Council late Tuesday to stop a United Nations draft resolution that threatened sanctions against Syria. It would have been the first such UN decision since March, when President Bashar Assad’s military regime began using tanks and soldiers to crack down on protester. US Ambassador Susan Rice walked out after the vote and remarks against the US by Syria.
The double veto 4 October was the first by the two countries since 2008, when they opposed sanctions against Zimbabwe and it came after several attempts to renegotiate the draft text failed.
The vote was 9-2, with four countries abstaining: India, South Africa, Brazil and Lebanon.
NPR in the US reports that “Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the council after the vote that his country did not support the Assad regime or the violence but opposed the resolution because it was “based on a philosophy of confrontation,” contained “an ultimatum of sanctions” and was against a peaceful settlement of a crisis. He also complained that the resolution did not call for the Syrian opposition to disassociate itself from ‘extremists’ and enter into dialogue.
Ria Novosti reports that Russia “stands firmly against any mention of sanctions citing the example of Libya where the Nato countries largely overstepped the UN mandate in a military operation against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime, said the text of the document was ‘unacceptable’ despite several changes to the draft. The Russian news agency cites Churkin’s complaint that “the document did not contain provisions on the unacceptability of an external military intervention.”
China’s Ambassador Li Bandong says that China is concerned about the violence but that sanctions achieve little and can complicate the situation rather than help it.
Links to other sites: BBC, The Globe & Mail, NPR, Ria Novosti, Xinhua
CHINA – Two Tibetan monks set themselves on fire, 26 September, in protest over China’s tight rein over Buddhist practices.
Xinhua News Agency said the monks were rescued by police, and had “suffered slight burns but were in stable condition.”
China has previously said that religious law requires that the “reincarnation of the Dalai Lama be born in a Tibetan area under Chinese control.” However, the Dalai Lama has said his successor could be born in exile and has considered the idea of choosing his own successor while still alive — “perhaps even a woman.”
Links to: Winnipeg Free Press.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Concern is growing, say UN and national authorities in three countries after a 6.9 earthquake shook remote Himalayan areas in India, Nepal and Tibet Sunday. The regions hardest hit by the earthquake that was centered in the northern Indian state of Sikkim are difficult to reach and mountain roads have been blocked by debris in several areas.
At least 70 people have died, including three in Nepal when a British embassy wall collapsed, and the death toll is expected to rise. Structural damage has been heavy in several areas and officials in India say at least 1,000 homes collapsed.
Links to other sites:
BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14967812
Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Sikkim-earthquake-toll-climbs-to-66-rescue-work-hampered-by-landslides/articleshow/10041847.cms
Xinhuanet, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-09/19/c_131147529.htm
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – China has recognized Libya’s new government, the NTC, handing a final international political blow to the Qaddafi regime. The news comes this week as the National Transitional Council in Libya announced that the new government’s main source of law will be moderate Islam.
Earlier this week, 13 September Amnesty International issued a report on crimes against humanity by the Qaddafi regime but it also noted that the NTC may have committed war crimes.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Google’s license to operate in mainland China has been renewed for a year. The company has lost market share since it started re-directing traffic to its Hong Kong operations after it was unable to resolve its spat with the Chinese government over censorship. The Chinese license nevertheless allows it to pick up advertising from Chinese companies keen to reach the world outside China.
PC Magazine reports that Google now has just over 18 percent of the search market in China, compared to Baidu’s more than 75 percent.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, PC Magazine
Tourists meet the local cows, hiking down from the Jungfraujoch
BERN, SWITZERLAND – July 2011 was not the disaster for Swiss tourism that some people expected, given the high Swiss franc, but European visitors’ overnight stays were down by 3.5 percent compared to July 2010, with foreigners’ overnight stays down 4 percent.
Two of Switzerland’s traditionally largest groups of European visitors, Germans and the British, were down 11.6 and 10.5 percent respectively.
The Swiss Statistical Office attributes the drop to the combination of a very high franc and unusually cold, wet weather for mid-summer.
Chinese (without Hong Kong) tourists, while still a small part of the overall number, had a positive impact with a 61 percent increase, to 76,787 overnight stays. Germans had 527,612, the largest group.
For the first six months of the year, Chinese visitors’ overnight stays rose 42.5 percent, faster than Indian visitors’, which increased by more than 25 percent, and the Chinese are now not far behind Indians as a key tourist group.
