2008年1月29日 星期二

印度洋海啸预警系统

科学自然 | 2008.01.28

德国援助的印度洋海啸预警系统

GITEWS (German-Indonesian Contribution for the Installation of a Tsunami Warning System) 在印尼海面安装过程中

20041224日,印度洋發生劇烈海嘯,致使30萬人喪生。假如當時就有預警系統的話,遇難人數恐怕會降低很多。因此,災難發生不久,德國政府就決 定援助,和印尼政府共同建設印度洋海嘯預警系統。該系統名為GITEWS,兩年前開始在印尼安裝。至今進展是否如期呢?德國之聲記者發來的以下採訪報導。

時值20058月。德國漢堡港的一架 吊車緩緩地把一個黃色耀眼的浮標放下水。這個浮標有好幾米高,一面印著德國國旗,另一面印著印尼國旗。德國負責開發印度洋海嘯早期預警系統GITEWS 單位是波茨坦地理研究中心,項目負責人是大地物理學家勞特容(Joern Lauterjung)。當時他介紹說:這是我們準備運到印尼的第一個浮標,它上面的三角架上裝有GPS接收器。

今天,這個黃色耀眼的浮標已經漂浮在印度洋海面了,下面連接著一個埋伏在海底的壓力感測器。勞特容說:我們可以非常精確地測量水壓。假如海嘯波浪流經壓力感測器所在地,水壓就會發生變化,傳給浮標。浮標本身除了配備GPS以外,它還可以精確測量海面高度的變化。

印度洋海嘯早期預警系統共擁有10個這樣的浮 標,採集資料。此外,它還擁有20個海面高度觀測站、100個地震儀。無論印度洋的什麼地方發生地震,都逃不過這100個地震儀的火眼金睛。所有測量 資料都匯總到預警中心,一台大型電腦可以根據實際測到的資料,幾分鐘之內類比出海嘯的傳播方向、海浪的高度等重要參數。至於是否向老百姓發出海嘯警報, 則不是電腦所決定的,而是由值班專家決定。屆時,廣播、電視、互聯網等就會將警報消息傳播到各地,再偏遠的村落也不會遺漏。

勞特容說:目前系統建設的進度基本如期。地震儀是安裝在陸地上的,大部分已經完成,沿岸的觀測站大約已完成了一半,浮標的主要安裝工作放在2008年,計畫年底前安裝好10套浮標。

20081112日,在印尼總統的主持下, 該系統將投入運行。勞特容表示,時間安排是相當緊湊的,但他們胸有成竹,畢竟,該系統已經初顯實力了。勞特容介紹說:雖然系統部件還沒有安裝齊全,但去年912日離蘇門答臘島南岸不遠的海底發生一系列嚴重地震時,我們的系統就已經派上了用場。當時,地震發生大約3 半之後,系統就已經確定出震源和地震強度。隨後,印尼氣象局和其他有關部門根據系統提供的結果,在5分鐘之內發出早期警報。1520分鐘之後,第一批海 浪才到岸。可以說,我們的系統已經通過了實際考驗。

據勞特容介紹,印尼方面對這套系統也深表滿意,因為這個項目在印尼的知名度很高,政府也非常支持,所以一切都很順利。我們和印尼同事合作得也非常滿意。他們也確實是在盡力使這個項目獲得成功。

即便2008年底系統投入運行,勞特容及其同事 的工作也還遠遠沒有到此為止。為了培訓印尼的工作人員熟練操作這套早期預警系統,德國專家至少還要在印尼呆到20103月,說不定還會更長,我想,我們還有必要多和當地工作人員一起幹幾年,一是好讓他們更熟悉這套系統,但更重要的是繼續培養專業人才。培養人才不是兩、三年就可以完成的,你真 地需要付出更長的時間才行。

勞特容認為,這個項目基本上是如期進行的,就是 4500萬歐元的預算看來也不會超支,但是有兩點卻令這位大地物理學家擔憂,讓我擔心的是,2010年後的經費還沒有完全解決,我們還處於討論階段,還在進行籌備工作。讓我擔心的第二點是對老百姓的宣傳教育問題,遇到警報的時候 應當幹些什麼,不能幹什麼。這是我們的印尼合作夥伴還面臨的一項巨大任務,這肯定還需要好幾年的時間。我希望人們不要忘記這一點,希望我們的努力最終可以 獲得真正的成功。

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Grote Lueschen

2008年1月27日 星期日

Suharto of Indonesia Dies at 86

Suharto, Former Indonesian Dictator, Dies at 86


Published: January 28, 2008

Suharto of Indonesia, whose 32-year dictatorship was one of the most brutal and corrupt of the 20th century, died Sunday in Jakarta. He was 86.

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Associated Press

Suharto during a ceremony in 1967 in which he replaced President Sukarno. More Photos »

Mr. Suharto had been hospitalized on Jan. 4 with heart, lung and kidney problems, according to medical officials of Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta. His condition worsened dramatically over the weekend and he lost consciousness and stopped breathing on his own, they said.

A statement issued by the chief presidential doctor, Marjo Subiandono, said he was declared dead at 1:10 p.m. The cause of death was given as multi-organ failure.

Mr. Suharto was driven from office in 1998 by widespread rioting, economic paralysis and political chaos. His rule was not without accomplishment; he led Indonesia to stability and nurtured economic growth. But these successes were ultimately overshadowed by his pervasive and large-scale corruption; repressive, militarized rule; and a convulsion of mass bloodletting when he seized power in the late 1960s that took at least 500,000 lives.

As the leader of one of the world’s most populous countries, Mr. Suharto and his family became notorious for controlling state enterprises and taking kickbacks for government contracts, for siphoning money from state charities and for committing gross violations of human rights.

Yet Mr. Suharto remained virtually untouchable to the end, even as his successors in a new democratic system repudiated his rule. He was never charged with the killings committed under his command, and managed to escape criminal prosecution for embezzling millions of dollars, possibly billions, by having himself declared mentally incapable to stand trial. A civil suit against him was pending at his death.

After he was forced from office, he tried to give the appearance of a frail and humiliated former potentate, but he could be seen jogging and swinging a golf club at his home in the center of Jakarta. His health deteriorated in his final years and he became something of a recluse.

In his last days, a parade of the country’s power elite visited the hospital to pay their respects.

Mr. Suharto — who like many Indonesians used only one name — stepped down on May 21, 1998, just two months after arranging to have himself elected to a seventh five-year term. He departed with an apology to the nation. “I am sorry for my mistakes,” he said. But his quiet statement came only after the deaths of 500 student protesters, an event that shocked the people into a consensus that the president must go.

When demonstrators occupied the Parliament building, once-docile legislators finally called on the president to resign.

Like his predecessor, Sukarno, Mr. Suharto worked to forge national unity in a fractious country of 200 million people comprising 300 ethnic groups speaking 250 languages and inhabiting more than 17,000 islands spread over a 3,500-mile archipelago.

Sukarno had also fallen from power in a wave of violence, one that swept the country in 1965 after an attack that was officially portrayed as an abortive leftist coup. Mr. Suharto, one of the few senior military officers to escape execution on the first day of that uprising, moved decisively against the insurgents and effectively took control of the country.

Mr. Suharto dealt gingerly with Sukarno, a founding father of the nation who still had support within the army. Sukarno was kept as a figurehead while Mr. Suharto, a relatively little known major general, waited three years to officially succeed him, in 1968.

In the following years, governing through consensus, traditional mysticism, military repression and authoritarian control, President Suharto restored order to the country and presided over an era of substantial development. Many Indonesians benefited from his programs, but none more so than members of his family, who became billionaires many times over. Last year, he topped a new list of world leaders who had stolen from state coffers. The list, by the United Nations and the World Bank, cited an estimate that he had embezzled $15 billion to $35 billion.

Enigmatic and Magical

Mr. Suharto was an unlikely character to play such a major role in his country’s destiny. He was a private person, and although he wielded complete power, he spoke in gentle tones, smiled sweetly to friend and foe and presented himself as a man of humble origins, shy, retiring and enigmatic. Short and thick set, he almost invariably dressed in a Western business suit or a safari jacket once he gave up his military uniform, and a black songkok, the flat traditional Indonesian cap.

He rarely took a public stand on any issue. Instead, by waiting to allow a consensus to form, he was usually able to make events evolve the way he wished. He can be better understood in the context of the old forms of Javanese kingship in which the ruler was surrounded by courtiers who tried to divine the royal mind.

Although he was a Muslim, Mr. Suharto seemed imbued with Indonesian traditions of animism and mysticism overlaid with Hindu and Buddhist teachings. In a country given to superstition, where ancient patterns of belief coexist with more modern ideas, he consulted gurus and dukuns, spiritual advisers and soothsayers who were believed to be in touch with natural forces.

Whether it was those forces or his timing, good fortune came to him. Just as the United States was becoming embroiled in Vietnam, he stood as a bulwark against Communism in Asia. The United States rewarded him with a foreign aid program that eventually amounted to more than $4 billion a year. In addition, a consortium of Western countries and Japan established an aid program that in 1994 alone totaled almost $5 billion.

In doing so, the United States, along with much of the rest of the world, showed a willingness to overlook the corruption, favoritism and violations of human rights, including the disappearance of opposition politicians, that came to characterize Mr. Suharto’s rule.

Many Indonesians, too, supported him, at least while the economy was buoyant. But the Asian economic turmoil in 1997 exposed Indonesia’s economy as on the brink of collapse.

The currency lost 30 percent of its value in 1996, a drought made rice scarce, unemployment rose and the widening income gap led to rioting and violence. Mr. Suharto turned to the International Monetary Fund, which agreed to a $43 billion bailout if Indonesia would abide by its terms.

His signing of those terms was seen as a humiliating capitulation, but he equivocated when it came to instituting them. Many saw his hesitation as an effort to protect the fortunes of his family and friends, money widely believed to have been stashed in foreign banks.

Mr. Suharto called for belt-tightening. He raised fuel prices, then revoked the order. He promised bank reform and ended tax breaks, then reversed himself or left wide loopholes.

His failure to come to grips with economic problems brought a wave of student unrest. In May 1998, student rallies spilled from the campuses into the streets and across the archipelago. Hundreds died in fires and clashes with security forces.

Apparently unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation, Mr. Suharto left on a trip to Cairo, but was forced to cut it short in an effort to restore order. The economic crisis was a challenge that he did not seem to know how to handle.

“This is something he cannot shoot, he cannot put in jail, he cannot close down, like our newspaper,” said Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, an Indonesian policy institute.

Anti-Communist Purges

In the 1960s, during the turbulent months following his rise to power, few would have predicted that Mr. Suharto, a peasant turned soldier, would be able to weather crisis after crisis, as he did for 32 years.

The first of those was touched off by long-smoldering resentments between Communists, conservative Muslims and ethnic Chinese that exploded into one of the bloodiest massacres in modern history.

His precise role in the violence is not clear; he managed to keep his name from being directly attached to it. What is clear is that in many areas the army, which he controlled, supplied weapons to and whipped up an aroused population to mutilate and murder people suspected of being Communists, many of them of Chinese ancestry. Estimates of the number of dead have ranged from 500,000 to as many as one million.

Contemporary dispatches reported that the general sent crack troops of the army’s Strategic Reserve Command to organize the liquidation of the Communists. Hamish McDonald, a journalist with wide experience in Asia, wrote in his book “Suharto’s Indonesia” that General Suharto later dispatched Col. Sarwo Edhi Wibowo with a force of commandos “to encourage the anti-Communist civilians to help with the job.” The colonel said, “We gave them two or three days’ training, then sent them out to kill the Communists.”

Along with presumed Communists, entire families were wiped out and personal scores settled with ethnic Chinese, longtime residents of the country.

Mr. Suharto had blamed the Indonesian Communist Party for what he described as an abortive coup in 1965, though the Communists’ exact role in it remains unclear. In that uprising, six senior anti-Communist generals were killed in one evening, and questions have lingered about why Mr. Suharto was one of the few senior officers not marked for assassination. In any event, he became the chief beneficiary of the subsequent crackdown as he moved quickly to consolidate his control.

When Mr. Suharto took over from Sukarno, the country was bankrupt. Inflation was rampant and hunger was commonplace in a country rich in natural resources.

Mr. Suharto ended Sukarno’s policy of confrontation with Malaysia and became a force for regional stability by helping to establish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Indonesia rejoined the United Nations, from which it had withdrawn in 1965.

With the help of American-trained economists, Indonesia moved from being the world’s largest rice-importing nation to a rice exporter. During the 1970s, oil was a major export and a significant source of foreign exchange. High oil prices allowed considerable economic development, but when Pertamina, the national oil company, was shaken by scandal in the late ’70s, the country again neared bankruptcy.

Mr. Suharto brought what became known as the New Order to Indonesia, but at the price of repression. Scholars have estimated that as many as 750,000 people were arrested in the military crackdown after the killing of the generals, and that 55,000 to 100,000 people accused of being Communists may have been held without trial for as long as 14 years.

In the early ’80s, 4,000 to 9,000 people were killed by death squads organized by army Special Forces to deal with petty criminals and some political operatives. And, according to Benedict Richard O’Gorman Anderson, a professor emeritus of government at Cornell, 200,000 people of a population of 700,000 died in East Timor in the civil war and famine after Indonesia’s invasion and annexation in 1975.

Professor Anderson called Mr. Suharto a “malign dictator with blood on his hands — over the years anywhere from half a million to a million people.”

The repressiveness of the Suharto era broke into the headlines during President Ronald Reagan’s trip to Asia in 1986, a trip meant to highlight the “winds of freedom” in the region. Just before Mr. Reagan’s arrival in Bali, the government expelled a correspondent for The New York Times and barred two Australian journalists after unfavorable reports about the great wealth accumulated by the general and his family.

When he came to power, he refused at first to move into the presidential palace, saying he preferred to live in his own modest house in Jakarta. During his years as president, however, his homes became palatial.

The Family Business

While he occupied himself with affairs of state or relaxed with a round of golf or a day of fishing, his wife, Siti Hartinah Suharto, known as Madame Tien, handled the family’s business affairs. She became the object of quiet criticism, with her detractors calling her “Madame Tien Percent,” a reference to what were said to be commissions she received on business deals.

But Madame Tien, who died in 1996, was restrained compared with the six Suharto children. They used their connections to amass as much as $35 billion from their business interests, according to an estimate by Transparency International, a private anticorruption organization. Cartels and monopolies extended the family’s reach to paper, cement, plywood, cloves, toll roads, power plants, automobiles and banks.

One daughter, Siti Hadijanti Rukmana, led a corporate group that collected many of the tolls on new highways. A son, Bambang Trihatmodjo, became chairman of a conglomerate of some 90 companies with interests in everything from shipping and insurance to cocoa and timber, hotels, television, automobiles, even condoms. Another son was connected to the state oil monopoly.

Whatever favors were not given to the Suharto family went to friends. A respected Indonesian scholar was quoted by The Times as saying: “At least 80 percent of major government projects go in some form to the president’s children or friends.”

The family has denied that it benefited unfairly from tax breaks and other favors and said government contracts had been subject to competitive bidding, a widely disputed assertion.

Impoverished Childhood

Mr. Suharto was born on June 8, 1921, in Kemusu Argamulja, a village west of Yogyakarta in central Java. He was the only child from his father’s second marriage, but he had 11 half-brothers and sisters. His father was a village irrigation official, with control over the water for rice growers.

His parents divorced, and he moved from his mother’s home to an aunt’s, to his father’s, to his stepfather’s. At one point he was transferred to the household of Daryatmo, a noted guru and dukun, who remained an adviser to Mr. Suharto in his later years.

He was so poor that he once had to change schools because he could not afford the shorts and shoes that were the required uniform. His education ended with junior high school. He found a job in the bank in his village, but resigned after he tore his only set of work clothes in a bicycle accident.

Indonesia was a Dutch colony and with the outbreak of war in 1940, he joined the Royal Netherlands Indies Army, which surrendered to the Japanese three months after Pearl Harbor. Indonesian nationalists began cooperating with the Japanese as a step toward independence, and he joined the Japanese-sponsored Volunteer Army, reaching the rank of commander.

After the Japanese surrender he joined the independence forces, emerging as a lieutenant colonel, steeped in anticolonialism and anti-Communism.

In 1947 he married Siti Hartinah; they had six children, Siti Hardiyanti Hastuti, Sigit Harjojudanto, Bambang Trihatmodjo, Siti Hediati, Hutomo Mandala Putra and Siti Hutami Endang Adiningsih, who survive, along with 11 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

After attending the army staff and command school, he was made a brigadier general and placed in charge of intelligence. He rose to command the army’s new Strategic Reserve Force, the position he held when the six generals were killed in 1965. On that night, he was visiting his youngest child in a hospital, and it was said that that was how he escaped assassination.

Despite the allegations of human-rights abuses and corruption, Mr. Suharto escaped prosecution, evidence of the influence he retained long after he was forced from power. In 2000, the government charged him with having embezzled more than $600 million, but later dropped the charges because he was in ill health. After Time magazine reported that he had stolen up to $15 billion, he sued for defamation, and lost twice in lower courts before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor last year.

In July, prosecutors filed a civil suit, which is still pending, seeking $1.1 billion in damages for embezzling. And in December, an investigation was announced into six cases of human-rights abuses, including the killing of more than half a million people in the ’60s.

Because of a stroke and other ailments, he was said to have brain damage and trouble communicating. But in November, after obtaining the verdict against Time, he gave a rare interview to an Indonesian news magazine. Asked about the accusations of corruption, he laughed. “It’s all empty talk,” he said. “Let them accuse me. The fact is I have never committed corruption.”

Seth Mydans contributed reporting from Solo, Indonesia.

2008年1月25日 星期五

台灣舉辦全球新興民主國家論壇 上書反腐 ( BBC)

台灣舉辦全球新興民主國家論壇
林楠森
BBC中文網台灣特約記者

台灣舉辦第一屆全球新興國家民主論壇,包括東歐,南非與韓國在內數名由共產或威權轉型為民主國家的前總統,與台灣交流轉型經驗。

taiwan forum
會議邀請了曾帶領社會走向民主的領袖
由台灣民主基金會主辦的這場論壇,參加者包括波蘭前總統瓦文薩、羅馬尼亞前總統康斯坦丁內斯庫、南非前總統德克勒克、薩爾瓦多前總統弗洛瑞斯、韓國前總統金泳三以及現任台灣總統陳水扁。原也受邀的保加利亞前總統哲列夫表示因天候因素無法親自出席,而由羅馬尼亞前總統代為宣讀其發言。

這些過去在轉型期帶領各自國家走向民主的前領導人,就憲政選擇、政黨政治、轉型正義以及公民社會等四項議題,與台灣交流解決之道。

在論壇結束后這些前總統與台灣共同簽署的宣言指出,第三波民主化后,全球民主呈現停滯,部份威權國家拒絕擁抱民主,部份新興民主國家的民主化進程則處于劇烈動蕩。

宣言并且對民主人權提出了三大原則,三大反對,以及三大主張。

轉型正義

這次論壇的一個議題是在新興民主國家普遍面臨的轉型正義問題﹔此前台灣政府以轉型正義為由,將紀念蔣介石的紀念堂改名,卻受到泛藍力抗進而引起社會氣氛不安。

德克勒克認為,轉型各國面臨的問題非常相似,在推動轉型正義上要全然的客觀是不可能的﹔他以南非的經驗說,為了國家的和平,他曾經以良心作為代價而妥協。

台灣對于國民黨戒嚴時期人權遭迫害而失去自由或生命者,以法律規定予以金錢補償﹔但在德克勒克看來,生命很難以金錢補償,他認為政府真正能補償人民的是讓新制度可以運行,民主可以持續下去。

在執政前曾力抗波蘭共產黨的瓦文薩則認為,各新興民主國家的狀況不同,但他的觀察是轉型的第一階段,若想要達成真正的正義,將低估其對國家穩定帶來的威脅。他并說,正義雖然可能達成,但那需要很長的時間。

陳水扁則表示,包括台灣在內國家對轉型正義的努力,因為政治權力競逐而遭到全面污名化,將其說成是撕裂族群,制造仇恨﹔雖然有真相不必然就能和解,但沒有真相更不可能有真正的和解,寬恕與團結。

中國“九年后解體”

中國民主化的問題,也是這次論壇上各國前領導人共同關心的話題之一。

德克勒克提到了中國是否會在發展經濟以外,也走向民主憲政的問題﹔瓦文薩以他個人曾作為革命家的經驗說,他了解到國家若想發展,必須采取同時采取自由民主體制與自由市場機制。

陳水扁則認為,中國的民主化是可以期待的,只有中共的集權統治與黨國體制的解體,中國才可能走向真正的民主之路。

他并引用一名日本政界人士的說法指出,根據過去經驗,納粹德國與蘇聯都在舉辦奧運后的九年解體﹔而中共政權也將在今年也將舉辦奧運,因此中共也可能在九年后解體。

陳水扁同時說,希望這些新興民主國家的民主經驗,成功故事與慘痛教訓,可以給中共與中國人民更多借鏡。




50名中國退休高乾和保守派學者聯名上書中央,呼籲盡快落實官員財產申報,以對付腐敗問題。

參與聯署的包括:原國家統計局局長李成瑞,北京大學法學院教授鞏獻田﹔原化學工業部部長秦仲達等。

他們建議:盡快制定並認真實施《縣處級以上公職人員財產申報公布法》。

他們認為,這個法規是預防和懲處領導幹部侵吞公共財產和私人合法財產,以權謀私、權錢交易的一種銳利武器。

北京航空航天大學經濟管理學院教授韓德強向BBC中文部指出,中國的腐敗問題已經相當嚴重,單是把有形財產部分公開的話,可能就已經犯法,如果再加上隱形的收入,就更加多。

作用不大

他認為,這次上書建議的作用並不大。

但他表示,上書的意義是:"共產黨內部依然有一股被稱為保守派的傳統力量,他們不希望中共會出現像前蘇聯那樣的問題,希望中共還能多活幾年。"

中國目前監察部以及新建的國家預防腐敗局,都是隸屬於國務院和地方各級人民政府的,但這無法有效進行監督。

就此,建議書認為,應該把現有的國務院監察部升格為全國人民代表大會領導下的最高廉政監察院,從而把它從行政部門分離出來,實行逐級垂直領導。

韓德強指出:"監察院設在人大就不太容易檢查到最高領導人的動作,但是對普通中央委員,普通政治局委員,就可能起到檢察作用。"

橡皮圖章?

然而,中國依然是由共產黨領導的一黨專政,並沒有真正實施三權分立,全國人大被視為"橡皮圖章",監察院的實際權力令人懷疑。

不過韓德強認為:"他們的建議恰恰吸收了國外三權分立的精神,希望人大能夠從橡皮圖章變成鋼鐵圖章,成為對共產黨權力的約束機制。"

公職人員申報並公布家庭財產以接受公眾監督,是世界上許多國家通行已久的制度。

早在1988年,中國國務院便起草了有關草案﹔1994年全國人大"八五"立法規劃中,便將《財產收入申報法》列入立法項目。

此後,有不少全國人大代表、政協委員、專家、學者多次建議或呼籲建立這一制度。

然而,中共十七大結束後迄今,連這項法律的草案都還沒有出台。


2008年1月13日 星期日

Congress Uses Olympics to Focus on China

Congress Uses Olympics to Focus on China



By FOSTER KLUG
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 12, 2008; 7:26 AM

WASHINGTON -- The world will be watching China closely as it gears up to host the Olympics this year. So will U.S. lawmakers, who hope to use the attention generated by the summer games to highlight their complaints about China's government.

Lawmakers, in hearings and in legislation, will scrutinize what some see as unfair Chinese economic policies, its secretive military buildup and its human rights abuses. China already has been targeted by presidential candidates.

"The Chinese want this `Show' _ with a capital `S' _ to showcase their government to the world," Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said in an interview. Congress, he said, should use that as leverage to "bring maximum scrutiny and light to their egregious human rights abuses."

Smith champions legislation that would stop U.S. technology companies from aiding countries that restrict Internet access. American Internet companies have been denounced for turning a blind eye to abuse in China so they can crack that lucrative market.

The Bush administration's criticism of China is usually muted. Lawmakers, however, are more vocal in asserting that China has failed to live up to its responsibilities as an emerging superpower.

With the presidential campaign heating up, "2008 promises to be a trying year" for U.S.-China ties, wrote Brad Glosserman and Bonnie Glaser, analysts with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "There will be a temptation to make China a foreign policy issue or a scapegoat for problems in economic and security policy."

U.S. manufacturers say Beijing's low valuation of the yuan, its currency, makes Chinese goods cheaper in the United States and American products more expensive in China. Lawmakers are considering bills that would punish China for what they contend are predatory trade practices.

Lawmakers also worry about China's rapid military spending and the country's apparent secretiveness about its military aims. The House Armed Services Committee will hold hearings this year with top U.S. commanders in the Pacific, where China will be a major topic.

Last year, Washington criticized China's test of an anti-satellite weapon as a provocative militarization of space. The two countries also sparred after China barred the USS Kitty Hawk from entering Hong Kong for a port call.

But it is Taiwan that could cause the most friction. Taiwan split from China in 1949, although Beijing continues to see the island as part of its territory. China has pledged to keep the island from independence by force if necessary.

Reps. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., and Tom Tancredo, R-Col., are among sponsors of a resolution that would voice Congress' support for Taiwan's membership in the United Nations, which both China and the Bush administration oppose as a provocation. A referendum, scheduled to be held with Taiwan's presidential election in March, asks voters if they would support the island's application to join the United Nations under the name Taiwan, rather than under its long-standing official title, Republic of China.

The Olympics, said Mac Zimmerman, Tancredo's chief of staff, provide "a good opportunity for Taiwan and its friends in Congress to raise the profile of the Taiwan issue."

Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank, noted worry that congressional support for Taiwan's U.N. membership could encourage Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian to do something that China would see as a push for independence. Chen is trying to carve out a non-Chinese identity for the island.

"Hopefully, they won't do too much," Cossa said of Congress, "because nothing makes things worse than congressional efforts to make them better."



In this photo taken on Friday January 11, 2008 and released by China's official Xinhua news agency, shown is the interior view of the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium. The Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium is inaugurated on Friday and will host the basketball qualifications and finals during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Luo Xiaoguang)
In this photo taken on Friday January 11, 2008 and released by China's official Xinhua news agency, shown is the interior view of the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium. The Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium is inaugurated on Friday and will host the basketball qualifications and finals during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Luo Xiaoguang) (Luo Xiaoguang - AP)


2008年1月9日 星期三

Dispute: Pashmina

Twist
The Latest Dispute
Between Pakistan
And India: Pashmina

pashmina

By VIBHUTI AGARWAL
January 10, 2008

NEW DELHI -- In their 60 years as nations and neighbors, Pakistan and India have frequently quarreled -- over cricket, over land, over nuclear testing. The latest area of contention: pashmina.

[A Kashmiri woman weaves traditional handcrafted pashmina on a spinning wheel.]
www.kashmirarts.com/
A Kashmiri woman weaves traditional handcrafted pashmina on a spinning wheel.

An handicrafts association backed by the Indian government has applied to register a Geographical Indicator tag for "Kashmiri Pashmina" as a mark for the rare soft wool from the underbelly of the capra hircus goat. It wants the Kashmiri original -- the wool Westerners call "cashmere" -- to be easily distinguished from imitations as the popularity of pashmina has soared and the word itself has become synonymous with a large scarf of thin wool. In effect, they want the same protection for Kashmiri Pashmina that champagne makers have for their bubbly.

But as a special tribunal in the southern Indian city of Chennai considers the application, the process has hit a snag. The reason: Pakistani authorities say they don't want pashmina from the Pakistani-administered portion of Kashmir to be excluded, or to face recriminations if merchants there use the term. The disputed territory of Kashmir, where producing the prized wool has been among the biggest businesses for centuries, straddles India and Pakistan and has been a key cause of three wars between the two South Asian powers since 1947.

[Pashima shawls come in an array of colors and styles.]
www.kashmirarts.com
Pashima shawls come in an array of colors and styles.

Zulfikar Abbasi, president of the Jammu and Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the part of Kashmir currently occupied by Pakistan, claims the Indian government has been trying to pull the wool over its neighbor's eyes by seeking to obtain exclusive rights to the "Kashmiri Pashmina" name without consulting Pakistanis. He adds that the quality of the wool on both sides of the border is the same.

The Indians aren't so sure. "We don't want to comment on the quality of the pashmina produced on the other side," says M.S. Farooqi, director of the Craft Development Institute in Srinagar, a city in Indian-occupied Kashmir, which filed the application.

The tribunal is expected to decide on the issue as soon as mid-January. It may stitch together a compromise and allow both India and Pakistan to use the term. Or it may ask India to refile a joint application with Pakistan. Or it could sour relations further by declaring a victory for India.