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March 17, 2007
The Slowest Gas Pump
Not that this has anything to do with Xinjiang, but check out the following video I shot on my mobile phone yesterday:
I stopped for gas along the Garden State Parkway in Montvale, only to discover that every pump was super-slow. A friend recently told me that pumps have been slowed down so that the price goes up at approximately the same speed it did when the cost per gallon was much lower. I didn't really believe him until yesterday... when I was stuck pumping gas for 15 friggin' minutes to fill up the tank! (Look mom! I really do put gas in the car.)
For those math nuts among you, I used the video to calculate the speed of the pump. It comes in at a blazing 1.2 gallons/minute. What gives? Is there a pump slowdown nationwide?
Super annoying.
posted March 17, 2007 at 12:43 AM unofficial Xinjiang time | Comments (22)
March 16, 2007
Subtle Propaganda
Propaganda gets a bad rap in the West. But hey, what is a "puff" or "local interest" story other than non-governmental propaganda? Is anything that portrays government actions in a positive light propaganda? When soldiers help to rebuild a village mosque after an earthquake and the story is covered on CNN, that's news. But if the soldiers are from the PLA and the story's on CCTV, it's propaganda. Of course, the tone is different and a whole host of other factors come into play (not the least of which is the target audience).
In any case, that rambling and incoherent view of propaganda was only a trick to lure you into an excellent example that ran in today's China Daily about Uygur imam and CPPCC member, Abdulatip Abdurahim:
"It's very good news that our government is stressing harmony in society, but actually harmony was what Islam called for more than 1,400 years ago," Abudlatip, a CPPCC member of the religion circle, said.
Well, I'll be... it seems that the People's Republic and Allah are in total agreement: harmony rocks! The article goes on to describe how Abdurahim uses the Koran to disarm Uyghur mobs out for Han blood. It's all in a day's work for your average imam:
"Public order is mostly maintained by the authorities, but sometimes they turn to us and we try to do what we can," Abdulatip said.
At least now we know why the various ethnic groups in Xinjiang never get into confict with each other, eh? You can read the full article below.
IMAM PRACTISES WHAT HE PREACHES
By Mu Qian
16 March 2007
China Daily
For Abdulatip Abdurahim, an imam from Hotan of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the term "advocating harmony in society" is not meaningless religious window dressing.
It is a belief he has advocated all his life.
"It's very good news that our government is stressing harmony in society, but actually harmony was what Islam called for more than 1,400 years ago," Abudlatip, a CPPCC member of the religion circle, said.
"The word 'Islam' itself contains the meaning of harmony."
A few years ago, the son of Abdulatip's neighbor worked for a Han boss as a fisherman in a reservoir. One day a storm came when he was fishing in the reservoir. The boat was turned over and he drowned.
The young man's father was so infuriated that he was going to kill the Han boss, who he believed should have safeguarded his son.
Unable to stop him, the village's Party secretary asked Abdulatip for help.
When Abdulatip arrived, a group of people were ready to go looking for the Han boss, all armed with sticks and knives. The young man's father wouldn't listen to Abdulatip, saying that Abdulatip was with the government.
"Forget who I am. Let me ask you a question. Are you a Muslim?" Abdulatip asked.
"Yes."
"Do you believe in Allah?"
"Of course I do."
"Do you think it is Allah or a person that decides when, where and how someone dies?"
"It is Allah."
"That day the weather was ok at first, but the storm came when they were fishing. Do you think it is Allah or a person that decides the weather?"
"It is Allah."
"Then why are you going to take revenge on a person who doesn't have the power to decide the weather?"
Not able to answer Abdulatip's question, the young man's father admitted that he was too angry as he lost his beloved son, and asked Abdulatip to forgive him and said he needed Abdulatip's help for the funeral.
It was not the only time in which Abdulatip settled a conflict with his knowledge of Islam, though he said his regular work involved leading Muslims to pray, presiding over religious ceremonies and teaching the Koran.
"Public order is mostly maintained by the authorities, but sometimes they turn to us and we try to do what we can," Abdulatip said.
"I'm a religious leader, so I have to not only act according to the Koran myself, but also preach Islam's doctrines of harmony and peace at every chance."
The majority in Hotan is Uygur, though there are also Hui and Han people. Abdulatip said he would give Han people good wishes during Spring Festival, and he would also receive good wishes from Han people at Islamic festivals.
"The only difference between Muslims and non-Muslims is only the customs," Abdulatip said.
"We all seek the same happy lives."
posted March 16, 2007 at 11:40 AM unofficial Xinjiang time | Comments (35)
March 14, 2007
Texas? Xinjiang is Nevada, Baby!
You could be forgiven for comparing Xinjiang to another vast, dry, oil-rich territory acquired during a period of national expansion: Texas. Taking that metaphor too far, Urumqi becomes Houston, Korla is Austin, and that old Uyghur man grabbing fat sheep asses at the local livestock market is a Texas cattleman. Yee haw!
To tell you the truth, however, being like Texas is a bit boring. Sure, you get colorful nuts who proclaim local independence like it'll really happen someday, but most of the time you're stuck wishing you weren't surrounded by endless tracts of sand. And religous conservatives. And George W. Bush. Ugggh.
But wait! There is another path. A Wild Western path of gambling, horse racing, and prostitution. One down, two to go:
Mainland leaders have long argued that the western region should develop so-called speciality industries such as tourism to boost revenues. But that has been slow.
However, they can boost tourism and lift living standards in the west by first overcoming ideological barriers to the development of the gaming and entertainment industry.
The mainland leadership is close to approving horse racing, following years of lobbying. Instead of allowing the races in the booming east as widely expected, it should allow them only in the western region, a move that would greatly boost employment.
Eventually, when the time comes to liberalise gambling, there is no better location than the Wild West.
So, in this new scenario, Urumqi becomes Las Vegas, Korla is Reno, and that old Uyghur man grabbing fat sheep asses at the local livestock market is a Texas cattleman groping showgirls somewhere on the Strip. Now doesn't that sound like much more fun?
You can read the full South China Morning Post article below. (If you're the genius at SCMP who wrote this editorial, please get in touch with me for a free drink the next time you're passing through Xinjiang.)
Time has come to take a gamble on the Wild West
12 March 2007
South China Morning Post
When the mainland leadership announced its ambitious "go west" programme in 2000, the excitement over tapping the Wild West was palpable from almost everyone and everywhere, from the people in the poorer western regions and the overseas media to foreign businessmen.
Seven years later, Beijing does not have much to show for this, despite billions of yuan invested in infrastructure projects. The wealth gap is as wide as ever and the residents in the vast and poor western regions bitterly complain that they have been left behind.
With uncharacteristic frankness, central government officials have openly admitted as much. Lack of funds, poor transport infrastructure and low education standards are hampering the development of the region, the top officials in charge of the "go west" campaign said several days before the opening of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Wang Jinxiang , deputy minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, admitted that the western region had attracted only 3 per cent of foreign direct investment. Per capita GDP of the west was about 6,000 yuan in 2005, much less than the national average.
This has given more ammunition to the NPC and CPPCC delegates from the west to criticise the central government and to urge it to allow the western provinces to spend more on mega-industrial projects and speed up the progress of industrialisation.
But the mainland leadership must resist the temptation and the intense lobbying. After all, the bad news is a blessing in disguise, particularly from the ecological point of view. Precisely because of lack of funds and poor transport infrastructure, industrialisation has been historically slow in the western region.
This has preserved not only the tradition and cultures of ethnic minorities but also the fragile environment of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau, the forests in Yunnan and Sichuan and the plains of Inner Mongolia .
But the ecological balance has already shifted for the worse in the past seven years. The mainland leadership has invested billions of yuan to tap the vast mineral deposits including oil and gas, plans to dam more rivers, and even destroy the environment by diverting the region's rivers to Beijing and other northern cities thousands of kilometres away. All this is aimed at satisfying the thirst for energy and resources in the booming coastal regions.
With the wealth gap widening, officials in the western region have pursued industrial and mining projects that are damaging the environment. Farmers have ignored the impact of felling trees to cultivate land and used crude methods to dig for coal and gold.
Official media reports said the environmental damage in the western region was getting worse. Visitors to the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow, the mainland's two biggest rivers, in Qinghai have been shocked by the scale of the degradation.
Massive industrialisation in the west, even one-third of the scale in the east, will bring irreversible ecological disasters, not only for the whole region but for the whole country.
Thus it is heartening to see Premier Wen Jiabao , when delivering his work report last Monday, emphasise that the "go west" campaign would continue to focus on infrastructure projects, ecological protection, science, education and development of speciality industries. Mega-industrial projects and encouraging farmers to cultivate land or undertake small-scale gold digging or mining is not the only way to boost people's living standards.
It can also be argued that, for the sake of the environment and long-term economic security of the country, the mainland leadership should pay monthly salaries to farmers in the west in exchange for returning their farmland to its natural state or for giving up mining. With soaring revenues, the government can afford it.
Mainland leaders have long argued that the western region should develop so-called speciality industries such as tourism to boost revenues. But that has been slow.
However, they can boost tourism and lift living standards in the west by first overcoming ideological barriers to the development of the gaming and entertainment industry.
The mainland leadership is close to approving horse racing, following years of lobbying. Instead of allowing the races in the booming east as widely expected, it should allow them only in the western region, a move that would greatly boost employment.
Eventually, when the time comes to liberalise gambling, there is no better location than the Wild West.
posted March 14, 2007 at 12:32 AM unofficial Xinjiang time | Comments (40)
March 09, 2007
Thirsty in China
Let's face it: China is an environmentalist's nightmare. The air turns your snot black, the water is filled with toxic chemicals, and "litter" is an idiomatic concept.
Now, with Chongqing's taps running dry and 8 million thirsty people up a creek without any water, China's own Al Gore clones are starting to emerge. One possible candidate is water resources minister Wang Shucheng, who gave a bleak assessment of China's ecological future in his address to the National People's Congress:
Mr Wang cited a spate of natural disasters, such as Typhoon Bilis, drought in Chongqing and Sichuan , strong winds that derailed a train in Xinjiang and a rainstorm that swept away a school in Heilongjiang in the past year, as well as the recent blizzard in northeastern China, and warned they could be the result of global warming.
Some scientists had warned that weather in northern and southern China might reverse, he said.
Now that's just plain crazy! I hope for the sake of my sundried tomatoes that Xinjiang remains bone-dry... speaking of which, have you heard how China is obliterating Lake Balkash in Kazakhstan with massive irrigation projects? That's right: every juicy bite of a sweet Hami melon is a direct kick in the nuts to Borat and those of his ilk.
It's like the Aral Sea's greatest moments... but in slow-motion instant replay! Ah, memories. Anyway, who says Kazakhstan has the right to the Chinese people's snow melt?
A conference that convened here this week to address the fate of an ecologically threatened Central Asian basin the size of California has ended in stalemate between Kazakhstan and China, the two countries most reliant on its waters.
The heart of the basin is Lake Balkhash, the third-largest freshwater lake on earth, tucked in the southeastern corner of Kazakhstan. More than 20 percent of the country's population draws on the lake for its drinking water. Lumbering rivers flowing through neighboring Kyrgyzstan and China replenish the lake and adjacent wetlands.
After decades of water diversion to nearby factories and farms, Lake Balkhash is threatened with ''the same fate as the notorious Aral Sea,'' according to conference documents.
So... lakes are becoming deserts, north is becoming south, and the only thing that can save the world is a massive and immediate eco-transformation by China. But,
Scientists have predicted China will overtake the US as the world's biggest source of carbon dioxide in the next two years as its economy continues to grow.
Oh well, we're f$%^#$d. Al Gore for president, anyone?
Action urged over extreme weather
Provinces need to make contingency plans to ensure people do not go without water, minister says.
Josephine Ma in Beijing
8 March 2007
South China Morning Post
Water resources minister Wang Shucheng has called on provincial governments to draw up contingency plans for extreme weather in the face of a significant increase in such phenomena nationwide in the past year.
Mr Wang told Hunan's National People's Congress delegation at a panel discussion yesterday that China should brace for more extreme weather as a result of global climate change and work should start immediately on formulating contingency plans for disasters such as the prolonged drought in Chongqing .
Mr Wang cited a spate of natural disasters, such as Typhoon Bilis, drought in Chongqing and Sichuan , strong winds that derailed a train in Xinjiang and a rainstorm that swept away a school in Heilongjiang in the past year, as well as the recent blizzard in northeastern China, and warned they could be the result of global warming.
Some scientists had warned that weather in northern and southern China might reverse, he said.
"There were analyses that a rise in temperature may result in massive drought in China and Canada," he said. "Some other analyses said southern China may have drought while northern China may have more precipitation.
"In the past two or three years, Xinjiang, Gansu , Ningxia and Shaanxi have had more rain than before, but it is too early for us to be happy."
Mr Wang said local governments should be preparing for worse weather given the unusual nature of recent events. But he said such events were common worldwide.
"If droughts like those in Sichuan and Chongqing take place in Hunan for two years, are you prepared?" he asked.
"Will the public still have drinking water by then?"
China is the world's second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, after the US.
Scientists have predicted China will overtake the US as the world's biggest source of carbon dioxide in the next two years as its economy continues to grow.
In its first official assessment on climate change, issued in December, the central government said the average temperature in China would rise by 1.3 degrees to 2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020, and extreme weather and natural disasters would occur more frequently.
Researchers also said the mainland would soon release its first policy paper on how to handle global warming.
Mr Wang said cities should also secure more than one source of drinking water to make sure incidents like the contamination of the Songhua River, Harbin's main drinking-water source, would not cut off all drinking water supplies to the public.
"A big city should not just rely on a single source of drinking water," he said.
Meanwhile, State Forestry Administration director Jia Zhibang told the Shaanxi delegation that China should work harder to cut greenhouse gases by increasing the size of forests and wetlands and reducing deserts.
Cutting down on emissions was an uphill task given the mainland's rapid industrial growth.
He said China had started growing forests in Guangxi and Inner Mongolia to absorb carbon dioxide.
In terms of the growth in greenhouse gas emissions, China is the world's biggest.
More than 2,700 people died in climate disasters last year, with economic losses of 212 billion yuan.
On Tuesday, China Meteorological Administration deputy director Zheng Guoguang told an international aviation service training forum in Beijing that extreme weather conditions were becoming more frequent on the mainland and were posing a serious threat to air traffic, China News Service reported.
Kazakhstan and China Deadlock Over Depletion of a Major Lake
By ILAN GREENBERG
8 March 2007
The New York Times
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, March 7 -- A conference that convened here this week to address the fate of an ecologically threatened Central Asian basin the size of California has ended in stalemate between Kazakhstan and China, the two countries most reliant on its waters.
The heart of the basin is Lake Balkhash, the third-largest freshwater lake on earth, tucked in the southeastern corner of Kazakhstan. More than 20 percent of the country's population draws on the lake for its drinking water. Lumbering rivers flowing through neighboring Kyrgyzstan and China replenish the lake and adjacent wetlands.
After decades of water diversion to nearby factories and farms, Lake Balkhash is threatened with ''the same fate as the notorious Aral Sea,'' according to conference documents.
The Aral, in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, is widely considered one of the worst human-created ecological disasters in history. Rivers feeding the lake were diverted over decades for water-intensive cotton cultivation across Central Asia. That caused the sea to shrink drastically and eventually split into two anemic parts, devastating a once thriving fishing industry and causing deadly cancer clusters in nearby villages.
Progress at this week's conference, convened to introduce an environmentally sound economic development plan, stalled when China spurned Kazakhstan's proposal to send China large stocks of free or heavily subsidized food for 10 years in exchange for a commitment from China to allow an unimpeded flow of river water into Lake Balkhash.
''The Chinese were cautious and wary, but they also were listening,'' said Anna Bramwell, chief of operations for the European Union's political office in Kazakhstan, who attended the meeting.
As part of its ''Go West'' policy, China has offered incentives to people to move to its resource-rich Xinjiang territory, which includes part of the basin area. Chinese authorities have said the now sparsely populated region may eventually have as many as 40 million new inhabitants.
On top of population pressures, the water system is fast draining into nearby rice and sugar farms that consume twice the water that European and American operations require, according to representatives of the European Commission.
According to several participants in the conference, Kazakhstan's president, Nulsultan A Nazarbayev, strongly lobbied the other conference parties to urgently adopt preservation strategies.
But Mr. Nazarbayev has angered environmentalists in the past by appearing to endorse the building of a nuclear power plant in the basin, which yields more than 30,000 tons of fish a year and contains vast amounts of coal and building materials like marble.
Dr. Bramwell said, ''We're trying to move away from the classical environmental approach to a more win-win scenario where everyone has to pay for water and take responsibility for the damage'' they create.
posted March 09, 2007 at 12:33 PM unofficial Xinjiang time | Comments (60)