China’s One PerCent Solution

Beijing has named China’s price for getting serious about greenhouse gas emissions. It wants the “developed nations” to allocate 1% of their GDP to a fund to help poor nations fight global warming. China is also demanding that the industrialized nations commit to a transfer of green technology to less advanced states, presumably including China.

China’s “you first” gambit doesn’t come as a huge surprise. They’ve been arguing all along it was up to the industrialized nations to commit to cutting carbon emissions before expecting the developing nations (i.e. China and India) to follow suit.

The Chinese announcement is pretty specific on what it wants from the Western world but it’s also extremely vague on what China will commit to do in exchange and how it will deliver on any promises it may make.

From the lead toy scandal to the melamine-tainted food scandal, the world has seen that Beijing doesn’t have its own house in order. How does the central government think it can enforce its promises to cut carbon emissions?

When it comes to China, there’s a huge and well-deserved confidence issue. It’ll be interesting to see how the Chinese attempt to overcome that hurdle.

http://www.enn.com/business/article/38506

 

Pakistan Takes Refuge Under Chinese Wing

Pakistan continues to drift further away from the West and closer to China. When Pakistan plays such an integral role in the war which we’re supposed to be fighting next door in Afghanistan, that’s hardly welcome news.

The Pakistan news agency, Dawn, gives a pretty good indication of where this is going:

..Islamabad is looking forward to bolstering ties with Beijing in a big way.

The president’s decision to visit Beijing after every three months and agreements for the setting up of two nuclear energy plants, launch of a satellite and heavy investments by Chinese corporations in several other projects are some of the signs.

According to the foreign minister, the president would visit China every three months for “promoting economic integration between the two countries, enhancing their connectivity, optimally utilising the economic complementarities; and promoting trans-regional economic cooperation”.

“President Zardari wants to give a new dimension to China-Pakistan relations, basing them on enhanced economic cooperation,” the foreign minister said.

In the energy sector, Mr Qureshi also saw a role for China in the gas pipeline project between Iran and Pakistan. “I see a role for China whether China joins the projects at some later stage or invests in it.”

Another Pakistani news service, PakTribune, has this from Zardari:

The President pointed out that Pakistan has been following China’s progress and “we take pride in their success, because we are like a family.”

“Chinese and Pakistani people are like a family”, he said. “We see their progress with pride and are happy to see our friends strong. If China is strong, we are strong.”

There has been a groundswell of anti-Americanism building in Pakistan since before the ouster of Pervez Musharraf. The Zardari government seems to be riding that wave with real success. There are real economic, military and security questions that will come out of the closer bonds being forged between Islamabad and Beijing.

 

Pakistan – the Fuze in the Powder Keg

This is a glass half full sort of story, the kind you don’t see on this blog very often. Here’s the premise – maybe a South Asian Cold War wouldn’t be all that bad.

Pakistan is in a shambles. It needs a big power patron to get it through the tough times it’s now in. The US has already gone with India and has now fallen into its own economic abyss. Maybe we’d all be better off if China stepped in.

Just how bad are things in Pakistan today? That’s pretty much answered in today’s Guardian:

…A special session of parliament called by the government to forge a political consensus on the “war on terror” has backfired spectacularly as parties, including some in the ruling coalition, denounced the alliance with Washington and Nato rather than backing the army to take on the Pakistani Taliban.

…Critics of the government, which is led by controversial president Asif Ali Zardari, complain that there is a paralysis of decision-making and policy. A leaked US top secret National Intelligence Estimate on Pakistan concludes that the country is “on the edge”. A US official was quoted summing up the assessment as “no money, no energy, no government“.

The economic nosedive will aid recruitment to extremist groups, experts fear, and force more poor families to send their children to the free madrassa schools, which offer an exclusively religious curriculum. Inflation is running at 25%, or up to 100% for many staple food items, and unemployment is growing, pushing millions more into poverty. The rupee has lost around 30% of its value so far this year.

“The canvas of terrorism is expanding by the minute,” said Faisal Saleh Hayat, a former interior minister.

“It’s not only ideological motivation. Put that together with economic deprivation and you have a ready-made force of Taliban, al-Qaida, whatever you want to call them. You will see suicide bombers churned out by the hundred,” he said.

“The majority of the people of Pakistan do not see it as our war. We are fighting for somebody else and we are suffering because of that,” said Tariq Azim, a former minister in the previous government of Pervez Musharraf, whose party now sits in the opposition. “At the moment the only ones toeing the line are the People’s party.”

Members of parliament are particularly angered by recent signals from Washington that it is prepared to talk to the Afghan Taliban, while telling Pakistan that it must fight its Taliban menace. “They [the US] are showing a lot more flexibility on their side of the border,” said Khurram Dastagir, a member of parliament for Sharif’s party. “The US are trying to externalise their failure in Afghanistan by dumping it on us.”

The rising spread of anti-American and anti-NATO anger among the Pakistani people and their leaders is bloody awful for those of us with troops stuck in next door Afghanistan. It seems that the more we push Pakistan, the worse our position becomes.

So, it’s becoming painfully clear that we really can’t deal with Pakistan and we’d be fools to keep repeating the same mistakes. Maybe we’d all be better off with Pakistan stabilized under Chinese hegemony. At least we know we have some ability to deal with the Chinese.

Don’t get angry about this, it’s our own damned fault. Back in the days of Bush I, we came to treat the end of the Cold War as the end of our problems. We refused to see the obvious, that the decline of Soviet hegemony would actually make the world a more dangerous place, spawning a whole nest of failed and rogue states.

There was an enormous opportunity to create a Marshall Plan for the most critical Third World states to stabilize them politically and economically but it was a window of opportunity that we neglected. If you don’t understand that, look at Afghanistan. There was an enormous opportunity but no one was in the mood to commit the vast resources it would have taken to promote such an initiative, and so we let too much slide and we’re paying for that today.

Maybe a return to Cold War hegemony wouldn’t be entirely bad. For starters, it’s already underway, it’s happening whether we like it or not. Powerful nations inevitably seek to establish spheres of influence in their neighbouring states. We take ours for granted but imagine what Washington would do if it found Russian weaponry deployed along the Rio Grande?

As China borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan it has an inevitable vested interest in the spread of its sphere of influence into these countries. Likewise Russia has a strategic interest in maintaining its sphere of influence in the Cacasus and Eastern Europe. That doesn’t mean subjugation as much as co-operation and doing what’s necessary to achieve stability in these regions.

Maybe it’s time we stopped running around trying to poke rivals in the eye with a sharp stick. It might be time to work with the Chinese to see if they can accomplish in Pakistan what we can’t achieve. That might mean handing over a hunk of geo-political interest but that much seems inevitable in any case so perhaps we ought to see what we can get for it through negotiation first.

 

Arms Race Update – Space in India’s Crosshairs

The Chinese-Indian arms race is one of the least mentioned but most interesting now underway (yes there are a few others).

The world’s two most populous states have been pursuing military co-operation even as they stoke the boilers of military rivalry. There’s a great naval race underway with both countries eager to deploy true “blue water” naval muscle to secure their sea lane access to the Persian Gulf and the oil that serves as the lifeblood of their economic miracles. Washington is actively courting India to assist it in containing China.

It’s Chinese advances in space, however, that now have India’s military worried. China has already achieved manned space flight and has developed proven anti-satellite missiles. From The Times:

“General Deepak Kapoor, India’s Chief of Army Staff, has spoken publicly for the first time of his fears about China’s military space programme and the need for India to accelerate its own.

“The Chinese space programme is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content,” he told a conference attended by India’s military top brass this week. “The Indian Army’s agenda for exploitation of space will have to evolve dynamically. It should be our endeavour to optimise space applications for military purposes.”

Beijing’s space programme is already several years ahead of Delhi’s: China sent its first man into space in 2003, the third country to do so after the Soviet Union and the US. The Indian Space Research Organisation said last year that it aimed to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2020 — four years before China — but did not plan to send its first astronauts into orbit until 2014.

What really shocked India was China’s shooting down of one of its own weather satellites in January last year — again placing it alongside Russia and the United States as the only countries capable of such a feat. By comparison, India does not yet have a single dedicated military satellite, relying instead on the dual-use telecommunications satellites for surveillance and reconnaissance.

One of the military’s priorities is to match the technology China used to shoot down its satellite with a ballistic missile about 860km (535 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Abdul Kalam, a former President of India and missile engineer, said in February that India already had the capability to “intercept and destroy any spatial object or debris in a radius of 200km”.

 

Eyeing Each Other Over Open Sights

The great military rivalry of the 21st century is bound to be between China and the United States.
Gwynne Dyer, in his latest book, contends that a key reason for America’s invasion of Iraq was to achieve military control over the Persian Gulf to thwart China’s influence in the Middle East and be in a position to cripple its access to the region’s oil should that be necessary.

The Chinese government today announced an increase of 18% in the nation’s defence budget this year. The Pentagon figures China’s disclosed budget is but half to perhaps just one third of its actual spending which would still leave China spending well less than a third of the US defence budget. That said, the Chinese appear to be getting more bank for their buck out of their defence appropriations, spending that Chinese analyst Chen Zhou explained and defended in an interview in today’s Der Spiegel:

Chen: If we grow economically, we must also strengthen our military. We must protect our sovereignty, our unity and the country’s security. Historically our military consisted primarily of land-based forces that were meant to protect our homeland. Since 1980, we have also been arming ourselves for other local conflicts and wars. Please do not forget the activities of the separatists in Taiwan …

SPIEGEL: … who you have threatened with military force, should Taiwan declare its independence.

Chen: We will defend our sovereignty with all means. If, in fact, we are forced to stop a secession attempt with military means, our navy and air force are not yet effective enough. In that sort of a conflict, we must be superior in the water and in the air, at least locally.

SPIEGEL: Does this mean that you plan to measure up militarily to Taiwan’s most important ally, the United States?

Chen: It is not necessary for China to challenge America’s position of supremacy. Our concern is to prevent an intervention by the Americans during a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and no one else, should resolve the Taiwan issue. Whether this is done peacefully or militarily is purely a matter for the Chinese.

SPIEGEL: How does Beijing intend to prevent the Americans from intervening?

Chen: Both sides hope to preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. China wants to develop economically. We don’t want a war, not even a crisis. But to ensure that this is the case, we must be militarily prepared.

SPIEGEL: In other words, Beijing stresses deterrence?

Chen: Exactly. Deterrence is one of our strategies. Our goal is to preserve peace and stability on the Taiwan Strait. In the past, we did not pay sufficient attention to studies about deterrence. Now we are very interested in the effects of deterrence. We must be able to prevent, resolve and control crises. Crisis management is our top priority. We can resolve a crisis if we are in a position to deter.

SPIEGEL: You have demonstrated that you are able to give the Americans a shock. For example, one of your submarines surfaced directly next to the aircraft carrier “Kitty Hawk” without having been previously detected.

Chen: That was a coincidence. Our navy is still very small compared with the US Navy. Our range of operation has just reached the so-called first island chains, that is, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

SPIEGEL: Do you plan to venture farther afield in the future?

Chen: Traditionally China has seen itself as a land power. In our recent history, foreign powers were able to invade us because we had no navy. Now we want to defend ourselves at sea. To more effectively protect our national interests, we will develop our capability to operate on the high seas. Our navy will travel farther afield. But our goal is always defense. We are not an offensive power.

The US/China/Soviet/Indian arms race continues apace. It seems as though we’re about to enter a brand new Cold War.

 

China – Far Dirtier Than We’d Imagined

Here’s a real setback to hopes of tackling global greenhouse gas emissions.

Reuters news service reports that studies undertaken by researchers from the University of California found that Chinese GHG emissions are set to grow at least 11% annually from 2004 to 2010, not the more benign 2.5 to 5% estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Environment ministers from the world’s 20-top emitters are scheduled to meet on Friday in Japan. These 20-nations produce 80% of the planet’s total GHG emissions.

The UC Berkley report indicates Chinese emissions will have grown by 600-million metric tons by 2010 which vastly eclipses the 116-million metric ton reductions targeted in the first phase of the Kyoto Accords.

“It had been expected that the efficiency of China’s power generation would continue to improve as per-capita income increased, slowing down the rate of CO2 emissions growth,” said Maximillian Auffhammer, UC Berkeley assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics.

“What we’re finding instead is that the emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations, and that means the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is going to be much, much harder to achieve.”

This report isn’t an anti-Chinese smear job either. The calculations were based on pollution data from 30 Chinese provinces and China’s official waste gas emissions data.

So, the climb just got one helluva lot steeper and the lesson is that something effective has to be up and running very, very soon.

 

First The Guns, Then The Paranoia

Nothing like a good old-fashioned arms race to spice up the world’s problems.

It’s curious how they always seem to follow the same course – first the guns, then the paranoia and then… well, let’s leave that for a moment.

Guns. Nobody likes them more than the United States of America. Its economy may be in decline, it may be struggling to breathe under a suffocating blanket of debt, but there’s nothing known to man or earth that’ll stop it from spending more on its military than every other nation combined. Think about that. Five per cent of the world’s population, twenty five per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions, fifty per cent of its military spending. Wowee, zowee!

It’s a scary world when the hillbillies have all the guns.

Imagine you live in a big, old house with a big verandah where you like to sit to catch the cool evening breezes in the height of summer. In the big, old house across the street your somewhat strange neighbour also sits out in the evening. But one day you notice something different. Lined up along the porch railing you see the neighbour has leaned a couple of rifles and a shotgun. It’s enough that you notice it but you don’t react. Then the following night you see that he’s added an automatic assault rifle. The next night it’s a sniper rifle. About this time you might be getting a little worried about all this firepower and just what the guy has in mind. When you see him actually pointing a cannon at you, just that once, you realize you can’t keep giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Now take that situation to the global stage. You have one country that has served notice that it reserves the right to launch “pre-emptive” war against any nation that it perceives as an emerging rival, militarily or even economically. That’s right. If your economy stands to surpass his economy, he claims the right to attack you. If your military or your military and that of other countries with which you may ally yourself threaten to surpass his military might, he claims the right to attack you. On what basis? Because he can. Because might is right.

That little bit of madness is enshrined in today’s Bush Doctrine. It’s a perverse form of American exceptionalism that has other nations paying a lot of attention to the goings on in Washington. So, what do they see when their gaze shifts to the Potomac?

They see a nation that has gone for its guns, arming itself as though it was already in a total war and preparing for another. They see a nation bent on achieving superiority, on a generational scale, in everything from ships and submarines, to aircraft, to nuclear weapons and the militarization of space itself. They see a nation that has commercialized not just its armaments industry but warfare itself, a government whose elite friends (outfits such as Halliburton) now rake in unconscionable profits from actual warfare, an industrialized mercenary cash cow.

Bush/Cheney & Company cherish fear. It’s a weapon they use on everyone, including their own people. To them, it’s far easier and infinitely more effective to use fear as a motivator than to employ legitimate means of persuasion. Get’em afraid enough and they’ll do anything. The trouble is, other nations aren’t as easily intimidated as the American people.

As America has gone for its guns so have others. Russia, China, India, the Koreas, even Japan are all in the midst of one or more arms races. It’s even rumoured Brazil may seek to establish a nuclear hegemony in South America. What else do all these countries have in common? They’re all emerging economic superpowers. They’re all looking to expand trade with each other. And, with the exception of Brazil, they’re all geographically contiguous.

Asia Times Online has a good article on the Asian arms race: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JB14Ad02.html

Russia’s Vlad Putin has been outspoken about his nation’s insistence that it will not be cowed by American threats. Recently Putin said that Russia will soon field its own advanced weaponry and its own next-generation nuclear weapons with new missiles specifically designed to defeat Bush’s anti-missile defence systems. He has scrapped the Coventional Forces treaty and has promised to target Russian missiles at any nation that participates in the Bush anti-missile system.

First the guns, then fear, then more guns and, inevitably, the paranoia. This is the potentially lethal cocktail produced by mixing fear, a lack of confidence, and a powerful shot of suspicion.

Here’s the latest example. The United States has announced it will use a missile next week to destroy a defective spy satellite. Washington claims the satellite was launched just over a year ago, failed immediately, and now threatens to smash into earth with a deadly cargo of hydrazine fuel.

Russia, however, suspects an ulterior motive. From BBC:

Russia’s defence ministry said the US planned to test its “anti-missile defence system’s capability to destroy other countries’ satellites”.

“Speculations about the danger of the satellite hide preparations for the classical testing of an anti-satellite weapon,” a statement reported by Itar-Tass news agency said.

“Such testing essentially means the creation of a new type of strategic weapons,” it added.
“The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the US has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space,” the statement continued.

The Russian defence ministry argued that various countries’ spacecraft had crashed to Earth in the past, and many countries used toxic fuel in spacecraft, but this had never before merited such “extraordinary measures”.

It troubles and perplexes me that, as far as our leaders seem to be concerned, these arms races aren’t even on their radar. No one on our side speaks out demanding this be stopped and I can only assume that’s because it is the United States that is driving this lunacy. The good news is that not every arms race leads to major power war. The Cold War is an example, although there was a lot of luck involved and it had an abundance of troubles of its own. However the First and Second World Wars clearly did trace back to arms races.

There are political and economic shifts underway of a tectonic scale. It’ll be tough enough travelling that rocky road without everyone pointing guns with hair triggers.

 

Karzai’s Kabul Uprising

Hamid Karzai is on the warpath, in revolt, and his antics could have major repercussions for the US, NATO and us too. Over the weekend Karzai shook up his Western benefactors by torpedoing the appointment of Lord Paddy Ashdown who was slotted to become the UN’s super envoy to Afghanistan. It’s a tale of grand intrigue that our media totally missed. Fortunately the story is brilliantly laid out in Asia Times:

Kabul knew for months about the impending appointment of Ashdown as a key step in a new NATO strategy spearheaded by the US and Britain, aimed at stabilizing the Afghan situation. Karzai knew detailed planning had gone into the move involving NATO, the EU and the United Nations Security Council. But Karzai waited patiently until the eleventh hour before shooting it down publicly on Saturday in a interview with the BBC while attending the World Economic Forum meet in the Swiss resort town of Davos. The move was pre-planned and carried out in a typical Afghan way with maximum effect.

Karzai insists there has been a serious misunderstanding of motives because Kabul had never taken a “decision” on Ashdown’s appointment. He is perfectly right in saying so. But in actuality, Karzai has put on display his proud Afghan temper. He has taken umbrage that Washington and London took the decision on Ashdown’s appointment in consultation with Brussels and thereupon got UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to execute it, all the time taking Kabul’s agreement for granted.

Karzai anticipated that Ashdown, true to his reputation in the Balkans, would function like a colonial viceroy. Karzai knows that the Western agencies and organizations operating in Afghanistan lack coordination. But a “unified command” under Ashdown would create a counterpoint in Kabul to Karzai’s own authority. Karzai didn’t want that to happen.

The bottom line concerns Karzai’s political future. He sizes up that Ashdown is part of a political package leading toward a post-Karzai era. There has been persistent chatter in recent weeks that Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to the UN – an ethnic Afghan – is in the mix for a run as president of Afghanistan. According to Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, Karzai took the rumor seriously and point-blank asked Khalilzad about it when the two met in London in October, but Khalilzad “didn’t give a Shermanesque response”.

The UN’s capacity to spearhead the political process in Afghanistan now stands seriously impaired. This deprives Washington of a neutral international bridge – but under its control – leading toward the Taliban camp, which is a pre-requisite for commencement of any meaningful intra-Afghan dialogue. Meanwhile, the war hangs perilously on the edge of an abyss.

Almost everyone is talking to the Taliban one way or another. Confusion is near-total. All this is happening at an awkward time when NATO lacks a counterinsurgency strategy. In particular, Britain, which lately assumed a lead role within NATO, has been embarrassed. Karzai singled out British operations in Afghanistan for criticism in an interview with the Times newspaper of London on the eve of his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Davos on Friday. Karzai alleged that Afghan people “suffered” from the coming of the British. He had little praise for the 7,800 British troops deployed in Afghanistan. He said, “Both the American and British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And, when they came in, the Taliban came.”

As The Times commented, “British forces believe that, in many respects, their Afghan allies pose more of a challenge to their mission than the Taliban … It is the Afghan government that is now proving more of an obstacle to stability in an area where a mixture of official corruption, ineptitude and paranoia are stymying British efforts.”

…it remains to be seen how long Washington can keep Karzai away from the reach of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Russia and China-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization. From the Ashdown saga, Karzai must have realized his capacity to shake up US strategy in the region. In an interview with CNN in Davos on Thursday, Karzai said, “We have opened our doors to them [Iran]. They have been helping us in Afghanistan.” Karzai then insisted that the Bush administration has “wisely understood that Iran is Afghanistan’s neighbor”.

Musharraf will know that his own defiance of Washington’s recent attempts to dictate the nature of the political set-up in Islamabad now enters a conclusive phase. He will know that with such a first-rate mess-up in the war in Afghanistan, Washington is hardly in a position to be intrusive, let alone dictate terms of engagement to him. In a curious way, Karzai has considerably smoothened for him the passage from now until the elections in Pakistan on February 8. In all probability, Pakistan, which has excellent intelligence outfits in Kabul, knew in advance that Karzai was about to give shock-and-awe treatment to Washington. Clearly, Musharraf has begun finger-pointing at anyone who will even remotely suggest the need of deploying US troops on Pakistani soil.


Timely backing from China has also strengthened Musharraf’s hands. In an extraordinary commentary titled “No more turmoil in Pakistan is permissible”, China’s People’s Daily has come out with a whole-hearted endorsement of Musharraf’s leadership. It said, “President Pervez Musharraf has resorted to a host of viable measures … Pakistani government has been making unremitting efforts in defense of the supreme national interests … Some opposition forces at home and a few powers overseas impose pressures or punitive measures against Pakistan in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘opposition to terrorism’.

Musharraf must be greatly relieved that Beijing has finally broken its silence and come down unequivocally in support of him at a crucial juncture in his desperate resistance of the US game plan to remove him from power and to disgrace the military by deploying American troops on Pakistani soil.

Increasingly, Karzai and Musharraf find themselves in a somewhat similar predicament. They cannot do without American support, but they do not accept US pressure tactics. They know US regional policies are part of their problem within their own countries and, therefore, they need to differentiate themselves for their political survival. Paradoxically, their attempt is to perpetuate the US’s dependence on them while they work at consolidating a political base of their own, which is independent of US control. In Karzai’s case, the 3-4 million votes that Musharraf can mobilize from the Afghan refugee population in Pakistan will always remain a decisive factor in his re-election as president. Besides, there are regional powers – China and Iran in particular – which are keenly watching the geopolitics surrounding Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Iranian thinking is that there is a concerted US-Israeli plot to destabilize Musharraf’s regime with the twin objective of the US establishing a base in Pakistan for its military intelligence operations directed against Russia and China and at the same time for neutralizing Pakistan’s nuclear capability.

…Both China and Iran are keen on the stability of the Karzai government. Both would like Karzai to continue to explore the parameters of a neutral, independent foreign policy free of US manipulation. Both visualize that Afghanistan can serve as a vital land bridge between them, playing a strategic role in the rapid expansion of Sino-Iranian relations.

Wheels spinning within wheels and we’re stuck debating another thousand soldiers for Kandahar so that we can prop up a guy who is working hard at cross purposes and whose country appears headed in a direction of its own. Astonishing, unbelievable. Are we really so naive, so myopic, maybe even so stupid?

 

The Mighty Yangtze Humbled

Asia’s longest river, the Yangtze, has fallen to its lowest level in 142 years. Prolonged drought is blamed for the drop which has disrupted drinking supplies, stranded ships and imperilled already endangered species of marine life. Fron the Sydney Morning Herald:

The scale of the problem was revealed by the Yangtze Water Resources Commission in a report on the Xinhua news agency’s website. It said that the Hankou hydrological centre near Wuhan city found the river’s depth had fallen to its lowest level in 142 years.

The measurement confirmed fears raised in recent weeks by the appearance of islands and mudflats not normally seen at this time of year. Local farmers reported far more ships than usual being trapped in unnavigable shallow waters.

Jianli county is among the areas suffering water shortages. Officials say the problem has grown worse in the past 10 years, raising concerns of a link to climate change.

“Before 1996, we were short of water for three months of the year, but now there are only three months when we can use water as normal,” Wu Chunping, the vice-manager of Jianli county’s water utility, said

Along the endangered animals likely to be affected are the finless porpoise and the Chinese sturgeon, which returns to the sea at this time of year.

With the Yangtze three times as crowded with traffic as the Mississippi, conservationists fear the animals will be torn up by boat propellers or contaminated by more concentrated pollution from the 9000 chemical plants along the Yangtze.

 

Don’t Eat That Stuff, Charlie. It’s …Who Knows?

China has announced the creation of an Olympic Food Safety Command Center to protect visitors to the Beijung Olympics this August.

The idea behind the OFSCC is to ensure that terrorists don’t contaminate China’s food supplies. Say what? That’s already being done for them by the Chinese food industry. From the Associated Press:

“… food supplied for the Olympics will be checked against specific technical standards.

“Precautions must be taken to avert any trace of terrorist attacks on our food supply chain,” [state news agency] Xinhua quoted Zhang Shikuan [head of the Beijing Industry and Commerce Bureau] as saying.

Problems in China’s food supply are common, due to lax standards and improper use of chemicals, preservatives or drugs.

Such concerns were heightened last year after some Chinese food exports, such as seafood, were found to be contaminated with dangerous chemicals.”