Hindustan Times
The Great Distraction?
In all the chatter on the sweetening bond between Pakistan and China, one point may get lost. China, for all its diplomatic bluster backing its best friend, doesn’t want new problems while putting its own house in order.
Some Chinese intellectuals suggest that maintaining its own stability while grappling with widening inequalities and social tensions is keeping Beijing anxious and so in no mood for more trouble on the international front. For now, they estimate, Beijing may not risk overplaying its Pakistan card during a politically sensitive phase at home.
In the short-term, the buzz on Pakistan’s sovereignty, which became a talking point even in corporate Chinese lunch hours in Beijing’s central business district, served as useful public distraction. China is heading for a leadership succession in 2012-13 while dealing with an internal conflict of ideas on power sharing and political reform. There is the strongest crackdown on dissent since 20 years. Its netizens have become bolder and more demanding than ever before.
India is not a regular talking point for Chinese citizens. But neither is ally Pakistan, once the headlines move on.
This week, China is talking about an unusual anti-demolition protest. An alleged suicide bombing at a government office killed three and wounded ten people in Fuzhou city in southern Jiangxi on Thursday. Chinese netizens tracking the story on microblogs appeared to be sympathising with the attacker.
Xinhua reported that the bomber was allegedly a disgruntled petitioner named Qian Mingqi who was suspected of taking ‘revenge against the local government’.
The Global Times said that he posted on his Twitter-like microblog: “I was forced to step onto a road I didn’t want to step on” due to the loss of his newly built house which was “illegally demolished.” Three others attempted self immolation last year in Fuzhou to protest demolitions.
And in the far-flung north, Inner Mongolia remained tense on Sunday as paramilitary police swarmed its capital Hohhot and sealed parts of the province to suppress calls for mass protests that were blacked out of the mainstream Chinese media.
The death on May 10 of a Mongolian herder who was hit by a coal truck driven from the dominant Han community has kept the region simmering with ethnic tension and resentment over the government’s rapid development plans that may threaten its ethnic way of life.
All this in the span of a week.
And more…The Communist Party-run media issued a terse denial to squash a daring online rumour claiming that former chairman Mao did not write the Little Red Book.
The China Daily reported the denial : Online rumours that some articles and poems under the name of China’s late Chairman Mao Zedong were written by his secretary Hu Qiaomu and other colleagues are unfounded, a spokesman said on Wednesday. The rumour says two reports concerning the issue were filed to the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee in 1993 and one in 1995. The website cpc.people.com.cn, affiliated to People’s Daily, cited the unnamed spokesman of the Party Literature Research Center, the Party History Research Center and the Party School of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC), as saying the reports are rootless. The spokesman said contrary to the rumour, Hu said on many occasions before his death that Mao often helped him edit his articles, and many of his old-style poems were learned from Mao.”
(9 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ...
Ganesh Reply:
September 20th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
If you support Congress point of view
—– then its not a balance view, which is pointed by many. we might as weel listen to digvijay singh.
Modi is not the FIRST chief minister to sustain the development
—- ok name a few others
idiotic attacks on her by BJP supporters
— as you mentioned earlier, she support congress, others hv right to put their point of view, take it or leave it, but you cannot say stupid.
No one has a right to vilify,abuse and belittle anyone with a different opinion.
,I am a Hindu so I have to support Modi
—— , who told you ? who forced you, you can vote any one
Wow,what a democracy I am living in.
— clearly you don’t know the meaning of democracy, where you can support any one. even without this basic knowledge of democracy, you better shut up….
[Reply]
Ganesh Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 7:47 am
Well apart from Modi how can one forget Chimanbhai Patel against whom first there were agitations but later he turned out to be the most pro – development CM.Just like no one PM in the country can lay exclusive claim to development,same holds true for Gujarat.Who is denying development under Modi slogan ? But the slogan development ONLY under Modi is not acceptable.
As far as Digvijay Singh is concerned,let me say for every Digvijay there is a Pravin Togadia !!!! Do you or me belong to the lunatic fringe ? If we belong,what are we arguing in these columns ?
Why are you asking me to SHUT UP ? That is the problem with you BJP wallas.When you dont have anything to say,instead of trying to understand what the other person is saying you ask him to SHUT UP.
Those like me – even though we support Congress are the critical mass of the country.Vajpayee became PM because we also voted for him.Modi needs to accept his faults,re – invent himself then only he can become PM.
Pulling a FAST one on the country does not help.
[Reply]
Ganesh Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Why are you asking me to SHUT UP ? That is the problem with you BJP —–
that’s because you mentioned – idiotic attacks on her by BJP supporters — you are not ready to listen to others also how do you know iam a bjp supporter. that’s the problem with pseudo seculars, anyone who does not agree to congress point of view is a BJP guy, how pathetic.
Ganesh Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Digvijay there is a Pravin Togadia —- but digvijay is a MP and in a responsible position with power, how can you compare him to pravin…..