Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

In addition to competing for natural resources in Africa, India and China have now set their sights on mobile phone subscribers. Leading mobile companies in both China and India - China Mobile and  Bharti Airtel are fiercely trying to acquire Africa’s MTN Group Ltd, the continent’s biggest mobile-phone operator, China Knowledge reported.

China and India have often been compared as the rest of the world adjusts to the presence of new economic powers, but rarely have representatives of the two nations competed head to head on a deal. China’s government-controlled entities have invested and lent billions of dollars to African countries in recent years, while private companies in India have concentrated more on shopping outside the nation’s borders.

According to MTN’s statement to its shareholders, it has started to negotiate with Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile-phone carrier, on the acquisition. But analysts believed China Mobile as well as China Telecom will probably become the two strongest competitors against Bharti Airtel. “There are many phone operators in Africa,” Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile’s president told reporters in Hong Kong. The Beijing-based parent company of China Mobile Ltd. “hasn’t participated in the bidding” for MTN Group Ltd., Wang added, who didn’t say whether the Chinese company is interested in making an offer later, reported Bloomberg.

The two companies are believed to be eyeing a 51% stake in MTN, at a value of around US$19 billion, which would create the world’s sixth-largest mobile company with 130 million subscribers across 21 countries. Winning the bid will make either company a global player. MTN has a large presence in Africa and the Middle East. The bulk of its subscribers are in South Africa, Nigeria, Iran, Ghana, Syria, Cameroon, and Uganda. It is Africa’s largest mobile phone operator.

MTN’s major competitor is the Vodacom Group - South Africa’s biggest mobile phone operator which is jointly owned by Britain’s Vodafone and Telkom, South Africa’s largest fixed-line operator. Vodafone also has a majority stake in India’s third-largest mobile carrier, unlisted Vodafone Essar, which competes directly with Bharti Airtel.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Even as millions in developing countries in Asia and Africa are expected to die of starvation due to inflationary grain prices, president Bush asked Congress to authorize US$770 million to ease the global food crisis.

The United States is feeling the pressure of their empasis on biofuels even as energy and food demand rises. While grain supply is dwindling, experts around the world say that the American focus on biofuel subsidies which has given farmers incentives to grow biofuels in place of grain is only compounding the problem. As a result of the biofuels subsidies and a high demand for energy, farmers are more keen to plant acres of corn and sugarcane, the raw material for energy instead of rice and wheat human staples. This has led to the head on collosion of of a world food crisis partly fueled by record fuel costs.

Speaking on Monday at the European Parliament, Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University and a special UN adviser said that while a third of the US maize crop will go to a gas tank, “it is a huge blow to the world food supply.” “We should cut back significantly on our biofuels programmes, which were understandable at a time of much lower food prices and much lower food stocks but do not make sense now at a time of global food scarcity condition,” he added, reported Reuters.

EU leaders last spring agreed that the EU should increase the use of biofuels in transport fuel to ten percent by 2020, up from a planned 5.75 percent target to be achieved by 2010.

The United States is the world’s biggest producer of biofuels. The fuels are made from crops like corn, wheat, sugar and palm oil, which refiners turn into ethanol or oil to replace gasoline and diesel. Supporters say they are the only renewable alternative to fossil fuels and generally result in lower greenhouse gas emissions.

While biofuels are not the only reason, politicians, economists and enviromentalists also say bigger factors are at work, namely increased demand for meat and dairy products, particularly in developing countres such as China and India whos disposable income is rising substantially and which has reduced farmland for growing food crops.

Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU’s commissioner for agriculture also noted that bad weather in 2006 in North America, Russia, the 27-nation EU and in Australia last year further led to less production, reported the International Herald Tribune.

Also — but harder to quantify — grain and other food commodity speculators have pushed up prices, she said. She said investments in commodity indexes that totaled US$10 billion in 1998 reached US$142 billion by 2007.

In February alone, 140 commodity-based financial products were launched for investors, according to EU data. That is double the number issued each month in 2006 and 2007.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Numbers: (25,28)

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

A benchmark variety of Thai rice, a food stable across much of Asia, is at about US$1,000 a tonne, up threefold from last year. Meat prices have risen by 60 percent in Bangladesh in the year ending in March, and by 45 percent in Cambodia and 30 percent in the Philippines. The rise in global food prices has sparked riots last month in Egypt and Haiti, protests in other countries and restrictions on food exports in Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt.

In the first months of 2008, food price inflation has hit double digits in Bangladesh; People’s Republic of China (PRC); Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Pakistan; and Viet Nam. Food price inflation is also rising in India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. And although no 2008 figures are yet available for Sri Lanka, there is little doubt that food prices are also rising at double digits there as well. Wheat-dependent countries in Central and West Asia are also experiencing double-digit rates of food inflation says an Asian Development bank report on rising food prices.

The problem is not confined to importing countries, as net exporters are also experiencing food price inflation. In fact, the rising inflation pressure has been more intense in net exporting countries.

The explosion in food prices across the region is a threat to macroeconomic stability through inflation, the rising fiscal cost of food subsidies, and the possible exchange rate depreciation in food importing countries. The rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in 2007 accelerated in developing Asia to 4.3 percent, up from 3.3 percent in 2006, and currently is forecast to surge further in 2008 to 4.8 percent (ADB 2008). The fiscal burden of food subsidies will mount in 2008 given the sharp rise in food prices that is occurring across the region. Already, some rice-importing countries are experiencing weakening currencies against the US dollar, which threatens to push inflation rates even higher in 2008.

To read the entire report log onto: http://www.adb.org/Documents/reports/food-prices-inflation/food-prices-inflation.pdf

Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

Final final tomorrow on Corporations. Subsequently, there should be more than two posts a week…

Fondly remembering a deflationary China at Free Exchange

Foreign Companies in China Can’t Get No Love at China Law Blog

Regulations in China: Are You Prepared? Are Ready? Are You OK? at All Roads Lead to China

More on China’s Different Cost Perspective at Managing the Dragon
Currently reading Mr. Perkowski’s book and I enjoyed this post as a sort of addendum to the book. Plus, see further commentary on this issue at China Briefing.

Exporters are complaining loudly at China Financial Markets

Regulating Enterprise in China/China Dispute Resolution at China Law Blog

Natural Resources Defense Council (China) at China Environmental Law

Hong Kong Judgments Enforceable in China and Vice Versa - Almost at China Law Practice Blog

Sometimes, The Markets Just Want To Go Down at Managing the Dragon

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

In its report titled “Emerging Asian Regionalism,” the Asian Development Bank said Asia will account for as much as 35 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing-power parity [PPP] terms, from only 28 percent in 2005. By then, Asia’s GDP is set to be more than 50-percent larger than the European Union’s or North America’s.

While continued growth will reinforce the region’s market-led integration, official cooperation, production and financial markets integration, economic interdependence and inclusive and sustainable growth will need to intensify based on sound economic principles.

The report highlights that Asia is less integrated in finance than in trade but financial markets are now larger, deeper, and more sophisticated than they were a decade ago. The ADB Study urges policymakers to strengthen supervision, surveillance and dialogue on financial markets through creation of a new, high-level “Asian Financial Stability Dialogue.”

This, the bank said, will also generate greater confidence in financial institutions and protect investors. “These could lead to a virtuous cycle: greater investments in regional markets, including [those] by Asian investors, would generate new products and services that make markets more efficient and attractive,” the ADB said.

With the growth of trade and financial ties, Asia’s macroeconomic interdependence has also increased. The region faces a challenging period ahead as global payment imbalances appear increasingly unsustainable as the credit turmoil unfolds and global economic slowdown deepens.

The challenge to Asian policy makers is to monitor global and regional developments closely, and to be prepared to act together if region-wide responses are needed.

3,000+ leaders of government, the private sector, academe and civil society from around the world will gather in Madrid this week for the 41st Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) – the leading development organization in the world’s most dynamic and fastest growing region.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

The maritime arms race in Asia has crossed another threshold with the publication of satellite pictures of a massive Chinese underground submarine and warship base giving it a significant tactical advantage in the strategically important South China Sea.The naval base has been constructed by tunnelling into the mountainous shoreline of China’s southern Hainan Island near a place called Sanya.

The Times of India reported that the splashing of new satellite images of the underground base in the British media has reinforced the belief in the Indian defence establishment that it will not be long before the rapidly-modernising Chinese navy begins to make active forays into the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

“The Chinese SSBN (nuclear submarines armed with long-range strategic missiles) programme is very active. We have not really seen their submarines in IOR till now but it’s only a matter of time before they start flexing their muscles here,” said former navy chief Admiral (retd) Arun Prakash.

China and India, after all, are fighting for the same strategic space in the IOR, with the former hugely dependent on the oil shipping sea lanes passing through the region. Much more than Pakistan, Indian defence experts view China as the real long-term military threat.

India has good reason to be worried, China is leagues ahead of India in virtually all aspects of military projects. Take submarines, for instance. To India’s 16 conventional diesel-electric submarines, China has 57 attack submarines, including a dozen of them nuclear ones.

The Hainan Island underground base, incidentally, will house the new Shang-class (Type-093) nuclear-powered attack submarines and the Jin-class (Type-094) SSBNs.

“China is also developing the new submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missile JL-2, with a range of 8,000 km, to arm the Jin-class submarines. As per reports, China will have five of these submarines operational by 2010,” said a top navy officer.

Even in terms of conventional weapons, China is surging ahead. In the last seven years, it has imported US$12 billion worth of weapon systems from Russia alone, including Kilo-class submarines, Sovremenny-class destroyers, Sukhoi-27 and Sukhoi-30 fighter jets.

Apart from this military imbalance, India remains apprehensive of China’s strategic moves in the region. With its “string of pearls” strategy, China has already encircled India by assiduously forging maritime linkages with eastern Africa, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar, among other countries.

India has tried to counter this spreading arc of Chinese influence only in recent times by trying to build maritime bridges with countries in the IOR as well as the Asia-Pacific region. Though experts hold that China’s SSBN, ballistic missile and other military programmes are at this point in time primarily directed against any move by the US to intervene in the Taiwan Strait, India will have to keep a close watch on the People’s Liberation Army’s expanding capabilities. China, after all, actively continues to help Pakistan with its missile and nuclear programmes with the intention to use it as a pawn to checkmate India.

All right, it’s a joke but you’ll probably laugh a little.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Over the next 22 years, China will need to spend US$1 trillion on transmission and distribution of energy networks and India will need to spend US$700 billion in the electricity and oil sectors, says a report, which was issued at the 64th session the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The report continues to say that if Asia-Pacific governments follow a more sustainable energy paradigm they can shave US$766 billion off the estimated US$9 trillion needed to improve their energy infrastructure by 2030.  

The cost of expanding and modernizing energy systems in the Asia-Pacific region to meet soaring demand between now and 2030 is expected to reach US$9 trillion, but this could be cut to US$8.3 trillion if the region follows a sustainable energy scenario, said the report.

Asia needs to get more innovative in the way we use energy in order to have a more sustainable future - while people’s energy consumption is on the rise, governments need to find a way to mitigate the adverse impact of global warming. The region also needs to work together for greater regional and sub-regional cooperation in order to develop an energy infrastructure which promotes equitable economic and social development without compromising the environment said ESCAP Exectuive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer.

Between 1990 to 2004, per capita energy use in the region more than doubled,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in an opening address to the ESCAP session. At the same time some 1.7 billion people in the region are using bio-mass fuels, and 1 billion people still lack access to electricity. Asia also has the highest death toll resulting from indoor air pollution caused by burning biomass - such as wood and animal dung - amounting to nearly 1.3 million a year in India, China and South-East Asia, Ki-moon added.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

As China’s voracious demand for iron ore rises, the country demands a more stable, long term pricing policy from India.  India which currently meets 16 percent of China’s iron ore demands sells iron ore on a spot basis, allowing the price to fluctuate as demand grows. India is China’s third largest supplier, after Australia and Brazil, who supply over 60 percent of their iron ore to China at contract prices, which allowed shipping costs to remain ‘relatively stable.’

‘Last year India’s spot sales to China led to additional costs of US$838.3 million for Chinese steel makers,’ Luo Bingsheng, executive vice chairman of the China Iron and Steel Association told Forbes.

Now, China plans to take serious action to make sure iron ore prices are more stablized. China will have to consider reducing purchases of iron ore from India if Indian suppliers do not moderate their ‘over-reliance’ on spot sales, he added.

India’s spot sales have negative effects on both sides, and seriously affect the competitiveness of Indian iron ore. Therefore, although China imports more from India each year, its market share in China’s iron ore market has fallen.

India had a 25 percent share in 2005, but saw its share in China fall to under 16 percent last year.

However, India , who exports 80 percent of its iron ore to China is unwilling to set a fixed price to their iron ore exports. “India can do little in determining prices for iron ore shipped to China because it does not have a major share (16 percent) of the market, an Indian commerce ministry official told Forbes.

The move is also part of India’s drive to move away from the current pattern of trade with China. ‘India mainly sells primary commodities to China, and imports value-added goods back. This situation has to change. We also need to enhance mutual technological exchanges, because we have not always been successful in getting technology transfers from developed countries.

The value of Sino-Indian trade rose 56 percent to US$38.7 billion last year, according to Chinese data.

Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

Pravda, a “Russian semi-propaganda newspaper,” recently reported that Russia [is] infuriated with Chinese export copies of Su-27 jet fighters (h/t commenter at Marginal Revolution). The Sukhoi Su-27 fighter, and its numerous variants, is Russia’s most advanced jet fighter in service with the Su-27SM being the most advanced. Back in 1991, Russia sold China 24 Su-27s for approximately $1 billion. A second delivery of 24 Su-27s was made in 1996, and the total deal is worth about $1.7 billion. In the same year Russians and Chinese agreed to a $2.2 billion licensing agreement allowing the Chinese to produce up to 200 Su-27s, to be called the J-11. The license rights did not include export rights to foreign countries. Russia already had a healthy Su-27 export business with customers in Vietnam, India, and Indonesia. The Chinese license agreement, and sales of the Su-27 is an important revenue source for Russia’s military which is using the profit to finance the development of their next generation jet fighter, the Su-37. (Almost all of this data was sourced from FAS’s pages. FAS was founded by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project and were wracked with guilt following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their mission is combating nuclear proliferation and the small arms trade, and world peace in general)

Now, the Russians are accusing the Chinese of manufacturing Su-27s with an intent to export the jets in violation of the licensing agreements. Pravda reports that “Moscow promised to launch legal proceedings to protect its intellectual property.” This will probably have to be a legal proceeding based on violation of international law or breach of contract in selling to third parties. It is highly unlikely that there are any patent or trade secret claims. A patent claim would require that the Chinese misappropriated patented technology. Sophisticated military hardware often avoids patents because that requires disclosure. Also, competition for military contracts operates differently than the free market making patents less purposeful. A trade secret claim is unlikely because the Chinese already have the trade secret and would not be divulging it by selling the jets to a third-party. This would just give the third-party the opportunity to reverse engineer the jets. This also makes it less likely that the jets would be patented in Russia.

Selling jets involves more than just the delivery of a plane. There are also the training costs, maintenance costs, and upgrade costs. Russia might be worrying less about its IP, as its sales record demonstrates that it is willing to sell to anybody who can afford their jets, and more about the income from all of the services that go along with selling jets.

Further Reading:
Russia upset by China’s imitation fighter
China copies obsolete Russian fighter

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Growth of Asia’s factories are turning forests into grasslands and both booming China and India are to blame for this mass erosion of green cover. Forest experts have warned the soaring demand for timber, food, energy and commodities are all great contributors to the depletion of rainforests in Asia.

More recent reports show that the loss of forest continues to grow in Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Australia and Papua New Guinea amongst others. Although new forests in China, India and Vietnam have been planted to reduce the loss of forest, ecologists say this will not aid the problem.

New forests are being noted as man-made and therefore are said to lack the natural varieties of plants found in forests as well as species which are extremely endangered due to the heightened demand for logging. “Many plantations, in terms of biodiversity, are green concrete,” said Peter Walpole, head of the non-profit Asia Forest Network.

There is a fear that the solution to the problem of rainforests being lost throughout Asia will not easily be found as both China and India imports of wood form furniture to paper have grown in the past 10 years.

Asia’s boom economies have seen billions of dollars enter their economies through imports. Imports to China increased from 53 billion dollars in 1990 to 561 billion dollars in 2004. China is now recognized as the worlds leading furniture exporter.

On the other hand India too follows in China’s footsteps whereby imports of wood products which include paper rose from 750 million dollars in 1990 to US$3.1 billion in 2005, said the FAO.

In order to preserve rainforests and decrease the illegal logging and timber trade, solutions to the ongoing problem are being looked into at present. One suggestion to monitor the timber trade has been a universal timber certification system as well as rewarding countries for offsetting pollution through a carbon credit rewards scheme, the FAO continue to wait for some action to be taken before all of forests in Asia are lost to the demands of manufacturers.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Its been a long march since Thomas Friedman declared the world to be flat. Now, it seems as economies grow larger and countries struggle to gain control of depleating natural resources national  barriers are rising.  

A story by the wall street journal says that the global economy appears to be entering an epoch in which governments are reasserting their role in the lives of individuals and businesses. Once again, barriers are rising. Call it the new nationalism.

The report goes on to say: Just a decade ago, Asia, Latin America and Russia were on financial life support from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The U.S. was planning yet another round of global trade negotiations. The European Union was writing a constitution to shift power to Brussels from member nations.

Now borrowers shun the IMF and World Bank. Trade talks are shelved. Barriers to foreign investment are rising around the world. State-owned companies are expanding, particularly in oil and gas. Public support of immigration restrictions is growing in countries from the U.S. to India.

The rising influence of governments can be seen in massive state-funded investment pools, many backed by countries that were reeling financially a decade ago. Sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Middle East are now propping up wobbly financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe, and may hunt next for real-estate bargains. The growth of state power may also serve to make dealing with global climate change — the most borderless of all issues — even more difficult.

To read thr rest of the story please visit: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120934738145948747.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Numbers: (1.1,0.048)

More Here>

Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

Recently, I was appointed Senior Associate Editor of the San Diego International Law Journal. The outgoing editorial board tasked me with organizing a symposium issue for next year. A symposium issue of a law journal is an issue devoted to a single topic. The publication is often preceded by 3-6 months with a conference at which several of the authors present and critique each other’s papers. Our plan is to have a conference in Spring of 2009, and the release of the issue in Fall of 2009. The challenge now is finding authors to submit papers for inclusion in the issue and at the conference.

Our topic is Intellectual Property Law in Asia, with a focus on China. There will be one article each on Chinese patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, and licensing law. Also, there will be articles on IP issues from various East Asian countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, and India, or any other countries in the region that we can find scholars on. There will be a couple of new laws on China IP soon, and little scholarly work has been done on the laws of several countries in the region. We are very excited to further the legal scholarship in these fields.

If you know anybody who specializes in these areas and would like to write a scholarly article, please contact me at WD.Lewis@gmail.com. If you know somebody who knows somebody that knows these areas, I’d still be thrilled to hear from you.

Thanks goes to Anna Han for the IP in China suggestion, and thanks goes to Dan Harris of China Law Blogfor suggesting expanding the focus to cover other parts of Asia.

Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

China’s Two Markets at Managing the Dragon
Jack Perkowski explains the two market system in China where foreigners compete with locals, and locals and compete with locals. He concludes that the strongest competitors to foreign companies are arising out of the crucible of the intense competition in the local markets.

CNN sued for Cafferty’s “goons and thugs” comment at Chinese Law Prof Blog
Donald Clarke examines the merits of the case against CNN.

how to protect your IPR via supply chain security at China Esquire
Tom Chow reviews an article on supply chain security and how it can protect your IPR.

Three Cheers for Commenter BruceM at The Volokh Conspiracy
I guess commenting at blogs can be a worthwhile experience…

Is it tacky to add my own posts at the bottom? Maybe… And, let me know if it is! I promise not to list all of my posts from the past week, and I won’t put them in bold.

The Growth of Chinese Brands, plus the comments
China Choice of Law in 2003
Why Fix What Ain’t Broke? The Shanghai Market

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

The quest for natural gas has brought age old enemies India and Pakistan to seek an agreement, allowing a pipeline from Iran to bring energy to Pakistan and India.”I am very optimistic about the IPI (Iran, Pakistan, India) pipeline as it would go a along way in meeting India’s energy requirements in the long run,” Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora told The Hindu on Sunday. The US$7.4 billion , 2,700-km-long pipeline is scheduled to be completed by 2011 and would initially carry 600 million cubic metres of gas per day.

Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

The other week I posted that I’d comment on one of the articles from National Geographic’s Special Issue on China, Inside the Dragon. There isn’t much to comment on. The articles are about drawing personal connections between the reader and China’s citizens. This should do more to quiet American fears of China than just about anything else.

Today, I checked out the magazine edition of the magazine and flipped through it. The magazine edition is truly beautiful. The layout is masterful with photos and artwork displayed throughout. There is not even an advertisement from the first full story until the last 5 pages. The editors did a fine job displaying the beauty, diversity, humanity, and, even, the flaws of China. Impressive.

Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

A couple of Financial Times articles today got me thinking about the Shanghai Composite Index, Bubble Trouble and Shanghai shares soar as tax cut takes effect.

Way back in May of ‘07 Beijing took action to try and cool the market by introducing a stamp tax on trades. Despite the tax, the Shanghai Index remained one of the best performing markets in the world with prices increasing 141% from February 2007 to October 2007. At the peak on October 16, the average price/earnings ratio was at over 50x. By Tuesday, April 22, 2008, the Shanghai Index had fallen 51.2% to a 13-month low. But, P/E was at a less volatile and much more reasonable, and still a little bubbly 20. Something had cooled down the market. Probably the state of the global financial markets and overspeculation in worthless assets, but regardless the market was cooled to stable level. Why would Beijing intervene to jack the market up if it is operating more like (but still considerably dissimilar to) a normal market?

The FT articles speculate that the reduction of the stamp tax sparking a 9.3% jump in the Shanghai Index “betrayed an unwarranted nervousness about market movements.” Long-term investors have no problem posting gains, but small investors are hurt considerably from declines in the market and the government is stepping to help them. Also, the articles speculate that “with the Olympics approaching, Beijing would prefer the stock market to be rising again as it showcases the results of its rapid economic development.” A strong market is a nice indicator of a strong economy despite one of the articles noting that the performance of the Shanghai market has little impact on the “real economy” of China.

The “Bubble Trouble” article ends with the following wisdom:

[I]ntervention [by Beijing] will merely ensure that volatility remains a feature of the Chinese equity markets. Investors will revert to basing decisions not on the underlying value of the shares they want to buy or sell but on their guesses about the intentions of the Chinese government. Perhaps they were right all along about the destructive embrace of the state, the stock markets and the Olympics.

Also, see Michael Pettis’s insightful posts on this subject for some in depth and original analysis:
Stock market rises 9.3%
Stock market is down today

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Long before Oxford, Harvard or MIT ever made their mark on the global academic stage, Nalanda University in Bihar, (north-east India) attracted students from across Asia. Founded in 427 in northeastern India, not far from what is today the southern border of Nepal, and surviving until 1197, Nalanda, meaning Giver of knowledge in Sanskrit was one of the first great universities in recorded history. It was devoted to Buddhist studies, but it also trained students in fine arts, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, politics and the art of war.

The university was an architectural and environmental masterpiece. It had eight separate compounds, 10 temples, meditation halls, classrooms, lakes and parks. It had a nine-story library where monks meticulously copied books and documents so that individual scholars could have their own collections. It had dormitories for students, perhaps a first for an educational institution, housing 10,000 students in the university’s heyday and providing accommodations for 2,000 professors. Nalanda was also the most global university of its time, attracting pupils and scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey.

While the university died a slow death about the time that some of the great European universities, including those in Oxford, England, and Bologna, Italy, were just getting started, and more than half a millennium before Harvard or Yale were established. The University is being given a second lease on life with US$1 billion funds being poured in by Japan, Singapore, China and India to develop a new International University on the same site as well as build infrastructure to make the institution work.

The planned university will be completely residential, like the ancient seat of learning at Nalanda. In the first phase of the project, seven schools with 46 foreign faculty members and over 400 Indian academics would come up. The university will impart courses in science, philosophy and spiritualism along with other subjects. A renowned international scholar will be its chancellor.

While the university aims to restore to its former glory, Nalanda International University, true to its Asian heritage built a hall in memory of 7th century Chinese traveller Xuan Zang last year.

Xuan Zang is famous for his 17-year-long trip to India, during which he studied with many noted Buddhist masters, especially at Nalanda. He was a student at Nalanda for five years and taught for a year.
While returning to China, he carried 657 Sanskrit manuscripts with him and translated them in Chinese, laying a strong foundation of Buddhism not only in China, but also in Korea and Japan.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Numbers: (7.62,5.34)

Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

[Finals time is here, post frequency & depth might decline…]

The Economist.com has a new article up discussing the fallout over firm’s image and advertising dollars in connection with Darfur and the Beijing Olympics, Beyond the “genocide Olympics”. This article has generated more comments at the Economist than any article I’ve seen over there. Here is the central paragraph:

Coca-Cola is doing some good things in Darfur, from providing immediate relief on the ground to meeting “stakeholders” to try to figure out solutions to the crisis. But is this enough to buy Coca-Cola the right to remain silent in public about China? As Mr Isdell puts it, “rather than make public statements, we have chosen a more direct and, in our view, more effective route to help address the staggering human suffering in Darfur.” Not good enough, retorts Human Rights Watch, along with other campaigning NGOs.

The article reports that when the UN Human Rights Council convenes in June:

it will be the first time that the UN human-rights machinery has taken a substantive position on companies’ responsibilities. Mr Ruggie hopes for greater clarity over the duties of firms and governments, and a better balance between protecting the legitimate interests of investors with the needs of host states to discharge their human-rights obligations.

Ugh… What place does a bloated bureaucracy have in drawing up substantive standards on the way business should operate? Isn’t this supposed to be the job of the market place and tort law suits? If companies want to speak out against China and the way it operates in Darfur then they’ll alienate their Chinese customers and appease their Western customers. Keeping mum will have the opposite effect. Coca-Cola seems to be doing an admirable job in striking a reasonable balance, and at least they’re taking action in Sudan rather than just offering verbal condemnation. It is of course crucial that there is a free press to allow the market to see what these companies are doing and the manner in which they operate, but it should not be the UN’s job to regulate MNC’s human rights.

In the final paragraph of the article they quote Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman of Anglo American, who says that Chinese companies are “slowly becoming more sensitive to human rights,” and that they understand and are taking seriously the government’s call of the development of a “harmonious society.”

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the billion dollars in Olympics pays off…

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Numbers: (1.1,0.048)

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

After almost a year of negative growth, India’s textile and clothing industry’s exports to the U.S. grew by 8.26 percent in February this year, even as exports from China, the largest textile and clothing exporter to the U.S. (worth $32.3 billion or a third of US’ total T&C imports in 2007) slowed down registering a negative growth (-2.57%) in exports to the US in Jan-Feb 2008.

So what has led to this flux in the global T&C business?  it’s a repeat of history say analysts. In its evolution, the global textile industry has seen continual shifting of its base. As the economy grows beyond a level, it becomes unfit for the labour-intensive T&C sector. It happened earlier with Japan, and even earlier with the U.S. and EU .

Now, it’s China’s turn to cut its textile industry. And for other competitive textile producers like India, Vietnam and Indonesia, this is an opportunity. In India’s case, this is true for the next two decades at least (before it also finds textile production incompatible with the economy) reported The Economic Times.

Follwoing are the three reasons detailing why its China’s turn to cut its textile industy:

1. China’s raw material (read cotton) base is shrinking. China whose consumption of cotton is nearly three times India’s is importing 45 lakh bales from India.

2. Wages in China’s T&C industry are on the rise. Conventionally, Chinese wages were 30% higher than India’s, but now this disparity is widening, with China’s wages for unskilled and semi-skilled workers rising faster than India’s.

3. China’s is worse off than India now with yuan appreciating 8.52% against dollar in March 2007-March 2008, against rupee’s rise of 8.36% during the period. Althought a large part of fabrics produced in China are being converted into garments in Vietnam (which is therefore a major exporter to the US with exports of $4.6 billion in 2007), analysts believe these indirect exports of China would also decline in the coming months, leaving a larger part of the U.S. market for countries like India to capture.

Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Emerging countries India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa - the outreach countries of the G8 met in Beijing yesterday ahead of the G8 summit to be held in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido in July. The outreach countries, also permanent invitees to the G8 are meeting to discuss multilateral trade and climate change issues.  The discussions will be centered around developing a coordinated approach before the annual summit of G-8 leaders in Japan in July.

India’s Foreign secretary and ex Ambassador to China, Shiv Shankar Menon is in Beijing on a three day visit and met Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs He Yafei and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi. Menon’s visit is a precursor to India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Beijing, likely in June, and comes on the heels of the successful relay of the Olympic torch in New Delhi.

During the meetings Menon pitched for the principle of equity in global climate change negotiations and reiterated India’s position of collective but differentiated responsibility between developed and developing countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions - a point of view that found echo among officials of the four countries, official sources told Thaindian in New Delhi.

In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Special Envoy on climate change Shyam Saran clarified that there is no legal obligation on part of New Delhi under existing international climate change framework to take on binding emissions reduction obligations, now or in the post-2012 period.

The two countries also discussed the lingering boundry issue and jointly issued a statement saying that the issue cannot be resolved “overnight” and that the ongoing bilateral negotiations were not locked in any stalemate.

“I wouldn’t call it a stalemate. We have agreed guiding principles and we are discussing a framework, which will then translate into something specific - this is natural. It is not something that you can do overnight… Both sides are talking. They are dealing with the issue,” Menon told Sify news yesterday.

Menon also said India and China have expressed satisfaction over the steady development of bilateral ties. “Basically, both sides are happy. We went over the details on how we could push (the bilateral relations) forward,” Menon told reporters after his talks with Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs He Yafei over working lunch and separately with Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi.

The “outreach countries” are invited when the G-8, an exclusive club of rich nations comprising the US, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia, meets.