By relying on quiet salami slicing rather than on overt aggression, China’s strategy aims to seriously limit the options of the targeted countries by confounding their deterrence plans and making it difficult for them to devise proportionate or effective counteractions.
This, in part, is because the strategy — while bearing all the hallmarks of modern Chinese brinksmanship, such as a reliance on surprise and a disregard for the risks of wider military escalation — seeks to ensure the initiative remains with China.
Changing the territorial status quo has been the unfinished business of the People’s Republic of China since its founding in 1949. The early forcible absorption of the sprawling Xinjiang and Tibetan plateau more than doubled the landmass of China.
This was followed by the advent of the earliest incarnation of the salami-slicing strategy, which led to China gaining control, step by step between 1954 and 1962, of the Switzerland-size Aksai Chin plateau of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. An emboldened China then went on to seize the Paracel Islands in 1974, the Johnson Reef in 1988, the Mischief Reef in 1995 and, most recently, the Scarborough Shoal (2012).
At the core of the challenge posed by China to Asian security today is its lack of respect for existing frontier lines. In other words, China is still working to redraw political boundaries.
Along land frontiers, rodent-style surreptitious attacks usually precede its salami slicing. The aim is to start eating into enemy land like giant rodents and thereby facilitate salami slicing. The use of this strategy is becoming increasingly apparent along the Himalayan border with India, the world’s longest disputed frontier.
Here one form of attacks has involved the Chinese military bringing ethnic Han pastoralists to the valleys along the Himalayan line of control and giving them cover to range across it, in the process driving Indian herdsmen from their traditional pasturelands and opening the path to salami slicing. This strategy, which can also begin with the Chinese military nibbling at an unprotected border area, has been especially employed in the two highly strategic Buddhist regions located on opposite ends of the Himalayan frontier — Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
To assert its claims in the South and East China Seas, China unabashedly plays salami slicer. The tools of salami slicing here range from granting hydrocarbon-exploration leases to asserting expansive fishing rights — all designed to advance its territorial and maritime claims.
In the East China Sea, China has employed paramilitary agencies, such as the Maritime Safety Administration, the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, and the State Oceanic Administration, in a campaign of attrition against Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which it calls Diaoyu — an offensive that has already succeeded in shaking the status quo by making the rest of the world recognize the existence of a dispute. This has emboldened Beijing to gradually increase the frequency of Chinese maritime surveillance ships sent into the 12-nautical-mile zone regarded as the territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands and to violate the airspace over them.
Taking on Japan, its former occupier and historical rival, is part of China’s larger search for new seabed resources and for strategic ascendancy in the western Pacific by breaking out of what it perceives to be “first island chain” — a string that includes the Senkakus, Taiwan, and some islands controlled by Vietnam and the Philippines.
China’s aim in the South China Sea is to slowly but surely legitimize its presence in the 80 percent of the sea it now claims formally. Through repeated and growing acts, China is etching a lasting presence in the claimed zones.
Among the ways Beijing has sought to establish new “facts” on the ground in the South China Sea is to lease hydrocarbon and fishing blocks inside other disputant states’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs), as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Such leases are designed to circumscribe the UNCLOS-granted economic rights of states such as Vietnam and the Philippines while expanding China’s control of the region’s oil-and-gas wealth.
China has even established “Sansha City” on Woody Island in the Paracels as its administrative base for the South China Sea, setting up a local civilian government and a military garrison there to oversee the entire region. And in its latest effort to present a fait accompli over its occupation of the Paracels, it has started tourist cruises to those disputed islands.
To be sure, Beijing usually is careful to slice very thinly so as to avoid any dramatic action that could become a cause of war. Indeed, it has has a knack of disaggregating any action into several parts and then pursuing each element separately in such a manner as to allow the different pieces to fall in place.
This shrewdness helps to keep its opponents off balance and in a bind on how to respond. In fact, as a skillful salami slicer that acts insidiously, camouflaging offense as defense, China acts in ways not only to undercut its opponents’ deterrence but also to cast the burden of starting a war on them.
Any targeted state is presented with a strategic Hobson’s choice: either endure the salami slicing or face a dangerous and costly war with an emerging great power. This is the choice, for example, Manila has faced over China’s effective seizure of the Scarborough Shoal.
China’s tactics and strategy thus pose an increasing challenge to several of its neighbors who face a deepening dilemma over how to thwart the salami slicing. Exchanging notes with each other — and with the United States, the geographically nonresident Asian power — may be necessary to find ways to try and stop this creeping, covert warfare.
After all, China’s multipronged actions, cumulatively, carry the potential of fundamentally altering the Asian power dynamics to shape a Sino-centric region.
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Brahma Chellaney's blogpost on China's Salami Slicing foreign policy
China’s furtive, incremental encroachments into neighboring countries’ borderlands — propelled by its relative power advantage — have emerged as a key destabilizing element in the Asian security landscape. While China’s navy and a part of its air force focus on asserting revanchist territorial and maritime claims in the South and East China Seas, its army has been active in the mountainous borderlands with India, trying to alter the line of control bit by bit.
Beijing’s favored frontier strategy to change the territorial and maritime status quo is apparently anchored in “salami slicing.” This involves making a steady progression of small actions, none of which serves as a casus belli by itself, yet which over time lead cumulatively to a strategic transformation in China’s favor.
By relying on quiet salami slicing rather than on overt aggression, China’s strategy aims to seriously limit the options of the targeted countries by confounding their deterrence plans and making it difficult for them to devise proportionate or effective counteractions.
This, in part, is because the strategy — while bearing all the hallmarks of modern Chinese brinksmanship, such as a reliance on surprise and a disregard for the risks of wider military escalation — seeks to ensure the initiative remains with China.
Changing the territorial status quo has been the unfinished business of the People’s Republic of China since its founding in 1949. The early forcible absorption of the sprawling Xinjiang and Tibetan plateau more than doubled the landmass of China.
This was followed by the advent of the earliest incarnation of the salami-slicing strategy, which led to China gaining control, step by step between 1954 and 1962, of the Switzerland-size Aksai Chin plateau of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. An emboldened China then went on to seize the Paracel Islands in 1974, the Johnson Reef in 1988, the Mischief Reef in 1995 and, most recently, the Scarborough Shoal (2012).
At the core of the challenge posed by China to Asian security today is its lack of respect for existing frontier lines. In other words, China is still working to redraw political boundaries.
Along land frontiers, rodent-style surreptitious attacks usually precede its salami slicing. The aim is to start eating into enemy land like giant rodents and thereby facilitate salami slicing. The use of this strategy is becoming increasingly apparent along the Himalayan border with India, the world’s longest disputed frontier.
Here one form of attacks has involved the Chinese military bringing ethnic Han pastoralists to the valleys along the Himalayan line of control and giving them cover to range across it, in the process driving Indian herdsmen from their traditional pasturelands and opening the path to salami slicing. This strategy, which can also begin with the Chinese military nibbling at an unprotected border area, has been especially employed in the two highly strategic Buddhist regions located on opposite ends of the Himalayan frontier — Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
To assert its claims in the South and East China Seas, China unabashedly plays salami slicer. The tools of salami slicing here range from granting hydrocarbon-exploration leases to asserting expansive fishing rights — all designed to advance its territorial and maritime claims.
In the East China Sea, China has employed paramilitary agencies, such as the Maritime Safety Administration, the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, and the State Oceanic Administration, in a campaign of attrition against Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which it calls Diaoyu — an offensive that has already succeeded in shaking the status quo by making the rest of the world recognize the existence of a dispute. This has emboldened Beijing to gradually increase the frequency of Chinese maritime surveillance ships sent into the 12-nautical-mile zone regarded as the territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands and to violate the airspace over them.
Taking on Japan, its former occupier and historical rival, is part of China’s larger search for new seabed resources and for strategic ascendancy in the western Pacific by breaking out of what it perceives to be “first island chain” — a string that includes the Senkakus, Taiwan, and some islands controlled by Vietnam and the Philippines.
China’s aim in the South China Sea is to slowly but surely legitimize its presence in the 80 percent of the sea it now claims formally. Through repeated and growing acts, China is etching a lasting presence in the claimed zones.
Among the ways Beijing has sought to establish new “facts” on the ground in the South China Sea is to lease hydrocarbon and fishing blocks inside other disputant states’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs), as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Such leases are designed to circumscribe the UNCLOS-granted economic rights of states such as Vietnam and the Philippines while expanding China’s control of the region’s oil-and-gas wealth.
China has even established “Sansha City” on Woody Island in the Paracels as its administrative base for the South China Sea, setting up a local civilian government and a military garrison there to oversee the entire region. And in its latest effort to present a fait accompli over its occupation of the Paracels, it has started tourist cruises to those disputed islands.
To be sure, Beijing usually is careful to slice very thinly so as to avoid any dramatic action that could become a cause of war. Indeed, it has has a knack of disaggregating any action into several parts and then pursuing each element separately in such a manner as to allow the different pieces to fall in place.
This shrewdness helps to keep its opponents off balance and in a bind on how to respond. In fact, as a skillful salami slicer that acts insidiously, camouflaging offense as defense, China acts in ways not only to undercut its opponents’ deterrence but also to cast the burden of starting a war on them.
Any targeted state is presented with a strategic Hobson’s choice: either endure the salami slicing or face a dangerous and costly war with an emerging great power. This is the choice, for example, Manila has faced over China’s effective seizure of the Scarborough Shoal.
China’s tactics and strategy thus pose an increasing challenge to several of its neighbors who face a deepening dilemma over how to thwart the salami slicing. Exchanging notes with each other — and with the United States, the geographically nonresident Asian power — may be necessary to find ways to try and stop this creeping, covert warfare.
After all, China’s multipronged actions, cumulatively, carry the potential of fundamentally altering the Asian power dynamics to shape a Sino-centric region.
By relying on quiet salami slicing rather than on overt aggression, China’s strategy aims to seriously limit the options of the targeted countries by confounding their deterrence plans and making it difficult for them to devise proportionate or effective counteractions.
This, in part, is because the strategy — while bearing all the hallmarks of modern Chinese brinksmanship, such as a reliance on surprise and a disregard for the risks of wider military escalation — seeks to ensure the initiative remains with China.
Changing the territorial status quo has been the unfinished business of the People’s Republic of China since its founding in 1949. The early forcible absorption of the sprawling Xinjiang and Tibetan plateau more than doubled the landmass of China.
This was followed by the advent of the earliest incarnation of the salami-slicing strategy, which led to China gaining control, step by step between 1954 and 1962, of the Switzerland-size Aksai Chin plateau of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. An emboldened China then went on to seize the Paracel Islands in 1974, the Johnson Reef in 1988, the Mischief Reef in 1995 and, most recently, the Scarborough Shoal (2012).
At the core of the challenge posed by China to Asian security today is its lack of respect for existing frontier lines. In other words, China is still working to redraw political boundaries.
Along land frontiers, rodent-style surreptitious attacks usually precede its salami slicing. The aim is to start eating into enemy land like giant rodents and thereby facilitate salami slicing. The use of this strategy is becoming increasingly apparent along the Himalayan border with India, the world’s longest disputed frontier.
Here one form of attacks has involved the Chinese military bringing ethnic Han pastoralists to the valleys along the Himalayan line of control and giving them cover to range across it, in the process driving Indian herdsmen from their traditional pasturelands and opening the path to salami slicing. This strategy, which can also begin with the Chinese military nibbling at an unprotected border area, has been especially employed in the two highly strategic Buddhist regions located on opposite ends of the Himalayan frontier — Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
To assert its claims in the South and East China Seas, China unabashedly plays salami slicer. The tools of salami slicing here range from granting hydrocarbon-exploration leases to asserting expansive fishing rights — all designed to advance its territorial and maritime claims.
In the East China Sea, China has employed paramilitary agencies, such as the Maritime Safety Administration, the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, and the State Oceanic Administration, in a campaign of attrition against Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which it calls Diaoyu — an offensive that has already succeeded in shaking the status quo by making the rest of the world recognize the existence of a dispute. This has emboldened Beijing to gradually increase the frequency of Chinese maritime surveillance ships sent into the 12-nautical-mile zone regarded as the territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands and to violate the airspace over them.
Taking on Japan, its former occupier and historical rival, is part of China’s larger search for new seabed resources and for strategic ascendancy in the western Pacific by breaking out of what it perceives to be “first island chain” — a string that includes the Senkakus, Taiwan, and some islands controlled by Vietnam and the Philippines.
China’s aim in the South China Sea is to slowly but surely legitimize its presence in the 80 percent of the sea it now claims formally. Through repeated and growing acts, China is etching a lasting presence in the claimed zones.
Among the ways Beijing has sought to establish new “facts” on the ground in the South China Sea is to lease hydrocarbon and fishing blocks inside other disputant states’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs), as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Such leases are designed to circumscribe the UNCLOS-granted economic rights of states such as Vietnam and the Philippines while expanding China’s control of the region’s oil-and-gas wealth.
China has even established “Sansha City” on Woody Island in the Paracels as its administrative base for the South China Sea, setting up a local civilian government and a military garrison there to oversee the entire region. And in its latest effort to present a fait accompli over its occupation of the Paracels, it has started tourist cruises to those disputed islands.
To be sure, Beijing usually is careful to slice very thinly so as to avoid any dramatic action that could become a cause of war. Indeed, it has has a knack of disaggregating any action into several parts and then pursuing each element separately in such a manner as to allow the different pieces to fall in place.
This shrewdness helps to keep its opponents off balance and in a bind on how to respond. In fact, as a skillful salami slicer that acts insidiously, camouflaging offense as defense, China acts in ways not only to undercut its opponents’ deterrence but also to cast the burden of starting a war on them.
Any targeted state is presented with a strategic Hobson’s choice: either endure the salami slicing or face a dangerous and costly war with an emerging great power. This is the choice, for example, Manila has faced over China’s effective seizure of the Scarborough Shoal.
China’s tactics and strategy thus pose an increasing challenge to several of its neighbors who face a deepening dilemma over how to thwart the salami slicing. Exchanging notes with each other — and with the United States, the geographically nonresident Asian power — may be necessary to find ways to try and stop this creeping, covert warfare.
After all, China’s multipronged actions, cumulatively, carry the potential of fundamentally altering the Asian power dynamics to shape a Sino-centric region.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Saturday, August 6, 2011
2% interest Loans - P2P Lending a new Phenom in China
A TOI Article about online P2P lending in China
By Zhao Ying
Borrowing money from strangers may sound like an odd proposition to some. But China's farmers are taking advantage of online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending to build better futures. Yang Yanxia, 32, mother of two from Dingxi city in northwest China's Gansu province, borrowed 3,500 yuan ($543) via Yinongdai.com, a P2P lending website, at the end of 2009 to help build her farming business. Dingxi is one of the nation's most impoverished regions, owing to low agricultural yields caused by chronic drought.
Yang's lenders were from first- and second-tier cities in China, who charged her a fixed interest rate of around 2% - much lower than the rates typically charged by Chinese banks. Before 2009, Yang's family earned only $1,553 annually from their potato farm, and even that was subject to the whims of Mother Nature. With the loan, Yang and her husband were able to rent a plot of fertile land that effectively doubled the size of cultivable land available to them. The family's new farms brought in $5,434 in just six months.
Yang then used the profits to construct a barn to raise cattle, which she believes will provide a more reliable source of income. The world's first P2P lending service was launched in the United Kingdom in 2005 and has since become popular worldwide. Most of China's state-owned commercial banks are unlikely to lend to people like Yang, either because the loans sought are too small or because they have nothing to offer as collateral. China's P2P lending platforms give people like Yang an alternative.
Prospective borrowers must provide identification as well as proof of personal assets for a credit rating from the P2P platforms. Lenders can pick who they want to lend to based on the borrower's objectives, the terms of repayment and the interest rates offered by borrowers. Since Yang was unfamiliar with computers, she contacted a local micro-credit service centre for the online procedure. "We submitted her information to the P2P website after examining her credit and family situation carefully," says Yang Farong, director of the Minfuxinrong Micro-credit Service Center. The centre has been helping the people of Dingxi acquire loans for the past five years.
Since 2009, when Yinongdai.com started offering P2P services, 217 farming households in Dingxi have benefited to the tune of $119,544 in low-interest loans, Yang Farong says. Yang Yanxia only had to pay an extra $10.50 to the local micro-credit service centre, in addition to her $543 principal. "I never expected to borrow money from strangers. It's so exciting to know that personal credit still has value," she says. Canadian-Chinese Robert Li, 15, who studies at the Shanghai American School, became a P2P lender two years ago. "The amount of money spent on a single meal in the city can be enough to change the life of a family," says Li, who has lent $4,416 in loans so far with the help of his family.
Li believes that direct online lending is more transparent than charitable donations, and allows lenders greater discretion in providing loans. "Families with school-age children, particularly girls, are our primary targets," Li's mother Vivian says. The fact that there have been no delays in the repayment of loans offered through Yinongdai.com has also impressed her. "This proves that disadvantaged people can still have credit," she says. So far, Yinongdai.com has disbursed $434,705 in loans to nearly 1,000 rural families across China.
As a new form of micro-financing, P2P lending "not only fills in gaps left by the banking system, but also offers convenience to rural borrowers," says Bai Chengyu, secretary-general of China Association of Microfinance. However, P2P services that are designed to help people in need won't always be able to count on a steady supply of funds, as investors invariably seek higher profits amid inflation risks, Bai says.
Can such a venture work in India. The first problem is Collection. Second who will lend money at 2% when our FD rates are hovering around 8-10%.Moreover this is online ,the legal tender of such a transaction is always difficult. Rather than a P2P which is unorganised network i would prefer that reputed banks like ICICI,HDFC can provide this banking service by using their banking facilities to connect borrowers and micro lenders like salaried employees.They can even show the credit history of the borrower and rate them and divide them into categories and if they have good history of repayment then they can have lower interest rates like 2%.and other categories can have slightly higher interest rates like 4-6% but never above 6%. But we have to understand that the lender is basically giving up on savings as he is lending money at lower interest rates to complete strangers. We are dealing with honesty and credibility here which is very difficult to rely on these days.
By Zhao Ying
Borrowing money from strangers may sound like an odd proposition to some. But China's farmers are taking advantage of online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending to build better futures. Yang Yanxia, 32, mother of two from Dingxi city in northwest China's Gansu province, borrowed 3,500 yuan ($543) via Yinongdai.com, a P2P lending website, at the end of 2009 to help build her farming business. Dingxi is one of the nation's most impoverished regions, owing to low agricultural yields caused by chronic drought.
Yang's lenders were from first- and second-tier cities in China, who charged her a fixed interest rate of around 2% - much lower than the rates typically charged by Chinese banks. Before 2009, Yang's family earned only $1,553 annually from their potato farm, and even that was subject to the whims of Mother Nature. With the loan, Yang and her husband were able to rent a plot of fertile land that effectively doubled the size of cultivable land available to them. The family's new farms brought in $5,434 in just six months.
Yang then used the profits to construct a barn to raise cattle, which she believes will provide a more reliable source of income. The world's first P2P lending service was launched in the United Kingdom in 2005 and has since become popular worldwide. Most of China's state-owned commercial banks are unlikely to lend to people like Yang, either because the loans sought are too small or because they have nothing to offer as collateral. China's P2P lending platforms give people like Yang an alternative.
Prospective borrowers must provide identification as well as proof of personal assets for a credit rating from the P2P platforms. Lenders can pick who they want to lend to based on the borrower's objectives, the terms of repayment and the interest rates offered by borrowers. Since Yang was unfamiliar with computers, she contacted a local micro-credit service centre for the online procedure. "We submitted her information to the P2P website after examining her credit and family situation carefully," says Yang Farong, director of the Minfuxinrong Micro-credit Service Center. The centre has been helping the people of Dingxi acquire loans for the past five years.
Since 2009, when Yinongdai.com started offering P2P services, 217 farming households in Dingxi have benefited to the tune of $119,544 in low-interest loans, Yang Farong says. Yang Yanxia only had to pay an extra $10.50 to the local micro-credit service centre, in addition to her $543 principal. "I never expected to borrow money from strangers. It's so exciting to know that personal credit still has value," she says. Canadian-Chinese Robert Li, 15, who studies at the Shanghai American School, became a P2P lender two years ago. "The amount of money spent on a single meal in the city can be enough to change the life of a family," says Li, who has lent $4,416 in loans so far with the help of his family.
Li believes that direct online lending is more transparent than charitable donations, and allows lenders greater discretion in providing loans. "Families with school-age children, particularly girls, are our primary targets," Li's mother Vivian says. The fact that there have been no delays in the repayment of loans offered through Yinongdai.com has also impressed her. "This proves that disadvantaged people can still have credit," she says. So far, Yinongdai.com has disbursed $434,705 in loans to nearly 1,000 rural families across China.
As a new form of micro-financing, P2P lending "not only fills in gaps left by the banking system, but also offers convenience to rural borrowers," says Bai Chengyu, secretary-general of China Association of Microfinance. However, P2P services that are designed to help people in need won't always be able to count on a steady supply of funds, as investors invariably seek higher profits amid inflation risks, Bai says.
Can such a venture work in India. The first problem is Collection. Second who will lend money at 2% when our FD rates are hovering around 8-10%.Moreover this is online ,the legal tender of such a transaction is always difficult. Rather than a P2P which is unorganised network i would prefer that reputed banks like ICICI,HDFC can provide this banking service by using their banking facilities to connect borrowers and micro lenders like salaried employees.They can even show the credit history of the borrower and rate them and divide them into categories and if they have good history of repayment then they can have lower interest rates like 2%.and other categories can have slightly higher interest rates like 4-6% but never above 6%. But we have to understand that the lender is basically giving up on savings as he is lending money at lower interest rates to complete strangers. We are dealing with honesty and credibility here which is very difficult to rely on these days.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Renewable energy in India
The best way to encourage renewable energy usage is to have financial incentives like tax breaks,easy credit availability,lifting caps on foreign investment etc which will provide a profitable framework for the energy companies to operate in.You cannot protect natural resources by asking people to pay for it ,you can only encourage alternative sources by incentives.If India's energy needs are met by Solar,wind energy then there is no need for a nuclear deal with USA. But Solar and wind requires huge capital outlays and technology.Lifting caps of foreign investment in these sectors is the least the Govt can do.
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