Murdoch's adventures in China

When Rupert Murdoch took control of The Wall Street Journal in 2008, he collected another less prestigious Dow Jones monthly publication called The Far Eastern Economic Review. It was as the New York Times called it an incidental addition to the vast global stable of Murdoch's News Corp. Murdoch promised editorial independence to all of the Dow Jones stable as part of the price he had to pay for the Journal. But given his reputation, it was no surprise to find there would be a chilling effect whenever a story appeared that affected Murdoch.

The Review’s editor Hugo Restall had hired Australian writer Eric Ellis to write a review of Bruce Dover’s book “Rupert's Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife." The book is a privileged insider’s account of Murdoch’s attempts to woo the Chinese Government in the 19990s and his relationship with third wife Wendi Deng.  The book got a big reception in Asia in 2007 and Restall hired Ellis to review the book in January 2008. But by February, Restall had got cold feet and told Ellis the book “looks more like the work of a disgruntled ex-employee rather than an analysis of the business."

The book was nothing of the sort, as Ellis realised. In his spiked review, Ellis said for a businessman who has left such a mark on the world’s media, Murdoch himself was under-analysed and his personal life off-limits.  It was this reason why the book is of great service: because Dover (now the chief executive of ABC’s Australia Network charged with beaming content into Asia) was the Sun King’s chief courtier in the Forbidden City in a time when China meant everything to the boss. 

Dover tells the story from the time Murdoch bought STAR TV in 1993 for $1 billion to the time 10 years later when Dover has been sacked and Murdoch realised he could not replicate the success in China he had elsewhere. By 1993, Murdoch had defeated the British print unions in Wapping, was starting to make big money with BSkyB and the Premier League and expanding his footprint in America. The 23-year-old Richard Li’s STAR TV was a satellite operation that beamed programming to an area that stretched from the Philippines to the Middle East with the potential to reach two-thirds of the world’s population. 

But Li could never make money from STAR TV subscriptions as most of its users pirated the unencrypted service. He changed the model to advertising and charged big rates though no one could be exactly sure how much of an audience he was aggregating.  Li’s father Li Ka-shung was Hong Kong’s wealthiest businessman and a friend of Deng Xiaoping and he quietened ruffled feathers in Beijing over the fact the uncensored service was available at all in mainland China.  But Xiaoping told Ka-shung the business had to go and Li reluctantly sold to the highest bidder in 1993. Pearson PLC (owner of the Financial Times and Penguin Books) offered the same money as News Corp but wanted Ka-shung to stay on in some capacity. Murdoch had no such qualms.  

The problem was Li never sought approval from Beijing on the sale. When the Chinese politburo found out who STAR TV’s new owner was, there was deep concern. The Chinese saw only too well how Murdoch intervened in the politics of every other country he had interests in and feared the same would happen to them.  These fears intensified after a major speech Murdoch made in London’s Whitehall Palace. Murdoch was the main speaker in a night celebrating BSkyB’s new multi-channel offering. With the Internet still in its infancy, Murdoch used the speech to laud the new forms of communications which he said were a threat to “totalitarian regimes everywhere”. Orwell had got it wrong, Murdoch said, mass communication technologies did not subordinate individuals but liberate them. Telephony and satellite broadcasting, he enthused, made it possible to by-pass state control of information.

Murdoch would later claim he was talking about the recent collapse Communism in Eastern Europe. But the politicians in Beijing had no doubt he was talking about them. Premier Li Peng was incandescent with rage.  The Butcher of Beijing at Tiananmen was at the height of his powers four years later and he saw Murdoch’s speech as a threat to Chinese sovereignty. Within a month he banned the distribution, installation and use of satellite dishes in China, dashing STAR TV’s expansion plans from the word go.

Murdoch is nothing if not determined and quickly realised the extent of his blunder. He moved to Hong Kong with then wife Anna and started a long and assiduous campaign of wooing the Chinese leadership to see his position. The problem was that all contact with Zhongnanhai was funnelled through the State Council Information Office and Murdoch was allowed to meet no-one above the rank of vice minister.  In 1994 he used the excuse of limited transponder space on the satellite to drop the BBC from STAR TV but he later admitted to biographer William Shawcross it was because the Chinese leaders hated the BBC. Nevertheless it changed nothing and Murdoch remained persona non grata. 

The new play was for Murdoch to befriend family members of Deng Xiaoping.  He got Harper Collins to publish Deng’s daughter Deng Rong’s hagiography of her father.  He also feted his disabled eldest son Deng Pufang in an artists’ tour of Australia. The problem was Deng slipped from power in 1994 and new leader Jiang Zemin was not like the emperors of old. Deng’s children were out of favour and with them any chance of Murdoch patronage. Zemin enforced the crackdown on China’s half a million satellite dishes.

Dover himself was in China by this time trying to negotiate a joint venture with the People’s Daily. This strange alliance with the conservative communist organ was another peace plan and one tacitly approved by the politburo. The paper was under pressure to reduce its reliance on state handouts and proposed a business news magazine with News Corp. However, once again SCIO were not across the deal and did their utmost to ensure the new joint venture would never get off the ground. It was not the thaw in relations Murdoch needed.

Murdoch next’s ploy was to get into bed with businessman Liu Changle. Changle took half share in the Phoenix TV joint venture with STAR TV. Liu had cultivated several key Beijing decision makers and Murdoch was told by senior leaders this was his only way into China. Phoenix proved popular and shook up the tawdry domestic TV market. But Murdoch hated Phoenix because Changle retained day-to-day control.

Murdoch looked to the new information superhighway for a solution. As Beijing wrestled with control of the internet, Murdoch started a new joint venture with People’s Daily called PDN Xinren. The first product ChinaByte was launched to fanfare in January 1997 and soon became the most popular site in China. But after the tech bubble burst Murdoch lost faith in the product and by April 2001 has sold his foothold in the fastest growing internet market in the world.

Dover documents other manoeuvres such as getting rid of anti-Chinese China correspondent Jonathan Mirsky from the Times Hong Kong bureau. Murdoch had promised The Times editorial independence but he invited the Times editor Peter Stothard on a charm offensive of China. Southard would later spike so many stories from Hong Kong and Mirsky resigned citing Murdoch’s heavy hand. Murdoch also spiked the HarperCollins autobiography of former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten on Chinese instructions. Murdoch competed with great rival Time boss Jerry Levin to fawn over Chinese leaders and promise anything for a toehold in the country. Finally Murdoch made a speech which was a mea culpa for Whitehall where he conceded cultural and social values of a country trumped open communications. 

With relations warming slightly, Dover tells the amusing story of when Murdoch met Vice Premier Zhu Rongii in Australia in 1997. Zhu asked Murdoch to tell him the story of his rise to power and the pair had an animated conversation. At one point Zhu put his hands on Murdoch’s wrists, looked him in the eye and spoke in Mandarin.”I see when you needed to expand your business interests in the US you became a US citizen,” he said. “Maybe you should think of applying for Chinese citizenship to further your business interests in China”. Murdoch blinked when he heard the translation and spluttered a reply. Zhu burst into laughter and said he was joking.  

Murdoch did in the end apply for Chinese citizenship – by marrying his young Yale-educated interpreter Wendi Deng. Deng had the language skills but not the contacts in the politburo and the Chinese kept one step ahead of the Murdochs. Just as they successfully cultivated Zemin’s Shanghai clique, the leader was replaced by Hu Jintao. Dover was on the outer too, his boss frustrated by his inability to penetrate the Great Wall.  Hu closed down STAR TV’s intrusion into the Chinese “grey sector” and insisted China retain control of Chinese television, banning cooperation between local stationsand foreign companies. 

 

After 12 years of trying, Murdoch finally admitted he had hit a brick wall in China. In 2006 he sold his remaining interest in Phoenix and reposition STAR TV towards the Indian market. But it was not a total failure. Bruce Dover said Murdoch was a major catalyst of change in China both of its media and its attitude to the Internet (which the party wanted to ban entirely).  Phoenix transformed Chinese television with its brash, downmarket programming but control remained in Chinese hands. Dover said in seeking to woo China’s leaders, Murdoch overstepped the mark. “He became too impetuous, too imprudent,” he concluded.

Sport and Politics: an Olympic history

Munich 1972 was the first Olympics I remember. Aged 8 I have hazy memories of Olga Korbut in the ring, Lasse Viren and Valery Borzov on the track, Mark Spitz in the pool and hooded men in the Village. The Palestinian involvement was an early indication to me the Olympics was about far more than just sport. Here in the middle of the Cold War, the US and USSR were once again battling for supremacy in Germany.   

Only six nations nations have topped the OIympic medal tally: USA (16), Soviet Union (7), China (1), Germany (1), France (1) and Britain (1). The US dominated most of the 20th century but the Russians beat them in 1956 and 1960. As the space race intensified, the US regained control in the 1960s.  By Munich it was the turn of the USSR to come out ahead again. I remember this strange thing called “East Germany” with their forbidding looking athletes running a very creditable third well ahead of their western rivals despite a population of just 16 million people to the West's 50 million plus. They would rub salt in fellow German wounds with another home soil victory in the World Cup two years later in the only time they would ever meet (the West lost that battle but won the war against the Dutch in the final). 

With the pride of communism on the line, the 70s and 80s were the glory era of East German sport. It was the German College for Physical Culture which produced with ruthless efficiency the coaches, trainers and sports medicine personnel responsible for East Germany's remarkable success. There was drugs and cheating there but there was also genuine success. The problem was, as 1980 Olympic 110-metre hurdles gold medallist Thomas Munkelt said, “we ran our sports by the performance principle, but not our economy."

The 1980 Olympics was East Germany’s first high water mark. It was also the year any doubt the Olympics wasn’t political was wiped out with the west’s boycott after Afghanistan. Without the US, the East Germans ran second to the Russians. The Russians got their own back and boycotted Los Angeles in 1984. They cited “security concerns, chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria whipped up in the United States” but no one was in any doubt it was tit-for-tat. 

Little brother East Germany wasn't there either but Ceausescu’s Romania was the one Communist Bloc that ignored Konstantin Chernenko’s directive and they finished second to the Americans. 1984 was notable for another reason. Five years earlier, the IOC decided to rename the Republic of China to Chinese Taipei. With Taiwan downgraded, China would not lose face by competing for the first time since 1952.  They finished a creditable fourth in their first outing.

The Seoul Olympics in 1988 was the first truly global Olympics. It was also the first since Montreal to feature the US and the Soviets. East Germany were there too and they forced the Americans into third place. Other eastern bloc countries in the top ten were Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. The Chinese dropped to 11^th.  But East Germany’s second high water mark was to mark a rapidly changing tide. 

The stunning collapse of Eastern bloc Communism meant the medal table in Barcelona looked radically different. The USSR was the last to go in 1991 so there was still a strong “Unified Team” consisting of 12 of the old 15 Soviet republics. They were still unified enough to win the most medals a year later. It would be the last time Moscow would finish in front. East Germany was gone and China was back up to fourth behind the united Germany. There was still an East German clone in Barcelona as one of the last of the Communist countries Cuba finished fifth.

There was further change in the New World Order of Atlanta 1996. On home soil, the Americans finally beat the Russians for the first time since 1968. China stayed fourth but cut the gap on Germany as they were doing in the real world. In Sydney, China beat Germany and got the same amount of medals as the hosts (58) but with 28 golds to Australia’s 16. At Athens, China went clear as number two to the Americans. They got fewer medals than the Russians but as they did in Sydney, they knew how to get gold.

In Beijing they did to the Americans what they did to the Russians four years before. The US had 110 medals to China’s 100 but it was 51-36 to the hosts in golds.  China’s remarkable powerhouse economic advance was on display in Beijing and the last four years have accelerated the trend. it will be no surprise, that even without home advantage, they get more medals and golds than anyone else in London.

Sure enough, they have won the first gold of the 2012 Olympics (though arguably that honour belongs to Specsavers). Top-ranked Yi Siling of China captured the first gold medal of the London Olympics in the women's 10-metre air rifle at Royal Artillery Barracks on Saturday. Another Chinese woman, Yu Dan won the bronze.  If the 21^st century is the Asian century, then the place to watch for proof will be the Olympic Medal tally. It won’t be too long before the likes of India and Indonesia become the new East Germany – but getting the economics right as well as the sport.

China diffident about dissident Ai Weiwei

A terse statement yesterday from official Chinese news agency Xinhua revealed the news. The Beijing police department said Ai Weiwei had been released on bail because of “his good attitude in confessing his crimes as well as a chronic disease he suffers from”. Xinhua quoted police who said the decision to release Ai also took into account he had “repeatedly said he is willing to pay the taxes he evaded”. The same police source said Ai’s Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd, was found to have “evaded a huge amount of taxes and intentionally destroyed accounting documents.”

Typically for matters involving the Chinese security apparatus, the 54-year-old dissident artist’s release after 81 days in detention raises more questions than it answers. There is no word on whether he was formally charged or tried except Ai’s release comes with a caveat: a year-long probation that prohibits him from leaving Beijing without special permission from the Chinese government. "I'm sorry I can't talk," Ai told friends and reporters outside his Beijing home and studio hours after his release. "I am on probation, please understand."

At a regular news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Ai was still under investigation for unspecified offences. His “obtaining a guarantee pending a trial" can last up to 12 months, according to Hong. "Ai is still in the investigation period for suspected crimes," he said. "He is not allowed to leave where he lives, cannot interfere (with) other people's testimony, [and] cannot fabricate evidence nor collaborate with others to make false confession.”

Ai was arrested on 3 April and initially detained under "inciting subversion" charges to which later was added “economic crimes." The real reason however, was retaliation for a long record of social and political activism. Ai Weiwei rose to international prominence in the mid 1990s. A graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, he lived in the US in the 1980s studying design and gradually building his art portfolio. In 1993 he came home due to his father’s illness and established an experimental artists’ village. In 2000, he curated a Shanghai exhibition of 46 avant-garde artists called “fuck off” which allegedly featured self-mutilation, human corpses and body parts as well as cannibalism and was the subject of a Scotland Yard investigation. Shanghai police were not impressed either and closed the exhibition down before the finish date.

By 2005 his work was featured by the BBC as “one of the stars of China's art world” with work appearing in exhibitions across the world. At the time, Ai told the British broadcaster he had not held a solo show in China as the country was "not yet ready." As well as being at the cutting edge of art, Ai was also experimenting at the bounds of political expression expressing negative comments about the Olympics (despite designing the Bird’s Nest stadium) and supporting an investigation in the heavy casualties of the Sichuan earthquake. In 2009 he was beaten up by police when he tried to testify for dissident Tan Zuoren who was sentenced to five years for trumped-up state subversion charges when he tried to investigate the earthquake.

The authorities stepped up their harassment of Ai as he became a more vocal critic of the regime. Last year, he was stopped at Beijing’s airport from flying to South Korea because authorities feared he might go to Oslo to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for his friend Liu Xiaobo. Then they ordered a demolition of his Shanghai studio saying it was built illegally. Ai decided to hold a party to mark the demolition and issued an open invite to attend via Twitter. However on the day of the party national security officers placed him under house arrest. "They came last night and tried to interview me, saying I should not do it because it was getting too big," he said. “This is the general tragedy of this nation. Everything has to be dealt with by police. It is like you use an axe to do all the housework because this is the only tool you have."

The party happened anyway without Ai who was released two days later. The studio was demolished in January and Ai was arrested in April. By now the Chinese authorities were paranoid the contagion of Middle Eastern revolutions might spread to their country, revolutions Ai supported. In the weeks after mid-February, China arrested 26 people, while 30 more disappeared presumed held by security forces, and 200 were placed under “soft detention.” Ai was arrested without explanation and with no communication to family or friends. Police blocked off the streets to his studio during the raid and took away laptops and the hard drive from the main computer, and detained eight staff members and his wife Lu Qing for questioning.

Initially claiming his arrest was due to issues with his travel documentation, authorities changed their tune citing the existence of “economic crimes”. Financial fraud has been convenient catch-all way of shutting down opponents of the regime. Ai’s 78-year-old mother, Gao Ying denounced the government line. “Economic crimes! They say one thing now and another later. It’s ridiculous,” she said. “They must tell the family why and where they are holding my son? They have no right to keep us guessing. Where is the Constitution? Where is the law?”

But it wasn’t just Ai’s mother who was exasperated. Art groups created the protest “1,001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei” to call for artists to bring chairs to Chinese embassies and consulates around the world on 17 April "to sit peacefully in support of the artist's immediate release." Other museums and cultural organisations around the world signed an online petition expressing concern for “Ai's freedom and disappointment in China’s reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity and independent thought.” As Ai’s release yesterday proved, China’s “promise” comes with multiple strings attached none of which are designed with the west in mind.

Media miss the news in first Aussie Wikileak

Oblivious to the fact that one of the dreaded new media was providing the scoop, the Australian newspaper reported on its front page today the first Wikileaks document to mention Australian officials was “Rudd’s plan to contain Beijing”. It’s hardly surprising The Australian would go data-mining for the thing that would most embarrass the Federal Government. But it’s hardly surprising too they got it wrong.

In the haste to follow a narrow political agenda, the Oz skipped over far more substantive elements to the story. Not only that, they also misquoted Rudd. The first line of Paul Maley’s front page story said Rudd had warned the world "must be prepared to deploy force” if China didn’t co-operate with the international community.

Compare this to what the cable actually said:
Rudd argued for “multilateral engagement with bilateral vigour” - integrating China effectively into the international community and allowing it to demonstrate greater responsibility, all while also preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong.

Suggesting the world has a Plan Z for China that involves force is a long way from advocating it and certainly doesn't make it “Rudd’s plan”. It wasn’t just The Australian that took this slanted approach. The ABC took a similar tack with the material saying it was Rudd's "suggestion that the US use force against China in a worst case scenario”.

It was nothing of the sort and a poor way of using what was remarkable information put out in the public domain. The ABC added insult to injury by turning it into a petty domestic squabble by harvesting a meaningless quote from Julie Bishop about “disturbing reading”. Don't read it Julie, if it disturbs you.

Beyond this dross, the reportage ignores some major issues discussed when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Australian PM Kevin Rudd in Washington on 24 March 2009. Private Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and his army of Wikileaks helpers deserve praise for putting the material in the public domain nine years ahead of schedule. The cable about the meeting 09STATE30049 was marked “confidential” which is a mid-level security due to be released into the public domain in 2019.

The meeting talked about problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia, China was the biggest topic. Some of it was just polite platitudes with Rudd buttering up a valued friend but most of it was extremely useful and informative sharing of intel among allies.

Rudd told the Americans one possibility was the little-known philosophy of Kang Youwei which he said provided China’s idea of a harmonious world and could potentially fit in well with the West’s concept of responsible stakeholders. He also said Hu Jintao did not have the same level of power as former leader Jiang Zemin.
“No one person dominated Chinese leadership currently, although Hu’s likely replacement, Xi Jinping, had family ties to the military and might be able to rise above his colleagues,” Rudd told Clinton.

He also noticed an important distinction between China’s attitude to Taiwan and Tibet. With the former it was purely “sub-rational and deeply emotional” (because China has no intention of disturbing the status quo on Taiwan) while the more concrete hardline policies against the latter were designed not only to show who was boss in Llasa but to send a message to other minorities within mainland China.

Rudd also told Clinton the Standing Committee of the Politburo was the real decision-making body in China which then passed decisions to the State Council for implementation. He saw the new Asia Pacific Community initiative as a bulwark against any Chinese plans to issue an Asian Monroe Doctrine, but understood American reluctance to get involved in another international initiative. Rudd did say the 2009 Australian Defence White Paper was a response to Chinese power, something most people assumed but he could never admit publicly at the time.

In return for this information, Rudd wanted Washington’s intelligence on Russia so he could prepare for an upcoming meeting in Moscow. Conversation centred on the power struggle between Medvedev and Putin with both sides agreeing the President’s desire for “status and respect” could drive him closer to western thinking. But it was an outside chance.

On the AfPak situation, both parties agreed there was no point in “total success” in Afghanistan if Pakistan fell apart. Pakistan needed to drop its obsessive focus on India and attend to its western border problems.

What comes across in the cables I have read is not so much the “brutality and venality of US foreign policy” as its growing impotence. This is the reason the US is after Assange. It is the embarrassment he has caused them rather than the exposing of any international secrets that angers them so much.

The one phrase that sums up the problem was uttered by Hillary Clinton to Rudd in relation to China: “how do you deal toughly with your banker?” A damn good question and given China is our banker too, one Australian media should be asking. “Rudd’s embarrassment” has nothing on our media’s for missing the real news.

Burma buys time with sham election

To nobody’s great surprise, Burmese military rulers had a sweeping victory in last week’s election. With the last democratically elected leader of the country under house arrest for the last eight years and her party forcibly disbanded, few outside the remote capital Naypyidaw had any faith in the election’s validity. The country has been ruled undemocratically since 1962 by a military proxy party under several different names. It annulled the unfavourable result of the one free election it had in the last 48 years. It was little surprise then to hear they picked up 80 percent of the seats this time round. (picture: SOE THAN WIN/AFP/Getty Images)

But it took a while for even this news to seep out. Silent for three days after the election, State Television finally announced on Wednesday top members of the ruling junta, including army joint chief-of-staff Thura Shwe Mann and Prime Minister Thein Sein, were among those who won seats in Parliament.

We only have State Media’s word for what happened as foreign reporters are not allowed in the country. The tightly controlled local media only takes the Government’s side when it is forced to take a side at all. Yet the people of Burma are not stupid and word of mouth ensures everyone knows what is really happening. A brave few like Muang San strapped on a hidden camera as he went to vote. “I’m a journalist,” he said. “It’s my duty to show the world what is happening in Burma.”

The main opposition party led by the imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi boycotted the election. The Government retaliated by her National League for Democracy party. A breakaway offshoot called the National Democratic Front contested the election against the Government. With no press, no charismatic leader, no scrutiny of the polls and ten times fewer candidates, they were soundly trounced. “The Burmese junta hosted this election in order to whitewash itself internationally," said a banana seller at a market near the biggest city Rangoon.

This overlooks the fact that even this sham of an election has given voters the rare chance to voice their opinions and gain insights into a political culture stunted by an authoritarian government. The Government may struggle to put the genie back in the bottle. But the banana seller’s cynical analysis is mostly spot on.

The very fact an election was held, however irregular, gives the regime kudos and useful bargaining chips in its key relations with other ASEAN countries and China. Due to the repeated criticism of the US and the EU, Burma has become ASEAN’s albatross the association of south east Asian nations has survived due to its policy of turning the other cheek to member excesses but are under enormous pressure to get Burma to conform to international norms. ASEAN countries have offered guarded support for the elections. The real benefit is to give Asean an excuse to ignore further criticisms of the Naypyidaw regime.

The regime itself can also afford to ignore the criticisms. Burma spends at least 40 percent of its national budget on the military compared to 0.4 percent on healthcare and 0.5 percent on education. Its standing army of 500,000 soldiers is the largest in south east Asia. Foreign powers are queuing up to take their money.

In 2009, Burma signed a contract with Russia for the purchase of 20 MiG-29 jet fighters at a cost of nearly US $570 million and many of Burma's future nuclear military purchases may come from fellow rogue state North Korea. China is also a huge contributor as Burma’s third-largest trading partner and provides extensive military, economic and diplomatic support.

While fellow generals across Asia get cosy with the junta tatmadaw, the biggest thorn in their side remains the frail but immensely courageous activist Suu Kyi. The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, democracy activist and daughter of the country’s founder is apparently scheduled to be released Saturday from house arrest. Most observers remain sceptical this will happen as she has been in detention for 15 of the last 21 years despite repeated calls from the international community to release her. A bad sign is today’s decision to reject her appeal against house arrest by the politically motivated Burma’s Supreme Court.

Not all the regime’s enemies are in prison. In the hills, army forces still fight with ethnic groups that don’t want to be a part of Myanmar. Karen separatists are causing havoc on the border with Thailand. Thailand is concerned not because it wants to see a new Karen state, but because unrest at the Mae Sot-Myawaddy crossing is causing economic losses estimated to be in the region of 10 million baht (almost $400,000) this year. The Karen National Union has said it will now join up with five other ethnic rebel groups: the Kachin Independence Army, the Karenni National Progressive Party, the Mon New State Party and the Shan State Army-North.

Burma, for all its half a million strong army, is unable to crush these six ethnic revolt. Neither can the compliant media stop the grumbling on the streets of Rangoon. Like any Government that rules by fear, the Burmese junta philosophy is driven by desperate fear it will be overthrown. It has to prove the election victory is not pyrrhic, otherwise its enemies will strike stronger than ever. But at the very least it buys them more time to plan the counter-attack. The paranoid tragedy that is Burma’s politics still has a few acts to go before the curtain falls.

Zuma strengthens South African alliance with China

South African President Jacob Zuma is looking for ways to cut his country’s trade deficit with its largest partner as he begins a three day visit to China. Last year South Africa ran a $2.7 billion trade deficit with China and Zuma’s Trade Minister explained why in a press conference on arrival in Beijing today. “In South Africa's export market to China there is a preponderance of primary products, and in our imports from China there is a preponderance of value-added goods," he said. Davies and his boss Zuma want Chinese manufacturers of power equipment, railway cars, solar water heaters and vehicles to consider setting up factories in South Africa.

The relationship between the two countries is growing in importance as China continues its push for influence across the continent of Africa. In the first six months of 2010, there was $10.8 billion trade between the two countries almost half as much again as the same period last year. Zuma will hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing and will also meet Premier Wen Jiabao and tour the World Expo site in Shanghai. Zuma will be accompanied by an enormous delegation of 300 ministers and businesspeople as the Africans aim to emulate the Chinese growth rate.

Zuma expects to sign a number of agreements and memorandums of understanding during the visit. These include a declaration on the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership, and MOUs on co-operation in the fields of geology and mineral resources, environment management, transport and railways. There will also be a business seminar in Beijing with over 200 South African business leaders and entrepreneurs to further enhance and strengthen economic co-operation. The visit will conclude on Thursday when Zuma views the South African Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.

The relationship between the two countries is one of the fastest growing in the world. The countries did not re-establish relations after the end of apartheid until 1998 but within 11 years China had overtaken the US to become SA’s largest exporter and importer of goods and services. Zuma has called the trip “crucial” with China National Nuclear Corp in talks to build a nuclear power plant in South Africa. The relationship is important to China too which imports SA iron ore, iron and steel to fuel its growing economy. Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said his government would encourage domestic companies to invest in South Africa's mining and resources sector.

According to Chinese State news agency Xinhua, Zuma and Jintao signed a Beijing Declaration in the Great Hall of the People earlier today. The declaration contained 38 bilateral cooperation agreements, including political dialogues, trade, investment, mineral exploration and agriculture to joint efforts in the UN and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. The declaration also promised to strengthen cooperation between the two nations in political and regional affairs by “establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership based on equality, mutual benefit and common development”.

Zuma’s China trip is a welcome relief as he faces mounting problems at home, with more than a million public sector workers striking. The success of the World Cup is a distant glow as a strike by more than a million public sector workers enters its second week. Strikers include teachers, healthcare workers, police, customs officials and clerks who are seeking pay raises of more than double the inflation rate. The strike is paralysing the economy and police have used rubber bullets to disperse angry protesters on the streets. Unions are pressing for a settlement but Zuma said he will not negotiate until he returns from China.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, the health of South Africa’s economy is direct tied to China whose demand for SA resources is keeping the rand high. The currency’s strength continues despite the strikes and persistently high unemployment and public-sector strikes. The public sector unions were crucial in getting Zuma the top job so it is likely he will meet their demands. This will push South Africa's already high inflation rate to well over 5 percent by year’s end, and lead to another cycle of pay demands next year. The 68-year-old president will need all the help he can get from his new Chinese alliances.

Danger far from over in Shen Neng 1 Barrier Reef oil spill

A coal ship grounded on the Great Barrier Reef could spill more oil onto the reef if the vessel is refloated too soon. That is the concern of Maritime Safety Queensland who say a hydrostatic plug caused by the pressure of the ocean water is preventing oil escaping from the ship's engine room. This plug may give way if the breach in the tank is not repaired before refloating. “We need to assess the vessel's remaining strength before we consider any salvage options which may be available to us," MSQ general manager Captain Patrick Quirk said.

The 230m-long bulk coal carrier Shen Neng 1 ran aground at Douglas Shoal about 70km east of Great Keppel Island at 5.10pm Queensland time on Saturday. The ship had left the port of Gladstone bound for China with a crew of 23, 65,000 tonnes of coal and 975 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. The ship was off course about 120km east of Rockhampton and in a protected area, well outside the normal shipping channels. The 150 tonne fuel tank has been ruptured and heavy seas are driving the ship further into the fragile reef area.

Shen Neng 1 owners the Chinese COSCO Group is one of the largest shipping companies in the world with over 500 vessels. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has threatened fines of $1 million for the company and a further $200,000 for the captain for straying into the off-limits area. The owners could also be liable for the multi-million dollar clean up, though as Queensland found out last year in the Pacific Adventurer case, there is an upper limit set by international maritime convention.

In the latest accident, the ship’s captain initially told MSQ no oil had been spilt. The impact, he said, had created one hole in the ship’s lower hull which was 40m away from the nearest oil storage area. The captain said he would try to refloat the ship after midnight. MSQ worked with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to coordinate the emergency response. AMSA airlifted surveyors aboard to assess the condition of the ship. Emergency surveillance aircraft inspected the scene at first light. A long-range helicopter came from Bundaberg to take specialist response personnel to the vessel.

At 2am Sunday, the oil advice to MSQ had changed. Now “there was an unknown amount of oil” in the water, though the media release did not say who provided this advice or how it squared with the captain’s earlier statement about the hole being 40m away from oil storage. The new knowledge kicked off a national oil spill response plan. MSQ asked the GBRMPA for permission to use aerial dispersants on the oil leak. Response crews were activated in Brisbane, Gladstone and Rockhampton. MSQ’s vessel Norfolk was dispatched from Heron Island to provide logistical support.

By daylight on Easter Sunday it was clear from the air there were oil patches in the waters south-east of the ship. MSQ said at 8.30am there was “no major loss of oil” so far. The carrier was aground on a shoal and would need salvage crews to get it off. A light aircraft from Rockhampton arrived at midmorning to spray chemical dispersant on the spilled oil. Early arrival was critical as dispersants are most effective in breaking up heavy oil when deployed within the first one to two days.

A second aircraft arrived midafternoon yesterday to spray what MSQ called “a ‘ribbon’ of oil measuring approximately three kilometres by 100 metres.” MSQ staff reported only seeing small volumes of oil in the water in the vicinity of the ship but its persistent nature meant it could take some time to break apart. Modelling showed oil could possibly wash up around the nearby Shoalwater Bay military area within the next two days, depending on weather.

The most recent MSQ update at 6am today reported salvors were aboard the Shen Neng 1 to begin the salvage process. The main engine room was breached, the main engine damaged and the rudder seriously damaged. With reported 2 metre swells in the area, the ship was still moving on the reef causing further damage. The long term consequences to the fragile reef are yet to be fully felt.

Google has more to lose than China

On 12 January, the official Google blog posted a seemingly innocuous entry called “a new approach to China”. In it Google claimed that serious cyber-attacks in December resulted in the theft of their intellectual property. The post stated the attack was aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. It also said the accounts of dozens of American, Chinese and European Gmail users who advocate human rights in China “appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties”. Then they dropped the bombshell. As a result of these attacks, Google decided to stop censoring results on Google.cn. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China,” concluded post author David Drummond, Google Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer.

There is little doubt that Google made a business decision and dressed it up with noble values. The news was even kept secret from Google’s 700 Chinese staff until it was made publicly available. Techcrunch’s Sarah Lacy offered three reasons why Google made their decision. Lacy claims Google were not doing great business in China (with 30 percent of the market) and could never outdo local leader Baidu (with 63 percent). Secondly Google had already made their decision and the announcement was a “scorched earth” move aimed at buying Google goodwill in the west. Thirdly it is only going to get harder for western firms as cashed-up Chinese tech companies begin infiltrating the US market.

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua has been strangely diffident in its response. Normally it reacts bullishly to any perceived criticism of the Communist regime but an article on 13 January merely suggested China was seeking more information on Google’s stance. They quoted an anonymous high ranking official merely said "It is still hard to say whether Google will quit China or not. Nobody knows.” They also quoted Guo Ke, professor of mass communication at Shanghai International Studies University, who said it was "almost impossible" for Google to quit China and also impossible for the Chinese government to give up its management right over the Internet. "I think Google is just playing cat and mouse, and trying to use netizens' anger or disappointment as leverage,” Guo told Xinhua.

The official Chinese Government response is that companies must follow the law of the land. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said China welcomed foreign Internet companies but that those offering online services must do so “in accordance with the law.” According to the New York Times, another high-ranking official has called for even tighter Internet restrictions. Wang Chen, the information director for the State Council urged Internet companies to increase scrutiny of news or information that might threaten national stability and emphasized the importance of “guiding” online public opinion.

Subsequently Google has hinted it will negotiate with the Communist regime. It may be that Google needs China more than China needs Google. China has by far the world’s largest internet population with estimated 338 million Internet users - 46 million of those were added in the last 12 months alone. The entire network is policed by the Great Firewall of China and the government stepped up efforts to censor the Web during the Beijing Olympics and the Communist regime’s 60th anniversary last year. During the purge, the Chinese government made particular efforts to shut down social media sites such as blogs, online video sites, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

However, many Chinese users have sophisticated knowledge of the Internet and are able to circumvent the censorship. Locals call it “fanqiang”, or “scaling the wall.” Users connect to an overseas computer via a proxy server which costs $2 a month to share with about two dozen others. Chinese citizens engaged in such practices say the government rarely cracks down on them individually, preferring instead to go after prominent dissidents who publish information about forbidden topics online. Meanwhile non-profit companies have set up censorship-evading tools for users to download in a cat-and-mouse game with authorities.

But as The Hindu puts it, many Chinese online users will be let down by Google’s losing battle with the authorities over censorship issues. They quote Chinese Internet expert Kaiser Kuo, who believes the ordinary Chinese Internet user is being ignored. “But they are also questioning whether the moral point Google is trying to make is worth the price they have to pay,” he said. “The government no longer worries about access to outside information through Web 1.0 sites, but has closed down social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube that allow for the rapid dissemination of information.” The absence of Google will simply tighten the Government’s grip on power in this most closed of kingdoms.

New test to help crack down on illegal ivory trade

A new test to distinguish antique from modern ivory may help defeat the illegal trade in ivory. The EU allows the sale of antique ivory from before 1947, but once a tusk is carved there is no accurate way of distinguishing it from modern ivory. Until now, the only option has been to send samples to museums where experts tried to work out its age from signs such as how yellow it appeared. However this evidence would not stand up in court. A new method by an Edinburgh Zoo scientist can determine the age of ivory by looking at its level of carbon isotope. Because of nuclear testing which started in the 1950s, modern ivory has double the amount of carbon 14 than those of elephants that lived before the nuclear age. The test will now be rolled out to all European countries. (picture by wwarby)

While Europeans have killed elephants for trade since colonial times, the large-scale exploitation of elephant herds began in the 1970s. Organized gangs of poachers used automatic weapons while corrupt governments turned a blind eye. They laundered tons of elephant tusks through several African countries to destinations in the East and West. At its height, the ivory trade was driving the poaching of an estimated 100,000 African elephants a year for their tusks, as species numbers dropped from 1.3 million to 600,000.

Things improved after the African elephant was listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1989. This banned the ivory trade though it carried on illegally. And only 16 out of 35 African countries complied with the CITES system. The Born Free Foundation says thousands of elephants are still killed every year for their ivory. The British animal welfare group describes the slaughter as “horrifying”, with poachers shooting elephants with automatic weapons and hacking off their tusks with axes and chainsaws.

In November 2009 Tanzania and Zambia submitted a proposal for the relaxation of the ban to allow for the sale of 100 tonnes of stock-piled ivory to China and Japan. The proposal will be examined at an international meeting on wildlife conservation scheduled for March. There is a precedent for this. In 1997 regulations were relaxed for a one-off sale of 60 tonnes of stock-piled ivory. There was a similar sale in 2002. But Kenya has opposed the latest request for a relaxation saying it could lead to increased poaching in the region. It also wants the ban to include rhinos. Kenya’s elephant population dropped from 168,000 in 1969 to only 16,000 in 1989 when the ban was enforced. The population has now risen to 35,000 since the ban but the rhino population has decreased by a third in the same timeframe.

The Chinese market is now driving the demand for ivory. The problem has escalated in recent years as China forges more links with Africa. Chinese entrepreneurs, miners and tourists are coming to the continent in increasing numbers fuelling the illicit trade. Over 35 million tonnes of ivory has been illegally imported into China from Africa in the last 10 years and British-based wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC is working with China to educate travellers about ivory smuggling. But there are concerns the Chinese government is reacting defensively to reports of Chinese people caught in the act. After an Interpol operation seized several tonnes of ivory in November and arrested three Chinese and 62 Africans, China Daily refuted the director of a Kenyan wildlife NGO, who blamed the growing number of Chinese workers in Africa for the rise in elephant poaching in Kenya.

Ominously, ivory trade has been on the rise across the continent since 2004 but increased sharply last year according to TRAFFIC. Their latest report said the surge in 2009 suggest an increased involvement of organized crime syndicates in the trade, connecting African source countries with Asian end markets. According to its analysis of 14,364 ivory seizure records from 85 countries between January 1989 and August 2009, the adjusted trend for illicit ivory trade has risen to over 25 tonnes, the second largest after a peak of 32 tonnes in 1998. CITES will submit the report to the upcoming meeting of member countries.

Macau anniversary protests as new leader is sworn in

The New Democratic Macau Association has marked the 10th anniversary of the handover of the former Portuguese colony with a demonstration calling for more democracy. The pro-democracy political party is also protesting against the corruption that has settled in the territory in the last decade. For the last few years, they have used the December 20 anniversary to demand universal suffrage and a larger fight against corruption. But this year’s event was especially significant. The Chinese Community Party leadership was in town for the tenth anniversary celebrations and to mark the leadership of a new government. (photo credit: Vixyao)

Like Hong Kong, Macau is a Special Administrative Region with a separate constitution guaranteeing freedoms not available to the rest of China. Fernando Chui Sai On was sworn in as the territory’s new chief executive for a five year term. He is only the second person to assume the role since 1999. He replaces Edmund Ho who has dominated Macau since handover. The 52-year-old Chui has been handpicked by Beijing like Ho before him. But Macau has always been considered the more compliant of the two SARs. Chui vowed to continue the “great cause” of one country, two systems but also pledged to support Chinese interests. “For years the motherland has always been a strong backing to the maintenance of Macao's prosperity and stability,” he said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao was on hand to swear Chui in. He praised Macau’s passing of Article 23 state security legislation. The article which came into effect in March 2009 under former leader Edmund Ho prohibits and punishes acts of "treason, secession, and subversion" against the Chinese government, as well as "preparatory acts" leading to any of the three acts. Critics are wary about the ambiguous catch-all language of the act. But Hu said Article 23 “fully reflects the strong sense of responsibility of the government, Legislative Assembly and people of all circles of the Macau SAR to safeguard national security and interests.”

Front and central to those interests is protecting Macau’s gambling interests. Since 1999, Macau, which has 31 casinos, has overtaken Las Vegas and Atlantic City combined in terms of casino revenues. It is now the world’s biggest gambling centre with an annual revenue of $12 billion. International gambling companies like Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Wynn Resorts have invested Invest billions of dollars in the local industry. When it opened in August 2007 the $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort became the world’s largest casino with 3,000 hotel suites, a 15,000 sports arena, a 6,000 banquet hall and floor space for gambling games more than three times as large as the biggest in Las Vegas. But there are dangers inherent in solely relying on a gambling economy and there is also the stench of corruption.

Three years ago the US Treasury accused a Macau bank of laundering money on behalf of North Korean leaders engaged in nuclear proliferation. The US accused a family-owned Banco Delta of holding $25 million in profits from counterfeit US dollars, cigarettes and drugs made in North Korea. However they were prevented from freezing the assets after it became a sticking point in negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program. According to former State Office official David Asher, the investigations “demonstrated the awareness of the Macao authorities to these things.”

But if they were aware of it, they showed they had not learned its lesson. In early 2008, a judge sentenced Ao Man-long, Macau’s former secretary for transportation and public works, to 27 years of prison on charges of bribe-taking related to kickbacks on construction contracts. Long had been part of Macau’s administration since 1999 but he was charged in 2007 with 117 crimes including 43 crimes of abuse of power; 41 crimes of corruption for unlawful fact; 30 crimes of money laundering; 1 crime of economic participation in business transactions; one crime of intentional wrong declaration of assets; and one crime of illicit enrichment.

While the stench of corruption never quite reached Edmund Ho, it got near enough to him for Beijing to abandon support of him. But it is questionable if they will listen to the voice of the protesters who want the government to combat corruption and stop selling land cheaply to the casino operators and developers. China is determined to make a success of Macau and with 90,000 PLA troops in the tiny garrison is well able to dictate terms. It is also shrinking the physical distance between the one country and two systems by building a new $10.7 billion 50km-long bridge that will link Guangdong Province to Hong Kong and Macao. When built, it will cut driving time from Macau to Hong Kong from 3 hours to 30 minutes.

Regional survey exposes three myths in Australian climate change debate

A new report from international law firm Allens Arthur Robinson surveying climate change strategies across the Asia Pacific region has found the debate in Australia has been too narrowly focused on an ETS. The report entitled One Hat Doesn’t Fit All was an overview of climate change measures in 14 countries: Australia, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. Report co-author Grant Anderson said that while the debate in Australia and NZ has focused on a domestic ETS, the survey has revealed the wider region is looking at a variety of other measures to promote the green economy, all of which were necessary to combat climate change. (photo of Copenhagen bike commuter by David Dennis)

The report identified "three myths" about emissions reduction. The first myth identified by the report is that Australia can afford to wait until after Copenhagen to see what the rest of the world is doing on climate change. While it is possible (though unlikely) that negotiations may see the agreement of more ambitious proposals, many countries in the region including China, South Korea, Singapore and New Zealand have all announced unilateral measures that will position them to prosper in the green economy. Australia should be looking at targets and national feed-in tariffs to support renewables as well as providing tax incentives, fuel price reforms and energy efficiency programs.

The second myth is that China is doing nothing to constrain its greenhouse gas emissions. While it is true that its emissions are growing rapidly as the economy expands, China is investing heavily in renewable energy and becoming more energy efficient while increasing taxes on higher polluting products and industries. In advance of Copenhagen, the Chinese government has announced it would curb emissions per unit of gross domestic product by between 40 and 45 percent from the 2005 levels by 2020.The Chinese are also increasing consumption taxes on transport fuel, and have introduced stringent fuel efficiency regulations for vehicles.

The third myth is that there is a “silver bullet” that will solve climate change. The countries in the Asia Pacific region are taking a wide variety of approaches suitable to local economic and geographic conditions. While Japan and Singapore concentrate on energy efficiency, poorer countries such as Indonesia and PNG are working to avoid deforestation. The Philippines is the world’s second-largest producer of geothermal energy, and is now expanding into wind, solar, mini-hydro and biofuels initiatives with the aim of being 60 per cent energy self-sufficient in 2010. The report says that a wide variety of emission reduction measures will be needed to solve the problem of climate change.

Australia is particularly exposed with its reliance on vast, cheap reserves of coal, an energy-intensive export industry, and a sparsely located population wedded to private car usage. As a lucid Malcolm Turnbull noted this week, there is no costless way of moving to a lower emission economy. The country has been absorbed by the fight over the Government’s version of the ETS, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme which remains mired in the Senate after this week’s defeat despite it being riddled with compromises that severely limit its effectiveness. Meanwhile there is a vast untapped resource of renewable energy (currently supplying less than five percent of the base load) and the Government steadfastly refuses to examine the nuclear option.

Because of these factors, Australia faces relatively high economic costs of abatement compared with other developed countries. A key element in Australia’s negotiating position at Copenhagen is the idea of “comparable effort”. The concept requires that Australia would be prepared to adopt a national allocation budget between 2013 and 2020 that is comparable in its economic impact to that shouldered by other advanced countries. Economic modeling by Access Economics has shown a comprehensive climate change global agreement is more cost and environmentally effective from Australia’s point of view that a partial agreement.

But the AAR report warns that it could take many years to nut out a comprehensive post-Copenhagen agreement. The 180-page treaty draft is currently riddled with 2,000 square brackets each of which indicates a point of difference between participants. It notes that although it took two years to agree the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, much of the nitty-gritty was not agreed until the 2001 Marrakesh Accords and even then it did not come into force until Russia signed up in 2005. In the meantime, Australia should be widening its net far beyond its flawed ETS.

APEC Declaration is another fatal blow for Copenhagen talks

The two-day APEC economic leaders’ summit in Singapore has ended with a leaders’ declaration that promoted free trade but promised little action on climate change three weeks ahead of Copenhagen. Kevin Rudd joined 20 other Pacific Rim leaders in Singapore including US’s Barack Obama and China’s Hu Jintao. The key output phrase was “a new growth paradigm” and support for the recent Pittsburgh G20 commitments for global recovery. But a proposal to include a 50 percent emissions reduction target by 2050 was scrapped under pressure from China. (photo credit Xinhua/Xu Jinquan)

The proposal was in a draft version of the declaration but was removed in the final version. The declaration did acknowledge anthropogenic climate change as one of the biggest global challenges (a fact someone should tell prominent members of Australia’s main opposition party). The Singapore conference embraced recent world statements on climate change at Pittsburgh and L’Aquila and reaffirmed its intention to work towards an “ambitious outcome” in Copenhagen now just 22 days away.

However that looks completely unrealistic with the “50 by 2050” target kyboshed by China and the declaration was reduced to wishy-washy aspirational (ie non-binding) targets. These were a reiteration of the 2007 Sydney targets of reducing energy intensity by at least 25 percent by 2030 and increasing forest cover in the region by at least 20 million hectares of all types of forests by 2020. The conference also welcomed the May 2009 Manado Declaration on climate impact on ocean health – but again this is so far non binding.

The lack of prescribed targets does not bode well for the Copenhagen The APEC nations are responsible for 60 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. According to the Vancouver Sun, the leaders agreed at a breakfast meeting this morning that agreement on a binding treaty will have to wait at least until next year or beyond. They quoted Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who said there were significant areas of disagreement. "That said, there was a fair consensus…a broader political agreement, is still achievable at Copenhagen and that's what everybody is aiming for,” he said.

But the host of the Copenhagen talks will be bitterly disappointed by the outcome. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen had flown to Singapore specifically to attend "informal breakfast meeting". Once it was clear to him that China was not going to commit to binding targets, he got Obama’s support for a two-stage process. This would involve a face-saving (but mostly meaningless) political accord at Copenhagen next month and the setting of a new deadline in late 2010 (after Congress has approved Obama’s ETS) for global agreement on targets, levels of funding and verification of commitments.

But even then China will continue to be the main stumbling block. China Daily quotes leader Hu Jintao pushing the idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. This is China-speak for ensuring so-called developed countries do more than developing countries to address climate change. Jintao is supporting in this by the Kyoto Protocol and he is right to suggest that the high carbon-usage countries should do their fair share. But this also gives China the excuse to continue its own high-polluting ways well beyond 2012.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd played down the Singapore disagreements in similar fashion to Stephen Harper. But his praise for the “tenor of the contribution” was undermined by a further weakening in his own tepid response to climate change. The federal government announced today it has excluded agriculture from the cap and trade scheme in a bid to win opposition support for the second reading of the ETS bill later this month. However even this latest move is unlikely to win over the divided Coalition over. Its pro-ETS members are still demanding further concessions in the coal and electricity sectors while anti-ETS members would even vote that down. It is likely that any bill that will pass the house this year will be a trading scheme in name only. In Australia, as everywhere else, national interest will trump the planet’s interest every time.

When kleptomaniacs collide: Old media declares war on new media

The sheer onion-ness of President Obama’s Nobel win yesterday has deflected international attention from the fact that a conference of media Canutes had just declared war on the Interwebs. The announcement came at a three day “world media summit” between Western media elites and Communist cadres that Japanese Kyodo News dubbed “Beijing’s Media Olympics”. Among others, Associated Press’s CEO Tom Curley and News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch joined Chinese leader Hu Jintao on stage in the Great Hall of the People to denounce the people for the way they used media content. (photo of Internet pioneer Vinson Cerf by centralasian)

Today, that bastion of free media, the Chinese state press agency Xinhua, published the full text of the World Media Summit Joint Statement. The Forbidden City conference theme of “Cooperation, Action, Win-Win and Development” was a signal that management doublespeak lay ahead. Most of the sentences failed Bill Easterley’s not-test of summit outcomes. The not-test asks whether it is possible to negate it and create a sentence that a sane person would utter. Who, for instance, would NOT hope that “media organisations around the world will provide accurate, objective, impartial and fair coverage of the world's news events.” There was nothing in the bland communiqué that suggested war was on its way.

But many of the media leaders at the conference departed from the prepared script. The boss of AP passed Easterley’s not-test with flying colours by saying many sentences that sane people will disagree with. For Tom Curley the problem was nothing less than regaining control from “crowd-sourcing Web services” such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook, search engines and blogs. They were all hurting his business model but he was not going to take it lying down. Curley said AP would “no longer tolerate the disconnect” between those who gather the news and those who “profit from it without supporting it."

78-year-old Rupert Murdoch was equally bellicose about the future. He described fellow conference invitee Google as “parasites” who make money off traditional media. He said the “philistine phase” of the digital age was almost over and “the aggregators and plagiarists” will soon be forced to pay for “the co-opting of our content." He saw the contest as a battle to the death between content creators “the people in this hall” and “content kleptomaniacs”.

But Murdoch needs to remember content kleptomania is a two-way sword. In August, his own Sky News weren’t initially keen to pay for using an eye-witness picture to a London police shooting a citizen journalist named Joe Neale had posted on Twitpic. It was not until Neale tweeted to the world “Newscorp use your photos without permission but have plans to charge for reading their content” that they came to the party and paid him £330.75.

New media won this particular battle but it will be harder to win the war. Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff said this week in Vanity Fair war is Murdoch’s natural state. The enemy is the Internet. When Wolff explained to Murdoch a news aggregator business he is involved with, the media mogul said “so you steal from me”. Wolff said Murdoch did not understand the Internet and his online investments were all failures (Delphi, iGuide, Myspace, Pagesix.com). Murdoch runs his business not on the basis of giving the consumer what he wants but through more old-fashioned methods of structural market domination. Wolff called him “a scold who can intimidate the market into doing what he wants it to do.”

Weston Kasova at Newsweek was unimpressed with the scolding Murdoch and Curley dished out at the Beijing conference. He called it “macho outrage” which was calculated to be quotable but is fake. Kasova said aggregators actually draw audiences towards traditional media sites and their advertisers. News Corp and AP could shut off this traffic with one small piece of code (User-agent: Googlebot. Disallow: /) but of course they don’t do it. “They'd rather blame someone else for their failure to compete in a changing marketplace,” says Kasova pointedly.

Link economy advocate Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine also condemned the “Proletariat of the Press”. He said the Beijing conference was a “suicidal attempt to protect outmoded models and fight the future”. Jarvis prefers a different template of the future based on “new efficiencies, specialization, targeting, [and] value that comes with the collaboration that the internet and its links enable.” It was the “irresponsible stewardship over journalism” that was killing newspapers not the Internet. “We are not kleptomaniacs,” said Jarvis. “We are the new (free) distribution.”

US media academic Robert McChesney puts the question more pointedly in a rare old media act of contrition from Le Monde Diplomatique. McChesney wondered when the debate took place which ratified large corporations as the guardians of American media. “When, exactly, did Americans approve of the idea that a handful of corporations selling advertising were the proper stewards of the media or that it was inappropriate to ever question their power?” he asked. “When had the American people ratified the corporate media system as the proper one for the United States?” The answer is, of course, “before the Internet arrived”.

Let the war commence.

Xinjiang’s history of oppression

Hundreds of Uighurs rallied in Kazakhstan yesterday to call for the independence of Xinjiang from China and to mourn the 200 people killed in clashes in Urumchi with authorities last month. Most Uighurs in Xinjiang don't go as far as the Kazakh protesters and simply want be recognised within the federation. China says that the Han were mainly the victims of the most recent clashes but their claims simply cannot be trusted in this matter. Their clumsy attempts to shut down Rebiya Kadeer’s visit to Australia are the latest in a long history of subjugating the Uighur population in China’s westernmost province by whatever means possible including the media.

The large, sparsely populated land the Uighurs call home has always been at the crossroads of Chinese and Muslim culture. Han Chinese influence pre-dates Islam by a thousand years. Chinese leaders they have ruled the province on and off since then. But the startling rise of Islam beginning in 934AD complicated political allegiances for the next millenium. In 1877, the Chinese empire asserted its control of what it called Sinkiang (Xinjiang) Province. When after the Manchus were overthrown in 1911, China settled in to a long period of fractured rule. Xinjiang was ruled by a succession of mostly Chinese warlords who were hated by the local Uighur population. The province was ravaged by typhus and then ethnic wars in the 1930s until it was brought to an end by the Russians. The Red Army invaded in 1934 and Stalin saw Xinjiang as a counterbalance to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The USSR exploited Xinjiang for its oil and the province would remain under Soviet control until 1942.

With Russia engaged with the Nazis on three fronts, local Muslim leaders took the opportunity to take control. They renamed the territory the Eastern Turkestan Republic. The new ETR fought against Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang with Russian support. In the summer of 1949 most of the new republic’s leaders were killed in a plane crash and a third enemy took most advantage. Communist Party forces overran the province from the east in what Chinese history books now call a “liberation”. While there still great hostility between local Han Chinese and Uighurs, the Communist regime was generally accepted, partially because they were the first rulers to bring peace to the area in 40 years.

Mao’s philosophy was to integrate the Uighurs into the Chinese political system. But they were never trusted by local administrators and Xinjiang maintained the impression of a colony. There were forced labour camps, forced re-settlement, an influx of poor Han Chinese, and discrimination against Muslim practices. Mao’s portrait was hung in every mosque, Shari’a law was abolished and the teachings of imams were converted into pro-Communist lectures. In 1958, China insisted Xinjiang drop its use of the Cyrillic alphabet and use a Roman one with a few Chinese words. The effect was to weaken Uighur identity, especially across generations brought up with different alphabets.

Nothing much changed until the Deng-inspired reforms of the early 1980s. China officially acknowledged Uighurs were Turkic in origin, they allow mosques to be re-opened and they permitted some Muslim literature. This brief flower of openness ended with the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. Xinjiang had its own violent riots at the time with Muslims protesting about their lack of religious rights. A frightened China cracked down hard on the province, banned many Muslim practices (including attending mosques and observing Ramadan). They also introduced the one child policy which Muslims were previously exempt from and enforced it with compulsory sterilisations and late-term abortions.

Dissent was not tolerated. In 1990 authorities opened fire with helicopter gunships and mortars on a major protest at Baren. At least 50 people were killed. The Chinese justified the killing on the grounds the protesters were calling for jihad and the expulsion of the Han. After Baren, China stepped up its military presence in the province and placed cameras in all mosques. Relations worsened and another serious riot erupted in 1997 at Gulja caused by the tinder of the police arrest of two religious students. Despite a crackdown in which several people died, rioting continued for days afterwards and the city was sealed off for two weeks.

Uighur separatists gathered renewed vigour from Gulja. They responded with the anger of the poor man's air force - crude attacks against soft targets including one bomb in Beijing. In 2000, 60 people were killed in a massive explosion in the provincial capital Urumchi. The Chinese media reported it as an accident but it was more likely a truck bomb. After 9/11 gave this behaviour a bad name, China was able to use the western trope of a “war on terrorism” to justify further crackdowns on Xinjiang. China is worried by what it sees as unreasonable Islamic fanaticism, and particularly fears Hizb Ut-Tahrir, a growing pan-Central Asia movement which wants to establish a single caliphate from Xinjiang to the Caucasus. But most Muslims in Xinjiang have less grandiose ambitions. They want a decent life. While the Communist regime insisted on training, education and efficiency, they ignored the real issues of migration, unemployment, corruption, and lack of democracy that were alienating the Muslim population.

The Uighurs’ ultimate fear is extermination. In 1949, Xinjiang had 5 million Uighurs and 300,000 Han. Fifty years later it was 19 million to 12. And with increasing internal immigration and aggressive policing of the “one child policy” Uighurs fear they are moving ever closer to demographic suicide. Chinese policy experts don't help with patronising attitudes. They continue to refer to the autonomous regions as “backward ethnic-minority areas” and say the Han would help them “accelerate development and achieve common prosperity". But prosperity remains uncommon in Xinjiang and what economic benefits that have occurred have accrued to the immigrants. It is hardly surprising then that Uighur resistance to what they see as an occupation is growing.

Meddling in internal affairs: Rebiya Kadeer, China and the MIFF

On the afternoon of 5 July internal affairs in the far north west of China turned violent and ugly. Thousands of angry citizens had taken to the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang to protest the killing of two Uyghur workers in Guangdong. Suddenly there was a flashpoint and matters turned violent. Fights led to gunfire. Eventually 184 people died, and another 1,600 were injured. Both Han and Uyghur alike suffered amid claim and counter-claim whose fault it was. It was the worst ethnic riot in China in decades.

China was anxious to blame the separatist movement for the riot. “The violence was masterminded by the separatist World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer”, exclaimed the official state mouthpiece Xinhua. Though their nominated culprit was inconveniently located in North America at the time, the regime seemed happier to scapegoat her rather than scrutinise the role played by the thousands of soldiers it had sent in to the city.

China also scolded Muslim Turkey for expressing its anger over events affecting their ethnic Turkic brothers and sisters in Xinjiang. They were denounced, alongside all other foreign critics, in the time-honoured fashion of “meddling in internal affairs”.

Perhaps China now considers Melbourne as an internal affair. Last week it demanded the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) censor a film about Kadeer. On Friday, Chinese consular officials telephoned Festival director Richard Moore and asked him to justify its inclusion of a film about the “criminal” Rebiya Kadeer in the festival. China urged Moore to withdraw the documentary "Ten Conditions of Love" by Melbourne film-maker Jeff Daniels about the exiled Uyghur.

Moore was nonplussed. “I didn't have any reason to justify the inclusion of the film in the festival,” the MIFF director told the consulate. Nor did he need one. The film will be rightly shown - its cinematic merit is justified on the subject matter alone. Melbourne will get the opportunity to see the documentary in a fortnight. Kadeer will be here herself to talk about it.

She currently lives in Washington State where the vastness of the Pacific separates her from China. Xinjiang is further away still. Rebiya Kadeer was a successful businesswoman and an activist for a people that were being swamped in their homeland by Han Chinese. In the 1990s she founded and directed a large trading company in north-western China. She was not only a champion for the rights of Uyghurs but became one of the most prominent women’s rights advocate in all of China. These activities came to an abrupt halt in August 1999. She was arrested and charged with harming national security. In a charge that sounds as disturbingly vague as that of Stern Hu affair, Kadeer was thought to be “providing secret information to foreigners”. Thumbing their nose at America, Chinese authorities waited until she was about to meet a group of US congressional staff on an official visit to China before making the arrest.

She was found guilty and got eight years. It was reduced to seven in 2004.

In 2005 she was released as part of a deal with the US on the grounds of “medical treatment”. Kadeer has now recovered. But the medical treatment that Kadeer really wants is the healing of her oppressed people.

The Christian Science Monitor interviewed Kadeer last week. She told them the riot wasn’t her fault. The Uyghurs were provoked by the police, she said. She also thought that plain clothed agents launched the riot as a false flag operation to give China the excuse to justify a larger crackdown. Maybe or maybe not - but it is no less plausible than saying she launched it.

Kadeer knows the old Chinese Communist state was bad. But the current model is worse: the Party has shred the last vestige of political philosophy in a naked grab to maintain power. It now relies on nationalism for fuel. China aggressively promotes its vision of Greater China and uses western mediatisation methods to enforce the vision on the homeland.

The most important skill China learned from the West was how to control your image. This is a primary consideration of politicians the world over. Former British civil servant Christopher Foster told in 2006 how media pressures had changed New Labour’s Cabinet meetings. The meetings were shorter and were no longer about decision making but instead reviewing the media impact of decisions already made.

The Chinese have also made a decision. Xinjiang is an internal province. But to the World Uyghur Congress the area is East Turkistan. With an articulate spokesperson like Kadeer on the loose, China knew it would be difficult to sell its message. Kadeer was careful never to attack the regime (she left that to her husband Sidik Rouzi). Instead her tactic was to get under their skin realising the Chinese were not leaving East Turkestan any time soon.

“I am extremely grateful for both Han and Uyghurs that protected each other in the riots,” she told CSM last week. “That should be the true relationship we should have with each other. But this Chinese government has created such a tragic situation, that it is not happening, generally, as it could.”

She is right. As state security, the Chinese Government were ultimately responsible for the deaths in Urumqi. This outcome is something they may repent in leisure. They may not be able to control ethnic tensions they have created even with their media sophistication.

The MIFF deserve praise for not buckling to the pressure. Kadeer is an important voice that speaks for more than just Uyghur values.

“Under Mao, during the Cultural Revolution, Uyghurs were badly treated.” Rebiya said. “But [at least] we could speak our language.”