China's largest inland lake dries up as country battles drought

China's largest inland lake has disappeared in worst drought to hit the centre and east of the country for more than half a century.

A fishing boat is stranded on the grass lake bed of Poyang Lake Photo: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai

9:36PM BST 30 May 2011

The volume of water in Poyang lake in Jiangxi province, normally 100 miles-long and 10 miles-wide, is now a tenth of its normal level, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.

Fishing boats and house boats have been left stranded on a vast stretch of the lake bed, now a lush grassland.

The drought, which has seen no rainfall for two months, has struck the central Chinese provinces that are known as the country's "home of rice and fish".

Almost half of all the country's rice fields have been affected and four million people do not have access to drinking water.

At Honghu Lake, in Hubei province, fish farmers have seen 80 per cent of their stocks die. "More than 20,000 acres of fish farms have been severely damaged," said Zou Haibin, the local Communist party secretary in Dianhe, to Xinhua.

"I was born in 1967 and have never seen anything like this," added Li Liangjun, a fish farmer in Dianhe. "Even my father has never seen anything like it. It has not rained for nearly three months".

The drought has pushed up vegetable prices in major cities by as much as 30 per cent, and the government has warned that if it continues it may have an effect on this year's rice harvest.

However, the Chinese weather bureau has warned there is no rain in sight and that it expects the drought to continue until early June.

Also of note, see this link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8321368/Chinas-drought-could-have-devastating-consequences.html

Bloomberg: U.S. Says Settling South China Sea Disputes 'Leading Diplomatic Priority'

Bloomberg.com

July 23, 2010

By Daniel Ten Kate and Nicole Gaouette, Bloomberg News

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said resolving territorial disputes in waters off China’s coast is “a leading diplomatic priority” as the U.S. strengthens Asian defense ties in the face of a Chinese naval buildup.

Ending disagreements in the South China Sea “is pivotal to regional stability,” Clinton told the 27-member Asean Regional Forum in Hanoi today, according to a transcript provided by the State Department. She is set to meet later today with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

Clinton yesterday discussed military cooperation with Vietnam and Defense Secretary Robert Gates restored ties with special forces in Indonesia. The two countries border the South China Sea, which contains sea corridors vital to world trade, and where U.S. officials say China has become more assertive.

China considers the entire South China Sea as its own, dismissing rival claims, and is building a blue-water fleet to project power beyond its own borders. China told some international oil and gas companies to halt exploration in offshore areas that Vietnam considers part of its territory, a U.S. official told Congress last year.

“The United States supports a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion,” Clinton said. “We oppose the use or threat of force by any claimant.”

President Barack Obama invited leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Washington in the autumn for a second summit with the bloc, Clinton said. Asean includes Myanmar, which Clinton criticized for locking up political prisoners and possibly violating United Nations resolutions concerning North Korea.

China formally disputed the claims of Vietnam and Malaysia to part of the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands when it submitted a map to the United Nations last year asserting ownership over most of the sea. Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan also lay claim to all or part of the island chain, which may contain oil and gas reserves.

Asean foreign ministers are negotiating an agreement with China on a code of conduct in the sea to build on a 2002 accord that called for disputes to be resolved peacefully. Ministers hope the deal can be concluded by year’s end and be improved at a later date, Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said yesterday.

Open shipping lanes in the sea are “really the lifeline of our commerce, of our transport for all of us,” Surin told reporters in Hanoi. China, Japan and South Korea “recognize that 85 to 90 percent of their energy source comes either from or through Southeast Asia,” he said.

Estimates of oil and gas reserves vary, with some Chinese studies suggesting the waters contain more oil than Iran and more natural gas than Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc are among companies that have halted projects in the sea because of China’s objections, according to U.S. government agencies.

The U.S. plans to “facilitate initiatives and confidence-building measures” to bridge the gap between parties in the sea, which stretches from Singapore to the Strait of Taiwan, Clinton said, without elaborating. China cut off military ties with the U.S. in January over arms sales to Taiwan.

Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two days ago that the inability to speak directly with Chinese military leaders was a cause for concern.

China’s long-term military ambition is “not open, it’s not transparent,” he told U.S. troops in South Korea. “Where are they headed and why?”

China doesn’t see U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province, as “normal,” General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said in Singapore last month.

“The development of China’s national defense capabilities is not aimed at challenging, threatening or invading any other country but at, first and foremost, maintaining its own security,” he said.

Chinese officials told U.S. counterparts in March they consider the sea a “core interest” on par with Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, Kyodo News reported on July 3, citing unidentified officials.

China has criticized joint naval drills between the U.S. and South Korea aimed at deterring North Korea, which the two countries blame for sinking a South Korean warship in March in an attack that killed 46 people.

Oppression in Tibet: Is it about mainland Tibet or natural resources in Tibet?

The director of Asia America Initiative (AAI), Mr. Albert Santoli, has written a brief about the real intention of China in Tibet. He argues that the Chinese are more interested in controling natural resources in Tibet. He writes:

"The struggle for survival of the Tibetan people under Chinese occupation has been largely depicted as a human rights tragedy. There is, however, a significant strategic dimension to China's behavior.
Beijing's control of Tibet's vast landscape, its water resources, mineral and natural wealth, as well as its strategic location on "the roof of the world," is a major component of China's plans for expanded political, military and economic influence on a global scale"

Here are some of the little know facts about Tibet

• Tibet is the largest region of China, encompassing one-eighth of the empirical land mass. This does not include the historical and resource-rich Tibetan provinces of Kham and Amdo, which are larger than the Chinese official Tibet Autonomous Region, and were annexed by China after the 1950 invasion.
• Deposits of uranium in the hills around Lhasa are considered the largest in the world. Tibet is also rich in gold, copper, zinc, lithium and other scarce minerals.
• There are at least three major nuclear weapons bases in Tibet. The "Ninth Academy," China's primary nuclear weapons research and design facility is located in Haibei on the Tibetan plateau.
• Deforestation by Chinese loggers is rampant. At least 50 percent of Tibet's ancient forests have been destroyed, causing severe environmental damage, flooding and ecological devastation.
  Tibetans are now a minority population in the capitol Lhasa and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and are vastly outnumbered in the annexed territories. In the Amdo region, now the Chinese Qinghai province, in 1953 there were only 100,000 Han Chinese. According to the official Chinese Statistical Yearbook, in 1985 there were 2.5 million Chinese compared to only 750,000 thousand Tibetans.
• The ethnic ratio has gotten much more out of balance since 1992, when Deng Xiaoping began advocating the settlement of Han Chinese from other regions to Tibet and the Muslim Xinjiang region. Han settlers were given economic subsidies and other incentives and had houses and shops built for them by the government.
• The UN and the West have enabled and funded this cultural genocide by investing in the railroad into Tibet, which was opened in 2006. Under "economic development," as well as the relocation of thousands at least 130,000 Han settlers into the fertile Lhasa Valley.