Belém—30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). Credit: Antônio Scorza/COP30

By Erik Solheim
OSLO, Norway, Nov 11 2025 (IPS)

When world leaders now gather in Belém, Brazil for the UN climate conference, expectations will be modest. Few believe the meeting will produce any breakthroughs. The United States is retreating from climate engagement. Europe is distracted. The UN is struggling to keep relevant in the 21st century.

But step outside the negotiation tents, and a different story unfolds—one of quiet revolutions, technological leaps, and a new geography of leadership. The green transformation of the world is no longer being designed in Western capitals. It is being built, at scale, in the Global South.

Ten years ago, anyone seeking inspiration on climate policy went to Brussels, Berlin or Paris. Today, you go to Beijing, Delhi or Jakarta. The center of gravity has shifted. China and India are now the twin engines of the global green economy, with Brazil, Vietnam and Indonesia closely behind.

Erik Solheim

China has made the green transition its biggest business opportunity, turning green action into jobs, prosperity and global leadership. China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels.

India, too, is reshaping what green development looks like. I was in Andhra Pradesh last month, when I visited a wonderful six-gigawatt integrated energy park—solar, wind, and pumped storage. It delivers round-the-clock clean power. There is nothing like that in the West. In another state, Tamil Nadu, an ecotourism circuit is protecting mangroves and marine ecosystems while creating local jobs in tourism. The western state of Gujarat, long a laboratory for industrial innovation, has committed to 100 gigawatts of renewables by 2030, with the captains of Indian business – Adani and Reliance – driving large-scale solar and wind investments with the state government.

These are not pilot projects. They are national strategies. And they are succeeding because the economics have flipped.

The cost of solar power has fallen by over 90 percent in the last decade, largely thanks to the intense competition between Chinese solar companies. Battery storage is now competitive with fossil fuels. What was once an environmental aspiration has become a financial inevitability. In Indian Gujarat, solar-plus-storage projects are already cheaper than coal. Switching to clean energy is no longer a cost—it is a saving.

That is why climate action today is driven not by diplomacy, but by economics. The question is no longer if countries will go green, but who will own the technologies and industries that make it possible.

Europe, long the moral voice of the climate agenda, now risks losing the industrial race. After years of blocking imports from developing countries on grounds of “inferior” green quality, it now complains that Chinese electric vehicles are too good— too cheap and too efficient. Europe cannot have it both ways. The world cannot build a green transition behind protectionist walls. The markets must open to the best technologies, wherever they are made.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil understands this new reality. That is why he chose Belém, deep in the Amazon, as the site for climate talks. The location itself is a statement: the future of climate policy lies in protecting the rainforests and empowering the people who live within them.

Forests are not just carbon sinks; they are living economies. When I was Norway’s environment minister, we partnered with Brazil and Indonesia to reward them for reducing deforestation. Later, Guyana joined our effort—a small South American nation where nearly the entire population is of Indian or African origin.

Guyana has since turned conservation into currency. Under its jurisdictional REDD+ programme, the country now sells verified carbon credits through the global aviation market known as CORSIA. In the third quarter of this year, these credits traded at USD 22.55 per tonne of CO₂ equivalent, with around one million credits sold through a procurement event led by IATA and Mercuria.

The proceeds go directly to forest communities—building schools, improving digital access, and funding small enterprises. It is proof that the carbon market can deliver real value when tied to real lives. You cannot protect nature against the will of local people. You can only protect it with them. Last year in Guyana, I watched children play soccer and cricket beneath the jungle canopy—a glimpse of life thriving in harmony with the forest, not at its expense.

That, ultimately, is what Belém should represent: not another round of procedural debates, but a vision for linking markets, nature and livelihoods.

The Global South has also sidestepped one of the West’s greatest political failures: climate denial. In India, there is no major political party—or public figure, cricket star or Bollywood artist—questioning the reality of climate change. Leaders may differ on ideology, but not on this. Across Asia, from China to Indonesia, climate action unites rather than divides. Because here, ecology and economy move together.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India puts it simply: by going green, we also go prosperous. President Xi Jinping of China and President Lula of Brazil share that same message—a vision that draws people in, instead of lecturing them. It is this integration of growth and sustainability that explains why the Global South is moving faster than most of the developed world.

None of this means diplomacy is irrelevant. The UN still matters. But its institutions must evolve to reflect the realities of the 21st century. The Security Council, frozen in 1945, still excludes India and Africa from permanent membership. Without reform, multilateralism risks losing its meaning.

Yet, while negotiations stall, transformation continues. From solar parks in Gujarat to high-speed rail across China, from mangrove tourism in Tamil Nadu to carbon markets in Guyana—climate leadership is happening in real economies, not in press releases.

Belém will not deliver a grand agreement. But it doesn’t need to. The world is already moving—faster than our diplomats.

The story of Belem will not be written in communiqués, but in kilowatts, credits, and communities.

The real climate leaders are no longer in Washington or Brussels.

They are in Beijing, Delhi, São Paulo, and Georgetown.

The future of climate action is already here.

It just speaks with a southern accent.

The author is the former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and Norway’s Minister for Environment and International Development.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

The mega-ship BYD Shenzhen arrived on May 28 at the port of Itajaí in southern Brazil, carrying 7,292 electric vehicles from the Chinese company BYD. It set a record for this type of transport, with unloading taking four days. Credit: Porto de Itajaí

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 7 2025 (IPS)

Residents near the port of Itajaí in southern Brazil celebrated the arrival of 7,292 electric and hybrid vehicles from China aboard the ship BYD Shenzhen on May 28 as a “historic event,” with unloading taking four days. 

It was a record in maritime vehicle transport, but similar operations had already occurred in Brazil and other Latin American countries. A year earlier, the port of Suape in northeastern Brazil received 5,459 units also from BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer."China has been pivotal... Beyond providing more affordable vehicles, its technological leadership and mass production capacity have shaped global trends." —Cristóbal Sarmiento.

China’s automotive industry, led by BYD, is the decisive factor driving electric mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Over the past four years, the number of light electric vehicles in the region has nearly doubled annually, with a 187% jump in 2024, reaching 444,071 by the end of December, according to the Latin American Energy Organization (Olade), whose data excludes non-plug-in hybrids.

This is relatively small, representing only 0.7% of the world’s electric vehicle fleet and 0.3% of the region’s total light vehicles, as noted in Olade’s technical report in May. But it signals great expansion potential, now being fueled by Chinese vehicles.

Lower prices and improving quality make Chinese units competitive amid growing demand for transport electrification in the region, according to Fitzgerald Cantero, Director of Studies, Projects, and Information at Olade.

With their exports to the U.S. and the European Union (EU) practically blocked by 100% and 45.3% tariffs, respectively, Chinese electric vehicles see Latin America as “an attractive market” that remains open, along with Asia, he reasoned.

Industrial Hub of Camaçari in Bahia, northeastern Brazil, where BYD built its plant for producing electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, batteries, and auto parts. Spanning 460 hectares, it allows for expansions to double production to 300,000 vehicles per year. Part of the facilities were purchased from U.S. automaker Ford, which left the country. Credit: BYD

Renewable Energy and Lithium as Attractions 

An additional Latin American attraction is its abundance of renewable energy, Cantero told IPS by phone from Quito, Olade’s headquarters. Using sustainable electricity is essential to meet the goal of decarbonizing transport and reducing planet-warming emissions.

Moreover, some countries in the region are rich in minerals needed for vehicle electrification, such as lithium for batteries, copper for electrical components, and rare earths containing 17 chemical elements used in magnets for electric car motors, wind turbines, and other strategic technologies.

Thus, the region has become a priority for China, the automotive superpower where 12.87 million electric passenger vehicles were sold in 2024, plus 2.2 million exported—figures close to half of all new cars sold domestically and abroad, according to data compiled by Olade.

China’s leadership is more than absolute, as the next powers—the EU and the U.S.—produced only 2.4 million and 1.1 million electric vehicles, respectively, in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency.

Olade estimates that China accounted for over 75% of global electric vehicle sales. This share is likely to grow, as the European market has stagnated and the U.S. has rolled back its environmental policies.

“The (U.S.) electric vehicle industry has been discouraged by new legislation, which will have a dramatic impact on consumer preferences,” said Margaret Myers, director of the Asia and Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue.

Meanwhile, China is boosting exports of its production surplus, particularly to Global South markets with fewer import restrictions, she noted.

For China, “electric vehicle production is part of a broader effort to improve its economy and secure dominance in key industries, including EVs and their batteries, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, bioscience, and other priorities,” Myers concluded to IPS from Washington.

Electric trucks made in China at the second edition of the International Chinese Auto Expo, held from July 24 to 27 at an events center in Santiago, Chile. These cargo vehicles began operating in large mining facilities and urban areas in Chile and are now becoming more widespread nationwide. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Large Markets Concentrate Sales 

For now, Latin America remains a net importer. Brazil and Mexico are the largest markets, accounting for 73.6% of electrified vehicle sales (including fully electric, plug-in hybrid, and non-plug-in hybrid models) in the region, according to data from the Latin American Association of Automotive Distributors (Aladda), headquartered in Buenos Aires.

Their share of the population is much smaller. Brazil, with 212 million people, and Mexico, with 130 million, make up just 51.2% of Latin America and the Caribbean’s 668 million inhabitants.

Argentina, in fourth place with 47 million people, does not rank among the top eight in motor transport electrification. Colombia, the third most populous with 53 million, is also third in Aladda’s ranking.

Colombia and Chile lead in electric buses, with 1,590 and 2,600 operating in their cities as of December 2024, respectively, according to Olade. Brazil, despite its much larger population, has only 900—far fewer than Chile, a country of just 18.5 million people.

A Chinese electric vehicle charges its battery at a dealership in south-central Mexico City. Sales of Chinese-made electric vehicles have grown in this Latin American country due to their lower prices compared to Western brands and financing options. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Three Waves

“The evolution of electromobility in Chile had its first wave between 2017 and 2020, focused on public transportation—specifically electric bus systems,” recalled Cristóbal Sarmiento Laurel, Director of Energy and Sustainable Development at the private Diego Portales University.

The goal was to introduce the new technology in a “more feasible way, since buses operate on controlled routes and schedules, making charging planning easier,” he explained. BYD was the key player in this phase.

The second wave, starting in 2021, saw a “steady rise in sales of light hybrid and fully electric vehicles, with growing market presence from Chinese manufacturers like BYD, Maxus, JA, DFSK, and Changan, which quickly gained ground in the domestic market,” he added.

“China has been pivotal in this journey. Beyond providing more affordable vehicles, its technological leadership and mass production capacity have shaped global trends. For Chile, this relationship isn’t just a commercial opportunity but also a concrete way to accelerate the energy transition,” Sarmiento emphasized.

“Transport accounts for 33.3% of Chile’s energy consumption, according to the National Energy Balance, and relies almost entirely on fossil fuels”, therefore, electrification helps mitigate climate change, Sarmiento told IPS in Santiago.

“Not using fossil fuels is a solution,” but electrified cars “promote individual mobility rather than transforming transportation systems or boosting public transit,” noted Antonio del Río, a researcher at the Renewable Energy Institute of Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

More electric buses—whether Chinese or from other origins—are the way forward, he argued. “The cost per kilometer for an electric vehicle is 60% lower than a conventional car,” he said to IPS in Mexico City.

By the end of 2024, Mexico had only 780 electric buses, according to Olade data—half as many as Colombia, or a quarter per capita.

Assembly line of electric and hybrid vehicles at BYD’s Camaçari plant in northeastern Brazil, which will initially produce 150,000 vehicles annually with potential to double output. The electric vehicle market has grown rapidly in Brazil and Latin America over the past four years. With mass domestic production, Brazil could become an export hub for these advanced-technology vehicles. Credit: BYD

Mexico mirrored the region’s surge in electrified vehicle sales, which reached 412,493 units in 2024, up 174.9% from 2022, according to Aladda. Brazil led growth among major countries with a 256.2% increase, while Mexico saw 142.2%.

Despite the sharp rise, electrified vehicles still represent a small share of total sales: 8.1% regionally on average, 6.8% in Brazil, and 6.1% in Chile in 2024. Colombia stands out at 25.8%.

The most dramatic two-year growth—665.3% regionally—was in plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), followed by pure electric vehicles (EVs) at 403%. Non-plug-in hybrids (HEVs) lost momentum in Brazil but grew in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, especially in 2024.

Another notable trend is the diversity of Chinese brands—23 in both Mexico and Chile. Chile has 52 brands total, including Chinese and others, according to Rodrigo Salcedo, president of Chile’s  Electric Vehicle Trade Association (Avec).

The influx of new brands has heightened competition, bringing more options, models, and prices that are gradually approaching those of conventional cars. However, “there’s a gap,” lamented Salcedo, pointing to the lack of information, workshops, and trained technicians for maintenance—except for buses, which benefit from Chinese technicians in Chile.

BYD cars for sale and test drives at an Itavema dealership, a BYD sales network, in Botafogo, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Third Wave 

Meanwhile, a third wave of electric mobility is emerging in the region, following the initial phases of electric buses and the mass availability of light vehicles at falling prices. This new phase involves the establishment of assembly plants, including Chinese ones.

In Brazil, two Chinese automakers have begun local production of electrified vehicles. BYD (short for Build Your Dreams) started production in July at its assembly plant in Camaçari, Bahia, rolling out three models—one fully electric and two plug-in hybrids. And GWM (Great Wall Motors) is set to begin production this semester in Iracemápolis, São Paulo.

Symbolically, both manufacturers took over former plants of traditional automakers—Ford (U.S.) and Mercedes-Benz (Germany), respectively.

While Chinese-branded cars have been produced in Brazil since 2017 (such as those from the Caoa-Chery joint venture in Anápolis, Goiás), their electrified models, introduced in 2019, were limited in volume.

BYD’s plant marks a new era, designed to assemble 150,000 units annually initially, with plans to double that capacity. The project also includes battery and auto parts production, along with a logistics system, explained Mauro Pereira, general superintendent of Camaçari’s Industrial Development Committee (Cofic).

Cofic manages the Camaçari Industrial Park to create the best operating conditions for 88 local companies, including BYD.

“BYD is putting Brazil at the forefront of vehicle technology,” Pereira stated, anticipating 20,000 direct jobs and triple that in indirect employment. The plant could also turn Brazil into an export hub for vehicles and components, including batteries, to Latin America and possibly Europe.

The Camaçari plant benefited from land incentives and tax breaks, but the real driver was Brazil’s import tariffs on electric vehicles, introduced in January 2024. Starting at 10% (slightly higher for hybrids), they will gradually rise to 35% by 2027.

Chinese new-energy vehicles are cutting costs with advanced, efficient, and intelligent technologies—”they’re smartphones on wheels,” said Thiago Sugahara, VP of the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association and GWM’s institutional relations manager. Users can control and monitor their cars remotely and safely via smartphone, he explained.

“An electric car is a battery with four wheels,” quipped Ana Lia Rojas, head of Chile’s Renewable Energy and Storage Association (Acera), highlighting both the vehicle’s key component —still  costly—,  and their potential to support power grids.

Colbert Marques, a sales consultant at Itavema (a BYD dealership network), noted that Chinese manufacturers halved EV prices. Today, models start at just over US$20,000, forcing Western brands to slash prices to stay competitive.

Buyers of EVs and hybrids “are more informed and tech-savvy, even older ones,” he observed, confident in his decision to switch to BYD in 2023, having driven traditional vehicles for 18 years.

With contributions from Orlando Milesi (Chile) and Emilio Godoy (Mexico)

The Cauchari Solar Plant in Jujuy, Argentina, located 4,000 meters above sea level with over one million panels, was built with Chinese capital, engineering, and materials. Credit: Casa Rosada

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 18 2025 (IPS)

China, with its investments, products, technology, and innovation focused on solar and wind farms in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as on electricity networks and services, stands out as a driving force for the region’s shift toward energy less reliant on fossil fuels and increasingly cleaner and greener. 

Between 2010 and 2024, China invested US$33.69 billion in renewables in the region, with 70 transactions for as many projects, 54 of which were in non-hydroelectric energy, totaling US$13.138 billion.

These figures alone “highlight China’s importance in supporting the region’s energy transition, both through investments and infrastructure projects,” Enrique Dussel Peters, coordinator of the Latin America and the Caribbean Academic Network on China (RedALC-China), told IPS from Mexico City.“For China, Latin America as a whole is a market that geographically presents many opportunities; first, due to the availability of natural resources, which include critical minerals, and features such as access to water and natural and renewable energy sources”: Ana Lía Rojas.

Beyond money, China “has the capacity to develop technology, implement it, and scale it at the required speed,” said Ana Lia Rojas, executive director of the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Storage (Acera).

In a dialogue with IPS in Santiago, Chile, Rojas cited American economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and a United Nations advisor, who has argued that, in short, “the energy transition is Chinese.”

Sachs views China as a “leader in key technologies that will be essential over the next 25 years: photovoltaics, wind, modular nuclear, long-distance energy transmission, 5G (now 5.5G), batteries, electric vehicles, and others.”

The movement toward Latin America has been relentless. While there were no Chinese investments in renewable energy in the region between 2000 and 2009, eight emerged from 2010 to 2014, totaling US$3.298 billion and generating 6,000 jobs, according to RedALC’s Investment Monitor.

Between 2015 and 2019, 25 projects with Chinese financing materialized, totaling US$19.568 billion and creating 9,300 jobs. In the 2020-2024 period, 37 transactions were completed, amounting to US$10.824 billion and generating 15,000 jobs.

Investment volumes dipped in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a revealing contrast emerged: 35 of the 37 renewable energy transactions during this five-year period went to non-hydroelectric projects.

The Lagoinha Solar Complex, inaugurated in July this year and owned by the Brazilian subsidiary of Chinese group CGN. Spanning 304 hectares in Ceará state, northeastern Brazil, it features 337,000 panels that will provide electricity to 240,000 households. Credit: Government of Ceará

Interests and challenges converge

The International Energy Agency (IEA, representing major industrialized consumers) reports a “soaring increase in Chinese clean energy investments globally, particularly in renewables,” surpassing US$625 billion in 2024—nearly double 2015 levels and accounting for 30% of the world’s total, cementing China’s leadership.

Traditionally dominated by state-owned enterprises backed by public funding, China’s energy investment landscape is shifting, with the government increasingly encouraging private sector participation.

Meanwhile, Latin America and the Caribbean saw roughly US$70 billion invested in renewables from 2015 to 2024, of which over US$30.3 billion (43%) came from China, according to the IEA.

Yet the agency notes that despite steady growth in renewable investments, the region represents just 5% of global privately funded clean energy investment—a reflection of high interest rates, scarce long-term financing, and costly public debt.

This highlights the intersection between the region’s needs and challenges and what Dussel Peters describes as China’s strategic focus on technological development and disruptive innovations, from nanomanufacturing to aerospace, including new energy sources.

Chinese investment in renewables “delivers multiple benefits by advancing energy sustainability, supporting the transition to a low-carbon grid, providing critical technology, and creating skilled jobs,” Chilean academic Rodrigo Cáceres told IPS in Santiago.

A researcher at  Diego Portales University’s Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, Cáceres observes China’s “sustained commitment” in areas like energy storage, smart grids, and green hydrogen, framing the China-Latin America relationship as “strategic and long-term.”

A key factor enabling this enduring partnership is the vast territorial, demographic, and resource potential Latin America and the Caribbean offers China. “If we look at the per capita income we have in the region and compare it with China’s, we have more or less the same. But Latin America has half the population of China and twice the territory of China,” observed Rojas.

Twice the territory “means that projects can be deployed differently than in the rest of the world,” noted the director of Acera.

According to Rojas, “it is evident that, for China, Latin America as a whole is a market that geographically presents many opportunities; first, due to the availability of natural resources, which include critical minerals, and features such as access to water and natural and renewable energy sources.”

“Second, because it is clearly a less densely populated region, which provides a certain degree of flexibility or freedom to develop projects in the territory that will aid the energy transition, not only for local or national economies but for the world,”she said.

The Tanque Novo Wind Complex in Bahia, Brazil, developed by Chinese group CGN. It consists of seven parks with 40 wind turbines, an installed capacity of 180 MW, and can serve 430,000 residents. Credit: Tanque Novo

Brazil, a leading hub 

In Brazil, China’s presence in the electricity sector “is deep and strategic, the result of more than a decade of investments by large state-owned companies such as State Grid and China Three Gorges (CTG),” said Tulio Cariello, research director at the Brazil-China Business Council.

“In fact, it has become the main destination for these companies’ assets outside China. Both State Grid and CTG have the majority of their international investments in Brazil, reflecting the country’s structural importance in their global projection,” Cariello told IPS in Rio de Janeiro.

State Grid is now a major electricity transmission operator in Brazil, and its massive entry into that market was solidified with the acquisition in 2016-2018 of CPFL Energia (formerly Companhia Paulista de Força e Luz), one of the country’s leading power distribution companies.

Another flagship project led by State Grid was the construction of ultra-high-voltage transmission systems, connecting the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant in the Amazon (11,200 MW) with the Southeast region, which has the highest electricity demand.

Combined, solar and wind energy sources account for a quarter of Brazil’s electricity matrix, according to its National Energy Balance.

By the end of 2024, Brazil’s installed wind power capacity—over 16% of the national electricity matrix—reached 33.7 gigawatts, with 1,103 wind farms and 11,720 wind turbines. By 2032, cumulative new installed capacity is projected to reach 56 GW.

Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Goldwind established its first factory outside China last year in Bahia, in Brazil’s Northeast, with an investment of over US$20 million to produce 150 turbines annually, ranging from 5.3 MW to 7.5 MW. This decision demonstrates strong confidence in the Brazilian market.

The volume of Chinese investment in Brazil between 2007 and 2023 reached US$73.3 billion—US$33.2 billion in the electricity sector—with 264 confirmed projects, and is on track to reach US$123.2 billion with 342 projects.

Regarding the impact of investments in renewable energy, “it can be seen on several fronts: increased generation and transmission capacity, modernization of critical infrastructure, greater stability in power supply, and job creation and technology transfer,” said Cariello.

The Los Cururos Wind Farm in Ovalle, Chile, is one of dozens of installations generating electricity in Chile thanks to the constant winds in this Pacific-facing region. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Advancing Across the Regional Map 

In Argentina, with initial financing of US$390 million from the China Export-Import Bank (Chexim), construction began in 2018 on the Cauchari solar park—one of the largest in Latin America—in the northwestern province of Jujuy.

Some 4,000 meters above sea level and equipped with 1.2 million panels, Cauchari has an installed capacity of 315 MW (with an expansion planned to add another 200 MWh) and reduces carbon emissions by 325,000 tons.

There are other solar developments with Chinese involvement, while Goldwind has acquired wind farms in the central province of Buenos Aires and the southern province of Chubut.

Researcher Juliana González Jáuregui from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) has highlighted Beijing’s participation in Argentina’s renewable energy projects, focusing on its provinces—even before the country joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2022.

In contrast, “Europe and the United States have yet to grasp the importance of engaging at the subnational level in Argentina, something China achieved quickly and significantly. The provinces hold natural resources, so the subnational component is essential,” González told Dialogue Earth.

Meanwhile, in Chile, “what has happened in the last two years is that Chinese companies have bet on the country as a gateway to Latin America and have set up several companies that create jobs,” said Rojas.

“They are interested in showcasing the quality and technological advancements they’ve achieved in these sectors, focusing on storage, inverter systems, and everything that helps stabilize power grid flows,” she stated.

In this way, China “has increasingly strengthened its presence in the electricity sector, where we have decarbonization efforts and which represents 22% of the country’s energy consumption,” particularly in the distribution segment through the acquisition of key companies to supply the population, explained Rojas.

A notable example is the Chinese group State Grid, which in 2020 acquired Chile’s Compañía General de Electricidad (CGE) from Spain’s Naturgy for US$3 billion and purchased Chilquinta, another electricity distributor in Chile, from the American company Sempra Energy for US$2.23 billion.

Additionally, it holds a stake in Transelec, the largest distributor, giving it a dominant majority position in Chile’s electricity distribution market.

Areas of Lima illuminated by the growing integration of renewable energy into electricity generation. The former Enel Perú, now Pluz Perú, was acquired by China’s CSG and serves over 1.5 million subscribers in the metropolitan area. Credit: Perú Inkas Tours

In Peru, China Southern Power Grid (CSG) acquired Enel Peru from Italy’s Enel Group in 2024 for US$3.1 billion. The company, now called Pluz Peru, operates in the market with 1,590 MW of generation from various sources and also participates in distribution.

The Peruvian firm includes a solar complex in the southern municipality of Moquegua, with 560,000 panels spread over 400 hectares, capable of generating 440 GWh annually, and a wind farm in the southwestern province of Nazca, with 42 turbines producing up to 600 GWh per year.

In Colombia, another Chinese giant, CTG, promoted the construction of the Baranoa solar plant in the northern department of Atlantico. With an investment of US$20 million and 36,000 modules, it can add 20 MW to the grid.

Though a small project far from major economic and urban centers, it reflects shared interests with Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro champions renewable energy and the decarbonization of the economy and society.

In Nicaragua, it was announced that China Communications Construction Company will build a 70 MW solar plant in the municipality of Nindirí, south of Managua, with 112,700 panels at a cost of US$80 million.

The Managua government—which recently restored relations with China in 2021 after cutting ties with Taiwan—hopes the project will not only feed into the power grid but also support drinking water supply and sanitation in the country.

In a leap across the Caribbean, China’s International Development Cooperation Agency delivered a batch of donated supplies to Cuba last March to support a photovoltaic park project with Chinese assistance in Guanajay, about 50 kilometers west of Havana.

According to data gathered by IPS in Havana, the project includes seven solar parks and will contribute 35 MW to the island’s electricity system. The remaining parks, to be developed by China’s Shanghái Electric and Cuba’s Unión Eléctrica, will add another 85 MW. Cuba’s power demand stands at 3,500 MW, with a deficit sometimes exceeding 1,500 MW.

“We hope to leverage this project as an opportunity to contribute China’s strength in ensuring energy security and promoting sustainable social development in Cuba,” said Hua Xin, China’s ambassador in Havana.

A production gondola at the new wind turbine factory in Camaçari, northeastern Brazil, installed by Chinese firm Goldwind. Wind energy is the second-largest renewable source in Brazil’s electricity supply, after hydropower. Credit: Goldwind

The Ball on the Roof 

Chilean expert Rojas noted that Chinese companies obviously aim to promote their own brands but also establish research centers or technology transfer hubs to help countries accelerate their energy transition.

“They have cutting-edge technologies that we currently see in PowerPoint presentations—but they’re already implementing them in their own cities,” she pointed out.

Experts agree that, alongside territorial potential, population, and resources, the regulatory framework of the electricity business—which varies across borders—is a key investment attraction.

This becomes even more relevant as major investors like China shift from merely selling products and technology to acquiring more assets, immersing themselves in the complexities of service networks, costs, and pricing.

For many countries in the region, the observation Jorge Arbache, an economics professor at the University of Brasilia, makes about Brazil may resonate. He analyzes how the advantages and resources enabling the energy transition are being mobilized.

He argues that “while China has used the energy transition as a pillar of its national development policy,” Brazil still treats its advantages “mainly as primary, short-term, and predatory assets—with low added value, institutional fragmentation, and a lack of coordinated strategy.”

“What China shows us is that the energy transition and natural capital, when well-coordinated, are more than just a shift in the energy matrix: they are a development strategy, a tool for sovereignty, and a source of geopolitical power,” concluded Arbache.

With reporting by Mario Osava (Brazil), Orlando Milesi (Chile) and Dariel Pradas (Cuba).

Bangladesh Chief Adviser Prof. Muhammad Yunus meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the third day of his four-day visit to China. Photo: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
BEIJING, Apr 1 2025 (IPS)

Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser, Professor Muhammad Yunus’s state visit to China, where he met Chinese President Xi Jinping, was seen as an opportunity to reaffirm old diplomatic and economic ties between the two countries.

During the meeting, Xi recalled Chinese-Bangladesh’s long-standing history of friendly exchanges, saying the ancient Silk Road closely linked the two countries.

Terming Bangladesh a good neighbour, good friend and good partner of mutual trust, he said China maintains a high degree of stability and continuity in its good-neighbourly and friendly policy toward Bangladesh, as this year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of China-Bangladesh diplomatic relations.

“China is ready to work with Bangladesh to bring China-Bangladesh cooperation to new heights and deliver greater benefits to the two peoples, Xi said, stressing that China and Bangladesh should continue to deepen political mutual trust and firmly support each other on issues related to mutual interests.

Yunus said Bangladesh and China share a profound friendship and have always understood, respected and trusted each other.

Claiming China is a reliable partner and friend of Bangladesh, he said Bangladesh firmly supports the one-China principle.

The Chief Adviser said Bangladesh is willing to use the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Bangladesh-China diplomatic relations as an opportunity to enhance bilateral relations.

Bangladesh sought more Chinese investment, which will help it promote its economic transition.

Political analysts assert that Yunus’s visit to China has catapulted Bangladesh-China relations to unprecedented heights, with Bangladesh securing a commitment of USD 2.1 billion in Chinese investments, loans, and grants during his historic China tour.

Chinese Ambassador in Dhaka Yao Wen said nearly 30 Chinese companies have pledged to invest USD 1 billion in Bangladesh.

China has also planned to lend some USD 400 million in the Mongla port modernisation project, USD 350 million in the development of the China Industrial Economic Zone and another USD 150 million as technical assistance. The rest of the amount would come as grants and other forms of lending.

“It is a milestone visit,” Yao Wen said.

During the bilateral meeting, Yunus asked Xi to approve the investment of Chinese private companies in Bangladesh.

The Chinse President affirmed that he would encourage Chinese firms to set up manufacturing plants in Bangladesh.

The talks between Yunus and Xi were comprehensive, fruitful and constructive, marked by warmth, Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary, Shafiqul Alam, said.

Chart Roadmap for Shared Prosperity

On March 27, Yunus addressed the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference in Hainan, asking the Asian nations to chart a clear roadmap for a shared future and shared prosperity.

“In this changing world, the fates of Asian countries are intertwined. We must chart a clear roadmap for a shared future and shared prosperity,” he said.

The Chief Adviser also focused on creating a sustainable financing mechanism for Asian countries. “We need reliable funds that address our challenges and meet our growing demands.”

About trade cooperation, he said Asia remains one of the least integrated regions and this weak integration stifles investment and trade.

“We must work to boost trade cooperation immediately,” he said.

Referring to food and agriculture cooperation, Yunus said the Asian countries should promote resource-efficient farming and domestic production must be enhanced for food security.

“We need to reduce import reliance and achieve self-sufficiency. Expanding tech-based sustainable agricultural solutions and innovation in regenerative and climate-smart farming is key,” he said.

The Bangladesh Chief Adviser stressed building a strong tech ecosystem, sharing knowledge and data and investing in technology incubation and innovation in Asia.

About social business to solve social problems, he said every young person should grow up as a three-zero person: zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration, and zero unemployment through entrepreneurship in social business.

“This is the shared future we in Asia must create together,” he added.

In his speech, Yunus underscored shifting toward sustainable economic models prioritising people and the planet over profits.

“We must shift toward sustainable economic models that prioritise people and the planet over profits,” he said.

Besides, the Chief Adviser focused on the long-pending Rohingya crisis, calling upon the Asian leaders to come forward towards ensuring safe and dignified repatriation of displaced Rohingyas to Myanmar.

“Bangladesh has been hosting over 1.2 million Rohingyas, who are Myanmar nationals, for over seven years. We continue to bear significant social, economic, and environmental costs,” he said.

On the sidelines of the conference, Yunus held meetings with Chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk and FAO Director General Qu Dongyu, among others, too.

Imagine Changing the World

On March 29, 2025, at a function at Peking University (PKU) in Beijing, Yunus urged students to think broadly and strive to transform the world.

“A university or educational institution is not only a place to learn what happens but to imagine,” he said.

Terming imagination the greatest power of the earth, Yunus said, “If you imagine, it will happen. If you do not imagine, it will never happen.”

The Bangladesh Chief Adviser said imagination is more powerful than anything “we can bring together”.

“Human journey is about making the impossible possible. That is our job. And we can make it happen,” Yunus said.

He said people become poor due to wrong economic systems, as all people are not given a fair chance in such systems.

He stressed promoting human beings to become entrepreneurs, not to be job seekers, saying, “All human beings are entrepreneurs.”

Yunus received an honorary doctorate degree from Peking University.
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The International Court of Justice is hearing 10 days of testimony in order to give an advisory opinion on climate change obligations. Credit: ICJ

By Umar Manzoor Shah
THE HAGUE & SRINAGAR, Dec 4 2024 (IPS)

At the International Court of Justice on Tuesday, December 4, 2024, Brazil called for climate justice, and Canada urged swift action on the world’s “greatest challenge,” while China advocated for equity and development rights. These countries are among the 98 that will make presentations during the fortnight of hearings, after which the court will give an advisory opinion.

The court’s forthcoming advisory opinion, expected in 2025, is seen as a critical step in delineating states’ responsibilities for addressing climate change and addressing the consequences of inaction.

The proceedings draw on international environmental law, human rights treaties, and multilateral agreements. On December 3, representatives from Brazil, Canada, and China presented their arguments emphasizing the urgency of collective action and climate justice.

Brazil’s Vision of Inclusivity Where No One is Left Behind

Representing Brazil, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, the nation’s Ambassador for Climate Change, highlighted Brazil’s vulnerability to climate change and its leadership in global climate governance. Figueiredo underscored Brazil’s proactive measures, including a revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that pledges to cut emissions by up to 67 percent by 2035 relative to 2005 levels.

“Brazil has consistently championed international cooperation in addressing climate challenges. Our efforts, despite socio-economic constraints, reflect a vision of inclusivity where no one is left behind,” said Figueiredo.

He emphasized Brazil’s exposure to climate-induced disasters such as severe droughts, floods, and wildfires, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups, including Indigenous communities. Advocating for climate justice, he urged global actors to consider the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDRRC), which assigns greater responsibility to historically high-emitting nations.

Legal Arguments for Climate Equity

Brazil’s legal advisor, Professor Jorge Galindo, reinforced the CBDRRC principle as a legal mechanism for ensuring fairness in climate governance. Citing precedents from the Paris Agreement and advisory opinions from international tribunals, he called for developed nations to lead by achieving net-zero emissions sooner, investing in clean technologies, and offering financial support to developing countries.

Galindo also urged the ICJ to recognize the legal value of decisions made by the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “COP decisions reflect genuine interpretations of treaty obligations and must guide the court’s opinion,” he said.

Galindo further stressed the importance of balancing climate policies with trade obligations, warning against the misuse of environmental measures as trade barriers. “Free trade and climate goals must coexist,” he added.

Canada committed to unified treaty-based approach

Canada’s representative, Louis Martel, described climate change as a profound threat, with the Arctic warming three times faster than the global average. Martel highlighted its cascading effects, including permafrost thaw, increased forest fires, and food insecurity for Indigenous communities.

Reaffirming Canada’s commitment to international climate instruments like the Paris Agreement, Martel emphasized the importance of collective and individual state responsibilities. He called attention to the global stocktake and enhanced transparency framework as essential mechanisms for ensuring accountability.

While supporting the “no harm” principle obligating states to prevent cross-border environmental harm, Martel expressed reservations about its consistent application to climate change under customary international law. He also questioned whether principles like “polluter pays” and “intergenerational equity” have achieved the status of binding legal norms.

“Canada remains committed to a unified treaty-based approach that strengthens global climate governance,” Martel said.

China Plea For Fair and Inclusive International Approach

China, represented by Ma Xinmin, advocated for equitable climate action, highlighting the principle of CBDRRC as fundamental to balancing responsibilities between developed and developing nations. Ma underscored the disproportionate vulnerabilities of developing countries and the necessity of recognizing their right to sustainable development.

China criticized unilateral measures by developed nations, such as trade restrictions targeting developing countries’ green industries, describing them as counterproductive to global climate goals. Instead, Ma urged collaboration that accounts for historical emissions and respects nations’ varied capacities to combat climate change.

“Addressing climate change involves not only emission reductions but also ensuring sustainable development and poverty eradication,” Ma argued. Highlighting China’s contributions, he reaffirmed the country’s commitment to climate action while calling for a fair and inclusive international approach.

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Excerpt:

View from the area of La Puntilla, in the bay of the Peruvian town of Chancay, of the beach eroded as a result of the construction of the breakwater that is part of the mega-port built by a Chinese company, whose work is in its first phase. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

By Mariela Jara
CHANCAY, Peru , Dec 19 2023 (IPS)

“We have always lived a very quiet life here, but everything has changed since the construction of the multi-purpose port began a few years ago,” said Miriam Arce, a neighborhood leader in this municipality 80 kilometers north of the Peruvian capital, where the new port is projected to become the epicenter of trade between China and South American countries.

Chancay is one of the 12 municipalities of the province of Huaral and has a population of about 63,000 inhabitants. It is known for its agricultural valleys, a sea providing an abundant catch for artisanal fishers and for fishmeal production, and attractive waves for surfers.

“This bay is ideal for getting away from the chaos of Lima. People came here because they found the calm and certainty of being in a safe place where everyone knows each other, without fear of being robbed while enjoying a beautiful beach and delicious seafood dishes,” Arce, president of the Association in Defense of Housing and the Environment of the port of Chancay, told IPS.

Her great-grandmother came to Peru in the 1930s fleeing the civil war in Spain, and settled in this Pacific coastal town where her children have always been involved in fishing.

“My grandfather worked in the first fishmeal factory and in the boom of the 1960s the company built these houses as a camp facing the sea and my dad, who was a fisherman, bought the house later,” she said.

Arce’s memories are related to the dilemma posed by some people moving away and leaving behind the conflict generated by the construction of the Chancay Multipurpose Port Terminal that will cover a total of 992 hectares, built with an investment of 1.2 billion dollars in Chinese capital in the current first stage, to reach 3.6 billion by the time it is completed.

The investment is part of the Belt and Road Initiative launched globally by Beijing in 2013 as part of its global economic policy, which includes the development of road, port and connectivity infrastructure in different countries around the world, including South American nations.

Miriam Arce, president of the Association in Defense of Housing and Environment of the port of Chancay, shows the side of El Cascajo hill that has been mutilated as part of the construction of a mega-port and logistics terminal that will commercially connect China with South America. CREDIT: Marianela Jara / IPS

China’s largest shipping company, the state-owned Cosco Shipping, joined the project in 2019, when it acquired 60 percent of the shares. It changed the original design of the work started in 2016, to reconvert it into a multipurpose terminal, with four planned ports, and it took charge of construction. The remaining 40 percent stayed in the hands of the initial designer, the private Peruvian mining company Volcan.

It is called a multipurpose port due to the different functions of its terminals, which are expected to handle one million containers per year of general, non-mineral bulk, liquid and rolling cargo, using infrastructure with three different components: port operations, access and logistics, and the vehicular tunnel, as explained by the Chinese shipping company on the project’s website.

The first stage, covering 141 hectares, will culminate with the construction of a port that will be inaugurated during the next Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which will be held for the third time in Peru in November 2024 and will be attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

According to the Peruvian government, the megaproject will position this Andean country as the leading Pacific logistics center in Latin America, which will boost its economy and exports and increase trade opportunities as well as local employment.

Projection of what the multipurpose port under construction in Chancay Bay will look like in an area of 141 hectares. The first of the four planned terminals is to be inaugurated in November 2024, eight years after the start of construction. CREDIT: Cosco Shipping

Why uproot ourselves?

Arce is 54 years old and lives with her parents in the house where her grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins lived. From the front of the house she can see the sea and their dock, while the back of the house is directly adjacent to the Cosco Shipping construction site, which has forced her to live permanently with dust, pollution and noise.

“This is not just a house, it is part of my family history. Why should I have to leave, uproot myself, if I was born here and I love this place. I was not a social activist, but defending the bay of Chancay has made me aware of the meaning of life and the interests at stake in our country, where it seems that money is worth more than people’s rights,” she said.

Her house is in the area of La Puntilla and together with her IPS toured the group of homes that line the boardwalk and lead to a hill from where you can see the breakwater, and the movement of machinery and workers.

What is most striking is the mutilation of one side of the Cascajo hill, on whose slopes are built the houses of La Puntilla, and which overlooks the port’s operational area where the docks, jetties and areas for maritime entry, container storage and maintenance workshops will be built.

Arce pointed out how the beach has eroded in the area. She also showed the geotubes, three-meter diameter canvas sleeves filled with sand and water that the company has placed between the sea and the sand as a retaining wall to counteract erosion.

“The works have changed the marine currents, we no longer have waves and have lost not only the characteristic beauty of the bay that was a tourist attraction, but the environment and natural resources have been damaged,” she complained.

In 2016, explosions began that created seismic waves that affected houses located as far as 50 kilometers from the project area. Protests led to the signing of agreements between affected residents who received payments of between 75 and 260 dollars for the inconvenience caused.

A view from one of the hills of La Puntilla, on the slope of El Cascajo hill, of the construction of the jetty of the Peruvian mega-port that will operate as a trade center between China and South America. The first phase is set to be inaugurated in November 2024 by Chinese President Xi Jinping. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Winging it

“That’s the problem, that they do not recognize us as people affected by the project, and the agreements practically set conditions for people not to complain or protest,” Angely Yufra, from the Peralvillo area, also part of Chancay, where she has lived since she was born 49 years ago, told IPS.

She now lives alone with her husband because their children have become independent and she says that she is not intimidated by threats from the company, which has criminalized the protests by prosecuting several of their leaders.

On a tour through the streets of the port to the main access road to the North Pan-American highway, Arce and Yufra show how the company has practically taken over urban areas to move its trucks with materials to the entrance to the construction site, as well as to a part repaired after a collapse caused by the construction of the tunnel that will run through Chancay.

On its information page, Cosco Shipping states that the viaduct tunnel is 1.8 kilometers long and is a three-lane road for the exclusive transit of cargo related to port operations, along with two large conveyor belts.

“There has been no analysis of soils, which are highly varied in Chancay, to build the tunnel. From the beginning, the project got off on the wrong foot because due to the scope of the work it should have been carried out in an unpopulated desert area,” Arce argued.

Angely Yufra, a resident of the Peralvillo area in the Peruvian bay of Chancay, criticizes a port megaproject that has destroyed the community’s way of life and complains in particular about the planned elevated road, while pointing to the cement pylons that will be its base. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Along the Pan-American Highway, a road that separates the municipality of Chancay in two, she pointed to huge concrete pylons on which an elevated road is to be built for the traffic of at least 4,000 trucks a day to the port’s logistics zone.

“And what will happen to the people who live on the sides of the road? They will be trapped, unable to cross to go to school, to the market, to visit relatives. What they have said is that they are going to build an alternative road, but that could take years,” said the community leader.

Arce said the origin of the project was marked by misinformation and under-the-table deals, and that it involved the second government of Alan García (2006-2011) and those that succeeded him: the administrations of Ollanta Humala, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Pedro Castillo. García committed suicide in 2019 when he was going to be arrested and the others are facing prosecution for different crimes.

“All of them gave their approval despite the fact that civil society and public organizations have submitted more than a hundred observations to the Modification of the Environmental Impact Study, which is necessary for the authorization of the works,” said Arce.

These observations include impacts on the life and rights of the local population and on nature, as well as irregular procedures.

Green shading net runs through different areas of the Peruvian port town of Chancay. It is the division between the work zone of a mega-port and the homes of the local population, affected by dust, seismic waves from the explosions, tension and noise. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Among the effects are impacts on the mental health of local residents. This is the case of María Bautista, “a lifelong resident of the Chancay port” who, at the age of 75 years, said she had never experienced anything like this before.

She and her daughter and granddaughter run a restaurant where ceviche, one of Peru’s signature dishes, is a favorite, as well as a hostel on the top floor, where surfers used to come. “Now they don’t come anymore because there are no waves,” she lamented.

She added that she has been badly affected psychologically and suffers from terrible anxiety.

“There is also contamination of the soil that affects our bronchial tubes and mistreatment by the company’s personnel, who trample on our dignity when giving us the agreed-upon amounts. They have told us that for Christmas we will receive a basket of goods ‘because they have been ripped off’, as if we were begging for money when we are working people,” Bautista said.

During the IPS tour through the streets of the port of Chancay, the dialogue was with women neighbors and leaders, because the male leaders were away on other business.

The Association in Defense of Housing and the Environment of the port of Chancay and other local residents’ organizations know that there will be no going back on the works because “the economic interests and political lobbying are very strong,” said Arce.

She explained that in view of this they are proposing the formation of a multisectoral round table at the government level to evaluate the Environmental Impact Study and to recognize local residents as being affected by the project, as this will be the only way to fight for a compensation policy that they currently have no legal basis for demanding.

María Bautista is the owner of a small ceviche restaurant, which has seen better times and has declined due to the absence of tourists and surfers who no longer choose the beaches of Chancay as a destination because the works of the mega-port have reduced the waves. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Arce said the local populace would join the protests because as the work progresses, the range of damage will increase, as is happening with the construction of the tunnel under the streets.

They are also beginning to feel the impacts of the overhead road that “will create a traffic jam at kilometer 80 of the North Pan-American highway, harming not only us but everyone who tries to drive along that road,” she said.

“We are a pebble in the giant’s shoe,” she summed up.

A boost to the economy?

Economist Norma Canales, who lived in the Huaral valley as a child, said there is a possibility that the multipurpose port of Chancay will increase GDP, as claimed by its advocates, which could contribute to improving the quality of life of the local population.

However, she said it was necessary to take into account the impacts that it will have on the lifestyle of local inhabitants, because it will lead to a radical change in their urban and productive infrastructure.

“It will mean going from a town of small-scale fishermen and farmers to a mega-port city receiving traffic of large-capacity shipping vessels,” she told IPS.

Against this background, she said, it was important not to lose sight of the possible population growth due to the demand for employment that may arise, which will require a response that guarantees access to services such as water, electricity and housing.

Activists at COP15 believe that keeping infrastructure off the radar is a problem and have expressed concern about the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China which impacts on biodiversity hotspots and Indigenous communities. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
Montreal, Dec 15 2022 (IPS)

As the COP entered its crucial second week, negotiations are intensifying now. A slew of new contact groups – meeting mostly behind closed doors – are discussing the minutest details of the Global Biodiversity Framework and the contentious issues within or around it, such as Digital Sequencing Information, Access, and Benefit Sharing. The core aim of all these groups is to talk and resolve all issues and produce a draft treaty that will be acceptable to all parties.

In this flurry of activities, however, there’s an elephant in the room that no one wants to see: The impact of mega infrastructural projects on biodiversity. Leading the table of these most impacting mega projects is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China – the president of COP15.

BRI: A Mammoth Project Like No Other

China launched BRI in 2013, intending to revive and strengthen its trade links with the rest of the world. Today, it’s a mammoth project involving several regions of Asia, Africa and Europe with plans to construct roads, railways, ports, and, more recently, health, digital, and space projects, building physical and economic links, enhancing trade and interconnectivity.

It is, however, not a single Chinese government initiative but consists of many different projects in multiple countries, financed through multiple avenues, including Chinese and international banks and investment funds.

According to a 2019 paper published by the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), the BRI was likely to boost world GDP by $7.1 trillion annually within the next two decades. The Information Office of the Chinese government also reports that BRI has created more than 244,000 jobs for locals abroad.

However, a vast majority of BRI projects require the use of Chinese companies, labour, and raw materials, meaning the GDP gains from BRI will go to the Chinese ‘locals,’ not to the locals of the countries in which China has invested.

An Ambition Vehicle or a Debt Trap

Today, at least sixty-four countries fall within its ambit, and the number is increasing.  The terrestrial route of BRI aims to cut across Central Asia, Russia, India, Pakistan and Europe, and the maritime route runs along the coast of Asia, East Africa, and Europe.

However, many of these small countries saw themselves falling into mounting debts. The first is Sri Lanka which recently plunged into a financial crisis from debts owed to China for highways, ports, airports, and a coal power plant. Sri Lanka owes China lenders over $7.4 billion – 20% of its total foreign debt. Other countries following the footsteps of Sri Lanka are Kyrgyzstan and Montenegro; while Kyrgyzstan owes 40% of its foreign debt, including $1.8 billion to Chinese lenders, the European Union (EU) refused to pay off a $1 billion Chinese loan for the BRI but has offered help on other infrastructure projects.

Impacts on Environment, Gender and Indigenous Peoples

The financial crisis put aside, the implication of the BRI on the region’s biodiversity is huge as it includes many different environmentally important areas such as protected areas, key landscapes, Global 200 Ecoregions (a list of ecoregions identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as priorities for conservation), and biodiversity hotspots that cover the distribution range of flagship species.  In fact, the study found that 32% of the total area of all protected areas in countries crossed by BRI corridors were potentially affected by the project. There are also areas that are important for delivering ecosystem services that provide social and economic benefits to people.

According to a geospatial study done by WWF, which examined the environmental impacts of BRI, the initiative will affect 1,700 biodiversity hotspots, threaten 265 species, and potentially introduce hundreds of alien species that threaten these fragile ecosystems.

The BRI corridors also overlap with 1,739 Important Bird Areas or Key Biodiversity Areas and 46 biodiversity hotspots or Global 200 Ecoregions5. This is in addition to the range of 265 IUCN threatened species, including 39 critically endangered species and 81 endangered species – including saiga antelopes, tigers and giant pandas.

According to Allie Constantine, Gender and Indigenous rights Advisor to Global Forest Coalition, there is still no impact assessment on how the BRI affects women, and China has not released data on gender and the BRI. However, given that China has signed and ratified most UN human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 5 being “Gender Equality”), the country is obliged to report on gender impacts of BRI projects it operates.

While China’s 14th Five-Year plan discusses women’s equality and gender rights, there is no indication of how China will implement or enforce this within the BRI.

“However, even without this data, we can still make certain inferences regarding gendered impacts,” says Constantine, who recently conducted a study on the impact of BRI on women and indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia.

The study reveals that BRI’s expansion through important ecological corridors, including Chinese-backed hydropower projects built along the Mekong River that cause changes in river flow, directly puts specific communities and fragile ecosystems at risk. In turn, this impacts fish migrations and creates a further loss of livelihoods for downstream communities in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam that rely on the river for sustenance.

It also says that specific BRI projects often negatively affect indigenous and forest communities. For example, the Indigenous Mah Meri community in Malaysia is frequently harmed by government processes, including the development of BRI ports in Mah Meri territories. Although Malaysia supports the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), it frequently acts against Indigenous land and human rights, Constantine’s study reveals.

Greening or Greenwashing

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China has been intensifying “Green BRI” efforts, including research on how to make BRI projects more environmentally sound. For example, in 2021, the Chinese ministries of Foreign Commerce and Ecology and Environment released “Green Development Guidelines.” China has also committed to ending coal-fired power plants and investing in renewable energy sources.

Speaking to IPS, Li Shuo, Global Policy Advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, said that within China, there is a growing concern over the country’s investment overseas, especially in high-carbon projects such as coal plants.

“It’s a little hard to say if BRI is a good thing or a bad thing for the local economy or local environment. You have to look at it on a case-by-case basis,“ says Shuo, “But there is a clear recognition that some of the BRI projects are quite problematic from an environmental point of view. I think there is a realization from the Chinese side as well, and that is why a year ago, there was this Chinese commitment to not fund coal-fired power projects. The announcement was made in September 2021 in the UN General Assembly.”

Shuo, however, says that there is still no such recognition or public debate when it comes to biodiversity.

“There is a recognition that China should not invest in high-carbon projects, so there is a slow transition, but on the other hand, where biodiversity is feeding into all these, I think you are in need of more recognition on the Chinese side on the biodiversity implications of the BRI projects. I think climate recognition is slowly getting there but not necessarily on biodiversity. And if you think about it, a lot of the infrastructural projects will have a negative footprint,” Shuo says.

Observers at COP15, however, are saying that with many destructive projects under the BRI, such as large dams built along the Mekong River, which also threaten biodiversity, forests, and forest communities—simply defunding coal and investing in other potentially harmful projects is not the solution.

Exclusion of Infrastructure in GBF

Infrastructure has not been included in the current biodiversity draft framework. On Dec 8, at a side event of the ongoing COP15, Amy Fraenkel, Executive Secretary, Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), expressed alarm that infrastructure is not addressed in the GBF.

Highlighting that migratory species must be able to reach new habitats, she noted the CMS tackles threats posed to these species by infrastructure. She also called on governments and investors to consider whether there is a real need for new infrastructure developments and to look into alternatives, including “no new infrastructure” options.

Simone Lovera of the Global Forest Coalition has been more vocal in her criticism of BRI, the exclusion of infrastructure in the biodiversity framework and China’s silence on the initiative’s impact on biodiversity. She especially spoke out on how the current financing mechanism – already a contentious issue at COP15 could further fail if mega projects like BRI were continued to be ignored.

“It doesn’t make any sense to just close the financing gap; even US100 billion dollars per year, we have 1.3 trillion US dollars that are going to destructive activities. Sadly, China’s own Belt and Road Initiative is an example of initiatives that are still financing very harmful projects. They are trying to green it up, but they are not doing any gender analysis, and a lot of BRI activities are actually very harmful on the ground. So first and foremost, the thing China should do is look at its own Belt and Road Initiative and make sure that that is aligned. On the one hand, they claim to have ecological civilization at home, but they export the destruction to other countries,” Lovera told IPS News.

Speaking to IPS, Basile Van Havre- Co-chair of the GBF, said negotiators were now “focusing on not adding any new texts to the draft and instead were working to shift as much existing text as possible out of the brackets”. This means if infrastructure has been excluded from the GBF, it is not likely to be included now.

The onus of curbing the harms caused to biodiversity by projects like BRI falls entirely on the countries that own and run them – such as China.

“The European Union just banned commodities that come from deforestation and biodiversity destruction. It’s possible. Let us have an agreement here so they (China) also have a legal alignment. They can say, ‘okay, in line with this multilateral agreement, we will start banning products caused by biodiversity destruction, and I think the EU legislation will show it’s possible. It is a good example, and we very much look at China to do that,” Lovera says.

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Only artisanal fishing is allowed in the waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands, where it is possible to catch large, valuable fish. The area is a marine reserve, a nursery of species for the eastern Pacific and is off-limits to industrial fishing. But its continental shelf is increasingly under siege by the Chinese fleet. CREDIT: MAG Ecuador

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

Illegal and excessive fishing, mainly attributed to Chinese fleets, remains a threat to marine resources in the eastern Pacific and southwest Atlantic, as well as to that sector of the economy in Latin American countries bathed by either ocean.

Worldwide, “one out of every five fish consumed has been caught illegally, 20 percent of the nearly 100 million tons of fish consumed each year, and generally in areas closed to fishing,” veteran Venezuelan oceanographer Juan José Cárdenas told IPS.

An emblematic case, said the researcher from the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, is the Galapagos Islands, 1,000 kilometers west of the coast of Ecuador, surrounded by a 193,000-square-kilometer protected marine area, a hotbed of species in great demand for human consumption.“For several species in the eastern Pacific we are already at the edge of the environmental precipice with legal fishing; a small additional fishing effort, illegal fishing, is enough to affect the sustainability and food security that these species provide." -- Juan José Cárdenas

Galapagos, an archipelago totaling 8,000 square kilometers, is famous for its unique biodiversity and as a natural laboratory used by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) for his theories on evolution.

The Ecuadorian Navy indicated that in June they maintained surveillance of 180 foreign vessels, including fishing boats, tankers and reefers, fishing near the 200 nautical mile (370 kilometers) limit of the Galapagos Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), also known as the continental shelf.

In 2017, 297 vessels were detected, 300 in 2018, 245 in 2019, and 350 in 2020. At the beginning of each summer they fish off Ecuador and Peru, then off of Chile, before crossing the Strait of Magellan and heading up the southwest Atlantic off Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

In the Pacific they have fished intensively for giant squid (Dosidicus gigas). According to the satellite tracking platform Global Fishing Watch, 615 vessels did so in 2021, 584 of which were Chinese.

Alfonso Miranda, president of the Committee for the Sustainable Management of the South Pacific Giant Squid (CALAMASUR), made up of businesspersons and fishers from Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru, said that this year 631 Chinese-flagged vessels have entered Ecuadorian and Peruvian Pacific waters.

Miranda says that Peruvian fishermen report incursions by Chinese ships in Peru’s EEZ, and he does the math: if Peruvian squid production reaches 500,000 tons, with revenues of 860 million dollars a year, some 50,000 tons taken by the foreign fleet means the loss of 85 million dollars a year.

The giant squid is the second most important fishing resource for Peru, after anchovy, and its catch generates more than 800 million dollars a year and thousands of jobs, which is why the country seeks to prevent incursions into its waters by vessels of other flags, especially from China. CREDIT: Government of Peru

Accumulated problems

Cárdenas the oceanographer pointed out that the area is rich in tuna, of which more than 600,000 tons are caught annually (10 percent of the world total), but posing a serious threat to sustainability, for example with the use of fish aggregating devices or FADs that alter even the migratory habits of this species.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 34 percent of tuna stocks in the seven most widely used tuna species are exploited at biologically unsustainable levels.

For several species in the eastern Pacific, including some whose fishing is banned such as sharks, “we are already at the edge of the environmental precipice with legal fishing; a small additional fishing effort, illegal fishing, is enough to affect the sustainability and food security that these species provide,” said Cárdenas.

Pedro Díaz, a fisherman in northern Peru, told the Diálogo Chino news platform in the port of Paita that “we don’t just want to fish and catch. We want to allow the giant squid to breed and grow so that it can generate employment and foreign currency for the State.

“We also want the giant squid to have a sustainable season, and what will those who come after us, the young people who take up fishing, find?” he added.

FAO fisheries officer Alicia Mosteiro Cabanelas told IPS from the U.N. agency’s regional headquarters in Santiago, Chile that “it is not always possible to measure the impact of a given fleet operating in areas adjacent to the exclusive economic zone of coastal nations.”

This is because “there is not always a stock assessment of the target species, nor is there information available on retained, discarded and incidental catch, or on the number of vessels authorized to operate by the respective flag States and unauthorized vessels.”

In 2017 Ecuador seized the Chinese vessel Fu Tuang Yu Leng after finding in its holds more than 6000 sharks illegally caught in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. CREDIT: DPN Galapagos

Mosteiro Cabanelas noted that “overfishing always has a direct impact on the sustainability of resources, generating a decrease in income for the fishing sector and in the availability of fishery products for local communities and consumers in general. Latin America is no exception.”

And for FAO it is clear that “illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a global problem that compromises the conservation and sustainable use of fishery resources,” said the expert.

It also “harms fishers’ livelihoods and related activities, and aggravates malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity.”

The media in coastal countries also report that fishers in Latin America – citing cases from Brazil, Chile and Mexico – are violating bans and extracting valuable species whose fishing is not permitted. Ecuadorians have exported large quantities of shark fins, after declaring the sharks as bycatch.

Shark fins are highly sought after in places like Hong Kong – where shark fin soup can cost up to 200 dollars – and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates the global trade in shark and ray meat at 2.6 billion dollars.

The Argentine Navy carries out surveillance of a Chinese fishing vessel at the limits of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which is rich in squid, hake and prawns. CREDIT: Argentine Naval Prefecture

Keeping an eye on poachers

Last year, some 350 Chinese-flagged vessels fished during the first half of the year off Argentina’s territorial waters, where there is a wealth of another kind of squid, the Argentine shortfin squid (Illex argentines), as well as Argentine hake, prawns and other prized species.

It is a fleet that, according to Argentine ship captains, commits IUU with unreported transshipments that camouflage illegal fishing, transferring fish between vessels and turning off the transponders that indicate the ships’ location.

A report published in June by Oceana, an international non-governmental organization that tracks IUU fishing, claimed that more than 400 Chinese-flagged vessels fished for about 621,000 hours along the Argentine EEZ between 2018 and 2021, and disappeared from tracking systems more than 4,000 times.

The Argentine government has reported that, in contrast to the 400,000 tons per year of Argentine shortfin squid that landed in its ports at the end of the 20th century, since 2015 less than 100,000 tons per year are caught, with just 60,000 in 2016.

Industry reports in the local media indicate that foreign vessels (Chinese, South Korean, Taiwanese or Spanish) have caught up to 500,000 tons of squid annually, near or within its EEZ – a volume that can represent between five and 14 billion dollars a year.

Fish aggregating devices or FADs are used in the eastern Pacific to facilitate and increase tuna catches, aggravating the threat of overfishing and even posing a risk of altering the migratory habits of the species. CREDIT: WWF

And the problem is not only seen in Argentina: last Jul. 4, the Uruguayan Navy captured in its territorial waters, 280 kilometers from the Punta del Este beach resort, a Chinese-flagged vessel, the “Lu Rong Yuan Yu 606”, dedicated to squid fishing, which was apparently fishing furtively at night in that area.

As the holds were empty, it could not be established with certainty that it was fishing in the Uruguayan EEZ, and the ship was released after payment of a fine for contravening other navigation regulations.

There was no repeat of the 2017 experience in Ecuador with the “Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999”, a vessel that functioned as a large refrigerator to store the catch of other vessels, which was operating illegally in the Galapagos Marine Reserve.

About 500 tons of fish, including vulnerable and protected species, were found on the ship, especially some 6,000 hammerhead sharks.

The Ecuadorian justice system handed prison sentences to the captain of the ship and three crew members for the crime of fishing for protected species, and fined them 6.1 million dollars. As the payment was not made, the vessel became the property of the Ecuadorian Navy.

China has formally banned its fleet from operating in prohibited waters and warned captains that it will withdraw licenses from those who violate these rules, and President Xi Jinping gave assurances to that effect to his Ecuadorian counterpart Guillermo Lasso when the latter visited Beijing in February.

Far from the shores of Latin America, on May 24 in Tokyo, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) bloc, agreed on new surveillance mechanisms for the Chinese fishing fleet.

At the same time, Washington is working with countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama on agreements to help monitor the Chinese fleet, the largest in the world, which has 17,000 ships catching 15 million tons a year in the world’s seas.

The U.S. initiative is part of its renewed global confrontation with the Asian giant, the so-called new cold war.

For the construction of the suspended Yucatán Solar Park on the Yucatán peninsula in southeastern Mexico, the site was only partially cleared. Like most infrastructure projects involving Chinese companies and banks in Latin America, the plant lacks socio-environmental standards. CREDIT: Courtesy of Asamblea Múuch' Xíinbal

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 4 2021 (IPS)

In southeast Mexico, work on the Yucatan Solar Park, owned by the Chinese company Jinko Solar, has been halted since 2020 for lack of proper consultation with indigenous communities, after affected local residents filed an injunction against the project.

In February 2019, residents of several Mayan indigenous villages in the municipalities of Cuncunul and Valladolid, in the state of Yucatan, demanded a halt to work on the park, run by Jinko Solar Investment Pte Ltd. Months later, a court ordered the suspension of the 71.5 million dollar project.

The conflict illustrates the need for Chinese corporations and banks to include socio-environmental safeguards in the financing, design, construction and operation of works in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there are at least 983 conflicts over mining, energy, transportation and communications projects, some of which are financed by Chinese firms.

Paulina Garzón from Ecuador, who is director of the non-governmental Latinoamerica Sustentable (LAS), said that although standards exist in China, they have not been internalised by the institutions.

“China has not included the economic cost in its developmentalist and extractivist vision, a cost that is paid in the long term by the affected populations and by the debtor countries. But these costs are not taken into account when the viability of granting the loan is assessed,” the head of LAS’ China-Latin America Sustainable Investments Initiative (CLASII), told IPS by telephone from Washington.

CLASII is about to publish research on the application of the environmental guidelines of the China Development Bank (CDB). These guidelines, established in 2004, are secret and there is no channel for denouncing the negative impacts of projects.

The organisation found eight Chinese guidelines for companies and investors, nine for financial institutions and seven sectoral guidelines for infrastructure, mining and forestry. The Chinese government will soon publish new regulations for the ministries of trade and environment on outbound investment.

In Argentina, the hydroelectric power plants under construction, named “Presidente Néstor Kirchner” and “Gobernador Jorge Cepernic”, with a combined capacity of 1,310 megawatts on the Santa Cruz River in Patagonia, in the south of the country, represent another emblematic case of the vicissitudes of projects that have Chinese financing.

In 2016 the Argentine Supreme Court halted work on the project, financed by the CDB and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), until a public hearing and a new environmental impact assessment were conducted. The project was thus suspended for two years.

Construction of two hydropower plants in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina, financed by the China Development Bank, was stalled between 2016 and 2018 due to an order by the country’s highest court for a new environmental impact assessment and other unmet requirements. China is stumbling over socio-environmental safeguards as it makes headway in Latin America. CREDIT: IEASA

In a 2016 letter, the BDC Corporation reminded the Argentine Ministry of Finance and Treasury of several force majeure clauses for approving the power plants and their dams, such as the necessary approval by the lender of any contractual modifications.

The parties signed the 4.7 billion dollar financing agreement in 2014 and linked it to a similar one in 2012 for the 2.1 billion dollar upgrading of the Belgrano Cargas railway, which runs across northern Argentina.

“We wish to insist that the ongoing and successful implementation of the project is not only mutually beneficial and a bilateral win-win, but will also lay the foundation for deeper future economic cooperation” between the parties, the 2016 letter states, while warning of the risk of cross-default, should Argentina default on the 2014 agreement for the dams.

Gradual adherence to multilateral guidelines

Although several Chinese financial institutions have signed up to various voluntary socio-environmental guidelines, in practice none of the ones with a significant presence in infrastructure projects in Latin America have adhered, with the exception of ICBC, the largest of its kind in China and with operations in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

The Yucatan Solar Park, owned by Chinese company Jinko Solar, has been on hold in Mexico since 2019 due to a lack of adequate consultation with local indigenous communities. The image shows the planned location of the power plant, in the middle of the jungle in the southeastern state of Yucatan and, top right, the city of Valladolid. CREDIT: Justice Atlas

Three Chinese institutions have adhered to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, a set of six socio-environmental safeguards.

Nine Chinese banks signed the Principles of Responsible Banking, with six other standards on environmental impact, sustainability, participation and transparency.

In addition, seven Chinese banks adopted the Equator Principles, a framework for defining, assessing and managing the socio-environmental risks of projects.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), founded in 2015 to finance the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), has only validated one project in Latin America out of 134 approved worldwide. However, the project, in Ecuador, does not involve infrastructure, but addresses the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although in 2019 several Chinese banks, such as the BDC and ICBC, signed the “Green Investment Principles” (GIP) to assess the potential social and environmental effects of BRI investments, there is still no evidence of their application by this initiative that emerged to promote a maritime and rail network from the Asian powerhouse to the western end of Europe and to Latin America.

For Enrique Dussel, director of the Centre for China-Mexico Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the debate on safeguards is a novel one in the Asian giant.

“Historically, Chinese companies have shown great political pragmatism, the banks are interested in doing business and it did not matter if it was in activities that could be questioned from an environmental standpoint. The question was to mark a presence and participate in the Latin American market. Chinese pragmatism in these aspects practically leaves the responsibility up to the counterpart,” Dussel told IPS.

A magnet

The region attracted 138 Chinese infrastructure projects worth 94.09 billion dollars for the 2005-2020 period, according to the “Monitor of Chinese Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean 2021“, drawn up by the Latin American and Caribbean Academic Network on China.

South America has been the biggest pole of attraction for Chinese investment, as Ecuador obtained 11 of the 40 infrastructure projects during the 2010-2014 period, while from 2015 to 2020 Argentina and Brazil accounted for 23 and 11 of the 92 projects in the region, respectively.

The projection of one of the two hydroelectric power plants financed by Chinese institutions in southern Patagonia, Argentina, whose construction generated tensions between Bejing and Buenos Aires due to intervention by the South American country’s justice system to verify compliance with socio-environmental requirements, which suspended the mega-projects for two years. CREDIT: Government of Argentina

Chile, Colombia and Mexico carried out infrastructure projects with Chinese companies and financing for the first time in the 2015-2020 period.

Energy, transportation, communications and telecommunications are among the main areas of Chinese involvement in the region. The incursion of the Asian giant has been based on public and some private companies, backed by funds from Chinese banks.

To shore up its foothold in Latin America, Beijing has created instruments into which it has injected multimillion-dollar funds, such as the Special Loan Programme for China-Latin America Infrastructure Project and the China-LAC Industrial Cooperation Investment Fund and bilateral cooperation funds.

That strategy is linked to the BRI, which several Latin American countries have joined, in an attempt to draw investment, and which is helping China fill the void left by the United States since 2016.

In December 2020, a group of international advisors to the BRI suggested that China adopt stricter environmental controls for its foreign investments.

According to this scheme, projects that could cause significant and irreversible environmental damage would be marked red, works of moderate and mitigable impact would be marked yellow, and projects without significant negative effects would be marked green.

Garzón and Dussel said there have been some changes.

“It is a process that we are going to see gradually. The institutions recognise the need to improve things and have taken a step to improve environmental behavior. The worrying thing is if this at some point becomes just a slogan that aims to improve the ability to approve projects and obtain a social license, rather than a serious practice,” said the head of CLASII.

Dussel noted, for his part, that “the AIIB is explicitly seeking to integrate environmental issues. There are many initiatives in this regard in China itself, to evaluate projects, attempting to compare the criteria for evaluation and implementation of Chinese infrastructure versus Western ones, specifically the World Bank’s. There is clearly a learning process.”

As the Chinese Infrastructure Monitor anticipates, infrastructure initiatives in the region will grow, with their attendant social and environmental fallout.

Social distancing in a Macau Hospital waiting room. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said censorship of the Chinese media made the COVID-19 situation worse. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 26 2021 (IPS)

China is one of the worst places in the world for media freedom, according to the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) which ranked the country 177 out of 180 in its latest World Press Freedom Index. In the report, the group warned that Beijing is taking “internet censorship,  surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented level,” and had “taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to enhance its control over online information even more”. China is also the world’s biggest jailers of journalists with more than 120 journalists and what the group calls “defenders of press freedom” currently detained.

IPS spoke to Cedric Alviani, East Asia Bureau Head at RSF, about what effect China’s media restrictions had in the early days of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak over a year ago, how foreign journalists are facing unprecedented pressures in the country, and what Beijing is doing to try and create a New World Media Order to spread its propaganda around the globe.

Interpress Service (IPS): Media freedom watchdogs, and many doctors, have pointed to how restrictions on media during the Covid-19 pandemic may have cost lives. Some members of RSF have even gone as far as to say that had China had a freer press, the Covid-19 pandemic may not have needed to happen. Would you agree with that?

Cedric Alviani (CA): What we are saying is that had there been a freer press in China, information about the first infections would have been made public much sooner, and authorities in China, and elsewhere, may have been able to better control the spread. The pandemic may not have been so severe. But we are not in any way blaming China for the pandemic as there are so many other factors involved in any pandemic.

However, censorship made the situation worse. Viruses do not recognise borders, nor censorship. Compare what happened in China with regard to open reporting on the virus, and Taiwan, where the authorities were very open right from the start with information about Covid and disseminating it to the public. That way the public were fully informed and could make decisions to protect themselves.

We still do not have the information to fully see the current situation with Covid in China because of censorship. Have there been any outbreaks? Would we know, be told about them? We cannot have a clear picture.

What this pandemic has shown is the very reason we need a free press and independent journalism so that the facts and full information can be got out. This is not just in the case of a pandemic, but in any situation in which getting full information out to people can help save lives.

In a world where media is completely controlled by the state, can you imagine how many epidemics there would be? You cannot censor, or hide, a virus. They could spread overnight. There would be no full information, doctors would be afraid to speak.

IPS: In RSF’s latest press freedom index, China is ranked the fourth worst country in the world for media freedom and the report accompanying the index said that China continues to take internet censorship, surveillance, and propaganda to “unprecedented levels”. What kind of media restrictions do Chinese journalists face and what happens to journalists who defy those restrictions and report freely, or critically of the government?

CA: China is the world’s worst enemy of free press. Our fear is that in 20 years there will be no journalism, only state propaganda. The censorship authorities in the country are providing lists to media of what they can and cannot talk about. The lists are getting longer all the time.

IPS: Is this the same in Hong Kong, where there have been increasing curbs on general freedoms in the last few years?

CA: In Hong Kong, the Chinese government has entered ownership of most Chinese language media and through economic pressure has also managed to deprive other media of funds. The situation is getting worse with direct attacks being used to impose Beijing’s media rules and censorship on local media.

IPS: Last year, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, news about the situation in China leaked out to the rest of the world through many so-called ‘citizen-journalists’. Some of these people later reportedly disappeared or there were claims they had been forced into silence by the authorities and were living in fear of arrest, or worse. Has the regime essentially shutdown any and all citizen journalism now, and what does this mean for freedom of information in the country?

CA: We use the term ‘non-professional journalist’ rather than citizen journalist as these are people who are imparting facts, as professional journalists do – to their readers or audience. What has happened to these non-professional journalists is that since Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power, professional journalists have been increasingly under pressure, and some people in society have stepped in to replace them and do the role professional journalists have found increasingly difficult to perform by getting information out there that is not being seen by people, for instance information about various social movements in China, which is not being disseminated. Obviously, non-professional journalists have also come under pressure in recent times – some bloggers have been jailed for years for writing about subjects such as corruption of officials – but there will always be people out there who will want to get hold of, and spread, information about what is going on.

IPS: What is the situation like for foreign journalists in China?

CA: Unlike local journalists, their families can’t be threatened so they can do freer reporting than domestic journalists. But now they are coming under pressure from the regime. A lot are moving to Taiwan, which is a safe haven for journalists, but it makes it more difficult to report on mainland China and get an accurate picture of events there. The world needs foreign correspondents in mainland China so we know what is happening there.

In the last year, the Chinese government has expelled 18 foreign correspondents. So many being expelled is unheard of here. Foreign journalists are starting to worry they may be taken hostage in political disputes between China and other countries. They have also complained of pressure being put on their sources, so they are left with no one to speak to for their stories as those sources are too scared to speak on record or too scared to speak at all.

IPS: Can you see a time in the future where foreign journalists will not be able to work at all in China, or not without their work being censored or approved in some way by authorities in Beijing?

CA: Unfortunately, it is looking more and more likely that this could happen. Twenty years ago, China needed foreign correspondents to promote the country and its story to the world. In recent years though it has developed a system of propaganda so the regime can reach the people it wants to directly, and therefore no longer needs foreign correspondents. There may come a time when foreign correspondents do not want to work in China.

IPS: RSF has previously spoken about what it claims is China’s pursuit of a New World Media Order to expand its ideological influence beyond its borders, which poses a threat to free journalism and democracy. Could you explain what this New World Media Order is and how exactly China is pursuing it?

CA: The New World Media Order is simple to explain – China’s aim is to make journalism a synonym for propaganda. It wants to remove any counterforce or opposition to the regime in power. Investigative journalism is necessary for democracy and accountability, and what China wants is to have ‘journalists’ who are patriotic people who present propaganda. The regime is trying to change and control the narrative of itself and China. It is using international TV broadcasting, as well as buying up advertising space in international media and even working its way into foreign media, as part of its aim to create this new order.

IPS: Do you think the countries in which China is trying to infiltrate foreign media and gain influence are aware that this is what Beijing is doing?

CA: Everyone is aware of what China is doing with this New World Media Order and trying to infiltrate media, but they have closed their eyes to it because countries want to do trade with China. There has been this engagement and stated aims of trying to change and improve the human rights situation in China, but it has been shown that nothing has changed. What is going to happen is that citizens in these other countries, in democracies, are going to soon realise that their governments have been selling their countries’ souls for decades.

IPS: Beijing could argue that by setting up Chinese language TV stations and media outlets in other countries it is doing nothing different to what the BBC, CNN, or other similar foreign broadcasters do, or have done, in China. What would your counter argument be for that?

CA: There is a huge difference between public media, i.e. media which is essentially owned by the public, and state media. It is important for any public to have access to information which is independent, and which acts as a reference media for the public. For example, the BBC is a public media, it is now owned or run by the state authorities, it has its own board, and is responsible for its own decisions, and it is impossible for the government to make it publish or broadcast something which it does not want to. It is independent. But something like China’s CCTV has to promote the Chinese communist party’s propaganda. The two entities are entirely different in their nature and it is incorrect to even compare them in any way.

IPS: Are other regimes copying China’s example of gaining influence and peddling propaganda in foreign media to pursue their own ideological and political aims?

CA: China’s model of media turning into state propaganda is being exported all over the world. Dictators now know that if they can control the media, they can keep getting re-elected because there is only one message getting to the people – that they have a glorious leader.

IPS: What can, or should, countries which claim to support freedom of information and free media, such as many Western democracies, be doing to counter China’s pursuit of a New World Media Order?

What they have to do is to remain democracies and open and not arbitrarily get rid or ban any media. But they also have to have a system in place which protects free, independent media and makes sure competition is fair, and that any media operating on that market do so by adhering to free and open journalism and not to propaganda.

IPS: What are the prospects for media freedom in China in the medium and long-term future?

CA: As long as Xi Jinping is in power it is hard to see any positive change in the state of media freedom in China any time soon, and in fact it is more likely to just get worse. The only hope is that political forces eventually emerge within China which will open up the possibility of a freer media and give the Chinese people what they want, which is freedom of information. We saw how angry Chinese people were online when they realised that the authorities had lied to them over Covid-19. The government has powerful technological tools at their disposal and have been successful in stopping people accessing information, but the demand from the people for real and accurate information will win out in the end, even though that does not appear to be something likely to happen any time very soon.

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Chinese companies have been gaining increasing access to the electricity grids of South American countries. Credit: Bigstock.

By Cecilia Joy-Pérez
WASHINGTON, May 19 2021 (IPS)

Over the past decade, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from China have carved out a niche as owners and operators of electric utilities in South American countries through acquisitions of energy grids. As SOEs shift from their previous role as mostly builders to investors in large energy assets, policymakers in South America and in Washington should consider the implications of having these companies at the helm of such services.

Countries should assess the risk of Beijing directing its SOEs to use their positions as leverage in the event of a diplomatic conflict. Under these circumstances, SOEs could increase the cost of energy, and go as far as to disrupt services.

Although such measures might constitute an extreme response, China has been willing to exert commercial power in disputes with other countries, as a recent episode with Australia has shown.

Furthermore, energy grids are increasingly interwoven with the digital infrastructure of cities – providing an opening for China to introduce backdoors into critical infrastructure. As a result, South American leaders may be less willing to reject Beijing’s claims in international bodies on myriad issues, ranging from the origins of covid-19 to human rights, if basic services hang in the balance.

From Washington’s standpoint, China’s growing role as a service provider could improve perceptions of its economic engagement in the region, paving the way for stronger relationships with South American countries and edging out the US

From Washington’s standpoint, China’s growing role as a service provider could improve perceptions of its economic engagement in the region, paving the way for stronger relationships with South American countries and edging out the US.

This could generate more support for Beijing’s broader policy objectives. US policymakers should engage South American countries to safeguard their energy grids by communicating these potential risks and taking on more leadership in infrastructure development in the region.

China’s firms enter South America through non-competitive means

Despite occasional hype, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has largely refused to cut excess capacity in SOEs. One alternative has been to encourage them to pursue international contracting – first through the ‘Going Out’ policy and later with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Supported by cheap state financing, SOEs can participate in projects that for-profit firms cannot compete with. Beijing also supports SOEs efforts to capture market share, often irrespective of commercial gains, in sectors that it deems strategically important.

Firms such as State Grid have an impressive track record of building energy grids in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and in West Asia, outcompeting other firms through Beijing’s subsidies.

Through this work, SOEs have amassed a wealth of experience working in tough environments, making them attractive partners for Latin American countries that may have unreliable energy grids. Today, SOEs own nearly US$24.4 billion in energy grids in South America, with US$8.9 billion in deals closing or reaching a sale agreement in 2020 alone.

SOE energy grid investments in South America do not yet include any greenfield projects. They are all acquisitions. For example, in June 2020 State Grid announced its acquisition of a 100% stake in Chilquinta Energía S.A., the Chilean arm of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, as well as two additional companies that provide electric construction and maintenance services for Chilquinta.

The acquisition strategy enables China’s firms to enter the market more easily, relying on existing systems and know-how. It also may provide State Grid – and by extension the state – insight into the operations of US energy companies such as Sempra.

China’s evolving interests in the region

China is taking on a new role in the region as a service provider through its recent investments in energy grids. Historically, economic engagement in South America fits with the China’s long-standing pursuit of commodities and export markets globally.

Beijing’s international engagement is shaped by its partner regions. Rich areas like the US and the EU generally draw larger amounts of investment, while developing regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia draw greater construction activity.

Since 2005, however, South America has hosted US$54 billion in construction contracts and received US$129 billion in investment. The lion’s share of the investment has focused on the extraction of commodities, such as oil in Venezuela and copper in Peru. Yet, with the investment in energy grids a new trend is emerging.

China’s approach in the region to date has relied on carrots rather than sticks. However, the pandemic is shifting dynamics worldwide.

China’s trade retaliation for Australia’s endorsement of an investigation into the origins of Covid-19 demonstrates that Beijing is willing to leverage commercial tools in diplomatic conflicts. Australia is home to over US$100 billion in investment from China and, like South America, is a major supplier of commodities.

As Beijing’s global ambitions grow, cultivating allies in South America could prove beneficial. Already, the CPC has dangled economic engagement and used infrastructure cooperation to entice Latin American countries into severing ties with Taiwan.

Responding to China’s new presence in South America

Policymakers in Washington are grappling with how to respond to the BRI and China’s broader economic engagement in developing countries. An immediate step should be informing other countries of the risks of doing business with entities from China through diplomatic exchanges and open-source intelligence sharing.

Furthermore, the US, which has long viewed foreign involvement in strategic sectors in Latin America as a potential threat to its own national security, should determine which sectors and countries are of high priority to narrow the China’s gains in those markets.

Most countries treat electrical grids as key assets, limiting foreign investment in the sector. South American countries may welcome the investment from China now, but they would do well to better understand the specific risks that come with it. Subsequently, the US should lead in developing the region’s critical infrastructure, ultimately safeguarding stability in the Western Hemisphere.

Cecilia Joy-Pérez is an associate at Pointe Bello, specialising in business intelligence with a particular focus on China’s outward foreign investment

This article was originally published by ChinaDialogue

Social distancing in a Macau Hospital waiting room. Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about human rights abuses being carried out under the guise of COVID-19 public health lockdowns in China. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 2021 (IPS)

China must end its campaign against individuals seeking redress for COVID-19 linked abuses and the human rights lawyers and activists who help them, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said as reports ranging from allegedly trapping them inside their homes, to chaining alleged lock-down violators to metal posts emerge.

This comes as the World Health Organisation team has arrived in Wuhan to investigate the origins of the outbreak and just as China announced today, Jan. 14, its first COVID-19-related death in 8 months.

In a statement last week, the New York based rights group said that “under the pretext of COVID-19 lockdowns”, Chinese authorities unleashed cruel measures against its citizens. HRW said the government is attempting to silence its critics, through surveillance, intimidation and lengthy prison terms.

HRW China Researcher Yaqui Wang told IPS that governments and the international community should apply pressure on the Chinese government to end the abuses.  

Yaqiu Wang is a China researcher at Human Rights Watch. Courtesy: Human Rights Watch

Inter Press Service (IPS): You cited international human rights law, which dictates that state restrictions due to public health needs must be lawful, necessary and proportionate. Based on reports on the ground, are restrictions in China flouting those conditions?

Yaqiu Wang (YW): Right. There were measurements undertaken by the Chinese government that seemed to be unnecessarily harsh and failed to respect human dignity. For example, officials were seen sealing apartment doors to prevent people from leaving their homes.

Some residents were chained to metal posts for purportedly violating stay-at-home orders. Videos circulated online showed residents yelling from their homes in despair. In Xinjiang, authorities forced some residents to drink traditional Chinese medicines.

According to international human rights law, when quarantines or lockdowns are imposed, the authorities are obligated to ensure access to food, water, health care, and care-giving support.  Yet, during the Wuhan lockdown, you saw on the Chinese internet many chilling stories: A boy with cerebral palsy died because no one took care of him after his father was taken to be quarantined. A woman with leukemia died after being turned away by several hospitals because of concerns about cross-infection. A mother desperately pleaded to the police to let her leukemia-stricken daughter through a checkpoint at a bridge to get chemotherapy. A man with kidney disease jumped to his death from his apartment balcony after he couldn’t get access to health facilities for dialysis. 

Bear in mind, these stories are just the tip of the iceberg given the stringent censorship people in China are living under. Information critical of the government is swiftly removed. More often than not, people don’t even bother to voice their criticism or tell their stories knowing they could be punished.

IPS: You expressed concern about human rights abuses being carried out under the guise of public health lockdowns. What are some of the ways citizens say they are being intimidated?

YW: For example, in the name of cracking down on false information about the pandemic, the authorities have detained hundreds, if not thousands, of people for “rumour-mongering,” censored online discussions of the epidemic, curbed media reporting, and imprisoned citizen journalists.

IPS: How concerned are you about surveillance tactics that intercept citizens’ communications platforms? Are you worried that citizens will be afraid to come forward and voice any concerns?

YW: That is now the digital reality of people living in China. Whatever you say publicly on Chinese social media or privately through Chinese messaging apps is open for the Chinese government to see. If you criticise the government, even privately, you can be harassed, or worse, imprisoned. The perhaps more pernicious effect is that knowing the risks, many choose to self-censor. 

The fear permeates the Chinese society, long existed before the pandemic.

IPS: You stated that residents also fear detainment and harsh punishments, including lengthy prison sentences if they speak out. Are those fears founded on hearings taking place during the pandemic?

YW: Since the outbreak in Wuhan, authorities detained several citizen journalists who reported from Wuhan. A court in Shanghai sentenced Zhang Zhan to four years in prison after convicting her of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. The situation and whereabouts of Fang Bin, a businessman in Wuhan who has been detained for posting videos of city hospital, remain unknown. Beijing-based activists Chen Mei and Cai Wei, whom the police detained in April for archiving censored COVID-19-related information, remain in a detention center awaiting trial.

IPS: Are there measures in place to assist citizens who do come forward, but would require some level of anonymity in reporting grievances?

YW: It has actually become very difficult. One the one hand, many securer communication tools, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, are banned in China. It is increasingly difficult to circumvent censorship and obtain secure communication because unauthorised VPNs are increasingly banned in China. So, people are left to use domestic apps, and these apps are heavily surveilled and censored. For example, all WeChat accounts are attached to a phone number which is attached to your national ID card. The Chinese government has pretty much eliminated anonymity in the Chinese digital space. 

IPS: You are calling for an end to intimidation and surveillance of those critical of the government’s COVID response. Bearing in mind the realities on the ground in China, are you hoping that, at the very least, you can shed light on what is going on?

YW: Yes, so people outside of China are aware of the abuses going on inside China. We hope governments and the international community can put pressure on the Chinese government to cease the abuses.

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In Iran, which has seen some of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world, a number of reporters are now facing jail after being detained earlier this month for challenging official statistics about the outbreak of the disease in the country. People in Rasht, Gilan Province, Iran, taking precautions to prevent infection by wearing masks in public. mojtaba mosayebzadeh

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 20 2020 (IPS)

Growing intimidation and repression of journalists reporting on the coronavirus is threatening public health in some countries, press freedom monitors have warned.

Repressive regimes desperate to control the narrative around the disease’s spread have stepped up their harassment of journalists challenging official information on cases and their handling of the outbreak, they say.

And by cracking down on those trying to report accurately on the disease, these regimes are jeopardising the dissemination of essential facts the population may need to keep themselves safe, the groups argue.

“When the truth is repressed, everyone’s lives are put in danger, not just journalists,’” Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

Since the emergence of the disease at the end of last year in China and its subsequent transformation into a global pandemic, there have been growing concerns over the treatment of reporters covering virus outbreaks in some states.

In China, there have been reports of local journalists who criticised the government’s response to the virus being harassed by security forces. Some have even vanished, presumed taken by police and detained in an unknown location.

Meanwhile, last month, three Wall Street Journal reporters were expelled from China over an article about the impact of the virus on the Chinese economy. And just this week 13 journalists working for The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post had their credentials revoked by Chinese authorities.

Beijing said this followed United States authorities’ tightening of rules for Chinese media outlets operating in the country, but the editors of the three newspapers all condemned the decision. Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, said it was “especially irresponsible at a time when the world needs the free and open flow of credible information about the coronavirus pandemic”.

But it is not just China where journalists are facing problems for not toeing the government line.

In Iran, which has seen some of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world, a number of reporters are now facing jail after being detained earlier this month for challenging official statistics about the outbreak of the disease in the country.

Fardin Moustafai, the editor of a news channel on the Telegram instant messaging app, was this month formally charged with publishing figures contradicting official information about the epidemic’s progress, according to press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

It says two journalists were detained for questioning in Rasht, one of the Iranian cities worst hit by the disease, after publishing information about the situation in the city and the number of victims while four journalists were questioned over official information about the epidemic.

Reza Moisi, head of the Afghanistan-Iran Desk at RSF, told IPS that some journalists who had been brought in for questioning over their reporting will now stand trial and could face jail sentences.

He said though that the regime’s approach to such journalists would “do nothing to help combat the coronavirus epidemic, quite the contrary.”

“The repression of press freedom in Iran is systematic and therefore the control of information there is implacable. This repression targets journalists, of course, but also the public’s right to be informed. Researchers and journalists themselves have said this is one reason why situations, especially in a crisis, worsen.

“In the current crisis, the concealment of information and lack of complete and independent information has clearly put the population in danger,” he said.

The crackdown on journalists in Iran, and in other places such as China, is little surprise, said Mahoney.

“We have seen journalists face repression in places like China and Iran in the past. There are governments which want to control the narrative when something embarrassing, something they appear to be dealing badly with, or has got out of their control, like a pandemic, happens,” he said.

“The apparatus of censorship is already in place, this is just another time that it has been turned on to control the flow of information,” he added.

But concerns over the press’s ability to report accurately on the crisis are not confined solely to countries seen to have repressive regimes.

In the U.S., for instance, there has been criticism about the way the White House has informed about the disease. Critics say there has been a litany of scientifically baseless, false, misleading or confusing statements from President Donald Trump and other officials for months.

U.S. media also reported that Trump tried to have at least one health expert, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, muzzled after she publicly contradicted the President’s statements and that the White House tried to gag health officials who wanted to warn elderly people to avoid air travel.

Officials have also openly attacked media for their reporting on COVID-19. At the end of last month, acting White House chief of staff David Mulvaney said the media was overplaying the dangers of the disease as a way to “bring down the president”.

Mahoney said that in situations where governments effectively bypass the press and speak directly to the people, or do not give them proper access to relevant officials and experts, incorrect or misleading information can end up being passed out to the population unchecked.

“Look at the US where the White House was telling people for weeks that the coronavirus was just like seasonal flu, and then suddenly it’s an emergency,” he said.

“The work journalists do in uncovering things, such as corruption or political scandals, is important but often does not have an immediate impact on normal people’s lives. But their work now has real-time consequences – it could be a matter of life and death. This is why journalists need to have, and be able to disseminate, correct information. If the truth is repressed, the correct information is not getting out,” he explained.

The importance of ensuring accurate information is relayed to not just the public but healthcare workers and scientists has recently been pointed out by health professionals.

Last month, dozens of public health scientists wrote in The Lancet medical journal of their concerns that misinformation about COVID-19 could be hindering efforts to contain the disease.

Previous studies, including on recent Ebola outbreaks on Africa, have shown that misinformation can worsen infectious disease outbreaks.

To this end, governments around the world have taken action to stop the spread of hoaxes and fake news about the disease. Some of this has been drastic, including criminalisation and long jail terms for people found guilty of posting or sharing misinformation about the virus and its spread.

This has led to fears that in some countries these measures are being used to silence critical voices, including journalists.

In China alone, as of February 21, China’s Ministry of Public Security had registered more than 5,500 cases of people “fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information”.

In Malaysia, for example, dozens of people, including a journalist, have been arrested for allegedly spreading false information about the virus via social media. There have been similar arrests across Asia, including in India, Thailand and Indonesia, in recent weeks.

Moiri told IPS that in Iran, more than 130 people have been arrested since the end of February for publishing false information. “Not all these people are journalists, but many of them are probably citizen journalists who have published something that contradicts official information,” he said.

Journalism experts have cast doubt over the effectiveness and motivations behind such measures.

Lynette Leonard, Associate Professor at the Journalism and Mass Communication Department of the American University in Bulgaria, told IPS: “Censorship is always a concern even with ‘fake news’. There is rarely a clear way of distinguishing the political goals of criminalising information dissemination from public health goals.

“Fake news, the intentional spread of false information to gain influence or power, is a real problem but the term has been manipulated so much that any legislation that is enacted quickly will likely lack the precise definitions needed to be useful in the fight [against it].”

With no end expected to the pandemic anytime soon, it is unclear what further threats journalists in some countries will face for challenging their governments’ handling of the crisis.

But in at least one country they are unlikely to be effective in completely suppressing critical reporting.

During a string of crises over the last year, including floods in March 2019, popular protests last November, the shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner in in February, and now the coronavirus outbreak, the regime has made increasing use of censorship and repression, particularly to control the population, according to Moisi.

“But the question is, will the Islamic Republic of Iran win this war on information? The country’s recent history shows that repression and imprisonment have not kept journalists quiet,” he said.

Protesters forming the Hong Kong Way hold up their cell phone lights while standing on a busy road in Sham Shui Po, where double decker buses often passed through, on Aug. 23. Human Rights Watch has blasted China’s government for undermining global interests and interventions with regards to human rights issues. Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 2020 (IPS)

China is currently under heavy scrutiny for its massive human rights violations across different sections, Human Rights Watch (HRW) head Kenneth Roth said on Wednesday. 

At the launch of World Report 2020, which focuses largely on China’s record of violating human rights for both its citizens domestically as well as abroad, Roth blasted the country’s government for undermining global interests and interventions with regards to human rights issues.

Roth, who was denied access to Hong Kong over the weekend, said at the launch that China is “using diplomatic clout to silence global institutions”. He also heavily criticised the United Nations Secretary General for not holding China accountable for its human rights abuses. 

“At the U.N. headquarters, a major Chinese government priority has been avoiding discussion of its conduct in Xinjiang,” he said. “U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has been unwilling to publicly demand an end to China’s mass detention of its Muslims.”

On Wednesday, Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres’ spokesperson told reporters during a briefing that the Secretary General had previously spoken out on this issue on a number of occasions and raised a number of issues with his Chinese counterparts. He reiterated the Secretary General’s position which is based on principles surrounding “full respect for the unity and territorial integrity of China,” protection of human rights in the “fight against terrorism” and the importance of “each community to “feel that its identity is fully respected.”  

He was unable to respond to specific allegations by Roth that China continues to “avoid discussion of its conduct in Xinjiang” at the U.N.  In September HRW released a report of the “Chinese government’s mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment of Turkic Muslims”. 

Suu Kyi’s ‘appalling’ efforts 

Meanwhile, Roth also echoed thoughts from experts who have previously said that one of the reasons the Security Council had not been able to take steps against Myanmar is because of pressure from China. 

In November, on the heels of a lawsuit being filed against Myanmar by the Gambia, Akila Radhakrishnan of the Global Justice Center expressed similar concerns to IPS.

“Security council has consistently failed to act because of China — there’s no possibility of any strong action,” Radhakrishnan had said, reiterating why it’s important for states to directly take action against Myanmar.  

In that regard, especially with Roth’s concerns about China “intimidation of other governments” with threats, one issue of concern would be China’s relations with the Gambia, which has grown in the past few years. 

When asked, Roth told IPS he wasn’t aware if the Gambia was going to suffer any threats from China given its actions against Myanmar, but he said Aung San Suu Kyi leading the defence in the case is “appalling.” 

“One element of this that is not generally appreciated is the initial hearing that took place a few weeks ago was actually not about the merits of the genocide case, it was about the provisional measures,” he said. 

Provisional measures in the case of international law ensures that the main concern at the centre of the suite is not destroyed while the case is pending, which in this case would mean Myanmar imposes measures to refrain from any acts of genocide against the Rohingya community, and would ensure protecting the Rohingya community still in Myanmar. 

“It was about protecting the roughly 450,000 Rohingyas who are still in Rakhine state, still within Myanmar,” Roth said. “So these are the people who are living terrified, displaced…unable to move. They are extremely at risk of the same violence that sent 730,000 compatriots fleeing to Bangladesh a couple years ago.”

He said Suu Kyi’s move implies that she isn’t just defending the past atrocities of Myanmar against Rohingya people. 

“It’s not just defending past action that she was there for,” he said, “she was defending the future.”

By Zhengian Huang and Daniel Jeong-Dae Lee
BANGKOK, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

The Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads. The traditional export-oriented, manufacturing-driven growth is facing headwinds from sluggish external demand and rising protectionist trade measures. 

New technologies have increased the likelihood of labour-intensive jobs in the region becoming automated. Meanwhile, many countries have witnessed widening income and opportunity inequalities. Rising environmental risks and climatic disasters add further burdens to the future development agenda.

There is an alternative scenario in which China pursues a holistic approach to structural reforms that achieves innovative, inclusive and sustainable development growth paths simultaneously

Now the questions that most developing countries in the region face are: Can they achieve economic convergence by following the traditional growth path? How can they balance economic growth with social inclusiveness and environmental sustainability?

This article addresses these questions by using China as an example.

China’s economic development is outstanding in terms of pace and scale. Over the last four decades, China’s economy has become the largest in the region, and has transformed from a predominantly agricultural one to an industrial powerhouse, and is now increasingly service-oriented.

However, strains from rapid structural changes have become clearer. Prominent among these are the country’s slowing population growth and labour force expansion, its decelerating productivity growth as available technologies approach the technological frontier, distributional tensions resulting from rising inequality and strains on the carrying capacity of the natural environment.

Economic simulations through 2030 suggest that under the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, GDP growth would hold up at a rate of around 6 per cent in the short-term but would experience a sharp drop by 2030 as economic efficiency declines. At the same time, urban-rural income gaps as well as inequality within urban and rural areas would remain wide, leaving pockets of poverty.

China’s energy consumption and carbon emissions would continue to rise, failing to meet its commitment to the Paris Agreement (see BAU scenario in figure A, B and C).

Figure: Alternative scenarios for China in 2030
Source: ESCAP, based on DRC-CGE model.
Note: BAU = baseline scenario; ING = innovative growth scenario; ICG = inclusive growth scenario; SSG = sustainable growth scenario; and ALL = innovative, inclusive and sustainable growth scenario.

However, there is an alternative scenario in which China pursues a holistic approach to structural reforms that achieves innovative, inclusive and sustainable development growth paths simultaneously.

Under this scenario, the country could maintain relatively high rates of economic growth, even as external demand remains sluggish, the labour force shrinks, and capital accumulation slows.

Accelerated urbanization, a rising “middle-class” population and increasing government transfers to optimize the social protection system could narrow rural and urban income disparities.

China’s total energy consumption and carbon emissions could peak in 2025, five years ahead of the timeline for the Paris Agreement, if a new carbon tax is implemented and non-fossil fuel energy assumes a greater share of the energy mix (see ALL scenario in figure A, B and C).

Recent policies and measures show that China is giving more weight to the quality of growth. First, China is pursuing supply-side reforms, focusing on technology and innovation. The country has established objectives to become an “international innovation leader” by 2030.

Second, actions are underway to improve the inclusiveness of economic growth. China has established objectives for eliminating absolute poverty by 2020.

Fiscal transfers to enhance social protection have been increased, while more funds have been deployed for rural infrastructure, agricultural subsidies and discounted loans.

Third, China has taken serious steps to curb pollution while speeding up the transition to clean energy. China aims to get 20 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2030. In late 2017, a carbon emissions trading system was launched in the country.

Such policies should be pursued in an integrated manner in order to reduce trade-offs and maximize synergies. In the Chinese example, policy priorities on technology and innovation could boost growth in GDP but might worsen income inequality, given technology’s effect of favouring capital over labour and favouring skilled over unskilled labour (BAU and ING scenarios in figure A and B).

Policies to reduce carbon emissions would be more effective if combined with new technologies and innovation which improves resource efficiency (SSG and ALL scenarios in figure C).

Scenarios on China’s potential policy paths towards a sustainable future shed some light for other developing countries. While a country’s economic growth may inevitably trend down as it matures, the quality of growth will differ significantly depending on the policy choices made.

It’s highly important and urgent for policymakers to switch their mindsets to prioritize policies that support people and the planet. This is not an easy process. Continuous policy efforts are required to balance development between the social, environmental and economic dimensions to ensure long-term prosperity.

This article is based on a recent ESCAP report China’s Economic Transformation: Impacts on Asia and the Pacific. Please click here to view it.

Excerpt:

The United Nations has warned that drought, disease and war are preventing farmers from producing enough food for millions of people across Africa and other regions.Recurring droughts have destroyed most harvests in the Sahel. Credit:Kristin Palitza/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has warned of drought, disease and war preventing farmers from producing enough food for millions of people across Africa and other regions, leading to the need for major aid operations.

A report called the Crop Prospects and Food Situation by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that shortages of grain and other foodstuffs have left people in 41 countries — 31 of them in Africa — in need of handouts.

“Ongoing conflicts and dry weather conditions remain the primary causes of high levels of severe food insecurity, hampering food availability and access for millions of people,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters on Tuesday.

Southern Africa has experienced both dry spells and rainfall damage from Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique on Mar. 14. The storm caused “agricultural production shortfalls” and big “increases in cereal import needs,” added Haq. 

Farmers in Zimbabwe and Zambia have seen harvests decline this year. Some three million people faced shortages at the start of 2019, but food price spikes there will likely push that number upwards in the coming months, researchers say.

In eastern Africa, crop yields have dropped in Somalia, Kenya and Sudan due to “severe dryness”, added Haq. 

According to the FAO, life for rural herders in Kassala State, in eastern Sudan, has been upended by a drought that has forced them to move livestock away from traditional grazing routes in pursuit of greener pastures.

“Life would be so hard if our livestock died. We wouldn’t have food or milk for the children,” Khalda Mohammed Ibrahim, a farmer near Aroma, in Kassala State, told FAO. “When it is dry, I am afraid the animals will starve — and then we will too.”

Droughts are getting worse, says the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”.

In Asia, low yields of wheat and barley outputs are raising concerns in North Korea, where dry spells, heatwaves and flooding have led to what has been called the worst harvests the hermit dictatorship has seen in a decade, the report said.

More than 10 million North Koreans — or 40 percent of the country’s population — are short of food or require aid handouts, the U.N.’s Rome-based agency for agriculture said in its 42-page study.

FAO researchers also addressed the spread of a deadly pig disease in China that has disrupted the world’s biggest pork market and is one of the major risks to a well-supplied global agricultural sector.

China is grappling with African swine fever, which has spread across much of the country this past year. There is no cure or vaccine for the disease, often fatal for pigs although harmless for humans.

By the middle of June, more than 1.1 million pigs had died or been culled. The bug has also been reported in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mongolia, North Korea and Laos, affecting millions of pigs and threatening farmers’ livelihoods.

The FAO forecast a five percent fall in Chinese pork output this year, while imports were predicted to rise to almost two million tonnes from an average 1.6 million tonnes per year from 2016 to 2018.

Conflict is another worry, the FAO said. While Syria and Yemen have seen “generally conducive weather conditions for crops”, fighting between government forces, rebels and other groups in both countries has ravaged agriculture.

Violence in Yemen has triggered what the U.N. calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 3.3 million people displaced and 24.1 million — more than two-thirds of the population — in need of aid.

Last month, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) announced a “partial suspension” of aid affecting 850,000 people in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, saying the Houthi rebels that run the city were diverting food from the needy.

Likewise, in Africa, simmering conflicts in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan have caused a “dire food security situation”. In  South Sudan, seven million people do not have enough food.

A U.S. soldier stands watch at the Kindi IDP Resettlement Center near Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 16, 2009. Credit: U.S. Navy Photo

By Leila Yasmine Khan and Daud Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

As China rapidly replaces Europe and the USA as the key player in developing countries, the Western press is full of articles about the dangers of dealing with the Chinese.

China, it is said, is not liberal and not democratic and hence is not a trustworthy partner in strategic and economic matters. An often cited example is that of Hambantota – a strategically located port that was handed over by the Sri Lankan Government to the Chinese in lieu of repayment of loans.

Of course closely corresponding examples of what was done by western countries is not mentioned such as Diego Garcia. This is a strategically located island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In the late 1960s the USA and United Kingdom forcibly removed the local population and established a miltiary base.

Acts like that of Diego Garcia are justified by the excuse that they were necessary to dafeguard democarcy and liberalism. The most glaring recent example for western countries going to war to defend democracy is in Iraq.

Diplomatic pressure, collusion, corruption and, when necessary, war are justified by the fact that these other societies have systems and values distinct from the liberal ones

The USA invaded Iraq to save democratic countries (read Israel) from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and to liberate the Iraqi people from an undemocratic regime. This narrative had strong resonance in Congress, in the Senate, in the popular media and among the general public and created a groundswell of support for the Shock and Awe campaign.

In a few weeks over 1,500 air strikes were launched against Iraq and almost 7,000 civilians were killed. A triumphant President Bush was able to proudly announce “Mission Accomplished” to an adulating public and pave the way to a second term in office.

An important question for developing countries is:  are these patterns of behavior aberrations in what are otherwise free, peaceful and caring societies; or are they an integral part of the political systems of these countries?

Would things be different if more leaders of the western world were like Justin Trudeau? Would things be different if Hilary Clinton had won the election instead of Donald Trump? Will things be different if the aggressive tendencies of the deep state and occult elites, such as the military-industrial complex, are harnessed by more democratic institutions? In order to answer this we need to look a little into the political philosophy and social consensus that underpins these societies.

Over the last two to three centuries, the values espoused by the Enlightenment – freedom, equality, dignity and independence – have come to dominate the political and socio-economical mainstream in Europe and the USA.

This classical liberalism was complemented by shared views on social justice, the welfare state, and a reliance on the free market for the allocation of a society’s resources.  The view that the liberal, democratic, free-market system is the best way to organize society is now widely shared in the West.

A somewhat deeper look suggests that aggression and exploitation are not an aberration but are very much part of western liberalism. In their critique to John Rawls’ liberal theory, modern political philosophers such as Charles W. Mills, Leif Wenar and Branko Milanovic point out that a liberal society is “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage” regulated by rules for advancing the interests “of those taking part in it”.

The practical manifestation of this is that the social commitment to liberal beliefs often tends to translate into a belief that if the system is under threat, or perceived to be under threat, it is legitimate to defend it against others – by violence when necessary.

As a result the values of peace, freedom and liberty, which are the pillars of western liberal society, tend not to be extended to countries outside this system. Diplomatic pressure, collusion, corruption and, when necessary, war are justified by the fact that these other societies have systems and values distinct from the liberal ones.

As in the case of the Iraq war, the 9/11 attacks and the perceived threat to democracy, and the western way of life, created an unprecedented wave of popular indignation.  It was considered more than sufficient cause to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone-age and to threaten other countries with a similar fate.

History abounds with similar examples where liberal societies have had no qualms about going to war with the excuse of bringing civilization, trade or democracy to other countries. In the same vein, western democracies have no second thoughts about making alliances with repressive and undemocratic regimes whenever it suited them.

The fact that western liberal societies are capable of colonialism and war does not mean that China is going to be a heaven-sent, or that developing countries should abandon our progress towards liberal values such as tolerance, freedom and equality. However, it does mean that they should not get swayed by the anti-China rhetoric of the western press but take a pragmatic approach way for the good of the country.

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s in Philosophy and a Master’s in Argumentation and Rhetoric from the University of Amsterdam, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre).

Daud Khan a retired UN staff based in Rome. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

Reclamation of desertified, sandified land on either side of the Sudu desert road in Wengniute County, China. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Daud Khan
ROME, Apr 18 2019 (IPS)

As China has moved from a poor isolated country to a major player in the world economic and political sphere, developing countries need to learn how to engage.  

In the first of this two part article I explored how best developing countries could benefit from the ongoing and planned flow of investments into their countries.

In this second part I look at some of the critical elements of China’s development experience and discuss what lessons could be drawn for policies and programmes in other developing countries. Given my background and experience I shall look at this issue from the perspective of agriculture and rural development, although the key ideas most likely also apply to other sectors.

Overall growth in China over the past 25 years has years has averaged 9% per year!!  This is while many other developing countries have struggled to keep growth above population increases.

The key to this fast economic growth is China’s amazingly high investment rate – over 40% in the past two and a half decades.  In comparison, most other developing countries struggle to reach investment rates of 15%.

Much of the investment and the associated growth occurred in manufacturing and associated services which is what make the country the workshop of the world.

However, it is important to recall that one of the key factors underpinnings China’ performance was strong agricultural performance with growth of around 4-5%. – this rate of growth in the agriculture sector is now a benchmark rate for other developing countries who wish to achieve rapid economic development.

It is important to recall that one of the key factors underpinnings China’ performance was strong agricultural performance with growth of around 4-5%. - this rate of growth in the agriculture sector is now a benchmark rate for other developing countries who wish to achieve rapid economic development

This relatively high growth had two consequences. Firstly, it helped maintain low prices, particularly for food and agricultural raw materials, and secondly, it allowed a massive release of labour from agriculture.

The proportion of total labour employed in agriculture in China dropped from around well over 50% in 1991 to around 16% in 2018, a transformation that only a few other countries in the world, such as Thailand and VietNam even come close to.

The low prices of food and agricultural raw materials, along with the transfer of labour out of agriculture, provided the cheap manpower and inputs that laid the foundation for China’s competitive growth in manufacturing and services.

China’s agriculture growth reflects higher yields and productivity improvements, rather than an increase in inputs.  Productivity increases took place along the full value chain, from postharvest handing to processing, packaging and marketing.

This was the result of investments in machinery, equipment, irrigation, storage and logistics, as well as a strong push on research and technology diffusion.   There were also changes in the structure of production which reflect changes in demand patterns particularly of richer, more urbanised consumers.

Output of traditional cereals such as wheat and rice fell, while that of fruits, vegetables, livestock products and fisheries increased rapidly.    China also integrated well with the world trading system, importing crops which were cheaper on the world market such as soyabean, needed for the rapidly expanding livestock sector; and cotton, needed for the textile industry.

Several factors stand out from China’s experience that are of importance to other developing countries. The most important of these are: high levels of public investments in key infrastructure, which eased and facilitated private investments; a strong push for technological change and innovation; and a dynamic approach to institutional reforms and critical policy issues such as liberalization of trade and markets. However, other developing countries may find that implementing these lessons will not be easy and will require substantial changes in their governments do business.

Developing countries need to raise investment rates, including in agriculture. However, low saving rates and poor taxation capacity limit the extent that this can be done. The funds needed to make transformative change will have to come from foreign sources and the only country that can do this at the scale required is China.

The saving’s rate in China is around 50% of GDP and continues to outpace investment providing huge resources to invest overseas. Ensuring that developing countries attract, and then make the best use of Chinese investments is thus critical. This is a topic I dealt with in my preceding paper.

At the same time, Governments in developing countries need to make far better use of the limited available public funds. In a number of countries, public funds from Government or donors are not spent in a timely manner due to bureaucratic and administrative inefficiencies.

When they are spent, much goes into corruption; on appeasing political constituencies particularly by providing low-skill, unproductive jobs; or funding activities that are best left to the private sector.  Developing countries also need to spend much more on research and technological innovation.

Overall China spends over 2% of GDP on research and development – a massive US$200 billion/year. Spending on agriculture is lower – about 0.6% of Agriculture GDP – but this still makes it the largest public agricultural research system in the world. The only other developing countries which have anything similar in size and complexity are Brazil – which spends over 1.5% to 2% of agriculture GDP on research, – and India which spend around 0.3%.

Actions to improve public spending, including larger allocations to research and technological innovations, require a mix of administrative and political actions which are the capacities of Governments of developing countries to implement if they so wish.

However, getting the right mix of policies especially with regard to broad development visions and strategies is more complex. In the unipolar world which emerged after the fall of the USSR, neo-liberalism provided the dominant development paradigm. The success of China, and countries such as Viet Nam, are providing an alternative to this neoliberal paradigm where the role of the state is stronger, and markets are used to guide local decisions but with strategic directions and key economic levers in the hands of the Government.

Most western academic institutions, traditional donor agencies and international UN agencies aligned themselves with the neoliberal view.  However, developing countries faced with a successful and emergent China need to think harder about their development strategies and policies.

This will require them to work closely not just with traditional donors and UN agencies but increasingly with academia, civil society and research institutions, at home as well as in China. As mentioned in the first of these two articles, this is something that developing country governments need to still need to learn how to do.

Daud Khan has more than 30 years of experience on development issues with various national and international organizations. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.  

The harbour expansion in Colombo seeks to tap into the lucrative Indian shipping trade, with Chinese help. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Daud Khan
ROME, Apr 3 2019 (IPS)

Fifty years ago China was a poor country with little influence in the international sphere and without even a seat at the United Nations. Since then rapid economic growth in China has made it an economic powerhouse that increasingly plays a leading role on the world stage as a trade partners as well as a source of investment.

China’s development trajectory has been much different from most other developing countries which have been often been buffeted by political and economic problems and have failed to grow at anywhere near their potential.

In the first of this two part article we would like to explore how best developing countries can benefit from the ongoing and planned flow of Chinese investments into the country. In the second part we will look at some of the key element of China’s development experience and, see what lessons we can draw for policies and programmes.

The most iconic and discussed manifestation of China’s increased economic and political clout is the Belt and Road Initiative that aims to link China with markets in Europe and Asia.

The impact of Chinese investments is likely to be enormous and transformational in developing countries, especially in those countries that have been stuck in a trap of slow growth and low investment. This is a huge opportunity but in order to maximise its benefits it is essential that these investments are well managed and regulated.

The Initiative is largely about improving trade and logistics. At the same time, major investments are also being made in mining, manufacturing, agriculture and services – both for export to the Chinese markets as well as for sale in domestic markets. These investments are being made in both developed and developing countries.

However, their impact is likely to be enormous and transformational in the latter, especially in those developing countries that have been stuck in a trap of slow growth and low investment. This is a huge opportunity but in order to maximise its benefits it is essential that these investments are well managed and regulated.

Most Chinese firms investing overseas tend to be middle to large enterprises. Many are state owned, or subsidiaries of state owned companies, and, as such, enjoy good government connections and backing.

These factors give them superior bargaining power vis-a-vis local counterparts and there is risk that the terms of agreement may be tilted in their favour. Such risks are particularly acute in countries where counterpart local enterprises tend to be small with limited financial and administrative skills.

There is an urgent need for laws, regulation and guidelines that ensure that contracts and agreements signed are fair and equitable. This is critical for all sectors, but especially so for activities such as mining, which require massive investment and long gestation periods, where agreements can be for decades.

A number of critical aspects require public oversight including royalty payments and financial parameters, such as interest rates, depreciation rates and insurance fees.

There is also a need to ensure that prices charged for the output of Chinese firms sold in local markets are fair and within reach of domestic consumers;  that there is no “transfer pricing” in the case of exports – this is a practice where companies sell at low prices to parent companies overseas in order to reduce profits and tax liabilities, while at the same time reducing the inflow of foreign exchange into the host country; that taxes, duties and other levies are fully paid in time; that negative environment impacts are mitigated and, when necessary, remedial actions are put in place; that workers are paid fair wages and that essential services such as medical assistance and education are provided to them; and that current land owners, farmers and tenants are not displaced from their lands and houses.

It may appear that these conditions are harsh and risk alienating Chinese investors.  However, Chinese investment should not be simply an opportunity to make a quick return but as a long-term partnership that is based on mutual benefits that are shared, also with workers.

These conditions, including on transfer pricing, are common for transnational investors in most developed countries and in these countries Chinese companies have no problem adhering to them.  There is no reason that similar condition are not set in developing countries and that Chinese firms should comply with them.

Moreover, over the last couple of decades, under pressure from consumer lobbying, boycotts and law suits in their countries of origin, many US and European companies, including the large multinationals, are increasingly conforming to such laws and regulations.

Many of them now also have significant Corporate Social Responsibility programmes. Chinese companies, if they expect to complete in the medium to long-term with Western corporations, must be prepared to do the same.

It is Government’s prerogative and duty to make laws, regulations and guidelines to manage overseas investment.  However, such laws are notoriously difficult to implement in developing countries with limited governance capacities.

It will be more so in the case of Chinese investors which, as mentioned above, tend to be big and well connected.

Moreover, it is unlikely that NGOs, pressure groups and civil society groups in China will take it upon themselves to lobby against unfair trade or manufacturing operations of Chinese companies in other countries, as happened in the case of US and Europeans companies.

In this situation, much responsibility rests with the civil society, the press and the judicial system in developing countries.  These institutions need to take up the challenge.

This will not be easy and help would be required from the international development community. At political level, the UN and other official agencies need to help governments to daft laws and regulations; and international NGOs, lobby groups and consumer associations will need to create and help counterpart organizations in developing countries.

However, the most difficult hurdle will be for Governments in developing countries to start seeing civil society organizations, the press and the judicial systems as key partners in the development process and not as impediments to trade and financial partnerships.

Daud Khan has more than 30 years of experience on development issues with various national and international organizations. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.  

By Scott Morris and Gailyn Portelance
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 10 2019 (IPS)

China continues to borrow an average of $2 billion a year from the World Bank, making it one of the Bank’s top borrowers—despite being the world’s second-largest economy and itself a major global lender, according to our study released today.

By doing a project-level analysis of recent World Bank loans to China, we found that the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)—which offers loans to middle-income and credit-worthy lower-income countries—has loaned more than $7.8 billion to China since the country surpassed the bank’s “graduation” income threshold for lending in 2016. The World Bank’s current threshold to trigger IBRD country graduation discussions is $6,895 in gross national income (GNI) per capita.

Lending to countries above this threshold has been controversial, with the United States particularly critical of ongoing lending to China. Critics have pushed for strict graduation standards that would make wealthier borrowers ineligible for bank loans (i.e., “graduation”). Under the 2018 agreement, World Bank shareholders agreed to limit loans to countries above the threshold to only projects that focus on:

• global public goods (projects that benefit the world at large); and,
• capacity-building (projects that help the countries “graduate” away from World Bank lending).

As shown in the figure above, less than half of China’s lending has gone to either of the approved categories, by strict definitions of these categories, since China crossed the income threshold in 2016. Capacity-building projects contribute to only 5 percent of its portfolio, and global public goods make up 38 percent of China’s borrowing portfolio.

However, a broader conception of capacity-building, which focuses on the allocation of resources to the poorest provinces within China improves that picture. Fifty-eight percent of lending to China has been directed to provinces with per capita incomes below the graduation income threshold.

And with a third of the portfolio supporting the reduction of carbon emissions in the country, the bank is meeting a clear global public good mandate. As the world’s largest polluter, China will need to make sizeable investments in climate-friendly finance if we are to make meaningful progress on this critical agenda.

The world has a lot to gain from a sustainable and productive China-World Bank relationship. To lower political heat from the United States and other critics, the Bank should request more from China in terms of interest charges on loans and ensure that all project lending adheres to the 2018 standards.

You can read the full study here.

Excerpt:

The little shop owned by Leean Saan, close the monument with the lions. "Business is going down, Chinese people don't buy from me," she says. Credit: Kris Janssens/IPS

By Kris Janssens
SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia, Sep 19 2018 (IPS)

The new Macau. That’s what the Cambodian coastal city Sihanoukville is called nowadays. Chinese investors are building casinos there on a massive scale.

The southern port city lies on the new Silk Road (the so called ‘One Belt, One Road’) and is therefore interesting for China.

The Cambodian government is happy to accept the money. And Beijing never asks difficult questions.

“Things are happening so fast in Sihanoukville; the city has changed completely in only a few months time,” a friend tells me.

My last visit there was in December.

And so I wanted to see these ‘spectacular changes’ with my own eyes.

My friend was right. When you enter the city, you see casinos everywhere. There could be about a hundred by now, and new ones are constantly being built. Some of them are big showy palaces, but there are also obscure gambling houses.

Alongside those casinos you still find the typical Cambodian shops, where people drink tea and where food is skewered and cooked on the barbecue.

Tourists at the beach enjoy their cocktails or take a dip in the gulf of Thailand.

But all those elements are in disharmony with one another.

There is clearly no urban planning here.

It seems the builders got carte blanche to satisfy the hunger for gambling.

Gaudy lions

The statue of two golden lions, at a roundabout close to the sea, is a beacon in the city. Leean Saan (76) has a tiny little shop close to the lions. She sells soda water, cigarettes and fuel for motorbikes.

Ten years ago, when the tourists came, she started selling drinks. “But the business is going down,” she says. “There are more and more Chinese people and they don’t buy in my shop.”

“They are gangsters!” says a tuk-tuk driver who comes to buy fuel. “They promise for example to pay three dollars, but when we get to the destination they only give two. And when I complain, they threaten me with violence. They always travel in groups, so they feel superior.”

Making good money

I walk down the street and see some Cambodian youngsters who are queuing to buy coffee. They are more positive about the recent developments.

Rath (22) has been working for five years as a receptionist in a hotel casino. “My first salary was 80 dollars a month. Two years ago it was raised to 200 dollars and since last year I make 500 dollars a month. They need experienced staff.”

But there is a flip side to the coin: prices have gone up in a short period of time. “I used to pay 30 dollars a month to rent a room, nowadays they ask up to 250. But at the end of the day I still earn more than before.”

O Fortuna

It is time to get an inside look into one of those casinos, ‘Golden Sand’. I am the only white person and the security staff watches me closely.

At the entrance of the hall the song ‘O Fortuna’ taken from ‘Carmina Burana’ is being played repeatedly. A screen shows an animated movie with Chinese dragons and philosophers.

The game room is big but feels cold, in spite of the wall-to-wall carpet and the leather and fabric seats. There are Chinese wall ornaments.

Croupiers in red costumes are sitting at big card tables. You see a lot of security agents here as well. Young girls in blue outfits wander down the hall carrying fly swatters to kill annoying insects.

Remarkable: Cambodians are not allowed to gamble, by law. So all customers are Chinese.

Also remarkable: they don’t come dressed in suits and ties, but are dressed in shorts and t-shirts.

“Most customers here are builders,” says Wu, who works himself at one of the numerous construction sites in Sihanoukville. “They come here to spend the money they just earned.”

Wu is here for six months. He earns 700 dollars a month. He could make as much money in China, but here he has more job security.

Recruiting

Srun (28) works as a recruiter. He’s Cambodian but has Chinese roots and works as a tour guide for Chinese tourists. “They often asked me where they could go to gamble.” So Srun went to talk to several casino managers and he has an agreement to work on commission.

“You have to talk face to face to Chinese people,” he says. “I understand some Cambodians think they are gangsters, because they always talk so loudly. But that is simply their way of negotiating.”

Srun gets one percent of the money customers spend on gambling. “That doesn’t seem much, but in some cases we are talking about 10,000 dollars for a group of four people. The casino opens a special VIP-room and I get a 100 dollars.”

Rental prices

It is lunchtime. I decide to go for a noodle soup in a…Chinese restaurant.

“We only have Chinese people,” says manager Zong, “I don’t even speak Khmer.” She followed her husband about one year ago, coming from Hangzhou, in the eastern part of China. “Customers pay about seven times more here for the same dish. So the decision was easily made.”

She pays 3,000 dollars in rent for her restaurant. “That’s a lot of money, but it still is an interesting deal. That also goes for the owner. He could never get this amount of money from locals. So everyone is satisfied.”

This house owner is actively helping the Chinese settlement in Sihanoukville. His fellow citizens, who might have been born here, have no other option than to leave the city and try to find affordable business premises elsewhere.

As long as money talks here, the Chinese population will continue to grow.

Maybe I should make the same trip in another six months from now, to document the new changes to this area.

*The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of IPS. 

Excerpt:

Demonstrators protest the construction of two mega hydroelectric power plants on the Santa Cruz River in Argentine Patagonia, with Chinese investment of five billion dollars. Despite concerns about environmental impacts, the government of Mauricio Macri decided to go ahead with the projects. Credit: Courtesy of FARN

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 8 2018 (IPS)

As in other Latin American countries, in recent years China has been a strong investor in Argentina. The environmental impact and economic benefits of this phenomenon, however, are a subject of discussion among local stakeholders.

One of the key areas is energy. A study by the non-governmental Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN) states that China has mainly been financing hydroelectric, nuclear and hydrocarbon projects.

Just four percent of these investments are in renewable energies, which is precisely the sector where the country is clearly lagging.

“China’s main objective is to export its technology and inputs. And it has highly developed hydraulic, nuclear and oil sectors. There are no more rivers in China where dams can be built and this is why they are so interested in the dams on the Santa Cruz River,” María Marta Di Paola, FARN’s director of research, told IPS."What we attributed in the past to U.S. pressure we are now experiencing with China….The dams are a clear example of how this pressure for economic reasons could be trampling over the nation's environmental sovereignty.” -- Hernán Casañas

China is behind a controversial project to build two giant dams in Patagonia, on the Santa Cruz River, which was approved during the administration of Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015) and ratified by President Mauricio Macri, despite strong environmental concerns.

The dams would cost some five billion dollars, with a foreseen a capacity of 1,310 MW.

However, expert Gustavo Girado said that it is not China that refuses to get involved in renewable energy projects, but Argentina that has not yet made a firm commitment to the energy transition towards clean and unconventional renewable sources.

“Like any country with a lot of capital, China is interested in all possible businesses and takes what it is offered. In fact, in Argentina it also has a high level of participation in the RenovAr Plan,” explained Girado, an economist and director of a postgraduate course on contemporary China at the public National University of Lanús, based in Buenos Aires.

He was referring to the initiative launched by the Argentine government to develop renewable energies and revert the current scenario, in which fossil fuels account for 87 percent of the country’s primary energy mix.

Also participating in this industry are Chinese companies, which during the period January-September 2017 produced 25 percent of the total oil and 14 percent of the natural gas extracted in the country.

Since 2016, the Ministry of Energy has signed 147 contracts for renewable energy projects that would contribute a total of 4,466 MW to the electric grid, most of them involving solar and wind power, which are currently under development.

The goal is to comply with the law enacted in 2015, which establishes that by 2025 renewables must contribute at least 20 percent of the capacity of the electric grid, which today is around 30,000 MW.

In this sense, 15 percent of the power allocated through the RenovAr Plan has been to Chinese capital.

One mega project in renewable energies is the Caucharí solar park, in the northern province of Jujuy, which is to consist of the installation of 1,200,000 solar panels built in China, on a 700-hectare site.

The project has a budget of 390 million dollars, of which 330 million will be financed by the state-owned Export-Import Bank of China.

China is also behind Argentina’s intention to develop nuclear energy, since in 2017 it was agreed that it would finance the fourth and fifth nuclear power plants in this South American country, at a total cost of 14 billion dollars.

However, the Macri administration announced this month that it would indefinitely postpone the start of construction of at least the first of these plants, to avoid further indebtedness and reduce the country’s high fiscal deficit.

The decision is aimed at facilitating the granting of a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), after the crisis of confidence that resulted in a massive outflow of capital and which put the local economy in serious trouble.

On the other hand, other energy projects funded by Chinese capital are going ahead, including four other hydroelectric power plants and thermal plants powered by natural gas.

So far, the investments already committed by Beijing in the energy sector in Latin America’s third-largest economy total 30 billion dollars, in addition to projects in other areas, such as infrastructure, agribusiness or mining.

“The Chinese looked first at their continent, then at Africa, and for some years now they have their eyes on Latin America. First of all, they were interested in agricultural and mineral products, and today they are not only the region’s second largest trading partner, but also a good investor,” Jorge Taiana, Argentine foreign minister between 2005 and 2010, told IPS.

The veteran diplomat recalled a point made by then U.S. President George W. Bush at the 2005 Summit of the Americas (SOA) in the Argentine city of Mar del Plata, where the region refused to form the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

“He (Bush) told us,’I don’t know why they care so much about the FTAA, when what we need to discuss is how we defend ourselves against China’,” Taiana said.

He maintains that it depends on the decisions of Argentina and the rest of the countries in the region whether they will benefit from or be victims of China’s aggressive economic expansion.

“Foreign direct investment is always beneficial. The secret lies in what conditions the recipients put in place and what their development plan is,” he said.

“Argentina, for example, built its railways with English capital, and all the tracks converge in Buenos Aires because the English were only interested in getting the agricultural products to to the port. Those are the things that shouldn’t happen,” he added.

Environmental organisations are particularly critical of the dams on the Santa Cruz River, which begins in the magnificent Los Glaciares National Park and could affect the water level in Lake Argentino, home to the Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the country’s major tourist attractions.

However, the dam contract has a cross default clause whereby, if not built, Chinese banks could also cut off financing for railway infrastructure projects they are carrying out in Argentina.

“What we attributed in the past to U.S. pressure we are now experiencing with China,” said Hernán Casañas, director of Aves Argentinas, the country’s oldest environmental organisation.

“The dams are a clear example of how this pressure for economic reasons could be trampling over the nation’s environmental sovereignty,” he told IPS.

In this regard, Di Paola said that “China has occupied in Latin America the place previously occupied primarily by traditional financial institutions such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.”

“The problem is that it does not have the same framework of safeguards, so they are able to start infrastructure works without complying with environmental requirements,” he said.

But Girado sees things differently, saying “the financial institutions impose conditions on the countries that receive the credits, which China does not do. In that sense it is more advantageous.”

The solar farm in Arribeños, a locality in the province of Buenos Aires, which began to inject 500 Kw into the Argentinian power grid in August. Credit: Argentine Chamber of Renewable Energy

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 14 2017 (IPS)

The first thing anyone who looks at any official document this year in Argentina will read is: “2017, the year of renewable energies.” This indicates the importance that the government gives to the issue, although translating the slogan into reality does not seem as easy as putting it in the headings of public documents.

Renewable sources of energy today make up an insignificant proportion of Argentina’s energy mix. But under a law passed in 2015, with the consensus of all political sectors, this scenario is to be reverted in the next few years.“The main driver of these initiatives is that Argentina has a large energy deficit and needs new power from all sources: from hydroelectric plants as well as the two new projected nuclear plants, while increasing its production of natural gas and also boost production from renewable sources.” -- Javier Cao

The objective is not only based on commitments of turning to clean sources of energy undertaken by Argentina within the framework of global agreements to combat climate change, but also on the need, imposed by the economy, to expand and diversify the energy mix.

For years, Argentina has been spending a fortune to import fossil fuels, although the amount has decreased, from seven billion dollars in 2014 to less than three billion dollars last year.

However, that did not happen due to increased productivity or a diversification of local sources, but because of a fall in international oil prices.

“Fossil fuels form an absurdly large portion of our energy mix. We have to change that,” Daniel Redondo, the government’s secretary of strategic energy planning, acknowledged in July in front of an auditorium of experts.

“We are going to live up to the law on renewable energies, which stipulates that 20 per cent of our energy should come from clean source by 2025,” he added.

According to official data, Argentina’s primary energy supply is based on 51 per cent natural gas and 33 per cent oil.

With respect to power generation, thermal plants which use fossil fuels cover 64 per cent of the supply, while 30 per cent comes from hydroelectric plants. The country’s three nuclear plants provide four per cent of the total.

Since 2016, the government has signed 59 contracts with private investors to develop renewable energy projects around the country. These initiatives, which should begin functioning next year, involve an overall investment of about four billion dollars, according to the Energy Ministry.

These projects will jointly add 2,423 megawatts (MW) to the energy supply, which the state has assumed the commitment to buy and incorporate into the national grid, which currently has some 30,000 MW of installed capacity.

China, a decisive player in the energy sector

Besides these projects, which form part of the government’s RenovAr Programme, the governor of the northern province of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, announced that he signed a contract with the Power China company for the construction and financing of a 300-MW solar farm in the Salar de Cauchari, some 4,000 metres above sea level.

The contract was signed during President Mauricio Macri’s visit to China in May, when Morales was part of the official delegation. According to the governor, it will be “the biggest solar farm in Latin America.”

President Mauricio Macri signs contracts for renewable energy projects, together with members of his administration and representatives of the Buenos Aires city government. Credit: Argentine Presidency

During the visit, China consolidated its role as a key player in the renewal of the power industry in Argentina. In Beijing, an agreement was reached for the Asian giant to finance 85 per cent of the construction of two nuclear plants, with an investment of 14 billion dollars.

Before the visit, they had agreed for China to finance the construction of two hydroelectric plants in Argentina’s southern region of Patagonia, at a cost of nearly five billion dollars. But the two mega-projects are still on hold by a Supreme Court order, in response to a complaint filed by environmental organisations.

The government is keen on solving this situation, as the Chinese investors have threatened to apply a “cross-default” clause and block their investments in other projects.

Energy Ministry officials reiterate in every public forum in which they participate that the goal is for 20,000 MW of power to be added to the electric grid by 2025, and for half of this to come from renewable sources.

To finance this, the government created the Fund for the Development of Renewable Energies (Foder), which was endowed with 800 million dollars from the state, in addition to another 480 million approved by the World Bank to finance the projects.

The ones that are already underway are mainly wind and solar power projects, since Argentina has favourable conditions for the former in the windy southern region of Patagonia, and for the latter in the high plateaus of northwestern Argentina, where solar radiation is intense.

There are also small-scale hydroelectric and biogas projects.

“This is the first time that Argentina is really moving forward in the development of renewable energies. Today we have what we used to lack: financing,” said Javier Cao, an expert in renewable energies for the economic consulting firm Abeceb.

“The main driver of these initiatives is that Argentina has a large energy deficit and needs new power from all sources: from hydroelectric plants as well as the two new projected nuclear plants, while increasing its production of natural gas and also boost production from renewable sources,” he told IPS.

Will the third time be the charm?

Argentina’s dream of developing renewable energies is not new, but up to now all the efforts made had failed.

The first law that declared renewables a matter of “national interest” was passed by Congress in 1998. But the financial incentives created by that law were destroyed by the late 2001 economic and political crisis that led to the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa.

In 2006 a second law was enacted, which set a target: eight per cent of the electric power consumed was to come from renewable sources by 2016. But once again, it failed, due to problems with financing.

The third, which will hopefully be the charm, was passed in 2015, with votes from lawmakers who backed then president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) as well as members of the opposition, in a rare example of consensus.

This law created tax and customs incentives for investors and included among renewable sources hydroelectric dams up to 50 MW of capacity, in contrast to the ceiling of 30 MW set by the previous law.

In addition, it established the obligation to reach the target of eight per cent renewable energies in the electric grid by Dec. 31, 2017 – a deadline that will not be reached. However, the government hopes to meet the target by 2019.

The government does hope to reach the second target set by the law, on time: 20 per cent renewables by 2025.

“One of the challenges in this respect is decentralising production,” said Marcelo Álvarez, president of the Argentine Chamber of Renewable Energies, which represents companies in the sector.

Towards that end, Congress is expected to pass a new power distribution law this year, which will allow users who generate renewable power to sell their surplus to the grid, which would be a real innovation in Argentina.

“We already have achieved a unified text for the bill in the Energy Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, with the participation of technical advisers from all the parties and technicians from the executive branch,” said Juan Carlos Villalonga, a former Greenpeace environmental activist who is now a lawmaker for the governing alliance Cambiemos.

“The take-off of renewable energies will be one of the legacies of this government,” said Villalonga.

Within the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by 196 member states in December 2015, Argentina committed itself to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent before 2030, a level criticised as low, but to which this country would add another 15 per cent if it receives special funds.

Ma Jun, chief economist at the People’s Bank of China, together with Rubén Mercado, from the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP) in Argentina. The high-ranking Chinese official promoted Beijing’s green finance while in Buenos Aires. Credit: UNDP

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 26 2017 (IPS)

Hand in hand with UN Environment and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) disembarked in the Argentine capital to prompt this country to adopt and promote the agenda of so-called green finance, which supports clean or sustainable development projects and combats climate change.

The PBOC, which as China’s central bank regulates the country’s financial activity and monitors its monetary activity, has been particularly interested in Argentina, because next year it will preside over the Group of 20 (G20) industrialised and emerging economies.

In 2018, Buenos Aires will become the first Latin American city to organise a summit of the G20 forum, in which the major global powers discuss issues on the global agenda.

“China started to develop strategies to promote green finance international collaboration in the G20 framework in 2016, the year when it took over the presidency. And Germany took over this year the presidency and decided to continue. We are looking forward to Argentina to continue with this topic of green finance in 2018,” said Ma Jun, chief economist at the PBoC, in a meeting with a small group of reporters at the UNDP offices in Buenos Aires. “Once the companies begin to release the environmental information, we’ll see that money will begin to change direction. Some of the money which is invested in the polluting sector will be redirected to the green companies. And that costs governments zero. It’s only a requirement for the companies to disclose their environmental information.” -- Ma Jun

Ma, a distinguished economist who has worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Deutsche Bank, was the keynote speaker at the International Symposium on Green Finance, held Jul. 20-21 at IDB headquarters in Buenos Aires.

At that event, he told representatives of the public sector and private companies from a number of countries that over the past three years China has been making an important effort for its financial system to underpin a change in the development model, putting aside polluting industries and supporting projects that respect the environment and use resources more efficiently.

Ma, a high-ranking PBoC official since 2014, surprised participants in the Symposium stating that in 2015, China decided to change its development model because of the enormous environmental impact it had, which is reflected in the estimate he quoted: that “a million people a year die in China due to pollution-related diseases.“

He said four trillion yuan – approximately 600 billion dollars – will be needed to finance investments in environmentally sustainable projects over the next few years in China.

Simon Zadek, co-director of the UN Environment Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System, concurred with Ma.

He explained that the UN agency he co-heads promotes the “mobilisation of private capital towards undertakings compatible with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the commitments made in the Paris Agreement on climate change, by the financial markets, banks, investment funds and insurance companies.“

He added that “many countries have taken steps in that direction and China is one of the most inspiring, most ambitious at an internal level and most active in promoting international cooperation.“

“Financial markets and capital should take environmental and climate issues into account now, not tomorrow. We are hoping for Argentina’s leadership next year on this matter and we are ready to collaborate if it decides to do so,“ said the UN Environment official.

The Symposium was held a few days after this year’s G20 summit, which was hosted Jul. 7-8 by Hamburg, Germany.

During the summit the discrepancy became evident between the rest of the heads of government and U.S. President Donald Trump, who does not believe in climate change and withdrew his country from the Paris Agreement, which in December 2015 set commitments for all governments to reduce global warming.

In Hamburg, a meeting was held by the Green Finance Study Group (GFSG), created in 2016, the year China presided over the G20, and which is headed by Ma and Michael Sheren, senior advisor to the Bank of England, with UN Environment acting as its secretariat.

There are two main issues that the GFSG currently promotes for the financial industry to consider when deciding on the financing of infrastructure or productive projects: setting up an environmental risk analysis and using publicly available environmental data.

“PBoC, the largest Chinese bank, has verified that to invest too much in the polluting sector is not beneficial. The costs are higher and the profits lower, because lots of policies are more and more restrictive in the polluting sector,” Ma said, noting that the bank began to carry out environmental risk analysis two years ago.

For the chief economist, “the other focus is to allow financial markets to distinguish who is green and who is brown,” referring to the predominant model of development, based on draining natural resources and not preserving ecosystems.

“Once the companies begin to release the environmental information, we’ll see that money will begin to change direction. Some of the money which is invested in the polluting sector will be redirected to the green companies. And that costs governments zero. It’s only a requirement for the companies to disclose their environmental information,” added Ma.

An important part of the initiative is the promotion of the emission of so-called green bonds, to finance projects of renewable energy, energy saving, treatment of wastewater or solid waste, the construction of green buildings that emit less pollutants and reduce their energy consumption, and green transport.

But the promotion of green finance does not foresee the arrival of special funds for that purpose to countries of the developing South.

In fact, the “greening of the financial system“ mainly depends on the private sector, especially where the state has limited fiscal capacity, according to the conclusions of the G20’s GFSG.

For Rubén Mercado, UNDP economist in Argentina, governments can facilitate undertakings that are beneficial to the environment by changing policies, without the need for spending additional funds.

“The key issue is that of relative prices. In Argentina we have subsidised fossil fuels for years. Perhaps we would not even have to subsidise renewable forms of energy, but simply reduce our subsidies for fossil fuels so that the other sources can be developed,“ he said.

Ma took a similar approach, pointing out that “You don´t need to spend money, you just need to eliminate the subsidies” that are traditionally granted to fossil fuel producers, which hamper investments in clean energies.

In the Symposium in Buenos Aires a study was released about the economies of Germany, China and India, which revealed that in the last year they have invested in renewable energies just 0.7, 0.4 and 0.1 per cent of GDP, respectively.

“The massive demand for green financing simply cannot be met by the public sector or the fiscal system,” said Ma.

“In a country like China, 90 percent is being covered by the private sector. Globally, my feeling is that in the OECD countries the fiscal capacity is probably higher. Maybe more than 10 percent could be provided by governments,” he said.

“But in other economies with weaker fiscal capacity, the rate should be even lower than in China.”

The first of Argentina’s three existing nuclear plants, Atucha I, is located 100 km from Buenos Aires. China has offered to finance 85 percent of the 14 billion dollar cost of two other plants. Credit: CNEA

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 27 2017 (IPS)

Two new nuclear power plants, to cost 14 billion dollars, will give a new impetus to Argentina’s relation with atomic energy, which began over 60 years ago. President Mauricio Macri made the announcement from China, the country that is to finance 85 per cent of the works.

But besides the fact that social movements quickly started to organise against the plants, the project appears to face a major hurdle.

The Chinese government has set a condition: it threatens to pull out of the plans for the nuclear plants and from the rest of its investments in Argentina if the contract signed for the construction of two gigantic hydroelectric power plants in Argentina’s southernmost wilderness region, Patagonia, does not move forward. The plans are currently on hold, pending a Supreme Court decision.“China has an almost endless capacity for investment and is interested in Argentina as in the rest of Latin America, a region that it wants to secure as a provider of inputs. Of course China has a strong bargaining position and Argentina’s aim should be a balance of power.“ -- Dante Sica

Together with Brazil and Mexico, Argentina is one of the three Latin American countries that have developed nuclear energy.

The National Commission for Atomic Energy was founded in 1950 by then president Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955 and 1973-1974) and the country inaugurated its first nuclear plant, Atucha I, in 1974. The development of nuclear energy was halted after the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, by then-president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), but it was resumed during the administration of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007).

According to the announcement Macri made during his visit to Beijing in May, construction of Atucha III, with a capacity of 745 MW, is to begin in January 2018, 100 km from the capital, in the town of Lima, within the province of Buenos Aires.

Atucha I and II, two of Argentina’s three nuclear power plants, are located in that area, while the third, known as Embalse, is in the central province of Córdoba.

Construction of a fifth nuclear plant, with a capacity of 1,150 MW, would begin in 2020 in an as-yet unannounced spot in the province of Río Negro, north of Patagonia.

Currently, nuclear energy represents four per cent of Argentina’s electric power, while thermal plants fired by natural gas and oil account for 64 per cent and hydroelectric power plants represent 30 per cent, according to the Energy Ministry. Other renewable sources only amount to two per cent, although the government is seeking to expand them.

Besides diversifying the energy mix, the projected nuclear and hydroelectric plants are part of an ambitious strategy that Argentina set in motion several years ago: to strengthen economic ties with China, which would buy more food from Argentina and boost investment here.

During his May 14-17 visit to China, Macri was enthusiastic about the role that the Asian giant could play in this South American country.

“China is an absolutely strategic partner. This will be the beginning of a wonderful era between our countries. There must be few countries in the world that complement each other than Argentina and China,” said Macri in Beijing, speaking to businesspeople from both countries.

During his May 14-17 visit to China, Argentina President Mauricio Macri announced the construction of two new nuclear power plants. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico are the three Latin American countries that use nuclear energy. Credit: Argentine Presidency

“Argentina produces food for 400 million people and we are aiming at doubling this figure in five to eight years,“ said Macri, who added that he expects from China investments in “roads, bridges, energy, ports, airports.“

Ties between Argentina and China began to grow more than 10 years ago and expanded sharply in 2014, when then president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) received her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires, where they signed several agreements.

These ranged from the construction of dams in Patagonia to investments in the upgrading of the Belgrano railway, which transports goods from the north of the country to the western river port of Rosario, where they are shipped to the Atlantic Ocean and overseas.

On Jun. 22, 18 new locomotives from China arrived in Buenos Aires for the Belgrano railroad.

However, relations between China and Argentina are not free of risks for this country, experts warn.

“China has an almost endless capacity for investment and is interested in Argentina as in the rest of Latin America, a region that it wants to secure as a provider of inputs. Of course China has a strong bargaining position and Argentina’s aim should be a balance of power,“ economist Dante Sica, who was secretary of trade and industry in 2002-2003, told IPS.

“They are buyers of food, but they also want to sell their products and they generate tension in Argentina´s industrial structure. In fact, our country for several years now has had a trade deficit with China,“ he added.

Roberto Adaro, an expert on international relations at the Centre for Studies in State Policies and Society, told IPS that “Argentina can benefit from its relations with China if it is clear with regard to its interests. It must insist on complementarity and not let China flood our local market with their products.“

Adaro praised the decision to invest in nuclear energy since it is “important to diversify the energy mix“ and because the construction of nuclear plants “also generates investments and jobs in other sectors of the economy.“

However, there is a thorn in the side of relations between China and Argentina regarding the nuclear issue: the project of the hydroelectric plants. These two giant plants with a projected capacity of 1,290 MW are to be built at a cost of nearly five billion dollar, on the Santa Cruz River, which emerges in the spectacular Glaciers National Park in the southern region of Patagonia, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

In December, when the works seemed about to get underway, the Supreme Court suspended construction of the dams, in response to a lawsuit filed by two environmental organisations.

The three Chinese state banks financing the two projects then said they would invoke a cross-default clause included in the contract for the dams, which said they would cancel the rest of their investments if the dams were not built.

To build the two plants, three Chinese and one Argentine companies formed a consortium, but after winning the tender in 2013, construction has not yet begun.

Under pressure from China, the government released the results of a new environmental impact study on Jun. 15 and now plans to convene a public hearing to discuss it, so that Argentina’s highest court will authorise the beginning of the works.

Added to opposition to the dams by environmentalists is their rejection of the nuclear plants. In the last few weeks, activists from Río Negro have held meetings in different parts of the province, demanding a referendum to allow the public to vote on the plant to be installed there.

They have even generated an unusual conflict with the neighbouring province of Chubut, where the regional parliament unanimously approved a statement against the nuclear plants. The governor of Río Negro, Alberto Weretilnek, asked the people of Chubut to “stop meddling.“

“Argentina must start a serious debate about what these plants mean, at a time when the world is abandoning this kind of energy. We need to know, among other things, how the uranium that is needed as fuel is going to be obtained,“ the director of the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, Andrés Nápòli, told IPS.

Argentina now imports the uranium used in the country’s nuclear plants, but environmentalists are worried that local production, which was abandoned more than 20 years ago, will restart.

Officials say future climate action will require farsightedness, political courage, intelligent regulations and getting corporations on board. Credit: Bigstock

By Zofeen Ebrahim
BERLIN, May 22 2017 (IPS)

In a last-ditch effort, Germany and China are trying to influence the United States not to walk away from the Paris climate change accord it signed along with 194 nations.

In December 2015, nearly every country committed to take action to reduce planet-warming emissions."The US may try to renegotiate the terms of the agreement. Other countries have to be very clear that they are defending the integrity of the accord and would not accept reduced US commitments." --Lutz Weischer

“We are trying to influence the US through different channels and people, at the foreign ministry level to the EPA and even the Chancellor [Angela Merkel] has repeatedly called up President [Donald] Trump to remain in this landmark agreement,” said German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks at the two-day 8th Petersberg Climate Dialogue being held in Berlin.

Terming the Paris Agreement a “hard-won milestone”, the Chinese special envoy Xie Zhenhua said his country was “true to word and resolute in deed”. Like his German counterpart, he too reiterated that all signatories should “stick to it” and “not retreat”. China is resolute in its commitment, he said and added the need for transparency to “build mutual trust and confidence” was also paramount.

At the same time, both countries gave a positive signal of what they were doing to reduce carbon emissions, with Hendricks emphasizing on the need to work on the “ecological technologies of the future” in the sectors of transport, infrastructure development and grids. They talked about the advances made in the renewable energy sector, the dire need for phasing out coal and the baby steps made towards electric cars.

Hendricks said future climate action would require farsightedness, political courage, intelligent regulations and getting corporations on board. “We do not have a blueprint as yet” but countries are ready to ride the wave of enthusiasm although with some reservations but all for “prosperity in the long term”.

She also said it was prudent to mainstream climate action in all economic, fiscal even health policies. “The ball is in the court of national governments,” she said adding: “Actions should speak louder than words.”

But despite so much commitment, the air of uncertainty continues to loom heavy over all climate talks as President Trump mulls over his “big decision”.

Dr Ralph Bodle, a senior fellow and coordinator of Ecologic, a Berlin based think tank on environment, was recently in Bonn helping ministers and diplomats from nearly 200 countries to hammer out a “rule book” to say who should do what, by when, how and with what financial support, thereby putting the Paris Climate Agreement into practice.

He, too, conceded that there was concern over Trump’s decision during the 11-day intersessional climate talks. Bodle believed the Paris Accord “will live or fail with political will”.

It is expected the US president will announce a final decision after his return from Taormina, in Sicily, where he will attend the 43rd G7 Summit and where he will be pressured by other countries to give in.

In March, Trump had threatened to pull out of the accord and roll back the widely- supported climate policies of former president Barack Obama, whose administration set a target of a 26-28 percent reduction in emissions by 2025, based in 2005 levels. He had declared an end to the “war on coal”, signed an executive order that removed several restrictions on fossil fuel production and removed barriers to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

Before leaving office, Obama had transferred one billion dollars to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund and pledged billions more to the fund through the Paris deal, which has not been taken well by Trump.

He has said the US was “paying disproportionately” and that they “got taken to the cleaners financially”. It is unclear whether Trump will honour those financial commitments.

In addition, he has gathered around him climate deniers. Take Scott Pruitt, the environment chief, for instance, who has gone on record saying global warming is not caused by emissions from fossil fuels.

Not everyone is sure whether it’s better to have Trump in or out.

“If Trump poses conditions for the US staying in the Paris Agreement, depending on the conditions, they could cause damage to the accord,” said Lutz Weischer from Germanwatch. He suspects the “US may try to renegotiate the terms of the agreement. Other countries have to be very clear that they are defending the integrity of the accord and would not accept reduced US commitments.”

There are others who also say that the withdrawal may have implications for the US-China relationship. President Xi Jinping has publicly hinted at his desire for the US to remain in it despite a tweet by Trump saying climate change was a Chinese conspiracy.

During the campaign, he claimed on Twitter that the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

According to Weischer, there are three important gaps that China is looking at — climate diplomacy, emissions and financing.”It knows it cannot fill the void all by itself and without the US on its side.” But if things take a turn for the worse, China will forge alliances with the EU and Canada. As for the financing gap, Weischer said “even that loss can be assuaged if all other countries stick to their commitments, at least for the next four years.”

But even if the US decides to pull out there are other countries who have reaffirmed their commitment which could, in fact be, a “reaction to the US”, said Weischer, who heads international climate policy at Germanwatch. He said it was more important to keep that momentum with actions being taken on the ground.

Even within the US, there are several states and even big corporations who want the US to have the seat at the table. “And even within the White House there are various camps on the issue,” he noted.

The next Conference of Parties to the climate framework (COP23), to be held this November, will be organized by Fiji, but hosted by Bonn.

A wind farm outside Tianjin. Credit: Mitch Moxley/IPS

By Nicholas Rosellini
BEIJING, Apr 18 2017 (IPS)

“Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room,” Chinese President Xi Jinping warned the assembled leaders at the World Economic Forum earlier this year. “While wind and rain may be kept outside, that dark room will also block light and air.”

All signs are that China has been heeding its own advice.

With the current geopolitical balance seeming to teeter on every tweet, China’s brand of multilateralism – which President Xi has described as “a win-win, opening-up strategy,” an engine of development for the world – is an alternative to the zero-sum calculus that has fed a wave of nationalism across developed countries.

At the United Nations, where Member States have pledged to ‘leave no one behind’ with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, China has been positioning itself as a champion for inclusive growth and peace. China’s engagement combines development assistance, soft loans and direct investment, reimagining possibilities in a transformed landscape in which leveraged financing, rather than grant-making, is fast becoming the new normal.

China has become the largest contributor of troops and second-largest contributor of funds to UN peacekeeping missions among the five permanent members of the Security Council, which also include France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Through its new UN Peace and Development Trust Fund, it has pledged USD 1 billion to support multilateral cooperation. China is also committing to increase its contributions to the UN development system by USD 100 million by the year 2020.

It is taking a lead on supporting implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), earmarking hundreds of millions to support global efforts to reduce poverty and improve education and health. And, to much relief, it is holding fast to commitments it made during the international climate negotiations to achieve the historic Paris Agreement and its concrete follow-ups.

Regionally and among emerging economies, China has been proactive in building a multipolar architecture of cooperation. Its presidency of the G20 has helped to build consensus around inclusive growth as a shared agenda.

Some 57 countries have signed on to the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, in which China has a 30 percent stake. The BRICS New Development Bank, with 20 percent Chinese contribution, is aiming to support sustainable development initiatives in emerging economies. Both are widely seen as an alternative to Western dominance of multilateral financial institutions and represent China’s leadership in creating new development financing mechanisms and reconfiguring the global governance architecture.

Examples like these are encouraging for proponents of inclusive growth and equity. Yet practice does not always match principle. China has become one of the major South-South development partners in the world, providing by end 2015 some US$63 billion worth of development assistance to 166 countries, both directly and through regional and international organisations. Under the framework of South-South cooperation, China observes principles of mutual benefit, no-strings attached, equality and non-interference in its engagement with other countries. In reality, however, support sometimes comes tied to national regulations and requirements that Chinese parts and labour be used. Opportunities to build capacity and sustainability sometimes are missed in the transfer of technology or equipment, or in the building of infrastructure.

China will need to perfect the balance of interests underpinning its multilateral approach. How does pursuit of the ‘Chinese dream’ – that of a prosperous country, strong and proud at home, powerful and influential abroad – square with the cultivation and preservation of global public goods like clean air and water? Are they mutually reinforcing? Is there a point at which one ends and the other begins?

Even those not charged with creating public goods must be responsible custodians of them. As China’s cities grapple with the effects of pollution caused by decades of neglect, the Chinese private sector has increasingly embraced sustainability as a pillar of good business at home and abroad.

Since Chinese companies are, as a bloc, the third largest investor in the world – their direct investments overseas reached USD 145.7 billion in 2015 – this is welcome news for global development. UN development practitioners are working with the Chinese private sector to promote inclusive practices in business operations, create partnerships that contribute to achieving the SDGs, and ensure that capital markets are aligned to the SDG agenda.

As it rises in prominence as a development partner, China has an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of well-intentioned initiatives of the past. It can be demand- rather than supply-driven, contributing solutions to challenges that the countries it engages with have themselves identified as priorities. And it can use its massive investment, through its blended offer, to support around the world new models of growth and cooperation that are anchored in the principles of inclusivity and sustainability it espouses.

For all its visibility and might, China is still very much a developing country. Yet its adoption of a complementary brand of multilateralism offers welcome grounds for hope in these times.

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Djibouti’s strategic and commercial relevance at the junction of Africa, the Middle East and Indian Ocean is further bolstered by its increasing network of ports. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
DJIBOUTI CITY, Apr 5 2017 (IPS)

As balmy night settles over Djibouti City, the arc lights come on at its growing network of ports as ships are offloaded 24 hours a day and trucks laden with cargo depart westwards into the Horn of Africa interior.

Not that long ago Djibouti was known for little more than French legionnaires, atrocious heat and its old railway line to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Nowadays, however, this tiny republic of only about 900,000 people on the Horn of Africa coast has big plans, including turning its capital into the Dubai of Africa.Befitting a crossroads nation, a heady melting pot culture exists: cafés brewing coffee in the traditional Ethiopian style, Yemeni restaurants serving the specialty poisson Yemenite, and haggling at open-air markets in rapid-fire Somali.

Since gaining independence from France in 1977, Djibouti has steadily carved out a regional role through its strategic and commercial relevance at the junction of Africa and the Middle East, and at the confluence of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, overlooking a passage of water used by 30 percent of the world’s shipping transiting from and to the Suez Canal.

“It’s a weird place, really,” says an Addis Ababa-based foreign diplomat. “Djibouti’s also important strategically. I don’t know why more isn’t reported about it.”

Recently-acquired Chinese investment totaling more than 12 billion dollars is funding the building of six new ports, two new airports, a railway, and what is being touted as the biggest and most dynamic free trade zone in Africa, potentially giving the capital, Djibouti City, an edge over its rivals.

“About 2 million African customers travel to Dubai each year,” says Dawit Gebre-ab, with the Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority overseeing the city’s commercial infrastructure development. “We know what is on their shopping lists, and they could be coming here instead.”

Helping secure such ambitions is the fact that Djibouti is viewed as offering some of the most prime military real-estate in the world, both to counter piracy threatening that key shipping lane—since peaking in 2011, when 151 vessels were attacked and 25 hijacked, piracy has steeply declined—and to shore up regional stability.

Another foreign diplomat referred to Djibouti as “an oasis in a bad neighbourhood”.

In 2014, the US military agreed a 10-year extension to its presence—with an option to extend for another 10 years—centered on Camp Lemonnier, its African headquarters.

US president Barack Obama described the camp as “extraordinarily important not only to our work throughout the Horn of Africa but throughout the region.”

A similar perspective happens to be held by China, also. In addition to its Djibouti investments, having invested huge amounts in the rest of East Africa—especially in neighboring Ethiopia, one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and 90 percent of whose imports come through Djibouti—it wants to secure those interests and others throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

On a beach in Tadjoura locals play a traditional Afar game—Djibouti’s population consists mainly of ethnic Somali and Afar—on the sand. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Furthermore, ever thirsty for crude oil, China wants to shield its heavy dependence on imports from the Middle East that south of Djibouti pass from the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean and then on to the South China Sea.

In 2016 China finalized plans for a new base in Obock, a small port a couple of hours by ferry from Djibouti City northward across the Gulf of Tadjoura. About 10,000 Chinese personal will occupy the base once complete.

Foreign military already stationed in Djibouti—including from France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Japan—number around 25,000, according to some estimates.

But behind all the construction cranes, flashy hotels and military camps, there still exists a very different side to Djibouti.

Every morning in the small town of Tadjoura, about 40km west of Obock along the coastline, local Djiboutians queue to collect their daily quota of baguettes—a scene repeated across the country.

Djibouti’s former existence as colonial French Somaliland has left an indelible Gallic stamp. Along with Somali, Afar and Arabic, French remains one of the main languages used.

Locals in Tadjoura, a small town across the Gulf of Tadjoura from Djibouti city, buying their daily baguettes, a legacy of French colonial rule. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

A constant stream of Bonsoirs greet the visitor during an evening wander around Djibouti City’s so-called European quarter and its focal point: Place du 27 Juin 1977, a large square of whitewashed buildings and Moorish arcades named for the date of independence.

South of the quarter’s French-colonial-inspired architecture and orderly avenues and boulevards, lies the dustier and more ramshackle African quarter.

Here, befitting a crossroads nation, a heady melting pot culture exists: cafés brewing coffee in the traditional Ethiopian style, Yemeni restaurants serving the specialty poisson Yemenite, and haggling at open-air markets in rapid-fire Somali all adds to the surprising melting pot within this small capital city.

But whether that lively cultural mix can withstand the brash new modernizing development is a concern for some locals, proud of the country’s past and heterogeneous mix of traditions.

“My fear is not about cultural change, because we need that as this is an ultra-conservative society,” says an elegant Djiboutian professional in her early thirties, her hair covered in the Muslim style, and a cigarette clasped in her slender fingers as the sun dips behind the original old port in the distance.

“It is more about the effects on our customs, such as traditional clothing, food and decorations that symbolize our identity.”

While Djibouti’s maritime commerce and government’s ambitions continue apace, for the average local Djiboutian everyday life remains unaffected by dreams of an African Dubai. Here a lady makes fresh juices on the street to slake the thirsts of sun-blasted pedestrians in Djibouti city’s African quarter. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Others are more outspoken in their criticism of Djibouti’s current strategic and economic upswing—a healthy 6 percent a year, and likely to surpass 7 percent amid the construction boom.

Some locals talk of a country run by a business-savvy dictatorship that has reaped profits from its superpower tenants while not doing enough to relieve widespread poverty; having signed an initial 10-year lease for the base, China will pay 20 million dollars per year in rent. The US pays 60 million dollars a year to lease Camp Lemonnier.

“The government only cares about how to collect the country’s wealth,” says a Djiboutian journalist previously arrested for reporting domestic issues. “They do not care about freedom of expression, human rights, justice and equal opportunities of people.”

Dreams of a Dubai-type future don’t appear to have much relevance for most local Djiboutians, 42 percent of whom live in extreme poverty, while up to 60 percent of the labor force are unemployed, according to current estimates.

“Now I can’t stay here,” says Mohammed, a marine engineer, who left Iraq after the 1991 war for Djibouti where he married a local woman. “My three children won’t be able to get good enough jobs. I’m hoping my brother in the US will be able to get us a green card.”

A 2014 US State Department human-rights report on the country cited the government’s restrictions on free speech and assembly; its use of excessive force, including torture; as well as the harassment and detention of government critics.

Even the hugely popular use of khat by locals is manipulated by government officials as a means of repression, critics claim. It’s alleged government affiliates facilitate its sale in the country as a money maker and means of keeping a potentially frustrated populace calm, while handing it when campaign season rolls around to win favor.

Meanwhile, ships endlessly glide to and from the ports, where cranes offload containers to waiting trucks late into the night under the arc lights.

In early 2017, the new Chinese-built 4-billion-dollar railway officially opened linking Djibouti to the Ethiopian interior—the original railway has lain abandoned for years—and which could eventually connect to other Chinese-built railways emerging across the African continent.

Djibouti’s location has always been its most precious resource—devoid of a single river or the likes of extractable minerals, it produces almost nothing.

Nevertheless, for nearly 150 years it has attracted armies, mercenaries, smugglers, gunrunners and traders: anyone and everyone concerned with the movement or control of merchandise. And that trend only seems set to increase.

“Ethiopia has a population 100 times larger than Djibouti’s but it only imports and exports six times as much,” says Aboubaker Omar, chairman and CEO of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority. “Imagine the day that demand matches Ethiopia’s population size.”

“Over our dead bodies.” Villagers in Beragama, Sri Lanka protest to prevent government surveyors from carrying out mapping due to fears of losing their land. Credit: Sanjana Hattotuwa/IPS

By Amantha Perera
BERAGAMA, Jan 9 2017 (IPS)

Beragama is a typical Sri Lankan rural village, with lush green paddy fields interspersed by small houses and the village temple standing at the highest location. Despite being close to the island’s second international harbour and its second international airport, Beragama appears untouched by modernity.

All that is about to change. There is angst in this hamlet located in the Hambantota District about 250 km south of the capital Colombo. The fear is that a new Chinese investment topping 1.5 billion dollars could gobble up the village, along with an adjacent stretch of 15,000 acres.“We are not against investments, but we don’t want to lose our lands and homes.” -- Beragama resident Nandana Wijesinghe

The Sri Lankan government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe wants to sign a deal with a Chinese company by which the investors would gain controlling shares of the new Magampura Port and a proposed investment zone. The investment is expected to ease some of the burden of a whopping national debt of around 64 billion dollars, 8 billion of which the country owes China. Between 2016 and 2017 its debt payments are expected to in the region of 8 billion.

This is money the government desperately needs to revive a flagging economy. It was so desperate that within two years of taking power, it has turned to the very lenders that it shunned in 2015. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had followed a pro-Beijing policy even at the risk of annoying regional power India by its actions.

The new government that replaced it first tried to follow a pro-Western investment policy, even suspending Sri Lanka’s single largest investment project, the 1.5-billion-dollar Colombo Port City. However, without new investments coming in at anticipated rates, Colombo has had to seek China’s help.

“We are not against investments, but we don’t want to lose our lands and homes,” Beragama resident Nandana Wijesinghe told IPS.

The villagers charge that the Chinese want the most fertile land, and the areas close to the port. “Why don’t they take land that is shrub? There is plenty of that,” Wijesinghe said.

When word trickled down that the village was being eyed by the investors and the government was moving to close the deal, the villagers began gathering at the temple. There they decided that they would not part with their land. This was in mid-November.

When surveyors arrived at the village to begin mapping, the villagers stopped them. “We have asked for top government officials from Colombo to come and explain the situation to us. Till then we will not allow any of this,” S. Chandima, another villager, told IPS while others crowded around survey department officials.

Top government officials in the district say that as of the end of last year, there was still no decision on which land would be handed over in a 99-year lease. “Right now we have instruction to do surveys, nothing else. We have no information on what land will be handed over,” said S H Karunarathne, the District Secretary for Hambantota.

Still, protests have been held in Hambantota against the handover, and the tempo is slowly building. A worrying factor for the government is that Hambantota is Rajapaksa’s home turf. He channeled multi-billion-dollar investments here, including the port, the airport (which now serves one flight a day at its peak performance), an international cricket stadium now used for wedding receptions and an international convention center that remains shut.

The multi-million-dollar Mattala International Airport, inaugurated in 2013, now serves just one flight per day at best. The Sri Lankan government has been searching for ways to make it a profitable venture. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Rajapaksa, who was the bulwark in getting Chinese investments into Sri Lanka between 2009 and 2014, has said he is opposed to the land handover.

“These are people’s agricultural lands. We are not against Chinese or Indians or Americans coming here for investment. But we are against the land being given to them and the privatisation they are doing,” he recently told Colombo-based foreign correspondents. He added that he had in fact discussed the issue with Chinese authorities during his recent visit to the country.

During the same meeting Rajapaksa said that he planed to topple the current administration in 2017. Once the undisputed strongman in Sri Lanka, Rajapaksa enjoyed unparallel popularity, especially among the majority Sinhala community, after he led the military effort to end three decades of civil war. Despite his defeat two years ago, he has, however, remained a relevant leader to his core support group in the last two years and in the last six months has become more politically active.

He has so far not taken part in any of the anti-Chinese protests in Hambantota, but his eldest son and heir apparent Parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has participated in one public protest in Hambantota. Any groundswell of anti-government protests in this southern region could potentially be helmed by Rajapaksa at any time.

The government has already postponed the handover ceremony once, till late January. But Malik Samarawickrama, Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade, has confirmed that deal will go through by the end of the month.

The postponement did not dowse the embers in Hambantota. The opposite happened when the prime minister and the Chinese ambassador came there to inaugurate the industrial zone, and clashes broke out between police and a group of protestors including Buddhist monks opposing the project. The inauguration did take place despite the water canons and the teargas that was flying around — not a good omen for what is to come in the future.

The Paris agreement, which was adopted in December 2015 and which came into force in record time in October 2016 as a demonstration of international concern over climate change, may face a major test and even an existential challenge in 2017, if Trump fulfils his election promise to pull the US out. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS.

By Martin Khor
PENANG, Jan 2 2017 (IPS)

Yet another new year has dawned.   But 2017 will be a year like no other.

There will be a thunderous clash of policies, economies and politics worldwide.   We will therefore be on a roller-coaster ride, and we should prepare for it and not only be spectators on the side-lines in danger of being swept away by the waves.

With his extreme views and bulldozing style, Donald Trump is set to create an upheaval if not revolution in the United States and the world.

He is installing an oil company chief as the Secretary of State, investment bankers in key finance positions, climate sceptics and anti-environmentalists in environmental and energy agencies and an extreme rightwing internet media mogul as his chief strategist

US-China relations, the most important for global stability, could change from big-power co-existence with a careful combination of competition and cooperation, to outright crisis.

Trump, through a phone call with Taiwan’s leader and subsequent remarks, signalled he could withdraw the longstanding US adherence to the One China policy and instead use Taiwan as a bargaining card when negotiating economic policies with China.  The Chinese perceive this as an extreme provocation.

He has appointed as head of the new National Trade Council an economist known for his books demonising China, including “Death by China: Confronting the Dragon”.

Trump seems intent on doing an about-turn on US trade and investment policies, starting with ditching the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and re-negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Other measures being considered include a 45% duty on Chinese products, extra duties and taxes on American companies located abroad, and even a 10% tariff on all imports.

Martin Khor

Thus 2017 will see a rise in protectionism in the US, the extent still unknown.  That is bad news for those developing countries whose economies have grown on the back of exports and international investments.

Europe in 2017 will also be preoccupied with its own regional problems.  The Brexit shock of 2016 will continue to reverberate and several European countries facing elections will see challenges to their traditional values and established order from xenophobic and narrow nationalist parties.

As Western societies become less open to the world and more inward looking, developing countries should revise their development strategies and rely more on domestic and regional demand and investments.

As North-South economic relations decline, this should also be the moment for expanding South-South cooperation, spurred as much by necessity as by principles.

2017 may be the year when resource-rich China, with its huge Road and Belt initiative and its immense financing capacity, fills in the economic void created by western trade and investment protectionism.

But this may not be sufficient to prevent a finance shock in many developing countries now beginning to suffer a reversal of capital flowing back to the US, attracted by the prospect of higher interest rates and economic growth.

Several emerging economies which together received many hundreds of billions of dollars of hot money in recent years are now vulnerable to the latest downturn phase of the boom-bust cycle of capital flows.

Some of these countries opened up their capital markets to foreign funds which now own large portions of government bonds denominated in the domestic currency, as well as shares in the equity market.

As the tide turns, foreign investors are expected to sell off and transfer back a significant part of the bonds and shares they bought, and this new vulnerability is in addition to the traditional external debt contracted by the developing countries in foreign currencies.

Some countries will be hit by a terrible combination of capital outflow, reduced export earnings, currency depreciation and an increased debt servicing burden caused by higher US interest rates.

As the local currency depreciates further, the affected countries’ companies will have to pay more for servicing loans contracted in foreign currencies and imported machinery and parts, while consumers suffer from a rapid rise in the prices of imports.

On the positive side, the currency depreciation will make exporters more competitive and make tourism more attractive, but for many countries this will not be enough to offset the negative effects.

Thus 2017 will not be kind to the economy, business and the pockets of the common man and woman.  It might even spark a new global financial crisis.

The old year ended with mixed blessings for Palestinians. On one hand they won a significant victory when the outgoing President Obama allowed the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories by not exercising a veto.

The resolution will spur international actions against the expansion of settlements which have become a big obstacle to peace talks.

On the other hand the Israeli leadership, which responded defiantly with plans for more settlements, will find in Trump a much more sympathetic President.  He is appointing a pro-Israel hawk who has cheered the expansion of settlements as the new US ambassador to Israel.

With Trump also indicating he will tear up the nuclear power deal with Iran, the Middle East will have an even more tumultuous time in 2017.

Some countries will be hit by a terrible combination of capital outflow, reduced export earnings, currency depreciation and an increased debt servicing burden caused by higher US interest rates.
In the area of health care, the battle for affordable access to medicines will continue, as public frustration grows over the high and often astronomical prices of patented medicines including for the treatment of HIV AIDS, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and cancers.

There will be more powerful calls for governments to curb the excesses of drug companies, as well as more extensive use of the flexibilities in the patent laws to counter the high cost of medicines.

Momentum will also increase to deal with antibiotic resistance which in 2016 was recognised by political leaders meeting at the United Nations to be perhaps the gravest threat to global health.

All countries pledged to come up with national action plans to counter antibiotic and anti-microbial resistance by May 2017 and the challenge will then be to review the adequacy of these plans and to finance and implement them.

The new year will also see its fair share of natural disasters and a continued decline in the state of the environment.  Both will continue to be major issues in 2017, just as the worsening of air pollution and the many earthquakes, big storms and heat-waves marked the previous few years.

Unfortunately low priority is given to the environment.  Hundreds of billions of dollars are allocated for highways, railways and urban buildings but only a trickle for conservation and rehabilitation of hills, watersheds, forests, mangroves, coastal areas, biodiversity or for serious climate change actions.

2017 should be the year when priorities change, that when people talk about infrastructure or development, they put actions to protect and promote the environment as the first items for allocation of funds.

This new year will also be make or break for climate change.  The momentum for action painfully built up in recent years will find a roadblock in the US as the new President dismantles Obama-initiated policies and measures.

The Paris agreement, which was adopted in December 2015 and which came into force in record time in October 2016 as a demonstration of international concern over climate change, may face a major test and even an existential challenge in 2017, if Trump fulfils his election promise to pull the US out.

But Trump and his team will face resistance domestically including from state governments and municipalities which have their own climate plans, and from other countries determined to carry on without the US on board.

Indeed if 2017 will bring big changes initiated by the new US administration, it will also generate many counter actions to fill in the void left in the world by a withdrawing US or to counter its new unsettling actions.

Many people around the world, from politicians and policy makers to citizen groups and community organisers are already bracing themselves to come up with responses and actions.

Indeed 2017 will be characterised by the Trump effect but also the consequent counter-effects.

There are opportunities to think through, alternatives to chart and reforms to carry out that are anyway needed on the global and national economies, on the environment, and on geo-politics.

Most of the main levers of power and decision-making are still in the hands of a few countries and a few people, but there has also been the emergence of many new centres of economic, environmental and intellectual capabilities and community-based organising.

2017 will be a year in which ideas, policies, economies and politics will all clash, thunderously, and we should be prepared to meet the challenges ahead and not only be spectators.

Excerpt:

Over the next decade, China will be home to the world's largest elderly population, while India -- because of its demographic dividend – will require jobs for the world's largest workforce. This offers both nations opportunities to work together. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Sep 8 2016 (IPS)

Despite bilateral dissonances and an unresolved boundary issue, India and China — two of the world’s most ancient civilisations — are engaged in vigorous cooperation at various levels. The Asian neighbours’ relationship has also focussed global attention in recent years on Asia’s demographically dominant, major developing economies engaged in common concerns of poverty alleviation and national development.

As the world’s two most populous nations, making up nearly 37 percent of humanity, India and China are committed to improve the lot of their people. These complementarities offer the scope to work in synergy and strengthen ties. Over the next decade, China will be home to the world’s largest elderly population while India — because of its demographic dividend — will require jobs for the world’s largest workforce. This area offers both nations opportunities to work together.With Western economies remaining skittish, India - with its 1.25 billion people and bubbling entrepreneurial energy - offers Chinese investors enormous scope for growth.

As neighbours, China and India have also shared a long history of cultural, scientific, and economic linkages. Following a brief border war in 1962, bilateral trade and investment suffered. However, the last decade the economic relationship of the two giant nations has gained traction. And from just about 3 billion dollars in trade at the turn of the century, the countries are now eyeing 100 billion dollars worth of merchandise trade. This will mean tremendous opportunities for traders and investors in both countries.

Apart from sharing a new extroversion and enthusiasm in their economic policies, Delhi and Beijing have also tightened their economic embrace with the rest of the world. China and India are also members of the World Trade Organization, India as a founding member and China since 2001.

Analysts say that robust economic ties between China and India will also play a stellar role in one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world by 2020. Even conservative estimates suggest that, by 2020, China-India trade could surpass US-China trade.

There is a plethora of business opportunities for India and China, in sectors such as agriculture and food processing, asset management, construction and infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, electronics and information technology, and transport and logistics. The pharmaceutical sector also offers gargantuan business potential for both countries.

China also has a vast underused manufacturing capacity, plus capital surpluses in need of new markets. With Western economies remaining skittish, India – with its 1.25 billion people and bubbling entrepreneurial energy – offers Chinese investors enormous scope for growth.

India, a nation of 1.2 billion people, shares common concerns of poverty alleviation and nation-building with China. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

China is also seeking greater economic cooperation with India on the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor and the New Silk Route programme. Beijing could help accelerate India’s economic take-off by focusing on the key areas of manufacturing, roads, railways and industrial parks, which can form the bedrock for bilateral ties.

Beijing and New Delhi’s attempts to build a strategic and cooperative partnership while expanding trade and economic cooperation has resulted in China emerging as India’s biggest trading partner. However, a few wrinkles need to be ironed out on this front. India’s trade deficit with China has ratcheted up from 1 billion dollars in 2001-02 to 48.43 billion in 2014-15. This asymmetry has raised issues of sustainability.

However, bilateral engagements in this sphere have raised hopes of a more sustainable trade trajectory. Towards this end, the Commerce Ministries of both the countries have also signed a Five-year Development Programme for Economic and Trade Cooperation in September 2014 to lay down a medium-term roadmap for promoting balanced and sustainable development of economic and trade relations.

signs of cooperation are also visible in recent bilateral agreements inked for railway cooperation, smart cities, and skill development. Although the two countries are considered political rivals, in October 2013, China and India inked the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement. The Agreement acknowledges “the need to continue to maintain peace, stability and tranquillity along the line of actual control in the India-China border areas and to continue implementing confidence building measures in the military field along the line of actual control.”

China and India are also among 21 Asian countries to sign on to a new infrastructure investment bank — the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — which will offer the region a counterpoint to West-dominated financial institutions like the World Bank. China and India’s combined resources and talents can power regional and global economic growth.

Despite being critical of China’s expansionist policies, and increasing assertiveness in the Indian Ocean Region and the South China Sea, India is keen on robust ties with China. As well as pursuing bilateral cooperation in areas like infrastructure, industry, communications and energy, both India and China are also forging Sino-Indian cooperation at multilateral forums like the G20, the East Asia Summit and BRICS.

The two sides have strengthened strategic dialogue on such major international issues as climate change and global action, and safeguarded the common interests of emerging markets and developing countries. Delhi and Beijing are also keen to augment cooperation in such fields as railway and industrial park construction, security, anti-terror and anti-extremism, and to expand communication and exchanges in education and tourism, and facilitate more exchanges among regional governments of both countries, and jointly safeguard their common interests as well as those of all developing countries.
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Given that India and China have many shared goals and areas of convergences, a bilateral relationship premised on a balanced economic engagement, along with some inventive and bold thinking on the political front, can benefit both nations while jumpstarting an Asian revolution.

This story is part of special IPS coverage of the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation, observed on September 12.

The joint move by the U.S. and China, which account for nearly 40 percent of global carbon emissions, paves the way for the Paris Agreement forged last December to enter into force. Credit: Bigstock

By Guy Dinmore
HONOLULU, Hawaii, Sep 3 2016 (IPS)

The world’s super-polluters – the United States and China – have formally joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in a symbolic show of unity.

At a ceremony in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, where China is hosting a summit of G20 industrialised nations, President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping handed their documents of ratification to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.In contrast to the excitement in Honolulu among the world’s leading environmental activists and scientists, the announcement that Obama had used his executive authority to accede to the Paris Agreement was widely ignored by the major U.S. networks.

The joint move by the U.S. and China, which account for nearly 40 percent of global carbon emissions, paves the way for the Paris Agreement forged last December to enter into force, most likely by the end of the year. For the agreement to enter into effect and start to be implemented, at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions need to formally join.

The UN Secretary General praised Obama for his “inspiring” leadership. He said Obama and Xi had both been “far-sighted, bold and ambitious”.

The joint accession by the world’s biggest polluters was enthusiastically welcomed in Honolulu where the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which groups governments and NGOs, is holding a key congress that aims to chart the future path for stopping the planet’s slide into environmental ruin.

“This is a momentous event,” Xavier Sticker, France’s ambassador for the environment, said of the ratification by the U.S. and China. He told IPS it was expected to pave the way for many other countries to follow. But he cautioned that the European Union needs to accede as a bloc and that the internal complexities of national political systems could lead to delays. Belgium requires the assent of seven legislative assemblies, for example. France has already ratified but the UK has not.

Delegates at the IUCN World Conservation Congress warned that there was a risk for the European Union that the Paris Agreement implementation taskforce would be formed next month without EU involvement.

Patricia Espinosa, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, urged IUCN delegates representing the global conservation community to lobby governments on what must be done to achieve the Paris Agreement targets on emissions and limiting the rise of global temperatures.

“We are very excited about this good news, for the early entry into force of the Paris Agreement. No one had imagined it would be this year,” she said shortly before official confirmation arrived from Hangzhou.

In contrast to the excitement in Honolulu among the world’s leading environmental activists and scientists, the announcement that Obama had used his executive authority to accede to the Paris Agreement was widely ignored by the major US networks in their news bulletins. Ironically, however, there was considerable coverage of Tropical Storm Hermine moving up the east coast of the U.S. on Labour Day weekend, possibly turning back into hurricane force, and also of Hurricane Lester brushing past Hawaii.

“We are here together because we believe that for all the challenges that we face, the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other challenge,” Obama said in a speech in Hangzhou.

“And someday we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet,” he added. “There are no shortage of cynics who thought the agreement would not happen. But they missed two big things: The investments that we made to allow for incredible innovation in clean energy, and the strong, principled diplomacy over the course of years that we were able to see pay off in the Paris Agreement. The United States and China were central to that effort. Over the past few years, our joint leadership on climate has been one of the most significant drivers of global action,” Obama said.

Xi was reported as calling the Paris Agreement a milestone that marks the “emergence of a global government system” for climate change. “Our response to climate change bears on the future of our people and the well-being of mankind,” China’s president said.

The accession of China and the U.S. bring to 25 the number of countries to have ratified so far. Diplomatic pressure is expected to be ramped up on other major polluters, such as India and Russia.

But scientists and activists are warning that the Paris Agreement target of keeping temperature rises “well below” 2 degrees centigrade, with a soft target of 1.5 degrees, is already on its way to being breached as the world records a succession of the hottest months on record.

“What’s needed is comprehensive and urgent action now to slash emissions and build a low-carbon future,” Friends of the Earth commented.

The Paris Agreement also provides for 100 billion dollars a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, with a commitment to further finance in the future.

The U.S. and China have set widely differing targets on carbon emissions, because of their different stages of economic development. The U.S. plans over the next 10 years to reduce emissions by over a quarter below the level of 2005, while China says it intends to stop increasing its emissions by 2030.

Workers from Bangladesh in Mauritius. Many fall into debt to pay for their travel, yet find it almost impossible to save any money despite working long hours. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Aug 29 2016 (IPS)

They come from Bangladesh, China, India and Madagascar, mainly to run the machines in the textile industry here. But they do all kinds of other jobs too, from masons to bakers, house cleaners and gardeners.

For the eight consecutive year in 2016, the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business report ranked Mauritius first among African economies, and its GDP per capita was over 16,820 dollars, one of the highest in Africa. But there is a darker side to the success of this upper middle income island nation in the Indian Ocean, situated about 2,000 kilometres off the southeast coast of the African continent.“The government argues that foreigners are hired because the locals refuse the jobs. The truth is the government itself discourages the locals by introducing a four-month short-term contract, for example, in the construction sector." -- Trade unionist Reeaz Chuttoo

“Living like animals”

Local enterprises rely on foreign workers because Mauritians are increasingly reluctant to work long hours under difficult conditions. But these foreigners live in very poor conditions and in many cases, in human indignity.

Thirty-six-year-old Bangladeshi Maqbool* left his wife and two children back home in Dhaka two years ago and came to work in the manufacturing sector in Mauritius, hoping to earn enough money to offer a decent life to his family.

“I paid 150,000 takkas (about 2,000 dollars) to an agent who got me this job. I was supposed to get 675 dollars a month, which represents a huge amount in my country, and I was ready for any sacrifice to earn it,” he said. To his bitter disappointment, he earns only about half of that.

Foreign workers all have such stories to tell. They take loans or sell the family’s lands or jewelry to pay for their travel to Mauritius. “The island is very beautiful but there is no money here. I run short of money every month after paying for my own expenses. I send some to the family every three months and I save nothing,” adds Massood*.

Both men are frustrated as they have to leave the island in a couple of months and they have yet to save any money to take back home.

Running away from poverty

Poverty, unemployment and the rising costs of living in their home countries force thousands of Bangladeshis, Chinese, Indians and also Malagasy people to look for jobs abroad. About 40,000 of them already work in the manufacturing sector, the construction industry, hotels, transport and also in the seafood hub. They start work very early in the morning and finish up very late at night. They are forced to do overtime and do not earn more than a 150 dollars a month.

A local welfare officer from a well-known textile enterprise confirms under condition of anonymity that the foreigners work night and day with little time for rest and live and sleep in unhygienic dormitories with just a cupboard and a thin mattress full of fleas and bugs.

“I feel sorry for them. They live like animals and are helpless. They accept things as they are,” he told IPS.

Those who resist or cause trouble on their worksites are sent back home. Hundreds of them faced this fate last year after they took to the streets demanding better wages and protesting against their working conditions. Even though, says trade unionist Feisal Ally Beegun, these migrants are exemplary workers.

Still, some of them claim they are happy. “Please sir, tell them to give me more work and more money, no fuss about it,” one Bangladeshi worker pleaded with IPS, while others working at the Compagnie Mauricienne du Textile (CMT), which employs a few thousand expatriates, ran away upon seeing journalists.

A security guard posted at the gate of this factory in Phoenix, in the centre of the island, revealed that the foreigners have had so many problems with their employer and the police last year that they now refuse to talk to the media.

Source of irritation

The antipathy of the locals for the textile and manufacturing sector and for low-paid jobs has resulted in the import of labour to keep the wheels of the island’s industry turning. They were first brought in 1992 as a temporary measure as the industry moved from labour-intensive to capital-intensive manufacture.

Twenty-five years later, they are still here and the government believes they add value to the island’s economy by helping the factories deliver on time and also help in keeping the locals’ jobs.

Trade unionist Reeaz Chuttoo begs to disagree. “The government argues that foreigners are hired because the locals refuse the jobs. The truth is the government itself discourages the locals by introducing a four-month short-term contract, for example, in the construction sector, which the Mauritians refuse. In the seafood hub, foreigners are hired only for the night shift because no local does it.

“So the locals prefer to hawk cheap imported goods on the street rather than working long and late hours, even if they have to run from the police,” he says.

Chuttoo warns that a social explosion is in the making, with high unemployment, too many foreign workers and not enough jobs for the locals. “Mauritius is already invaded by a feeling of xenophobia and racism towards foreign workers,” he adds.

Jaynarain Mathurah, director at the Special Expatriate Unit of the Labour and Industrial Relations Ministry, brushes aside these allegations, arguing that foreign workers enjoy the same working conditions as the locals.

“We do not discriminate between them. The free zone manufacturing sector is governed by a remuneration order that is applied to all. Above this, there is a Special Migrant Workers Unit that take care of these migrants and it intervenes very fast with the employers when a problem arises,” he told IPS.

He believes the foreigners are well treated but agrees that “seeing their number, it happens that we are unable to visit them as often as we would have liked.”

“We believe they are well-off regarding their wages and their working and living conditions. Apart from their wages, they also get accommodation, food and transport,” he added.

According to him, low-paid jobs are common in developing countries where the free zone manufacturing sector has been introduced in a bid to create jobs. Investors are always looking for cheap and skilled labour and right now many enterprises in Mauritius plan to expand their activities and they need skilled labour.

“Where do I get them?” shouts a manager at Firemount Textiles in northern Mauritius.

Foreign workers will not stop coming to this island anytime soon, as they are needed to support its economic development in the absence of locals. They are now expected to increase in the agriculture and the ICT sectors.

*Names changed to protect their identities.

Chen Weihua, deputy editor of China Daily, USA, talked with MYRON NORDQUIST in a telephone interview regarding the South China Sea arbitration case initiated by Manila against Beijing before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague, Netherlands.

After it conducted a series of hearings, the five-judge PCA has since been studying whether China’s claim over South China Sea flouts UN Conventions. The following are the interview’s excerpts, made available to The Manila Times by the Chinese Embassy in Manila

Does the tribunal have the legal right to arbitrate on the case?

The tribunal has the right to arbitrate. But the real question is: Should the case even be there at all? I can say with some authority that the big item on dispute was there were those who want to subject everything to dispute settlement. And there were those very skeptical about anything. Russia is very skeptical about this dispute settlement system.

And the United States wasn’t even a party. Under Article 298 of UNCLOS, a state can opt out if it does not want a settlement on sovereignty. China did opt out, but the Philippines sued them anyway. And there were these five Europeans, who want to get their hands on this. They were eager to pass on their judgment on the case.

So China had put out a position paper in Dec. 2014, saying, “We unmistakably did not want this arbitration. We opposed to it. We are not going to honor it. We are not going to participate.”

The court turned on its head, and said, “Ah, the position paper is going to be a plea” because they have the authority to decide on whether they have jurisdiction or not on each case. And so they took what was an all-right “we don’t want to play this game” decision by China in writing and they said, this will be a plea. So they then constituted the tribunal to look at whether they have jurisdiction or not. They treated not a plea as a plea. So China really got sandbagged.

Of course, the Philippines got this: Americans were cheerleading. All the world thought China was being really bad because they refused to honor this arbitration. They (China) boycotted it.

There were more reasons than just that, though.

What was the purpose of the position of the Philippines? They spent several million dollars on this high-priced lawyers, trying to embarrass China. But I don’t think the top bracket of the Philippine government really knew what the endgame was, because all they have done now is create bad will with China. They think somehow they are going to stop China from building this low-tide elevation stuff. But they are not. China is not going to abide by.

United States doesn’t even recognize the tribunal. So you got three out of the five permanent UN Security Council members (like this). So what is the endgame? What would they expect to accomplish? Who would enforce it?

Everyone in the Western press believes China is really being the bad guy, and they are only getting half of the story.

Also, you heard China is building airstrips. But every airstrip is dual use. It can be used for military purpose, or for search and rescue and disaster relief purpose. Anyway, there is only one side of the story because the Chinese have said, “Hey, we aren’t going to be in this game. We opted out to be in this kind of game involving either maritime delimitation or sovereignty.”

China never said, but they should say this: Nine Dash Line, among other things, indicate a broad sea area which there are features that are subject to the historic title claims. And if they say that, they are automatically opted out of any compulsory jurisdiction. Why they don’t say that? I don’t know.

You should not say historic rights or reasons, the magic word in the (UN) Convention is historic title. Title implies ownership, possession and sovereignty. There is no place in the Convention you could find historic rights. There are only two places where you will find historic titles. It means you own it.

The Chinese could kill this thing right now, in my opinion if they say, “All the Nine-Dash Line is in general not a boundary, it’s a general indication, among other things, there are maritime features we have historic title claims.”

I mean, Taiping (the only island occupied and inhabited by Taiwan people), is a historic title claim.

The real danger in this is the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese are just psycho about this. Vietnam is watching this thing like a hawk. They are waiting for a decision and sue China too.

So it’s very bad for the tribunal. They have two permanent members of the Security Council that are unhappy with the court. It’s very bad they stir up China and Vietnam get into a fight. People talk about China and the US getting into a fight, but they are not going to. Neither of them want that—a fight.

Is it true that the ruling is not going to be in China’s favor?

They have already shown the prejudice. They have already shown so much prejudice. China said: They (the Philippines) are doing this because they want to get an advantage on maritime delimitation. If that’s true, the Chinese have already opted out. You can’t have them subject to compulsory jurisdiction if the problem is the maritime delimitation or if it is sovereignty.
But they (China) sound like a tough guy, they don’t engender a lot of sympathy.

Does it make sense to you to say that Xisha and Nansha belong to China since ancient times?

It does if you don’t take it literally. That is to say if the Nine-Dash Line is an indication of sphere of influence. What happened is that journalists think they (China) claim it’s internal waters or something. They (China) never said that. China doesn’t want that to be internal waters.

Some Chinese think the US is behind the Philippines trying to stir up the situation?

I think they are. They want to get back to those military bases. You know they got kicked out of quite a few of those places.

Now the Filipinos are having such fun of making faces at China, hiding behind the US military, thinking they are really doing something wonderful. I think they are all wrong.

My view is that you got to have fair decisions. If you really obey the rule of the law, you never would have said that it didn’t involve the sovereignty of island or maritime delimitation and historic title. If any of those three exists, and sure all three exist, then China should never be there in that arbitration.

They (China) have not done an effective job. There are lots of arguments that can be made pro-Chinese. Here in this country (US) they think you are a traitor if you are pro-Chinese. There are something bigger than being a traitor—that is, being truthful. I am not afraid what they are going to do to me.

China said the tribunal is not legal?

But it engages in this sleight-of-hand tricks, such as what I described in respect to jurisdiction.

I think it’s a good strategy for the Chinese not to participate from the beginning. But what I don’t agree with is where after they (China) have not done a good job of explaining their position. It takes some hard work to get it. I don’t think they have won the public-relations fight, at least here, maybe at home, I don’t know.

But things involving sovereignty is not going to be solved quickly. Have mechanism for search and rescue, fighting piracy, there is lots of ways to cooperate.

US officials such as Assistant Secretary Danny Russel always said this tribunal ruling is going to be binding?

It does not mean anything. Anytime they say that, ask them the question, who is going to enforce it.

In my view, it’s an abuse of the process, where these five Europeans (judges) are passing judgment Chinese opted out of. By the way, if the US ever became a party of this agreement, we would have opted out as the Chinese did.

I think China’s position is legal because they opted out of this stuff.

It is blatantly stupid politically (on the part of the jury) … They should not use China’s position paper as a plea.

I think the ruling’s going to be bad for China. It’s not going to end the problem. It’s going to exacerbate it. That’s what I think.

I am just not happy. I don’t think China is getting a fair shake. I think part of the reason is that people who are being paid by a lot of money by the Filipinos are taking advantage of the ignorance of people about this very complicated area. I am not someone who’s in the pocket of China or the US, but someone who has opinion about this.

Myron Nordquist is the associate director and editor of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for National Security Law, at the University of Virginia School of Law. He spent more than 30 years on maritime law studies, including being editor in chief of a seven-volume commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

Model of one of the two dams under construction to harness the Santa Cruz river in the southern Argentine province of that name. The project is to cost five billion dollars, and 85 percent will be financed by China. It was granted to a consortium of Argentine and Chinese companies. Credit: Represas Patagonia

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22 2016 (IPS)

Argentina’s new government is reviewing several major projects to be carried out jointly with China. But aside from a few changes in priorities, the administration is not expected to put the brakes on an alliance that Beijing classifies as strategic.

One of the campaign pledges of the conservative Mauricio Macri, who was sworn in as president on Dec. 10, was to revise or cancel agreements with China that he considered “lacking in transparency” or “secret”.

His centre-left predecessor, Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), signed a set of laws in March 2015 that gave rise to a framework agreement with China on economic cooperation and investment, strengthening relations between the two countries.

In his campaign, Macri and his associates lashed out harshly at the agreements with China. But after the excitement of the elections was over, the new government changed its tune.

“We can’t deny China’s weight in the world. It is not in Argentina’s interest to break with China,” said the new foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, describing their ties as part of “a balanced relationship with the world.”

In December, in fact, Macri used a currency swap deal (the exchange of principal and interest in one currency for the same in another) in effect with China since 2014, in the first measure he took to shore up Argentina’s foreign reserves.

And as his ambassador to Beijing he chose Diego Guelar, a diplomat who is considered one of the promoters of the alliance between China and Argentina.

“International pacts must be respected…Some believe that if we fail to honour our agreements with China, it will be well looked upon, quote unquote, by the United States and Europe,” Guelar said in an interview with the newspaper Perfil.

“But it’s quite the opposite: he who fails to honour some, does the same with others; that is, a reliable Argentina, which lives up to its international commitments and is loyal to its foreign partners, is a key factor in the credibility that we have to develop to the utmost,” he stressed.

China’s ambassador in Buenos Aires, Yang Wanming, pointed out that his country is the third-largest investor in Argentina, and that in the last five years, investments and merger and acquisition operations in Argentina have totaled 8.3 billion dollars.

Allowing these projects to go ahead “will set a good example for substantial China-Argentina cooperation in the future,” he said.

Apparently, pragmatism appears to have once more taken precedence over political rhetoric.

An inter-urban railway car in Buenos Aires on a line that connects the Retiro neighbourhood with Tigre, in the north of Greater Buenos Aires. These Chinese-made cars are part of trade and investment accords reached by the two countries in the railway industry. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“Relations with China largely explain the years of economic growth after the 2001 crisis. Chinese investment in Latin America has grown significantly since around 2009,” Argentine academic Gonzalo Paz told IPS.

“The announcement that the accords would be reviewed was both a consequence of the election campaign and of the need for a thorough study of all of the issues in the relationship, and in particular of the megaprojects that were agreed in the final stage of the previous government,” he said.

Paz, an expert in relations between East Asia and Latin America at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., believes Macri will try to expand ties with long-time partners like Italy and France, and get relations with the United States back on track.

“But a top global power like China must continue to be a key partner of Argentina,” he added.

In an interview with the Argentine-Chinese cultural magazine Dang Dai, Guelar announced that, in any case, he would review things that “were done badly or carelessly.”

“I believe the criticism of those projects will lead to changes, but not to a break in relations with China,” the director of Dang Dai, Néstor Restivo, co-author of the book “Everything you need to know about China” published by the Paidós publishing house, told IPS.

“In the future it will be essential to see what new areas of cooperation open up or what projects are developed. In other words it would be a serious mistake to only focus on the management of the projects that emerged in the previous stage, and to not have a proactive policy,” said Paz.

One of the most emblematic projects to be reviewed is the construction of the Néstor Kirchner-Jorge Cepernic Hydroelectric Complex in the province of Santa Cruz in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region, for a total investment of five billion dollars, 85 percent of which is to be financed by China.

In 2013, the contract for the project was granted to the Patagonia Dams consortium headed by the Argentine companies Hidrocuyo and Electroingeniería and the Chinese firm Gezhboua Group.

The complex, which includes the construction of two dams on the Santa Cruz river, will generate 1,740 MW of electricity, which is to cover eight percent of demand in this energy-strapped country once it has been completed in 2020.

Another megaproject, agreed in November, involves the construction of two nuclear plants – the fourth and fifth in the country – with a total investment of some 15 billion dollars. More than half of the parts in the plants are to be produced domestically, and 85 percent of the financing will come from China.

The agreement includes technology transfer from China and the joint exploration of third country markets.

“I don’t think there will be any backtracking in relations with China,” and the same is true with the hydropower plant, which has already begun to be built and whose contract was assigned in an international tender, Restivo said.

“It’s the biggest construction project that China is currently involved in outside of China…if the new government believes some irregularity was committed, it will continue forward on another track, but it is virtually impossible to think of stopping the project,” he said.

With respect to the nuclear plants, Restivo thinks there may be changes, based on the new government’s strategic energy plan.

“But letters of intent have been signed, and it wouldn’t look good to backpedal in relations with China, although everything is negotiable,” said the economist.

“The Chinese would protest if they were left out of what has already been signed, but they are flexible or pragmatic enough to see how to eventually compensate for a lost business deal,” he said.

The project whose future Restivo has the greatest doubts about is the one signed in August 2015 by the two governments for the upgrade of the freight rail network that links 17 of Argentina’s 23 provinces and belongs to the public railroad company Belgrano Cargas y Logística.

The agreement involves a first tranche of financing from China of 2.4 billion dollars, and a second of 2.47 billion, and foresees the transport of Argentine and Brazil agricultural products to Chilean ports on the Pacific ocean.

One of the casualties of the new government’s wave of dismissals of public employees was the payroll of the company Fabricaciones Militares, which had been commissioned to build some 1,000 rail cars, with more than 80 percent nationally-made parts – a key component in the reconstruction of the local railway industry.

“It’s quite possible that now we won’t be able to count any more on the part that interests me the most – for agreements with China to industrialise Argentina and not only serve Chinese interests,” Restivo said.

Above and beyond these uncertainties, ambassador Yang Wanming hopes for more: “To promote a higher level in the strategic integral alliance” between Beijing and Buenos Aires.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes