The Deoband Declaration on Terrorism: Why Now?

Re: # 160


Do you need that for the Kumbakonam dikshithars?

Ref Golt #161

[Do you need that for the Kumbakonam dikshithars?]

The Dikshithars are in Chidambaram, not Kumbakonam.

Just keep going to Tirupathi and get your head shaved.

Dostmittar, Majumdar,

Even if we assume that Pakistani census figures are accurate (which are contested universally), if you were to add those areas that were subject of partition Punjab and Bengal... there are more Non-muslims on the erstwhile Pakistani partitioned provinces of 1947 (West Punjab and East Bengal) than there are Muslims in their counterparts.

So I am not sure what anyone wants to prove through this discussion.

NKG,

I am afraid I cannot accept your claim as it based on propaganda and nothing else.

In any event, Pakistan's census tragically underplays minorities and a more reasonable estimate is that there are about 8-12% Non-Muslims (I am not counting the Ahmaddiya community- the number jumps if we add them)... Reliable Christian sources put Pakistani Christians alone at around 10-15 Million. Pakistani Hindus number between 2.5-4 million.

Majumdar,

Dostmittar answered your post:

"However, a qualification is in order, most muslims in punjab, outside Maler Kotla, are not Punjabi speaking but more recent migrants from other states. "

Hence the number is any event irrelevant to any discussion of partition.

Re: # 162

What is the problem there at Chidambaram?

Yasser,

I am not sure the migrant population in Punjab is accurately acocunted for but I will try to get back with more details. By the way what do you make of the fact that Fascist Modiland has a higher Muslim % than Hindoos of Sindh- the birthplace of MAJ (pbuh) and the (allegedly) secular PPP.

Regards

If true, it just means that these are meaningless comparisons but I am hardly the one bringing them up :).

Ref ajeya #131

{[When did China join WTO? Look it up.]

2001. And your point is?

[How about GATT?]

Yes. How about it?}

As usual, your cluelessness is easily visible for all to see.

WTO mandates free trade under certain rules and conditions. Prior to that GATT was in force whereby bilateral trade agreements were struck between countries. China was out of GATT under the Communists.

Which means that the US didn't have to allow import of Chinese-made goods in to the country at all. Or, it could have imposed prohibitively high customs duties, effectively killing Chinese exports to the US. And those export-oriented items could have been made with US investment or Taiwanese investment or Overseas Chinese investment. It doesn't matter.

Not doing that was a way to "allow" China to rise.

I know it is hard for you to comprehend. Just lie down with a pack of ice on your forehead. You will be all right in a couple of days.

The rest of your post: equally stupid.

Ref Eklavya #134

[ajeya, ISlamIslam, dudes, what's with all this ego-metastisization?! Both of you bring unique and very valuable perspectives. And we can all be wrong once in a while. Give others the same benefit. Bashing each other is so counterproductive.]

I am an Equal Opportunity Abuser of Stupidity. I don't discriminate on the basis of National origin.

#168 ISlamIslam

[WTO mandates free trade under certain rules and conditions. Prior to that GATT was in force whereby bilateral trade agreements were struck between countries. China was out of GATT under the Communists.

Which means that the US didn't have to allow import of Chinese-made goods in to the country at all. Or, it could have imposed prohibitively high customs duties, effectively killing Chinese exports to the US. And those export-oriented items could have been made with US investment or Taiwanese investment or Overseas Chinese investment. It doesn't matter.

Not doing that was a way to "allow" China to rise.

I know it is hard for you to comprehend. Just lie down with a pack of ice on your forehead. You will be all right in a couple of days.

The rest of your post: equally stupid. ]

Wow. What an imbecilic response.

I think you know that it is clear to anyone who is watching this debate that you don't have a leg to stand on, and your boneheaded conspiracy theories are no better than Zeemax's theories of the US Government plotting 9/11. Your hard-headedness in not admitting your ignorance is only adding to your long list of stupid utterances - like comparing China and Cuba, or Phillippines and China.

Boy, you ARE stupid, and uninformed.

So let's get to this latest piece of crass idiocy.

Here's something for you to read. It is a good primer. If you are not completely brain-dead, it would hopefully penetrate your thick skull that the WTO membership was a very difficult decision for China, and one that the international community had been insisting that China should join for about 2 decades. The thought that WTO membership was an answer to China's prayers to the US government is as goatbrained as any one can think of.

By the way, the author of this article belongs to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, not some small-time IT manager who likes guesswork over facts.

http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~asaich/China%20and%20the%20WTO.pdf.

I'l l post some of the relevant details here:


China as a Member of the WTO: Some Political and Social Questions
Tony Saich
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University


China’s entry into WTO in late-2001 will be as important to its development in the Twenty-first century as the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 was to the Twentieth. Entry builds on the extraordinary economic integration into the world economy that has taken place since reforms began in 1978 and shows China’s leaders’ commitment to being an active member of the world economic community. At the same time, it presents new challenges for the leadership in terms of the level of foreign presence China is willing to tolerate and how destabilizing this presence will be to native industry. In addition, it raises fundamental questions about national sovereignty and the extent to which crucial decisions about China’s future development will be dictated or determined by factors beyond the control of Zhongnanhai.

Having negotiated entry terms for almost 15 years, the debate is only just beginning in China about what the real effects will be. Essentially, President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji realized that guiding the necessary concessions through China’s complex bureaucracy would only result in delay and potentially strong opposition. As a result they took the whole process out of the political system and kept information within a tight, leading group. Now that entry has been assured and the details of the agreement are being disseminated in China, its people and bureaucracies are becoming aware of what they have signed on to and how it will affect their lives. Judgment is mixed depending on where one sits and how one views the impact.
Certainly the agreements are dramatic. It opens up new sectors, such as telecommunications, to foreign companies that will be able to own up to 50 percent of joint ventures (not the 51 percent offered by premier Zhu in April 1999). Tariffs, which had been among the highest in the world in the early 1990s, will be reduced dramatically with those on cars falling from 80 to 100 percent to 25 percent by 2006, agricultural tariffs will come down from 31 to 17. 5 percent and 14 percent for US priority products, and will be eliminated for computers, telecommunications’ equipment and semiconductors. This should have the positive impact of reducing the rampant smuggling and corruption that has accompanied China’s high tariff barriers. There have been equally dramatic agreements for the financial and insurance sectors. China has agreed to full foreign access for US banks within five years. After two years foreign banks will be allowed to conduct local currency business with Chinese firms and this would be extended to individuals three years later. Currently, foreign banks are not allowed to conduct foreign currency business with Chinese clients (corporate or individual) and severe restrictions are applied geographically on the establishment of foreign banks.
Realization of the consequences of these agreements have caused some to raise alarmist scenarios of increasing unemployment, greater inequality, Chinese firms going under because of lack of competitiveness, and many being driven off the land because of lower and better quality agricultural imports. However, much of the alarmist literature overestimates the problems and attributes to WTO effects that are the result of the shortcomings of the old system. In this short piece, I shall look at two issues.

First, given the opposition and the potential short-term dislocation why did China’s senior leaders decide to pursue entry so vigorously at this time. Second, what are some of the key social and political consequences likely to be?

The Imperative to Join

So why did China agree to such a tough set of conditions, what does it hope to gain from entry, and how will it set off potential gains against costs? I would identify five principle reasons why China wanted to join at the present time. First and foremost, China had very little choice as not entering might have afforded protection over the short term for its
4
economy but would have shut it out from the significant and structural benefits that would accompany membership. For example, if China were outside of the WTO it would more easily fall prey to unilateral sanctions for not just economic but also its political behavior. China’s leaders had been shocked by the post-1989 burst of Western sanctions and have seen the US propensity to threaten sanctions against other regimes in the world that it does not like or that do not follow its policy lead. Also, although the multi-fiber agreement was a separate issue and China was protected until 2008, if it was not in the WTO it feared that it might become the target of textile quotas from a number of Western nations who would not be able to apply them to countries within the WTO.

Second, China’s desire to be an important player on the world stage means that it must be a member of key organizations to influence policy-making. Simply being outside was not acceptable and would not have fit with Jiang Zemin’s desire to project an image of an important country that needs to be consulted on major world affairs. Importantly, if China did not gain early entry, a number of decisions would be made that would affect its vital interests without it having any input. For example, trade in services and agriculture are looming issues, as are the questions of workers’ rights and environmental protection. On the first two, China has a strong economic interest in being part of the debate, whereas China does not feel that the latter should be a part of the WTO discussions. It needed to join before crucial decisions were made on such issues.

Third, a number of senior leaders seem to have concluded that without some strong external disciplining mechanism, economic reforms might grind to a halt as vested interests resisted further forward momentum. In essence there is nothing in the WTO agreement that does not support the leadership’s stated desire to move toward a market economy and especially on the SOEs and the financial system there will be pressure for more fundamental reform. It is always useful for a politician to have someone else to blame for tough decisions and in the case of China who better than the foreigners? As Woo has argued if growth in China has come predominantly from institutional convergence to a prototype economy rather than from its exceptionalism during the transition, then entry can only be of benefit to sustained long-term growth.1 Entry into the WTO will provide a line in the sand of reform that it will be almost impossible to retreat behind. It will bind subsequent leaderships to continuing economic reforms and increased internationalization of China’s economy.

Fourth, WTO entry will bring a number of specific economic benefits to China. With Chinese economic growth slowing during the late-1990s and the state investment programs showing limited signs of success at best, it is clear that new sources of growth must be found. A number of Chinese economists have suggested that WTO entry could add as much as two percentage points to growth, enough to add 10 to 15 million jobs. In particular, WTO entry would improve market access for Chinese goods to major markets in Europe, Japan, and the US, especially for textiles and fashion apparel, and telecommunications equipment. Further, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) growth has not only slowed but in 1999 it actually fell. WTO entry is seen as a way to sustain FDI and to encourage more US and European investment to supplement Hong Kong, other Asian capital, and Mainland China ‘round-trip’ capital. In particular, China wishes to direct more FDI to develop the service sector that must expand significantly for China to be able to absorb the surplus rural labor and laid-off industrial workers. One unintended
effect may be increased foreign control over the private sector, which has been starved of funds because of official bias in investment policy that still favors the state-owned sector. If Beijing continues to prop up and privilege a moribund SOE sector, it may find that foreigners are funding and reaping the benefits from the fastest-growing sector of the economy.

Fifth, and far more speculatively, China may have seen some advantage in membership in terms of its political and increasingly strong economic relationship with Taiwan. WTO membership for both will increase trade and investment across the Straits and may give more impetus to restart talks on future political integration. Failing all else, the WTO will provide a mechanism for dispute resolution on economic issues between Beijing and Taipei.

Social and Political Consequences

As noted above a number of writers have begun to produce doomsday scenarios about the social and political unrest that WTO membership will bring to China. By contrast, a number of liberal intellectuals have welcomed WTO entry as providing an impetus not only to the further development of the market economy but also to a more rule bound and democratic political order. WTO membership seems to presume not only a liberal trading order but also an independent legal system that constrains government as necessary, transparency, accountability, and a relatively pluralistic political order. However, this is likely to take a long time to develop. In essence WTO entry is liable to continue trends that had been set in motion well before China joined the WTO. In this sense, it will rationalize and hasten the
demise of the old economic order and will privilege those newly emerging sectors of the economy in which China enjoys an international comparative advantage.

yar harimau, brahmin rituals come across as really stupid to most ..i mean why would you WILLINGLY eat panchagavya?

If an area muslim population increases over time thanks to immigrants means the immigrants find an accomodating environment.

#168 ISlamIslam

[Which means that the US didn't have to allow import of Chinese-made goods in to the country at all. Or, it could have imposed prohibitively high customs duties, effectively killing Chinese exports to the US. And those export-oriented items could have been made with US investment or Taiwanese investment or Overseas Chinese investment. It doesn't matter.

Not doing that was a way to "allow" China to rise.]


Let me respond to this dumbass post that suggests that the US was "allowing" import of Chinese goods because of strategic reasons to "allow" China to rise.

Here's an article from someone who actually knows what he is talking about, not some small-time IT manager talking big on an obscure Internet site:

http://www.chinanowmag.com/finance.htm

Here's an excerpt:

[Second, and perhaps even more importantly, the Chinese government policy of buying heavily in the U.S. debt market has contributed to much lower interest rates than would otherwise prevail. These low interest rates have been instrumental in keeping the U.S. economy from falling further and faster, including stimulating the aforementioned boom in housing.

In other words, public policies formulated in Beijing have actually been beneficial to the U.S. economy. Furthermore, cheap Chinese-made exports into the U.S. economy, the source of ire for U.S. government officials and politicians, have benefited American consumers. The effect of lower-priced consumer goods is to increase the real income of these consumers. They can buy more, and live better, than without these low-cost imported goods. The money saved on goods made in China may, in fact, result in increased purchases of the more capital- and knowledge-intensive goods manufactured in the United States, and may stimulate more spending on services and other goods that generate jobs in the domestic economy. It is, therefore, not quite so clear that an undervalued yuan (if, indeed, it is undervalued) is a zero sum game.

Is the yuan undervalued? This is also not as straightforward as it might seem. Yes, China is running a trade surplus with the United States because of the demand for low-priced, Chinese-made goods.....]

#171 jang

[If an area muslim population increases over time thanks to immigrants means the immigrants find an accomodating environment. ]

You mean, like the Muslim immigrants in France? I am glad you think that the French are accommodating. The Muslims somehow don't seem to think so.

Now why is that?

Re: # 163
Pak Govt. site data specify that. Pakistan is notorious for Islam and people around the world are concerned about minority right in Pakistan (true for all countries where moslems are more than 50%. In the garb of Sharia and other mediaval middle east practise, freedom is limited for non moslems. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malayasia, Bangladesh and Pakistan are couple of examples). Naturally Pakistani Govt. data will show more minority than the actual number.

Manto,

Now, tell us if the minoroties (Ahmediyas, Christaians, Hindus) in Pakistan have ever tried or given the notion that they are undermining the sovereignty of Pakistan. Did they ever try to build a parallel system and started wringing their fingers once it fell apart.

To my knowledge, the minoroties in Pakistan have understood, very well, the length of the tether and are trying to be successful within the diameter caused by the tether.

You have a minority that complies to all the rules of the land and one that is not even remotely recalcitrant. There is a qualitative difference in the minorities of the two countries. Minorities (Muslims) of India and that of Pakistan are disparate in aspirations.

I am just curious to know if you have a minority caused bomb blast in Pakistan.

Having said that, I fully well understand that what Islamic Republic of Pakistan stands for and also the ideals of India. I am just trying to objectively spell out the differences, nonethless Muslims in India should be allowed to have their own aspirations, which does not harm the rest of the population.

Re: # 175
Muslims create trouble, whether they are majority or minority. In Indonesia (Muslim majority), Bali is hindu dominated area and very peaceful. It is target of Islamists. In India Mumbai, Delhi, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Varanasi, Jammu, Ahmedabad, Meerat moslems have created trouble. Neitherland had also similar experience.
The basic bararism incorporated in Islam is the root of all such problems. You can not bring any other theory and reason.