Life on the lake

Vipasai Niyamabha
Special to The Nation
Nyaung Shwe February 29, 2012 1:00 am

Home to Intha leg rowers and floating farms, Inle Lake is still relatively unspoiled by the outside world

In a state of civil conflict and closed to much of the world for more than 60 years, Burma is still best described by Rudyard Kipling's famous quote: "quite unlike any land you know about". The itinerary of a first timer will include the chaotic charms Rangoon, the old capital of Mandalay and Bagan but a visit to remote Inle Lake in Shan State will offer the mellowest moments of all.
The slim teak boats on show at Rangoon's National Museum are very much part of everyday life in Nyaung Shwe. From the narrow canals to the vast lake, wooden boats of various sizes are everywhere.
Nyaung Shwe, a small yet pleasant township in Taunggyi district, is the base for those who want to explore the lake area. Tourists on package tours stay in more expensive hotels overlooking the placid water.
January and February are the best months to go weather-wise but Nyaung Shwe and Inle Lake are at their most exciting in October during the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda Festival, when four Buddha Images are taken around the lake in a gilded barge pulled by hundreds of leg-rowers in long canoes in front. Rowing competitions are also held. Pilgrims from all over the country come to this festival, so guesthouses and hotels fill up quickly. Don't be too hesitant when you find one or you'll end up sleeping in a monastery.
The best way of getting around Nyaung Shwe is by bicycle and there are several bike rental shops on the both sides of the main thoroughfare. Local teashops dot the streets, offering plenty of sweet snacks as well as hot milky tea.
I avoid cycling into the crowded Mingalar Market during the day, as this trading place is very busy with buyers from the nearby ethnic villages. The market sells everything from tomatoes to thanaka powder, which local people rub on their faces to protect the skin from the sun. The night market is set up on the main street just before sunset with a handful of food stalls offering such delicacies as Shan noodles and barbecue fish with chilli dips.
To get a sense of this vast lake at the foot of the blue mountain ridges of Menetaung, you need to take a boat ride. You'll find passenger boats lined up near by the bridge to the west of town.
Inle lake has an estimated surface area of 116 square kilometres and is perched at an altitude of 880 metres, which means you need two blankets in winter. It's Burma's second largest freshwater lake - the largest one is Indawgyi Lake in Kachin State.
Because the lake is covered in reeds and floating plants, Intha fishermen are known for their unique leg rowing, which involves standing at the stern of the boat on one leg with the other wrapped around the oar.
The fishermen live and work in stilt houses built over the water. They also grow vegetables in floating gardens that rise and fall with the tides. The way of living gives the perception of floating villages, floating gardens, as well as floating markets in the authentic sense of the word.
The water is crystal clear in many parts, allowing sight of the lake floor up to three metres below, with villages, temples and gardens dotting the network of canals rather than the open lake. The Intha usually row out to the open lake to fish. Each small flat-bottomed boat carries a cone-shaped bamboo contraption lined with a mesh net and open at the top. When he arrives at a fishing spot, the fisherman presses the large side of the cone to the bottom of the shallow lake with his feet to trap the fish. He then uses the oar to hit the water surface, presumably to scare the fish, who then swim into the net.
Small waterway channels allow for a close-up view of the floating gardens, which are made by matting reeds that grow around the lake in long buoyant rows. The farmer gathers mud from the lake's floor to pile on top and mixes it with hyacinth weed for fertilisation. Green and red tomatoes grow in abundance alongside these small streams, making Inle Lake the largest producer of tomatoes in Shan state.
Most tourists take a day trip around the northern part of the lake stopping at a weaving village where lotus thread is still used to weave textile. A scarf made from natural dyed lotus thread scarf is impressively velvety to the touch but I wince when I see the price: it's more than my flight from Heho back to Rangoon.
A lot of small boat vendors try to sell their silver accessories just outside a silversmith workshop, paddling along the boat offering lovely ear rings or necklaces "at good prices".
The Intha are Buddhist and there are more than 100 Buddhist monasteries and shrines in and around the lake. Among the most popular is Nga Phe Kyaung near Ywama village. Visitors can stroll around the wooden monastery, pay respect to the old Buddha images and be entertained by cats that the monks have trained to jump through small hoops for donations.
If visiting the Phaung Daw Oo pagoda outside the festival, the golden barge designed as a hintha bird can be viewed in a boat garage next to the temple building. When the grand 18-day festival is held at the end of the Buddhist Lent known as the month of Thadingyut, four Buddha images covered thickly with gold leaves are borne on a royal barge and taken throughout the lake.
The accompanying fair, dances and races are surely sufficiently intriguing to make anyone want to plan ahead for the upcoming Phaung Daw Oo event. For visitors like us, the most exciting event will almost certainly be the leg-rowing boat races. Inle Lake is the only place on earth to witness such an extraordinary act.

A good life in far Siam

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas
Special to The Nation February 27, 2012 1:00 am

The harried sailors of the Portuguese Empire had compelling reasons to settle in Asia

The Portuguese sailors had done their share. Throughout the first half of the 16th century they had ventured across the seas in a demonstration of Western might that enriched their monarch and created an empire. But that empire was already on the wane as the century drew to a close - the Spanish and Dutch were in the ascendant.
For many of those Portuguese sailors, the new lands they'd found offered a better life than their weakened and vengeful homeland could, and Siam offered the best of all.
Portugal's rise and fall in Asia was recounted at last month's conference commemorating the 500th anniversary of Thai-Portuguese relations. Professor Nidhi Eoseewong, in his keynote speech "Navigation, Spices and Faith", marvelled at how a country of just a million citizens was able to forge a globe-spanning empire.
Portugal's century of power in Asia began in 1498 when Vasco da Gama's fleet landed in India at Calicut. In the name of trade, its explorers gradually expanded their sphere of influence - by any means necessary - and ultimately controlled the spice trade across South and Southeast Asia.
It's been estimated that Portugal's oriental mission required the dispatching of some 2,400 men a year throughout the 16th century.
Asian merchants had never before dealt with a foreign government, only private businessmen from afar - or pirates - said Assistant Professor of history Suthachai Yimprasert of Chulalongkorn University.
By 1500 the Portuguese had a thriving trading post at Cochin (now Kochi) on India's western coast, which they ruled well into the next century, and by 1510 they had an Indian state of their own, centred on Goa - and this they kept until violently forced out 1961. India chooses not to celebrate its own half-millennium of relations with Lisbon.
From this Estado da India, the Europeans launched their forays into Southeast Asia, with the prize being the capture of the spice trade's centrifugal core, Malacca. This they seized in 1511. All that remained was to secure the network of outposts, such as the Kingdom of Ayutthaya.
It soon became apparent, however, that while Asian commodities, especially the spices, were in high demand in Europe, Asians weren't interested in anything the West proffered as barter. The Portuguese royal court realised that trade could not be sustained, Nidhi pointed out.
"The Portuguese had only cannon and muskets to offer, but Asians quickly learned how to make these weapons themselves."
Adding to the empire's woes were chronic mismanagement, corruption, bureaucratic red tape and the wrath of ill-treated sailors. Nidhi pinned the blame on the centralisation of power under absolute monarchy, a common failing of autocrats throughout history.
Despite enjoying immense profits from the Asian spice trade, the Portuguese court overlooked the country's fiscal decay and ignored the wellbeing of the citizenry. It spent its spice income lavishly and kept the lid on domestic insurrections by buying the loyalty of local leaders.
Meanwhile the sailors who brought home the wealth were left to suffer, dismissed by the Lisbon elite as expendable, low-class rabble. Mammoth, four-storey ships, carrying 500 to 600 sailors each, set out for Asia on years-long voyages rife with risk. In half a century, around 180,000 seamen took that risk, on nearly 500 excursions in total.
Something like 12 per cent of the ships never reached their destination, wrecked by storms or inept captains.
So it is understandable that many of the crewmen chose not to chance the journey home, particularly after Lisbon began trading more in African slaves than Asian spices. Many sailors established their own lucrative dealings in the East as traders or pirates, while hundreds of others saw a brighter future in working for Asia's rulers.
In 1538 there were about 300 Portuguese tradesmen living in Pattani and 120 Portuguese mercenaries serving King Chairacha of Ayutthaya. In all, an estimated 16,000 Caucasian Portuguese settled down in Asian ports during the 16th century.
The communities they established eventually became "local" communities thanks to the Europeans' ease in assimilating, Nidhi said, so much so that they happily broke off all relations with their homeland.
A French account indicates that the Portuguese in Ayutthaya during the reign of King Narai the following century numbered 6,000.
Their legacy remains in evidence across the region, in the languages, architecture, food and, often, the colour of people's skin.
Nidhi pointed out, though, that relations between Portugal and Ayutthaya were "colourless" - neither state was capable of controlling the other, notwithstanding the Europeans' use of brute force in Malacca, India and elsewhere in Asia.

O-Net test 'stuck in 20th century', academic says

Chularat Saengpassa,
Wannapa Khaopa
The Nation February 27, 2012 1:00 am

Apparent flaws in the Ordinary National Educational Test (O-Net) have provided another strong reminder that Thailand's education system badly needs improvement.

For years, agencies have lamented the falling average of O-Net scores among students in all subjects. But if O-Net exam papers are not really well designed and mired with mistakes, how can we expect the students to do well?
Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) academic Dr Dilaka Lathapipat pointed out that while the ISA test reflected the vision of the 21st century, Thailand's O-Net was stuck to the 20th century.
"The test-design standards for these two tests are much different," Dilaka said.
If the test designers cannot provide reliable and efficient tests, teachers and students will lack trusted indicators of their performance. Relevant agencies, in that case, will also find it hard to check which areas they should concentrate on to improve for the country's educational system.

As part of the country's educational reform, the National Institute of Educational Testing Service (NIETS) sprang into operation and the O-Net was launched.
O-Net has also replaced the decades-long academically tough university exams.
From its inception, NIETS talked about developing standardised tests but years passed and the results were far from satisfactory.
Many universities became so worried about the O-Net ability to select qualified students for some of their fields that they allocated fewer and fewer seats for the central admission system, which has used O-Net scores as admission criteria.
Apart from such reactions from the universities, students and parents have often criticised the O-Net questions too. To them, some questions appear either ridiculous or rather stupid. Multiple choices given in each question have also raised eyebrows.
In fact, when the former director of NIETS looked at one O-Net question for Mathayom students this year, she gave an incorrect answer.
Dr Utumporn Jamornmann, who is now an adviser to the Ombudsman, chose "b" when presented with the following choices for the question - "If you have a sexual urge, what should you do?" a) Ask friends if you can play football together; b) Consult family members; c) Try to sleep; d) Go out with a friend of the opposite sex; or e) Invite a close friend to watch a movie together."
According to NIETS director Dr Samphan Phanphrut, the answer was "a".
But critics pointed out that both "a" and "b" could been seen as correct answers for boys; furthermore, in the case of most girls, "a" would be a strange option, and therefore not a viable choice. Utumporn said good test questions must be clear and in line with facts.
Test takers who sat the O-Net, so far, did not think NIETS was successful in ensuring that only good questions appeared in test papers.
Institute for Research and Quality Development Foundation chairman Chainarong Indhara-meesup said any minor mistake could ruin the credibility and reliability of the tests.
"If internal panels can't notice the minor mistakes, recruit the help of outsiders," he suggested.
He also recommended that test-design panels first try out some questions with a small group of students so as to test children's reactions.
"In my opinion, tests should use open-ended questions. A few sentences of answers written by students will tell a lot of things about what students know," Chainarong said.
He said when it came to assessment of educational quality, agencies should not tighten the budget too much.
"Look at the PISA exam paper, it contains no multiple choices. We have to adjust to improve," he |said.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) performed its first test in 2000, but its exam has won respect already across the world. It is a worldwide evaluation in OECD member countries (currently there are 65 member nations) of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance, performed first in 2000 and repeated every three years.
TDRI vice-chairman Dr Somkiat Tangkitvanich said he was not an educational expert but he noticed the need for the NIETS to improve its services.
"Let's do some research for test designing. I also think it's a good idea to publicly announce answers of already-used test questions and explain the rationale of the questions," he said.
TDRI's Dilaka said the tests were tools to evaluate not just students' academic performance but also the performance of teachers and schools.
"Good tests should determine children's ability to apply knowledge to their daily life," he commented.
Dilaka said the United States had a clear policy to put emphasis on subjects crucial for the development of the country.
If tests reveal the knowledge of those important subjects is still inadequate on the part of students, schools will be required to reduce learning hours for other subjects and allocate more time for the important stuff.

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The road to reform got a little less bumpy today

Friday, 13 January 2012 19:58 Mizzima News

(Editorial) – Burma is on the path to peaceful development but there will be more challenges ahead, in spite of a joyous day in which most of the prominent political prisoners were released.

The scenes of joy over the unexpected release of political prisoners today indicates real change. Those released included well-known 88 Generation Student leader Min Ko Naing, the Shan ethnic nationalities leader Hkun Htun Oo and one of the Saffron Revolution leaders, Ashin Gambia. Even the formerly powerful ex-prime minister and Military Intelligence Chief Khin Nyunt was sprung from incarceration. This is an indication it is not business as usual in Burma. Today’s release of political prisoners was preceded by concrete reformist actions by the new government, notably the decision to halt the Myitsone Dam project financed by China and the cancellation of the 400-megawatt coal-fired power plant in the Dawei Project of Italian-Thai company.

Opening the gates of the prisons today for these people indicates the government has confidence in national reconciliation and is moving towards a more democratic society. But more challenges lie ahead. Burma needs judiciary system, reform of the suffocating bureaucratic system and serious attention to infrastructure and the struggling health and education systems.

That there was a delay in seeing this release was an indication of the struggle behind the scenes between the reformists and the old guard.

Talk of release has been on people’s lips for months. Political leaders like 88-Generation students, the Shan ethnic leaders Khun Htun Oo and former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt are important figures in politics and they have the potential to disturb the tranquillity of the streets and the government's seven-point Road Map to full democracy. However, after the historic move of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to jump into the electoral process, things have truly changed. With the acknowledgement by Western governments and the support of opposition forces – bar a radical minority communist group – Thein Sein’s government appears to have gained the confidence to move forward pursing the electoral process.

Nobody would have believed this if they had been told about it a year ago. President Thein Sein understands that national reconciliation includes the release of political prisoners. This process has been accelerated by today’s action.

There appears to be a tacit understanding for the opposition to stay off the streets. No demonstrations are in the offing. But a lot will depend on whether changes seep through to the grassroots. Certainly the atmosphere on the streets of Rangoon this week was one of more openness with discussion of politics no longer a taboo. Important changes are needed in the country’s budget in sectors like health and education, meaningful change to bureaucratic mechanisms, local administrations, and the judiciary. If this happens in a relatively short period of time, the popularity of the Thein Sein government’s moves will remain and a sense of forgiveness of the previous regime may be realized. If this fails to happen, there may be mass protests with the focus on the environment, land confiscation, corruption, and possibly over the continued armed confrontation in ethnic areas, if tension still exists.

Might there be a backlash from hardliners? Unlikely. The interesting point here is that the military’s Commander in Chief General Min Aung Hlaing was visiting Thailand when the amnesty was announced. Min Aung Hlaing is a member of the 11-member National Security Council, which has the final say on matter like amnesty of prisoners. This indicates little or no concern that things will fall apart should he depart Burma’s shores.

China working hard to lure foreign experts

Updated: 2012-02-13 07:55

By Chen Xin (China Daily)

BEIJING - The government plans to introduce 500 to 1,000 high-end non-Chinese foreign professionals from other countries in 10 years to spur innovation and promote scientific research.
The One Thousand Foreign Experts Project, launched late last year, has attracted 214 candidates from countries including the United States, Japan and Germany, said Yi Fanping, deputy director of a work team under the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs that oversees the project, over the weekend.
The first application phase of the project started in November after requests were submitted from 214 universities, scientific research institutions and corporate units nationwide that seek foreign talent, according to Yi.
Potential employers are asked to make an initial deal with candidates and then apply for the project.
The project awards each foreign professional a subsidy of up to 1 million yuan ($159,000) from the central government and scientific researchers can get a 3 million yuan to 5 million yuan research allowance.
The professionals are also entitled to favorable visa, taxation and wage, residence, medical care and insurance policies.
According to the project's eligibility criteria, employers should be universities, scientific institutions, Chinese-invested enterprises or joint ventures in which Chinese investors have a more than 50 percent stake.
The targeted foreign professionals include professors at prestigious universities and scientific research institutions as well as senior technology and management professionals at world-renowned corporations or financial institutions. The program also seeks those who control intellectual property rights to master core technology and those with overseas experience in starting and running businesses and other skill sets China urgently needs.
Candidates must be non-Chinese, under the age of 65 and currently not employed full time in China. However, those already working in China can still apply for the project if they started their current job fewer than six months before each application phase of the project ends.
The second round of applications started on Friday and will close on March 12.
The project also requires foreign experts to work no fewer than three consecutive years and spend at least nine months a year in China.
"Central authorities will organize 40 experts to check each candidate's qualifications, including their achievements and influence in his or her field as well as each potential employer's expectations of the person it wants to hire and the work conditions it provides. Special meetings using video teleconferencing will also be held to see if individual candidates can really meet employers' demands," said Yi.
Yi did not reveal the date that the first meetings will be held.
"We will also work out measures to deal with any emergency that could happen, such as the illness or sudden death of a foreign expert," he said.
Many corporations in Beijing have expressed their desire to hire high-end professionals from overseas to give a shot in the arm to their business.
"My company already has an expert from Germany. We plan to introduce two to three experts from the United States or Japan this year through the project because experts from those countries are leading in the industry," said Ye Jing, a human resources manager with Pulead Technology Industry Co, a new material and new energy developer.
Chen Bei, deputy director of the Beijing municipal bureau of human resources and social security, said they are designing a website that will provide positions offered by employers to better implement the project.
"Currently, an employer is on its own when seeking high-end foreign talent, which is not very efficient. In the future, we will provide a platform that can ensure better interaction and matches between employers and foreign experts," she said.
Chen said her organization will also meet with Beijing's high-tech companies to introduce the project to them and help them better develop in order to facilitate innovation and promote upgrades to the city's industrial infrastructure.
More than 40,000 foreign experts - mainly senior technology and management personnel in fields such as education, scientific research, manufacturing and health - come to work in Beijing every year, Chen said.

Keeping the spirit of the country

New book offers refreshing perspective on Thailand's monarchy

• Published: 13/02/2012 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: Life

King Bhumibol Adulyadej: A Life's Work _ Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective is in the mould of official histories commissioned by democratic societies.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej: A Life’s Work— Thailand’s Monarchy in Perspective Edited by Nicholas Grossman and Dominic Faulder, 383pp, 2011 Singapore: Editions Didier Millet 1,200 baht. Available at leading bookshops

Such official histories are normally written by independent scholars who are given unique access to archives, with the usual understanding that they may write a critical history, but not a hostile one. A Life's Work is written by a committee, which inevitably mutes the critical edge of the text. All the same it is a remarkable feat, and hopefully a model to be emulated by future "official" histories _ of the Thai army, for example.
Publishing, however, remains hemmed in by the strict Thai law on lese majeste, as we know from the banning of Paul Handley's The King Never Smiles (2006). A Life's Work contains a very welcome overview of lese majeste in Thailand, making it clear that each strengthening of the law to its now draconian level was undertaken under military, not democratic, rule. As the book points out, Germany at the beginning of the last century found itself in an escalating conflict over similar laws and was politically deeply divided by them. The Kaiser himself stepped in to defuse the issue in 1904 and the law became a non-issue from there on. In 2005 King Bhumibol made it clear that he was unhappy with the law, but his intervention had little effect and unfortunately he may now be too frail to make a decisive intervention.
Those who claim that the law exists because of a "social consensus" or because of Thai "culture" are given their say here, but they have never been convincing; firstly, because the beefed-up laws were imposed by the military (that is not consensus), and secondly, because Thai culture itself has fundamentally changed during the lifetime of King Bhumibol. People now have new cultural expectations as shown by the dramatic "flight from marriage" by Thai women, particularly in Bangkok, which is a rejection of their "traditional" family role. Changes across the social spectrum manifest themselves politically in the refusal of a huge swathe of the population to comply with pre-existing norms concerning their place in society.
There is no going back to "traditional" Thailand.
If there is one clear lesson for monarchies from the 20th century it is that they cannot be seen as an obstacle to democracy. The defenders of lese-majeste in its present form are today in danger of forcing people to make what would be a fatal choice between monarchy and democracy.
Everyone acknowledges that an era is drawing to a close in Thailand and this in itself produces anxiety, especially among conservatives. A Life's Work tries to sum up the era, and it does so without the adulatory tone of previous tomes published on royal landmark occasions. It attempts to deal frankly with the monarchy's critics and to speak openly about difficult issues. For example, the death of King Ananda, King Bhumibol's brother and predecessor, is discussed succinctly. That his death remains officially a "mystery" to the palace itself, however, ensures that it will be the stuff of conspiracy theories for years to come, because I can't see any new information ever coming to light. Even the exhaustively investigated assassination of US President Kennedy in 1963 still produces arcane conspiracy theories.
The Crown Property Bureau, one of the most powerful economic organisations in the country, comes under special scrutiny, although, as the book says, "it is under no obligation to provide the public with details of its accounts or activities". Its most important function is to give the monarchy as an institution an independent economic base. The private wealth of the King is separate and it is not clear just how wealthy he is. The Bureau is a rather hybrid organisation with features of a state company, a charitable organisation and a modern global firm.
The Privy Council, the King's personal advisory body, also comes under close scrutiny. It was a powerful institution early in King Bhumibol's reign, faded into the background for a while as the King's stature grew and has come into the spotlight again following its alleged involvement in the 2006 coup. It is disingenuous to claim that the Privy Council does not have authority, although officially this is the case. But the tone of the book suggests that the actions of privy councillors like Prem Tinsulanonda have compromised its informal authority.
The important issue in both of these chapters is the power wielded by unrepresentative organisations or figures in modern democracies. It is a problem everywhere, as the scandal involving media tycoon Rupert Murdoch showed last year. Or, closer to home, the enormous economic power of the families gathered around Thaksin Shinawatra, that has been translated into political power. This book, unfortunately, only addresses these issues indirectly.
The most jarring transition in the book is between the chapter on the "sufficiency economy" and the CPB, because the latter is so obviously not practising the former. The King's criticisms of industrialisation and rampant commercialism are pretty much mainstream green with a strong Buddhist twist. Many people are surprised that such unorthodox views are held by a king. The formalisation of the King's theory has met with mixed success, but it attracted strong criticism after the 2006 coup-makers reached for it in a desperate bid to legitimise their actions, using the "sufficiency economy" as a contrasting ideology to that of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin.
The King is both a conservationist and a conservative of a rather special kind. As A Life's Work quotes him, the King "must become a living symbol. He must change with the country but, at the same time, he must keep the spirit of the country". Such a yearning for continuity in change is widely held and there is little doubt that the King symbolises this hope for many Thais.
But this book along with all the other books written about King Bhumibol still does not capture his charisma as a king _ "charisma" meaning a unique ability to use cultural symbols in inventive ways, consciously or unconsciously. The Thai idea of barami is certainly part of this, but charismatic figures can just as easily be bad guys as good guys, or a bit of both. King Bhumibol bundles together a number of seemingly contradictory images, the king as a jazz musician and a greenie, but also one who has a deep concern for decorum and a leaning towards "guided" democracy. The book doesn't hesitate to show his impatience with the squabbling inherent in multi-party systems, for instance. Whatever it is, his charisma has served him and the monarchy well.
This book will be dismissed outright as an apologia by anti-monarchists, who, it must be said, have grown rapidly in number in Thailand since the 2006 military coup. That many saw it as a "royalist" coup illustrates the monarchy's precarious relationship with democracy. On the other hand the book's attempt to deal evenly with the history of King Bhumibol's reign will give little comfort to hardline royalists who wish to turn the clock back. It will, however, appeal to the large majority of Thais, and others, who as modern, educated citizens want a rational discussion not only about the country's past, but its future as well. That the book will appear soon in Thai translation is a good sign.

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Grant Evans is the author of The Last Century of Lao Royalty (2009) and the revised edition of his Short History of Laos will soon be published by Silkworm Books.

Syria.

The reason that there’s no plausible end-game in Syria anytime soon — and that thousands more Syrians may be fated to die before the conflict is ended — is that the Assad regime is fighting a very different war to the one envisaged by many of its opponents. For Arab and Western powers, and many Syrians, President Bashar Assad is a doomed despot desperately holding on by force to the power he can never hope to exercise by democratic consent. But for Assad — and more importantly, for the minority Allawite community on which his regime is based — this is an existential struggle against an implacable sectarian foe. A majority of Syrians may be fighting for their rights and dignity; for the ruling minority it’s a battle to avoid the fate that befell Iraq’s Sunnis after the fall of their brutal benefactor, Saddam Hussein.
There’s no way of establishing its veracity, but one anecdote from the tormented city of Homs speaks volumes about how Syria’s power struggle is likely to play out: As regime forces continue to exact an horrific toll in their bombardment of Bab Amr and other opposition-controlled Sunni neighborhoods, residents in adjacent Allawite communities allege that the rebels are retaliating for regime attacks by firing mortars into Allawite neighborhoods. The Allawites of Homs, so the tale goes, are livid that the regime hasn’t more forcefully crushed the uprising, accusing President Assad of being too fearful of foreign intervention to smash the rebel forces with the ruthlessness his father would have mustered.
The story could be true, or it could simply be  propaganda fare aimed at whipping up Allawite fears — either way, though, it resonates with the deep fear of sectarian retribution among the minority sect that constitutes the key pillar of the regime’s support. Whatever their views of Assad, many Allawites — a community in which, by some estimates, every family has at least one member in the security forces, and which dominates the key structure of power — are willing to fight to preserve the system of minority rule over which he has presided, first and foremost out of fear of the alternative.
At least two thirds of Syria’s population are Sunni Arabs, yet the country is ruled by an authoritarian regime dominated by Allawites — a syncretic offshoot of Shi’ism that comprises some 12% of the population. But the Assad regime presents itself as the guarantor of the interests not only of Allawites, but also Syria’s Christians (10%), Kurds (10%) and smaller communities of Druze, Yazidis, Ismailis and Circassians — against the specter of a vengeful sectarian Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. No surprise, then, that the regime has, through its own violent strategy, encouraged the rebellion against Assad’s rule onto the path of sectarian civil war. Call it Assad’s Milosevic option, in which the despot narrows the political alternatives, and forces minority groups to either support his regime or stay on the sidelines for fear of the alternative.
Syria’s demographic picture would be incomplete without mentioning the presence of some 1.2 million refugees from Iraq — the equivalent some close to 5% of Syria’s population. Their presence, testimony to the sectarian chaos unleashed in Iraq by the U.S. toppling of Saddam Hussein, has reinforced the caution of many Syrians — including the more secular urban Sunni elite — over armed rebellion or seeking foreign intervention to oust Assad.
Two thirds of the Iraqi refugees in Syria are Sunni Arabs, and a further 10% are Christian. The lesson for Syria’s minorities is stark: One in seven Christians who lived in Iraq in 2003 is now a refugee in Syria; those left behind are an increasingly embattled community, while even in newly democratic Egypt, the Christian minority is feeling increasingly put-upon by the now dominant Sunni Islamists. For the Allawites, there’s a portent of their own prospects in the fate of Iraq’s Sunnis — a minority community that had been the foundation and prime beneficiary of Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian Ba’athist regime. Even in the best-case outcome, a democratic Syria would sweep Allawite elites out of their dominant position in the security forces and the state; more likely, in their minds, is the sort of violent retribution suffered by Iraq’s Sunni communities at the hands of the long-suffering Shi’ites.
Thus the loyalty of the core security forces to the project of keeping Assad in power — such defections to the rebel Free Syrian Army as are occurring are largely confined to the Sunni conscript forces on which the regime was never going to rely to protect itself from an internal rebellion, any more than Saddam Hussein was going to rely on Shi’ite conscripts rather than his Sunni-dominated Praetorian units to protect him from a popular uprising.
Neither Assad, nor many in the core community represented by his regime, would have seen much incentive to embrace the Arab League plan that removed him to make way for a democratic transition. Moreover, the Arab League response being driven by the not-exactly-Jeffersonian Sunni monarchies of the Gulf would reinforce the tendency in Damascus to read it through the lens of the Saudi-Iranian Cold War.
The Saudis had seen an (admittedly troublesome) ally in Saddam Hussein replaced by an Iran-aligned Shi’ite government in Baghdad; now they  have a chance to replace an Iran-aligned crypto-Shi’ite regime in Damascus with allies of their own. And some in Israel seem to concur, with former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy writing that ousting Assad’s regime has become the priority task of those looking to confront Iran.
Instead of going quietly, the regime and its core constituents have opted to fight, presumably believing that even if they can’t win — the rebellion is more resilient than ever after nearly a year of brutal bludgeoning — they may at least come away with some kind of a draw, at least in the sense of being present at the table holding some decisive cards when a political solution is negotiated rather than shunted aside by a transition to democratic rule.
The Arab League peace plan that would have had Assad step aside and hand power to a national unity government pending new elections may have already been eclipsed by events on the ground, which are looking more like the early days of the wars that broke apart the old Yugoslavia than like the rebellions in Egypt, Yemen or Libya. Of course Milosevic’s brutal wars eventually prompted limited NATO intervention, but only enough to eventually force him to the table to talk peace after four years of fighting. (His day of reckoning came five years later when he was overthrown in a popular rebellion, and eventually sent for trial at The Hague.) Assad may be hoping to emulate Milosevic at least in so far as he forces himself into any peace equation.
Russia is prompting Assad to consider talking to opponents now in order to end the violence (as distinct from stepping down) but it’s unlikely that he’ll be wiling to offer much that his opponents would be willing to accept at this point. For those who have taken up arms against all odds to face the tanks of the regime, this is a desperate fight to the finish.
But despite the stalemate, there’s little prospect for foreign military intervention. Western powers that have no appetite for another entanglement in an intra-Arab civil war had been hoping that Turkey or Arab partners may take on the challenge, but even they are hesitant to be sucked directly into what could be a dangerous quagmire — although pressure could mount for more limited forms of intervention to reinforce the rebels and weaken the regime.
More likely is a ramped up effort, openly or discreetly, to arm and enable the outgunned opposition forces in order to even up the fight on the ground. Even that’s a risky prospect, however, given the fragmented nature of the opposition forces, over which there is no clear and credible chain of command. It may be preceded by efforts to organize the rebellion into some sort of cohesive shape. So, arming the rebels effectively assumes a protracted war rather than any quick fix. And as the Gulf Arab countries take a lead in arming the rebellion, Iran will do what it can, with the help of its allies in Baghdad, to shore up the regime. It may yet take a protracted morbid interregnum in which each side tests the other’s capacity to absorb pain before any political solution becomes the more desirable alternative for both.

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For love and money

Updated: 2012-02-09 10:05

By Wang Kaihao (China Daily)

The tradition of giving relatives' children envelopes of cash during Spring Festival persists because of the affections it conveys. Wang Kaihao reports.

This will be the last year Anhui province native Huang Qingqian will get envelopes of cash from her relatives during the Spring Festival. The 23-year-old will leave her hometown, the provincial capital Hefei, to work in a bank in Shanghai. Local tradition dictates that those who earn their own money don't receive the red envelopes, called "hongbao", during the Lunar New Year. While the ancient custom was perhaps born at least partly out of economic traditions, it has survived until the present day largely because of the affections it represents. Huang got 25,000 yuan ($3,964) - a handsome sum, indeed - because she studied in Britain and didn't return for Spring Festival in 2011.
So her relatives wanted to make up for the lost time and money, she explains.
Her extended family is scattered throughout Anhui, so the festival is a "precious opportunity for a family reunion", Huang says. "Red envelopes are just a sideshow of the celebration."
This attitude seems to have been passed down by Huang's mother, Wang Lingxiang.
"Giving red envelopes is a way to maintain relationships with relatives we don't see that often," the 47-year-old engineer says.
Often, the money flows throughout the family, rather than remaining in the possession of the person to whom it's given.
That's why Huang jokes: "I only get to keep the cash for two minutes. Then, my parents pass it on to our relatives' kids."
Huang says her relatives gave 200 yuan ($32) to every child five years ago but now give 10 times that.
"We don't care how much money it is," she says.
"It's about the affection it represents."
Her grandmother usually gives her 100 yuan, which she cherishes.
As Wang puts it: "The amount we give depends on our financial situation."
Relatives without children often get gifts like cigarettes, liquor and teas, which can cost more than she would typically put in red envelopes, Wang says.
Not only will newly employed youth like Huang not receive red envelopes next Spring Festival but also they'll have to give them.
This Spring Festival was the first for Li Yanzhen, from Jiangsu's provincial capital Nanjing, to hand out, rather than be handed, red envelopes. The 25-year-old landed a job as a financial investor in 2011.
"Getting red envelopes was so exciting as a kid, but earning my own money as an adult feels even better," Li says.
"People care about face. It's sort of embarrassing to visit a relative who has kids without giving money. The envelope's value goes beyond the cash."
Li gave 100 yuan to her younger cousins and 800 yuan to both of her parents.
"I didn't give that much because I've only been employed for a few months and don't know what's appropriate," she says.
"But I don't think the sum matters."
But some younger children care about how much they bring in and compare totals with friends.
Zhao Yutong, a 12-year-old junior high school student from Wuhu, Anhui province, received about 2,000 yuan during Spring Festival.
"One classmate got 4,200 yuan and another got 3,200," Zhao says.
"It's not cool to get less."
Zhao rarely gets pocket money and was hoping to rake in a lot during the festival to buy her favorite Japanese comics.
Older teens usually care less about the amount.
Fan Zongjian, a 16-year-old senior high school student from Ankang, Shaanxi province, says it doesn't matter that he got 2,000 yuan while his classmates got about 7,000 yuan.
"Whatever the amount of money inside, what's important is the envelope shows my family's love for me," he says.
"So I don't compare it with what my classmates get."
He doesn't even care that his parents confiscated all of his cash, even though he dreams of buying an iPad.
"I don't care if they take it, because they've spent so much time taking care of me and have bought me things," Fan says.
"So, it's OK if they keep the money."
And they'll spend it on him in the end. All of Fan's red envelopes are saved in a bank account his parents created to pay for his college.
"They say it's for my future studying abroad," Fan says.
"It's better to put the money toward a plan rather than spending it on just anything."
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A Point of View: Mourning the loss of the written word

Comments (239)

 

The modernist writer Virginia Woolf called letter writing "the human art, which owes its origins in the love of friends". In our frenetic world of electronic communication, we must remember to write with thought and consideration, says historian Lisa Jardine.

 

In these days of email, texts and instant messaging, I am not alone, I feel sure, in mourning the demise of the old-fashioned handwritten letter. Exchanges of letters capture nuances of shared thought and feeling to which their electronic replacements simply cannot do justice. Here's an example.

In July 1940, with the country at war, Virginia Woolf published a biography of the artist, Roger Fry - champion of post-impressionism and leading member of the Bloomsbury Group. The timing could hardly have been worse. Fry's reputation was as an ivory tower liberal who believed that art inhabits a self-contained formal space remote from the vulgar world. As France fell to Hitler's troops and German planes pounded the south coast of England with increasingly regular air-raids, such artistic idealism seemed at best out of touch, at worst irrelevant.

Most of Woolf's friends were politely positive about the book. But in early August she received a letter from Ben Nicolson, the 26-year-old art critic son of her close friend Vita Sackville-West, who was serving as a lance-bombardier in an anti-aircraft battery in Kent under the flight-path of the German bombers. As enemy warplanes passed low overhead, Nicolson attacked the adulatory tone of Woolf's biography and accused Fry of failing to engage with the political realities of the inter-war years.
"I am so struck by the fool's paradise in which he and his friends lived," Nicolson wrote. "He shut himself out from all disagreeable actualities and allowed the spirit of Nazism to grow without taking any steps to check it."

 

Woolf's answering letter did not mince words:

"Lord, I thought to myself," she wrote back. "Roger shut himself out from disagreeable actualities did he? What can Ben mean? Didn't he spend half his life travelling about England addressing masses of people who'd never looked at a picture and making them see what he saw? And wasn't that the best way of checking Nazism?"

Stung by Woolf's condescending tone, and unpersuaded by her argument, Nicolson wrote again, criticising Fry and the Bloomsbury Group in yet stronger terms. This time Woolf took his comments personally and drafted a lengthy, rebarbative reply, in which she turned Nicolson's attack on Fry and herself back on him. Nicolson's own chosen career as art critic was hardly more engaged: "I suppose I'm being obtuse but I can't find your answer in your letter, how it is that you are going to change the attitudes of the mass of people by remaining an art critic."

Reading over what she had written, however, Woolf thought better of her stern tone and did not send the letter. Instead, she rewrote it in more measured terms, moderating her sharp remarks with an opening apology. "I think it's extraordinarily nice of you to write to me," she now began, "I hope I didn't annoy you by what I said. It's very difficult when one writes letters in a hurry as I always do, not to make them sound abrupt."

It is this second version of the letter that was eventually dispatched, and which evidently satisfied its recipient, who called a truce on their differing views of Fry's influence and reputation. In early September, Woolf wrote to arrange for Nicolson to visit, adding: "I love getting your letters," and "I'm so happy you found the life of Roger Fry interesting as well as infuriating."
Two things strike me in this exchange. The first is the simple good manners both correspondents evidence in the way they address one another and present their arguments, in spite of the real, keenly felt differences of opinion.

Virginia Woolf understood the effects of letters written in haste

The second is the strikingly different outcome arrived at because Virginia Woolf restrained herself from dispatching her first, intemperate draft reply and carefully modified it so as not to hurt the feelings of the young man - a family friend, very much younger and less experienced than herself.
I have, of course, dwelt on this exchange for a purpose. In it, Woolf - using established letter-writing conventions - takes advantage of the time lapses between exchanges to recuperate, clarify, recast and take control of the argument. The result has the elegance of a formal dance - a kind of minuet, in which the participants advance and retreat according to well-understood rules, until they have arrived at a satisfactory outcome.

How unlike the rapid firing off and counter-fire of email messages in which many of us find ourselves engaged nowadays as our predominant means of communicating with colleagues and friends, and even with complete strangers. Each time I broadcast a Point of View, I receive large numbers of emails from people I have never met, while the script posted on the BBC magazine website generates hundreds of anonymous messages.
Very few of these observe the courtesies enshrined in traditional letter-writing. Many adopt a curiously curt tone: I have not consulted my sources correctly, they insist, or I have misled my listeners. "Call yourself a historian" is a regular, shrill opener - emails and posts have mostly dispensed with the niceties of "Dear Lisa" or "Yours sincerely."
Yet if I answer such an email - and I do try to respond to them all - the reply that follows will be couched in very different terms. It will be prefaced by the kind of placatory remark Woolf used in responding to Nicolson: "I did not mean to imply criticism" or "I hope you did not think me rude." It is as if between the first and the second response I have become a person - an actual recipient of the communication - rather than an impersonal post box. So the courtesy and simple good manners of more old-fashioned letter-forms are restored to our correspondence.

Emails have replaced the handwritten letter

The most dramatic feature of electronic communication is surely its propensity to tempt us into dashing off a message in haste that we repent at leisure. As the emails ping into our inbox we answer them helter-skelter, breathlessly, without pausing to reflect on nuance or tone. As a consequence, misunderstandings often arise - "I'm sorry to have upset you," a colleague will reply to an email I intended as a matter-of-fact response to a bit of university business.

No doubt I am sentimentalising the orderliness of written letters by comparison with emails. When feelings run high, an ill-judged letter can cause as much emotional damage as any dashed-off online posting. Here's another example from Virginia Woolf's prolific correspondence.
In 1938, she wrote to Vita Sackville-West - with whom she had had a passionate affair in the late 1920s - refusing to read a poem Vita had sent her via Woolf's husband Leonard. Woolf was annoyed at hurtful remarks Vita had made about her:
"Leonard says you have sent a poem and would like to know what I think of it. Now I would like to read it and normally would fire off an opinion with my usual audacity. But I feel I can't read your poem impartially while your charges against me, as expressed in a letter I have somewhere but won't quote, remain unsubstantiated."

Vita Sackville-West was 'horrified' by one of Woolf's letters

Vita was appalled. Her response was a frantic telegram: "Horrified by your letter." This in its turn elicited a further letter from Woolf the same day:

"What on earth can I have said in my letter to call forth your telegram? God knows. I scribbled it off in five minutes, never read it through, and can only remember that it was written in a vein of obvious humorous extravagance and in a tearing hurry."

Woolf explained that she had been annoyed by a letter Vita had sent shortly after publication of her last book. She had written back asking Vita to explain a comment she had made that "one moment you enchant with your lovely prose and the next moment exasperate one with your misleading arguments". What were the misleading arguments? Woolf had asked. Vita had not replied.

"It's a lesson not to write letters," Woolf now continued contritely. "For I suppose you'll say, when you read what I've quoted from your own letter, that there's nothing to cause even a momentary irritation. And I daresay you're right. So let us leave it: and I apologise and will never write a letter so carelessly again."
Virginia Woolf called letter-writing "the humane art, which owes its origins to the love of friends", and devoted a good deal of emotional energy to using it to maintain her friendships.

Today's electronic forms of communication may lack that emotional depth but they do enable us to connect more speedily and efficiently than I at least could manage with pen and ink. Still, when we take advantage of them, we ought always to heed Woolf's warning, never to write carelessly. And, if we can, at least count to 10, and read over what we have written, before we press "send".
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How Burma is changing and what it means

Thursday, 02 February 2012 12:07 Mizzima News

(Commentary) – Over the past year, the pace of change in Burma  has  been rapid and non-stop moving one of the world's most repressive states into a  political shift towards democracy that has taken the world by surprise.

In a paper published by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow in Southeast Asian politics, looked back at the amazing year in Burmese politics and the interwoven domestic and international factors that converged to create a giant leap for potential long-term democratic change.

During the 2010 national elections, many members of the international community “condemned the polls as a way for the military to create a front government behind which it would continue wielding power,” Kurlantzick writes. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) declined to participate, “yet the elections opened up political space and provided a modicum of hope for continued change.”

“The elections were followed by the installation of Thein Sein as president and the creation of a civilian parliament,” he said.

“Since then, both the Parliament and Thein Sein have shown significant signs of reform, while former junta leader Than Shwe has vanished from public sight.” Freed from house arrest, Suu Kyi was able to begin a dialogue with Thein Sein “that resulted in the reintegration of her NLD into politics and the rebuilding of the party.” The government also has set up a national human rights commission, invited political exiles to return, loosened the censorship of some domestic media and dramatically freed hundreds of political prisoners, earning approval from the West.

“In a government isolated for so many years, it is impossible to know for sure why change is suddenly happening,” Kurlantzick said, but it goes beyond a simple desire to remove sanctions on U.S. and European investments.

The reality is far more complex. “Sanctions did not really deter foreign investment in Myanmar; they simply blocked Western investment. But Chinese, South Korean, Thai, and Indian companies invested heavily, particularly in the oil and gas sector,” he said.

He cited an article in “The Diplomat,” a leading Asian news site, which said Burma received some $20 billion in approved foreign investment in 2010 and 2011. This investment reportedly enriched the most senior generals. Sanctions also did not prevent Myanmar from joining the most important regional organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in the 1990s.

“Instead, other factors seem to have led to the surprising changes. Than Shwe and other generals may believe that by allowing a gradual transition led by Thein Sein, an ally they trust, they can avoid any sudden popular uprisings that might lead to harsh reprisals. Than Shwe, who is in his late seventies and reportedly ailing, may want to ensure that his family maintains the significant amount of wealth it has amassed.”

The generals' strategy appears to be working, he said. Although Thein Sein has launched a process of liberalization, “he has been careful not to touch much of the military's power. The defense budget remains largely off the books and unscrutinized in Parliament. However, reports in the Southeast Asian media, referencing a leaked government document, suggest that Myanmar's 2011 defense budget “comprised about 25 percent of the country's total budget – a staggeringly high figure for such a poor nation. Army commanders in the field clearly retain enormous power to wage war against remaining insurgencies, no matter what the civilian government says.”

“According to several Myanmar officials, the military also finally realized that with Suu Kyi still on the political scene, they had their best potential ally in a peaceful transition,” he said. “Like the Dalai Lama in Tibet, Suu Kyi is perhaps the only person in Myanmar with the moral legitimacy to get the population to accept slow reform and only marginal accountability for former military rulers.

“Perhaps also realizing this may be her last chance to help the country, Suu Kyi has been extraordinarily willing to work with Thein Sein, despite continued abuses in ethnic minority areas of the country and the fact that hundreds of political prisoners remain in jail.”

He said, ”Some ethnic minority leaders even have begun to criticize the once-unimpeachable opposition leader, worrying that she has ignored the fighting and abuses by the army against the Kachin ethnic group in the north.”

However, he said,  “Suu Kyi appears to have understood the need to balance accountability with keeping the generals in the barracks. Speaking to public audiences (including the Council on Foreign Relations) over the past year, she has repeatedly called for the country to move on from the past, suggesting that she is not going to push for a tribunal for former military leaders or other such judicial proceedings.”

Another key factor, he said, was that “some of the younger and less craven officers were clearly upset by how far Myanmar had fallen behind its neighbors, according to several officials in the country” and even President Thein Sein "admitted in a public speech that Burma had lagged behind in development, a tacit admission of the failures of past policy by military regimes.”

“In addition, the prospect of closer ties to China amid growing isolation from the West might have indirectly helped spark change,” he said. “Many of the senior generals had no real affection for Beijing, having fought the China-backed Communist Party of then-Burma as younger officers in the 1960s and early 1970s,” and launching reforms would allow them to diversify their partners and avoid becoming too reliant on Beijing.

“Likewise, a geopolitical reality is that over the past five years, Burma has become more strategically important to the United States. Besides oil and gas, it has other significant natural resources and could be a major new market for American companies.”

More ominously, he noted that evidence has emerged in recent years that show that the regime may be importing nuclear and missile technology from North Korea. “Moreover, refugee flight spurred by Myanmar's ethnic minority insurgencies in recent years poses a destabilizing risk to bordering areas of Thailand, India, and southwestern China,” he said.

Given these potential dangers, the gradual change occurring in Burma, though frustrating to many longtime activists and ethnic minority insurgent groups, “may actually be the best means of peaceful reform,” said Kurlantzick. “Keeping Suu Kyi at the center of the process is vital. She will be the only figure who can lead some kind of nationwide initiative fashioned on the 1947 Panglong Conference and designed to work out autonomy agreements for the largest ethnic minority groups.”

Meanwhile, at the same time, “by slowly pushing the senior-most generals into retirement rather than immediately pushing for accountability for their vast crimes, foreign actors and Myanmar's civilian leaders can create the kind of stability that will allow the country to take advantage of the large numbers of companies, donors, and international financial institutions waiting on their doorstep hoping to spend significant amounts of money in Myanmar.”

An additional benefit is that “some stability would also give international inspectors, including Americans, a better opportunity to canvass the country for any nuclear or missile sites and to reduce or terminate the North Korean presence in Myanmar,” he said.

“Delayed accountability does not rule out developing some form of accountability later, perhaps modeled on Timor Leste's truth and reconciliation commission,” he writes. “But for now, any signals that draw the senior generals back into politics will only scuttle Burma’s chances, preventing the year of reform from growing into more profound changes.”

Who is Xi: China's next leader

By Jaime A. FlorCruz, CNN

February 3, 2012 -- Updated 0349 GMT (1149 HKT)

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping will visit the United States this month.

Editor's note: "Jaime's China" is a weekly column about Chinese society and politics. Jaime FlorCruz has lived and worked in China since 1971. He studied Chinese history at Peking University (1977-81) and served as TIME Magazine's Beijing correspondent and bureau chief (1982-2000).

Beijing (CNN) -- Anyone interested in world affairs, Chinese diplomacy and China's future should know more about Xi Jinping.
Xi (pronounced "shee"), China's vice president, will be visiting the United States this month for meetings at the White House in Washington and will travel to other cities.
"The visit is important to boost his stature at home -- here is the man the U.S. takes seriously, and he can deal with them on our behalf," says Anthony Saich, a China expert at the Harvard Kennedy School. "For the U.S., it provides an opportunity to introduce him to key U.S. politicians and the American public. The same approach was taken with Hu Jintao before he took over."
Xi, 58, is in line to be China's next paramount leader. He is expected to succeed Hu when his second term ends in autumn this year and could rule China for 10 years.
But who is Xi? Some key information about him:
• He comes from a clique known as "princelings," sons and daughters of revolutionary veterans. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revolutionary hero who was banished during the Cultural Revolution.
• When his father was in limbo, Xi spent time as a teenager doing manual labor in China's countryside and went on to become a local party chief.
• He holds chemical engineering and law degrees from the prestigious Tsinghua University, the alma mater of Hu and other senior leaders.
• He served in the People's Liberation Army as an officer in the General Office Department and assistant to the chief of the policy-making Central Military Commission.
• He worked his way up from party chief to governor or party chief of four provinces.
• He became party chief of Shanghai in 2007 to replace Chen Liangyu, who was sacked because of a corruption scandal.
• He served as a point person for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and other recent major events.
• In addition to being vice president, he is a member of the communist party's secretariat and head of the Central Party School, a political training ground for party cadres.
• He has been married twice, more recently to Peng Lijuan, a famous folk singer in China. Their daughter, Xi Mingze, is now enrolled at Harvard.

What makes Xi click?

Facebook blocked in China

 

Analysts say Xi is generally liked for his pragmatism, competence and a heritage of political reliability.

He appeals to the broadest range of factions within the party, he is one of them, and he is not going to upset their privileges
Anthony Saich, Harvard Kennedy School

"He has avoided controversy in his career and has worked in provinces that could be deemed a success," Saich said. "He appeals to the broadest range of factions within the party, he is one of them, and he is not going to upset their privileges."
"His 'birthmark' is obviously a factor that propelled him to the top," says Yawei Liu, a China-watcher at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Liu also notes that Xi is generally perceived as "unassuming and unpretentious."
Singapore's retired leader Lee Kuan Yew recalled a one-hour meeting in late 2007 and found Xi to be a thoughtful man who has been through many trials in life.
"I would put him in the Nelson Mandela's class of persons, a person with enormous emotional stability who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings to affect his judgment. In other words, he is impressive."
What kind of a leader might Xi be as a driver of China's foreign policy? Will he be dovish or hawkish?
"Most see him, given his previous work experience, as likely to be on the collaborative side," Saich said. "People who know him say he is thoughtful and wants a good relationship with the U.S. His daughter is here, his sister is in Canada."
However, given the strong nationalistic sentiments in the military and among sections of the youth, Saich thinks "it might make him feel that he has to be aggressive, at least to start with, to consolidate his position."
In one occasion, during a visit in Mexico in 2009, he was caught on camera chastising foreigners while speaking informally to a group of overseas Chinese. "Some bored foreigners have nothing better to do than point their fingers at our affairs," he said. "(But) China does not, first, export revolution, second, export poverty and hunger, and third, cause unnecessary trouble for them. What else is there to say?"
"If his off--the-cuff remarks in Mexico are any reflection of his tendency, he could be hawkish in conducting Chinese foreign policy," says Liu of The Carter Center.
Little is actually known about Xi's political views, but analysts say he shares concerns about maintaining the rule of the communist party and social stability.
Recent ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet, strikes in factories and mass protests in towns and villages have made China far cry from Hu's dream of a "harmonious society."
The rapid economic growth the leadership has depended on to claim political legitimacy and to ease social tensions has been sputtering as key export markets in the U.S. and Europe continue to shrink.
"The international and domestic situation has changed so much he will have to introduce orderly political reform to ensure the nation does not implode as a result of rampant corruption, stagnant economic growth and popular frustration over the lack of freedom of speech and government accountability," Liu said.
Saich believes Xi's biggest challenge is how to deal with the new social media, given the divergent opinions within the Communist party.
"Some want to treat it like the old-fashioned print media and try to mimic the same kinds of controls and institutional structures," he explained. "Others recognize the world is changing and that a new way of dealing with the social media and citizen participation has to be found without undermining the party's paramount position."
"This challenge is fundamental to the future of the party," Saich added.
Netizens are not upbeat. "Don't expect too much change from Xi," said "Berlinbear," a microblogger posting on Sina Weibo, a social media site in China.
"Tianxiaoyu" writes: "I don't really expect the Communist Party to start holding general elections, but I do hope Xi can bring some substantial reform to keep the despotic 'people's servants' within limits... I want to at least have the right to remove someone from office when I don't want him there."
Perhaps Xi can pick up pointers, good and bad, when he visits the United States.
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