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China's Influence Widens Nobel Peace Prize Boycott
c0lo writes "Not only did China decline to attend the upcoming Nobel peace prize ceremony, but urged diplomats in Oslo to stay away from the event warning of 'consequences' if they go. Possibly as a result of this (or on their own decisions), 18 other countries turned down the invitation: Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Reuters seems to think the 'consequences' are of an economic nature, pointing out that half of the countries with economies that gained global influence during recent times are boycotting the ceremony (with Brazil and India still attending)."
The AP is also reporting that China is creating a Confucius Peace Prize to be given out the day before the Nobel Prize.
I know nothing (yet) about this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate...
His name is Liu Xiaobo. He is currently imprisoned in China. He advocates democracy. But that is not why he is in prison.
He also advocates abolition of the hukou. That is why he is in prison.
Doesn't the 1962 war between China and India count as aggression? Also, invasion of Tibet in 1950.
> With China and other foreign countries holding more that half of the US debt
The US has a lot of debt, and China owns a lot of that, but it's not half. Wikipedia has a fairly elaborate breakdown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_debt
Of a total 13.56 trillion dollars of debt, 9 trillion is publicly held (the rest is debt different parts of the government owe other parts of the government). 4 trillion is held by foreigners. 847 billion is held by China - just a little more than Japan. That's six percent. If you add in Hong Kong (apparently still counted separately; I guess the finances haven't been merged yet?) and even add in Taiwan too, that's eight percent.
Definitely worry about the total size of the debt (ugh, damn near 100% of GDP). Don't worry much about the sliver of it owed to China.
> Just the other month, China and Russia plotted to dump the US currency. If this comes to fruition, all hell will break lose. Trust me on this.
Read the whole article. The talk was about for trade between China and Russia, not all trade. Why would you go out of your way to inflate the amount of US money China has, then go out of your way to say China's going to destroy the value of that same money it's holding?
The funny thing about the Taiwanese is that they are, as a people, mostly willing to return to China.
Opinion polls show more people in Taiwan desire immediate independence than want to be part of China. I suspect far more would rather return to Japan than return to China; Japan treated Taiwan better than China did. Opinion polls the vast majority want to "maintain the status quo" which is of course de facto independence with no formal declaration. It's easy to see why: they have neighbor 50 times larger than them who keeps threatening war if they formally declare independence. Status quo maintains independence without the risk of war.
The government is very much not and alot of businesses aren't either.
The government, which despite Taiwan's democracy is still controlled through bureaucratic inertia by the Chinese and their descendents who showed up in the 1940s, is torn between its loyalty to their Chinese homeland and the preference for being a big fish in a small pond instead of a small fish in a big pond.
Businesses are similarly torn. Businesses, unlike the government bureaucracy, are often run by Taiwanese who are loyal to Taiwan. But there is a lot of money to be made in China. Also, even those businesses run by Chinese nationalists recognize that being part of China means a serious degradation in property rights.
And for us in IT since Taiwanese motherboard makers make up nearly all the retail board makers in the world... Is probably best it not scoot back to China right now...
The people though generally support China, and not Hong Kong style China, but the mainland originally CCP government.
Where are you getting this? I suspect you've landed in a group of Chinese nationalists (which means you probably live in Taipei or in an expat community outside Taiwan). Chinese nationalists and their descendents make up only about 10 to 15% of the population. I include "descendents" because I have noticed that anytime someone from Taiwan has told me they consider Taiwan to be part of China, they have anscestors who came from China in the 1940s or later.
But taiwan is strange in general... Historically when they were the pirate port for Chinese goods over the seas, the Chinese government hunted them down and cut off their heads. Around a hundred years later when Manchuria invaded China and took over, the taiwanese sided with the Chinese government against the Manchurians... Only to have the Manchurians take a huge disliking to them to the point of harsh treatment including a scorched earth tactic on the mainland for around 15 years as they built a navy to sail to Taiwan to put them down. Then China looses Taiwan to Japan before the start of the 20th century as they fail to modernize. And after WW2 Taiwan plays a role again as the former dictatorship of China flees from the CCP and ends up in Taiwan as their new home.
Obviously just some highlights, but it's been an... interesting place...
And let's not forget that the Taiwanese fought for the Japanese in WWII. If you read most of the news reports in English, the Japanese era tends to be overlooked. The statement is always something like "Taiwan and China split amid civil war" but this is misleading. The Chinese Nationalists an the Chinese Communists split, but the Chinese Nationalists were not synonymous with Taiwan. They were newcomers taking over a society that had become educated and industrialized by Japan and had fought against the Chinese Nationalists in WWII.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Hukou is a way to reduce the movement of populations. China especially fears large migrations from the poor west provinces to the rich east coast and from the rural areas to the cities. It is quite similar to the immigration problems all around the world, except that it is inside the country.
However, Liu Xiaobo is by no means the only one criticizing this hukou system and a lot of people want to reform it, arguing that it creates a very unequal society, where citizens don't have the same rights to education, social security, housing, etc. depending on where their official hukou is.
The reason he is in jail right now is rather that he is the main force behind the "Charter 08". This charter is also what prompted the Nobel Price. I'll let you google it yourself, I can't access it from work.
Well, they're in good company:
"The German National Prize for Art and Science (German: Deutscher Nationalpreis für Kunst und Wissenschaft) was an award created by Adolf Hitler in 1937 as a replacement for the Nobel Prize (he had forbidden Germans to accept the latter award in 1936 after an anti-Nazi German writer, Carl von Ossietzky, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize)."
And of course the Soviets also banned (a bit on-and-off though) their citizens from recieving the Nobel, and Stalin created the Stalin Prize in his own honor.