Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Inflation Hitting China May Cause Regime's Fall: He who Eats Pope, Dies

Inflation in China will cause the collapse of the regime
by Wei Jingsheng
To make a few people wealthy, the communist government keeps most of the population in poverty. If they really have the welfare of their people at heart, Beijing must allow the revaluation of the Yuan and should open the market to the West.

Washington (AsiaNews) - The inflation that is hitting China recently, the cause of many social protests, is different from any other to have ever occurred in the country: it continues to grow and can be simply explained by the greed of a minority of people, exploiting the cheap labour and authoritarianism of the regime to get rich.
Wei Jingsheng, pro-democracy activist and author of Democracy Wall, explains why the Chinese government is playing with fire at this critical stage of development: only democratic governments, he says, "can successfully manage an economic transformation similar to the one taking place in contemporary China”.
China's economy often has excessive inflation.  But each inflation is not exactly the same.  The inflation during the Mao Zedong era was due to the shortage of goods caused by the planned economy.  Academics call it a shortage economy.  After the economic reform of the 1980's, inflation is still emerging consistently.  At present the recently rising currency inflation has such intensity that it has made many people puzzled: "Since China has been reformed to a market economy, why is it still short of commodities, and has this inflation?"

Asia News, remainder of article...

Saturday, December 18, 2010

China Completes Military Highway to India

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – A new highway now links Metok County, in southern Tibet, to the rest of China. Although of limited economic significance since it has a small population of some 11,000 people, the area is crucial from a military standpoint because it bolsters Chinese claims to the wider region, currently disputed with India.

The People’s Liberation Army did most of the work. On Wednesday, its construction crews broke through the last obstacle in the 3.3-kilometre Galongla Tunnel at 3,750 metres above sea level, thus completing the 117-kilometre Metok highway.

At present, the “PLA's fighting capability in southern Tibet is very weak because we failed to overcome countless fatal natural barriers there over the past near five decades," Shanghai-based military expert Ni Lexiong told the South China Morning Post.

Read further at Asia News...

Friday, September 3, 2010

China-Holy See: the mirage and religious freedom for the official and underground church

Rome (AsiaNews) - In recent months, since April until today, the Church in China has celebrated the ordination of six new bishops, as well as the official installation of a previously ordained bishop who had not been recognised by the government. What has been surprising is that all candidates were approved by the Holy See and recognized by Beijing. But even more surprising is that this wave of new Episcopal ordinations comes in the wake of two lean years, i.e. during which there were no consecrations despite the fact that there were about 40 dioceses of the official Church with octogenarian pastors, who needed replacement, or indeed vacant sees.

The newly ordained (as well as the officially installed bishop) - of which AsiaNews gave immediate news - are the pastors of Bameng (Inner Mongolia), Hohhot (Inner Mongolia), Haimen (Jiangsu) Xiamen (Fujian); Sanyuan (Shaanxi), Taizhou ( Zhejiang), Yulin (Yanan, Shaanxi).

Bishops in communion with the Holy See attended all of the ordinations, with the exception of that of Bameng. Instead in Bameng, the patriotic bishop Ma Yinglin, illegally ordained in 2006, attended the celebration. He is considered the heir to Anthony Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Patriotic Association, nicknamed the "Pope" of the official Church because of his power over the finance and bishops of the Church.

Read further...

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Bishop Yao Liang, 87, Imprisoned in China for Loyalty to the Vatican, Dies

This is another great article by the usually very Marxist New York Times. The new owner of the paper, or the largest shareholder, who kept the paper from bankruptcy might be pro-immigration, but he might also pushign this paper to be more favoreable to the Church as well. This article owns that the Chicoms are persecuting the Catholic Church and it owns the heroic resistance of a saintly Bishop. Here's a life worth celebrating.

Published: January 5, 2010

BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.

Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.

The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.

Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.

China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.

For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.

The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.

Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.

Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.

“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”

His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.

Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.

Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.

Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.

Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Official and underground priests in China ponder Card. Bertone’s letter

The document of the Vatican Secretary of State is "encouraging." Underground priests and nuns have begun to study the letter in groups. Others hope that the Vatican will give more precise information. A young bishop: We too need to be trained". Among the problems: priests too distracted by the Internet and a lack of educators in seminaries.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - The Letter of the card. Bertone to Chinese priests, published yesterday, was received and read carefully. Bishops and priests in China are convinced that the formation and spiritual growth of priests should be the first concern of the Church.

Marking the Year for the priesthood, the Vatican secretary of state, yesterday issued a letter to all priests in China, official and underground, calling for reconciliation and exhorting them to live out their vocation.

Read More...

Friday, November 6, 2009

Pernicious Maoist influence in Nepal




More news about the usual ineptitude in countries affected by communist governments or influence. The Maoists in Nepal are bent on destroying the country and we can't think of any other way of seeing it than that powers outside of the country wish to erase the national history of a people as an experiment and an imperialistic motivation.

Those who burn the country by fire but talk of New Nepal are traitors. The country can run only on the bases of causes and effects. Politics without ideology has no meaning. In Nepal, so called parties Congress, UML and Maoists have no idea how to run the Nepal. Unless and until we are honest, the country would not get anything whatever you talk on idealistic and improved constitution. None of the parities or leaders was honest to nationality and democracy since 1990 (2047 BS). They thought the movement for democracy was just to rise in power, earn money, loot the country and get more personal facilities. Globally, the state has been constructed in two ways, either by dictating the people or by self motivated participation of people. In the world, some wonderful jobs have been done even by dictating the people. However the time has passed for dictators. Nothing can be obtained by imposition in national politics. The popular movement of 2005 (2063 BS) has been converted to a betrayal. In the name of construction of constitution, Congress, UML, Maoists and Madheshis are committed to demolish all established symbols, identities and beliefs of the nation. Apart to mandate of popular movement, Nepal's existence has been made endangered.

Read further...

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Monarchy threatened in Nepal by India and China

The following article appeared in the India Times and points to India's growing interest in the government of Nepal which it apparently seeks to destabilize by overthrowing the monarchy. Mr Prasai, quoted in the article, quite rightly identifies the historical consequences that invariably follow from the overthrow of monarchy, an anarchy from which the Indian government hopes it will benefit.

Here...

The writer Mr. Prasai with the former president of India-1987

It is true that there are many countries which do not have monarchy still they could remain independent and prosperous. But in a diverse country like Nepal, monarchy is the only basis of national unity and Nepal cannot be compared with other countries. Indian conspirators are taking some deviant leaders of the political parties on their shoulders with the sole aim that it will be easy for them to control Nepal if monarchy can be displaced. But such a situation will be a happy one for India also. Some communist parties take monarchy as the root cause of Nepal’s all woes. This is not correct. No Nepalese king has ever acted or walked on the path which is against Nepal’s national interest.

Many countries where monarchy was displaced have now ceased to exist and several other have fallen into anarchy and civil war. It will be totally inappropriate without knowing fully the ground realities. It was not for whether to keep monarchy or not. The Nepalese constituent assembly is just a representative organization to formulate a new constitution and it does not have any right to displace monarchy. Can the future of the country be decided just because so called big political parties ganged up together? Those powerful nations, who in the past shed blood in Vietnam, North and South Korea, East and West Germany, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, are now trying to drag Nepal into a civil war. So, if the political leaders, including the Maoists, tried to trample on this truth, one should know that the existence of Nepal [is threatened?].


And as if to confirm it, the article appears here at Revolution in Asia blog.