Ultimatum Issued to anti-mining protestors(Phayul[Sunday, August 18, 2013 11:41])

DHARAMSHALA, August 17: Hundreds of Chinese armed forces deployed in Gedrong Zatoe in Eastern Tibet clashed with local Tibetans reportedly injuring many Tibetans who were protesting against illegal mining in the area.

Speaking to Phayul, Kunchok Dhondup, a Tibetan monk living in exile with a close contact in the region said, “Hundreds of Chinese armed forces yesterday arrived at the three townships of the Gedrong Zatoe County and warned the Tibetans to surrender otherwise will be killed, arrested or subjected to torture."

The security forces fired tear-gas into the crowd. In a photograph that we obtained of the scene many Tibetans can be seen lying unconscious.

According to Dhondup, a local Tibetan leader named Khentsa Soedor while responding to the Chinese ultimatum said, “You can kill us but we will not let the mining take place here. It is our responsibility to protect our environment which is a source of water to many other countries.”

The Chinese authorities have detained Soedor’s wife and later released her. His whereabouts however remains unknown.

It is also reported that a Tibetan attempted to kill himself in the anti-mining protest.

“Sogpo Choedup tried to kill himself by stabbing twice in his stomach and was taken away by the Chinese forces,” said Dhondup.

Although the Chinese officials said that Choedup is out of danger and is currently in a hospital in China, the local Tibetans express doubt over this statement.

Dhondup further said that one of his friends managed to visit a hospital and witnessed 14 injured Tibetans. He was blocked from visiting other hospitals in the region where mobile phones are banned.

The accurate numbers of injured and arrested cannot be confirmed at the time of filing this report.

As a response to Chinese miners' claim of having permission from so-called Qinghai province, the Tibetans in the region showed them a Xi Jinping’s speech on environment protection. They have made copies of the same and put it up on the entrance gate.

The angry Chinese miners tore down Xi’s speech.

The current situation in Gedrong Zatoe is “tense” with all roads blocked, markets shut down and mobile phone services blocked.

Water War from Here!

ASIA "LONGEST" RIVERS:

This list highlights the Asian continent's thirty longest rivers. 

Yangtze - 3,915 miles
Yellow - 3,395 miles
Mekong - 3,050 miles
Lena - 2,734 miles
Irtysh - 2,640 miles
Yenisei - 2,540 miles
Ob - 2,268 miles
Lower Tunguska, 1,857 miles
Indus - 1,800 miles
Brahmaputra - 1,800 miles

Convert Miles to Kilometers 

Amur - 1,755 miles
Salween - 1,749 miles
Euphrates - 1,740 miles
Vilyuy - 1,647 miles
Amu Darya - 1,578 miles
Ganges - 1,560 miles
Ishim - 1,522 miles
Ural - 1,509 miles
Olenyok - 1,424 miles
Aldan - 1,412 miles

Convert Miles to Kilometers 
Syr Darya - 1,374 miles
Ayeyarwady - 1,350 miles
Kolyma - 1,323 miles
Tarim - 1,260 miles
Vitim - 1,229 miles
Xi - 1,200 miles
Sungari - 1,197 miles
Tigris - 1,180 miles
Tunguska - 1,159 miles
Angara - 1,105 miles

Tibet is endowed with the world's greatest river systems. Its river waters are a lifeline to the World's two most-populous countries — China and India — as well as to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries comprise 47 percent of the world population. Almost half of the world’s population lives in the watersheds of the rivers whose sources lie on the Tibetan Plateau. There are more than 1000 lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, including the world’s highest salt lake — Namtso (Nam Co). Both sourced in the Tibetan Plateau, the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) River and the Yellow River serve roughly 520 million people in China. The Yangtze River is the third-longest in the world, after the Amazon and the Nile.

A fatal landslide in Tibet raises questions about a rush for the region’s resources

The price of gold

THE ecology of the Tibetan plateau, noted the Ministry of Land and Resources two years ago, is “extremely fragile”. Any damage, it warned, would be difficult or impossible to reverse. But, it went on, the China National Gold Group, a state-owned company, had achieved “astonishing results” in working to protect the environment around its mine near the region’s capital, Lhasa. On March 29th at least 83 of the mine’s workers lay buried under a colossal landslide. Its cause is not yet certain, but critics of Tibet’s mining frenzy feel vindicated.

The disaster at the Jiama copper and gold mine, about 70km (45 miles) north-west of Lhasa, has clearly embarrassed the government in Beijing. According to China Digital Times, a California-based media-monitoring website, the Communist Party ordered newspapers to stick to reports issued by the government and the state-owned news agency, Xinhua.

Foreign reporters are rarely allowed into Tibet, least of all to cover sensitive incidents. The official media have avoided speculation about any possible link between the landslide and mining activities in the area. They say the landslide covered a large area with 2m cubic metres of rubble. By the time The Economist went to press, 66 bodies had been pulled out by teams of rescuers with sniffer dogs. The high altitude and lack of oxygen made rescue work hard.

A deputy minister of land and resources, Xu Deming, said preliminary investigations had shown that the landslide was caused by a “natural geological disaster”. Fragments of rock Left behind by receding glaciers are being blamed, though officials do not explain Why the workers’ camp was set up so close to such an apparent hazard.

The Tibetan Government-in-exile based in India says it fears the disaster was caused by Work related to the mine, which appears to have grown rapidly since Construction began in 2008. It was formally opened two years later, at a A ceremony attended by Tibet’s most senior officials. The $520m investment was Described at the time as the biggest in Tibet’s mining industry by a firm Belonging to the central government. The mine is owned by China Gold International Resources, a company listed in Hong Kong and Toronto. China The National Gold Group is the controlling shareholder.

Tibet has been trying hard in recent years to encourage such companies to dig up the plateau’s metals and minerals. It has a lot of them to offer: China’s biggest reserves of copper And chromite (used in steel production), among the world’s biggest of lithium (used to make batteries), as well as abundant reserves of uranium, gold, borax (a component of ceramics and glass) and oil. Extracting these, however, often involves boring into a landscape considered sacred by Tibetans. The Jiama mine, in a valley known to Tibetans as Gyama and revered as the birthplace of a seventh-century Tibetan king, has been the focus of protests by locals angered by environmental and other issues. Water from the valley flows into the Lhasa river. Woeser, a Tibetan activist based in Beijing, has blogged about locals’ fear that their water supplies will be polluted.

Tibetan resentment has been fuelled by the mining industry’s failure to provide much direct employment. Many miners, as well as builders of infrastructure used to service the mines, are brought in from elsewhere in China. Tellingly, only two of the miners killed by the landslide were reported to be Tibetans. Managers at big state-owned firms are usually Han Chinese, who in turn tend to regard their own ethnic kin as easier to control and communicate with than Tibetans. China Daily, a Beijing newspaper, reported last year that the Jiama mine had hired 191 locals. It said non-Han employees made up 35% of the mine operator’s staff, “the highest percentage among mining companies in China”.

In December Tibet Daily, another government newspaper, said that work was under way on setting up monitoring stations in the valley. One of their functions would be to look out for potential “geological disasters”. It was important, it said, gradually to “set up a green mine, with man and nature attaining harmonious unity”. Such unity was called into question on the Tibetan plateau this week.

From the print edition: China

Tibet glaciers melting due to South Asian pollution: China

Mar 25, 2013, 02.13PM IST

BEIJING: About 90 per cent of glaciers in Tibetare shrinking because of black carbon pollution "transferred from South Asia" to the ecologically fragile Tibetan plateau, a Chinese scientist has warned.

Known as the Roof of the World, the Tibetan Plateau concerns the interests of the surrounding countries and regions, covers more than five million square kilometres and has an average altitude of more than 4,000 metres.Like Antarctica and the Arctic, the Third Pole is drawing increased attention from the international academic community, but the results of former international studies in this area are inconsistent, Yao Tandong, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research said.
The area has the largest number of glaciers outside the polar region and exerts a direct influence on the social and economic development of some of the most densely populated regions on earth, including China and India.The glaciers are at the headwaters of many prominent Asian rivers.

Influenced by global warming, its alpine glaciers have seen drastic changes in recent years, such as thinning and shrinkage, which pose potential geological hazards to people both on and around the plateau.
Ongoing research over more than 30 years has also given scientists a new understanding of pollution on the Tibetan Plateau, Yao said claiming that most of the pollutants were coming from South Asia.
Latest investigations now show that black carbon generated from industrial production in South Asia is being taken to the Tibetan Plateau by the Indian monsoon in spring and summer, he said in a report in state-run China Daily.
"The accumulation of black carbon on the plateau will accelerate the shrinking of glaciers, bringing with it persistent organic pollutants that will be deposited in the soil" he said.
An investigation using topographic maps and satellite images revealed the retreat of 82 glaciers, area reduction by 7,090 glaciers and the mass-balance change of 15 glaciers, the Daily report said.

"Systematic differences in glacier status are apparent from region to region, with the most pronounced shrinkage in the Himalayas, the south eastern part of the region. Some of the glaciers there are very likely to disappear by 2030," Yao said.

"The shrinkage generally decreases from the Himalayas to the continental interior and is smallest in the western part. Some glaciers there are even growing," he said.He said changes in the glaciers will be accelerated if the planet continues to warm.Potential consequences would be unsustainable water supplies from major rivers and geo-hazards, such as glacier lake expansion and flooding, which could threaten the well-being of people downstream.

China's shift from a rural to urban society is speeding up development projects, including one where a developer is flattening mountains to build a new city


(Photo: Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Ratio of Chinese living in cities has doubled since 1990
Critics say rapid urbanization is ignoring environmental concerns
Investor: Lanzhou New City will be ready in five years

BIG WAVE GULLY, LANZHOU, China — The hills are alive with the sound of machines. As dozens of excavators gouge the slopes, and countless trucks groan past to dump yellow earth into the valley below, Ye Xingwu pauses from repair work to reflect on their landscape-shattering task in the desolate mountains of the northwest Gansu province.
Despite environmental concerns about the project's feasibility and long-term impact on this arid, polluted region, a government-hired private developer is slicing the tops off 700 low-level, barren mountains and filling in the valleys to create a 10-square-mile base for "Lanzhou New City," 8 miles from Gansu's grimy capital.

"I feel so proud of this project; China is amazing," says Ye, 40, his hands dripping with engine oil from his excavator. "This is the largest mountain-moving project ever in China. It shows China's power."

Critics worry that the rapid pace is steaming past environmental concerns and happening without social reforms crucial to integrating rural migrants. Here in Big Wave Gully, Ye and hundreds of other workers offer a dramatic illustration of how urbanization is transforming China. Hemmed in by hills and the Yellow River, and under government orders not to use arable land, the fast-growing city of Lanzhou has chosen to literally flatten the natural obstacles in the way of progress.
China's rapid shift from a rural to an urban society is staggering. In 12 years, China will have 221 cities with 1 million inhabitants each compared with 35 cities of that size in Europe today, according to McKinsey Global Institute. By then China is also expected to have 23 cities with more than 5 million people each.

The ratio of Chinese who live in cities has doubled in a little over two decades, from 26% in 1990 to half of the population today.          Excavators and dump trucks clear the earth at Big Wave Gully.(Photo: Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY)
Yan Jiehe, the multimillionaire founder of China Pacific Construction Group sounds confident about his $3.5 billion investment to carve out a city, ready in five years, "with the flavor of water city Venice, and the flavor of a Las Vegas oasis in the Gobi." he told China Newsweek, a magazine unrelated to the U.S.Newsweek.
"I am striving to win honor for Chinese people," says Yan, nicknamed "the Bulldozer."

Every year, China's urban population grows by the same size as the population of Australia, about 20 million people, says Tom Miller, author of China's Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History
"Lanzhou is one example of many dozens in China and shows the enormous demand for new housing," he say
By 2030, China's cities will be home to 1 billion people, or one in every eight people on earth, Miller says. China will surpass the United States and cement its position as the world's largest economy if it urbanizes its once-agrarian population successfully, he says. "But if they get it wrong, China could spend the next 20 years languishing in middle-income torpor, its cities pockmarked by giant slums."
Muffled in an army overcoat and hat, Liu Hong counts the trucks, as many as 500 a day rumbling in seven days a week, that tip soil down newly created ravines.

"Everyone in my village has a plan to move to the city," says Liu, 42, a former farmer. "If you try hard, you can achieve it; me, too, if I earn enough money."
He says the attraction of living in a city is infrastructure, a better environment and more government benefits though China's household registration system, which divides people into rural and urban residents, would continue to deny his family urban social benefits even after years as city dwellers.

Liu seems not to consider what the nearby city of Lanzhou has become. Ugly, congested and heavily polluted, it is broadly representative of much of Chinese urban life. A January fun run was postponed this year amid runners' complaints of having to choke their way through the course.

All cars must remain off the roads one day a week to combat smog and gridlock. Taxi driver Zhang Ruijun readily accepts the restriction however ineffective it appears.

"Our city is simply too polluted," says Zhang, 30, who is confident Lanzhou New City will attract migrants from across the province.

The massive tide of building nationwide is possible because China has a "different economic logic," than free-market economies, Miller says. Instead of relying on market forces to determine where to expand, "local governments in China have the power to move people, e.g. into a new university district," he says.


China requires environmental reviews of such projects; it just doesn't enforce them. Authorities allowed the Lanzhou New City project to begin in October before its mandatory environmental impact assessment report was approved.

Li Ding, a professor of human geography at Lanzhou University, is investigating the project with his students. He fears the development will drain the Yellow River of water that is badly needed for farms and people downstream. Short-term dust storms and long-term landslides are risks as well, says Li, but the developer and officials are reluctant to provide data on the project's impact.

Most locals dismiss environmental worries.

At the upscale Guofang Baihuo department store, where Gucci ties retail for $255, Luo Xiaolin, 34, who runs a construction firm with her husband, sounds pleased with her city's speedier growth in recent years after it long lagged its eastern counterparts.

"But air pollution and traffic are getting worse as living conditions have improved so more people have money to buy cars," she says.

Before climbing back into his excavator, now 75 yards below where he began digging two months ago, operator Yang Shuanglou shares the urban dreams fueled by his $640 monthly wage.

"We want to move to a city. The living conditions will be better there, and I may get a better job," says Yang, 27, whose wife lives in a north Gansu village. "We will move within 10 years. Maybe I am building our future home here."