1 China, Russia in 30-year gas deal (BBC) Russia's President Vladimir Putin has signed a multi-billion dollar, 30-year gas deal with China. The deal between Russia's Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has been 10 years in the making. Russia has been keen to find an alternative energy market for its gas as it faces the possibility of European sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine. No official price has been given but it is estimated to be worth over $400bn.
The agreement, signed at a summit in Shanghai, is expected to deliver some 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year eastward to China's burgeoning economy, starting around 2018. The main argument has been over price and China is thought to have been driving a hard bargain.
Over the last 10 years it has found other gas suppliers. Turkmenistan is now China's largest foreign gas supplier, and last year it started importing piped natural gas from Myanmar. Alexei Miller, Chief Executive of Gazprom said the new deal was "the biggest contract in the entire history of the USSR and Gazprom - over 1 trillion cubic metres of gas will be supplied during a whole contractual period."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27503017
2 The superpower and the rest (Jonathan Power in Khaleej Times) Who makes the law of the sea as China and Vietnam clash over China moving an oil rig close to an island only 25 miles from the mainland of Vietnam? One would hope that China which has ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty would seek international, but disinterested arbitration. It refuses to.
Has this got something to do with the fact that the US has not ratified the treaty? The Chinese don’t say so explicitly, but if the world’s one and only superpower refuses to sign up why should China pay the treaty due regard? Is that what China is thinking? It is not a very good reason, but conceivably an understandable one.
David Kaye writes in Foreign Affairs that the Senate “rejects treaties as if it was a sport”. After the First World War it rejected the US joining the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. Perhaps membership would have helped avert the rise of Nazi Germany by forging a more sensitive and united policy over German reparations, one of Germany’s sore points that Hitler played upon. Who knows? But maybe.
It was 26 years after 109 other states had signed up before the US ratified the International Convention on Human Rights, an instrument which it waged a long campaign for China to sign up to, and which it now uses to upbraid China’s human rights abuses.
But all cannot be blamed on the Senate. In 1979 president Jimmy Carter decided to file suit against Iran before the International Court of Justice for taking US diplomats as hostage. Yet, only four years later, when Nicaragua took the US to the Court for the mining of the harbour of its principal port, the US under president Ronald Reagan withdrew its membership of the Court.
The US has lived with its moral and diplomatic ambiguities over the application of international law for too long. If it wants other countries to toe the line it has to toe the line itself.
http://khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2014/May/opinion_May38.xml§ion=opinion
3 Challenges on the world stage for India’s Modi (Daniel Twining in The Wall Street Journal) India is back. Last week’s election tally shows that an allegedly divisive leader has united the country as no politician has in decades. India is now in the hands of a prime minister who has managed the economy of its most industrialized and globalized state and the consequences will extend far beyond India. The US, China and Japan all have high stakes in an Indian resurgence that could tilt Asia’s power balance in a democratic direction.
As the first Indian prime minister born after independence, Narendra Modi could now declare Indian independence from the old shibboleths of state socialism and non-alignment that have kept the country poor and geopolitically marginalized. To fulfill his people’s aspirations—tackle chronic underdevelopment at home, close the gap with Chinese power abroad—Mr. Modi will need all the western and Japanese capital, technology and military support he can get.
The last prime minister from Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Atal Bihari Vajpayee (in office 1998-2004), declared India and America “natural allies” after decades of alienation. He also conducted nuclear tests to deter Chinese adventurism, visited Lahore to sketch out a vision for peace with Pakistan and opened the door to US-India defense cooperation. Yet Indo-US ties weakened in recent years, part of what Mr. Modi calls the general “stagnancy” afflicting his country.
The best way to restore Indo-US momentum is to get India growing again. “A strong economy is the driver of an effective foreign policy,” Mr. Modi has said. “We have to put our own house in order so that the world is attracted to us.”
Although his vision for Indo-US ties is opaque, Mr. Modi is likely to discover what both Mr. Vajpayee and outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh understood: Partnership with America supports India’s development and security in a way autarky never can.
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/05/22/modis-challenges-on-the-world-stage/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=irt
The agreement, signed at a summit in Shanghai, is expected to deliver some 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year eastward to China's burgeoning economy, starting around 2018. The main argument has been over price and China is thought to have been driving a hard bargain.
Over the last 10 years it has found other gas suppliers. Turkmenistan is now China's largest foreign gas supplier, and last year it started importing piped natural gas from Myanmar. Alexei Miller, Chief Executive of Gazprom said the new deal was "the biggest contract in the entire history of the USSR and Gazprom - over 1 trillion cubic metres of gas will be supplied during a whole contractual period."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27503017
2 The superpower and the rest (Jonathan Power in Khaleej Times) Who makes the law of the sea as China and Vietnam clash over China moving an oil rig close to an island only 25 miles from the mainland of Vietnam? One would hope that China which has ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty would seek international, but disinterested arbitration. It refuses to.
Has this got something to do with the fact that the US has not ratified the treaty? The Chinese don’t say so explicitly, but if the world’s one and only superpower refuses to sign up why should China pay the treaty due regard? Is that what China is thinking? It is not a very good reason, but conceivably an understandable one.
David Kaye writes in Foreign Affairs that the Senate “rejects treaties as if it was a sport”. After the First World War it rejected the US joining the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. Perhaps membership would have helped avert the rise of Nazi Germany by forging a more sensitive and united policy over German reparations, one of Germany’s sore points that Hitler played upon. Who knows? But maybe.
It was 26 years after 109 other states had signed up before the US ratified the International Convention on Human Rights, an instrument which it waged a long campaign for China to sign up to, and which it now uses to upbraid China’s human rights abuses.
But all cannot be blamed on the Senate. In 1979 president Jimmy Carter decided to file suit against Iran before the International Court of Justice for taking US diplomats as hostage. Yet, only four years later, when Nicaragua took the US to the Court for the mining of the harbour of its principal port, the US under president Ronald Reagan withdrew its membership of the Court.
The US has lived with its moral and diplomatic ambiguities over the application of international law for too long. If it wants other countries to toe the line it has to toe the line itself.
http://khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2014/May/opinion_May38.xml§ion=opinion
3 Challenges on the world stage for India’s Modi (Daniel Twining in The Wall Street Journal) India is back. Last week’s election tally shows that an allegedly divisive leader has united the country as no politician has in decades. India is now in the hands of a prime minister who has managed the economy of its most industrialized and globalized state and the consequences will extend far beyond India. The US, China and Japan all have high stakes in an Indian resurgence that could tilt Asia’s power balance in a democratic direction.
As the first Indian prime minister born after independence, Narendra Modi could now declare Indian independence from the old shibboleths of state socialism and non-alignment that have kept the country poor and geopolitically marginalized. To fulfill his people’s aspirations—tackle chronic underdevelopment at home, close the gap with Chinese power abroad—Mr. Modi will need all the western and Japanese capital, technology and military support he can get.
The last prime minister from Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Atal Bihari Vajpayee (in office 1998-2004), declared India and America “natural allies” after decades of alienation. He also conducted nuclear tests to deter Chinese adventurism, visited Lahore to sketch out a vision for peace with Pakistan and opened the door to US-India defense cooperation. Yet Indo-US ties weakened in recent years, part of what Mr. Modi calls the general “stagnancy” afflicting his country.
The best way to restore Indo-US momentum is to get India growing again. “A strong economy is the driver of an effective foreign policy,” Mr. Modi has said. “We have to put our own house in order so that the world is attracted to us.”
Although his vision for Indo-US ties is opaque, Mr. Modi is likely to discover what both Mr. Vajpayee and outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh understood: Partnership with America supports India’s development and security in a way autarky never can.
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/05/22/modis-challenges-on-the-world-stage/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=irt
No comments:
Post a Comment