China to overhaul administration in border areas near India and Pakistan

[sandeepdg]

BEIJING: China's parliament has advised the government to overhaul the defense and administrative set up in border areas connected to India and other countries in south and central Asia.

The advice comes from Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, one of the two houses of Chinese parliament. It has a major influence in policy making on issues concerning minority Tibetans along the border with India, and Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan and Central Asia.

CPPCC has made "suggestions for developing border defense and overhauling the border defense administration system", it chairman Jia Qinglin said on the first day of its annual session at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday.

The statement is a pointer to major changes that might take place in the border regions. There has been wide-spread resentment against some local officials in the border region among the among minority Tibetan and Uighur Muslim communities. A Communist Party makes a statement of this kind only after the party has made up its mind.

Jia said members of CPPCC have come together to "investigate the working and living conditions of poor people in border areas". It has also suggested rapid urbanization to ensure the development of prefectures (or districts), which enjoy autonomy in the legal sense.

The 12th five-year plan beginning this year should provide a major impetus to the task of eliminating poverty and "fully implementing" the process of integration among the ethnic minorities in the border regions, he said.

Jia indicated the Communist Party will stick to decision to give a big push to development of the western region including Tibet and Xinjiang. This region has been left behind during the last three decades of industrialization focusing on eastern and southern China.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ar-India-and-Pakistan/articleshow/7626624.cms

 

[Ray]

It is an important requirement for China to ensure that their border along areas where there is internal unrest is made impervious to foreign influence.

It also indicates that China's Peaceful Rise policy is being jettisoned and given the necessary impetus to be effective into a more robust and dynamic defence policy that is stridently proactive in asserting her position in the world in general and Asia in particular.

The thrust towards Tibet and Xinjiang indicates that things are not normal in these areas and there is a trust deficit which China wants to rectify by bringing up the economic clout of the locals so that they are amenable to the Chinese Hanisation of the area through demographic changes, extolling the virtues of embracing Han idea in comparison to the crude, vulgar and antediluvian ancient ways as also the advantages of Mandarin and Han culture over the local ways that are dragging the locals out of the race towards modernity.