Visiting Haiti, Ban pledges that world will remain at its side

Shelter remains the biggest and most urgent priority in Haiti, two months after it was struck by a catastrophic earthquake, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today as he visited the country for the second time since the disaster and stressed that the world has not forgotten its people's plight.

Leaders Articulate National. Pan-African Interests Against Imperialism

Leaders articulate national, Pan-African interests against imperialism

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona Mahoso
Zimbabwe Sunday Mail

Africans may learn from the Anglo-Saxon fear and hatred of Patrice Lumumba and President Robert Mugabe several historical insights:

First is the hysterical, desperate desire among the Anglo-Saxon leaders, their media hacks and African collaborators to portray Lumumba and Mugabe in their respective times as crazy and isolated leaders hated by the African people. The progressive Belgian author Ludo de Witte exposes this false alibi effectively:

“If it is true that Lumumba was an isolated politician, why did Brussels, Washington, (London) and New York set up such a gigantic and long-lasting military operation, including the deployment of several thousand Belgian soldiers and Blue Berets, operations of destabilisation, murder and corruption, as well as a huge media campaign? Surely the Western powers which led these operations did not ignite one of the biggest crises since the Second World War solely to get rid of an isolated . . . political leader (hated by the Congolese masses)?”

The same question can be asked about the current onslaught on Zimbabwe and President Mugabe by the very same powers led by the US. Just read part of US President Barrack Obama’s renewal of former US President George W. Bush’s Executive Orders 13328 of 2003, 13391 of 2005 and 13469 of 2008 by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of the US. Obama’s renewal of these imperialist piracy powers extends George W. Bush by one year, calling the actions of President Mugabe’s government to empower the African majority “the unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States of America” and suggesting that what Mugabe’s government has done through land reform and economic indigenisation and empowerment programmes has precipitated “a national emergency” in the US.

Therefore, through Obama’s Bush order and through renewed EU sanctions against the same Zimbabwe — the entire Anglo-Saxon world is invited to throw against Zimbabwe everything they have, short of direct military intervention. No sane power would mobilise such awesome imperialist instruments against one unpopular, isolated and discredited leader!

Second, the Anglo-Saxon powers have created such a huge anti-Mugabe media industry and mobilised their diplomatic, political and economic systems against Mugabe precisely because Mugabe has had the courage and privilege to pursue and implement the vision of African independence and sovereignty which Lumumba was never given a chance to put into practice.

As Ludo de Witte testifies: “Patrice Lumumba totally broke away from the Congolese (petty-bourgeois) elite and its ambitions. He resolutely decided on real decolonisation to benefit the masses . . . Lumumba shaped a nationalism which rested on three . . . pillars: revolutionary and coherent nationalism, political action relying on a mass movement, and an internationalist perspective . . . The national democratic tasks were to free the country from the iron grip of imperialism and create an independent nation; to set up a democratic republic . . .; and finally to develop a truly national economy to meet the needs of the (African) population. The final objective was to build a unified nation state in which all peoples and regions (of Congo) considered themselves essential components of (Congolese) society.”

In other words, the examples of Lumumba and Mugabe are feared by imperialist powers because they threaten not only the imperialist investment in divide-and-conquer strategies but also the African petty bourgeois class collaborating with imperialism through the cultivation of “tribal” chauvinism and factionalism.

Here is a small sample of instances in which key players in the Congo crisis created an alibi for the Anglo-Saxon powers: Belgian African Affairs Minister Count Harold d’Aspremont to his Ambassador in Congo, Jan Vanden Bloock, on January 20 1961: “It seems to me a political necessity, firstly to ensure a tight guard, tight guard, repeat tight, on Lumumba, secondly, to avoid ill treatment and suppression.”

Vanden Bloock’s reply: “Can assure you that no Belgian has been involved in guarding Lumumba and company so far, and never will be since Katangan authorities consider Lumumba’s treatment their own exclusive prerogative.”

US State Department to US Consul William Canup, January 18 1961, paraphrased by Ludo de Witte:

“Washington drew its consul’s attention to Press communiqués saying Lumumba had been beaten severely in the presence of a white officer. If this turned out to be true, Consul Canup was requested to let Tshombe know that “the US government deplores such treatment” and must insist he receive “humane treatment”.

United Nations, after its Congo representative Andrew Cordier, a US citizen, had conspired with Congo President Kasavubu to put Lumumba under house arrest, deny him all media access and close all airports to anyone likely to assist the legitimate Congolese government of Prime Minister Lumumba:

“UN representatives insisted they could not interfere in internal affairs and that, if the president (Kasavubu) could keep the initiative (to overthrow Lumumba), the presence of the Blue Berets could work to this advantage.”

The US objection to reports of brutality was not to the ill-treatment of Lumumba and his colleagues. It was ill-treatment “in the presence of whites” which became an issue because that would be seen to mean that the whites controlled the brutality and approved of it. Such a view would mean the Anglo-Saxon powers would be blamed for the coup d’etat, the murders, and the massacres for which they should be expected to suffer consequences in Africa and beyond.

White officers in Katanga who either participated in or were fully aware of the torture, beating and assassination of Prime Minister Lumumba and his two lieutenants included: Commander of the Gendermerie Major Guy Weber; Police Commissioner Frans Verscheure; Major Paul Perrard; Second Lieutenant Roger Leva; Armand Joe Verdickt; and Colonel Frederic Vandewalle. Belgian Minister of African Affairs Count Harold d’Aspremont in fact ordered the transfer of Lumumba and his colleagues from Leopoldville to Katanga with the intention of having them murdered by the traitor Moise Tshombe, who was ordered to accept the prisoners.

Tshombe, Mobutu, Kasavubu and their puppet regimes were in fact being directed by the imperialist powers through Brussels. But the first official announcement of the deaths of the three Congolese leaders said that they had broken out of custody and run into a crowd of angry peasants who murdered them! Their bodies could not be found because African “tribesmen” were sworn cannibals!

In Congo as in Zimbabwe there were strategic reasons for demanding a convincing system of African masks and alibis for Anglo-Saxon crimes. The first reason was East-West (and now North-South) relations. China and the Soviet Union were feared as powers that could exploit Anglo-Saxon crimes to gain influence in Congo; just as today China, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and Iran are also feared as trading partners who can render illegal sanctions ineffective against Zimbabwe and win popular local support for their bilateral relations. This explains persistent white Rhodesian attacks on South Africa and the recent ill-treatment of South African President Jacob Zuma by the British Press during Zuma’s visit in Britain in March 2010.

The second reason for imperialist anxiety was African, Pan-African and NAM recognition for the Tshombe regime. Any African leader in Congo or Zimbabwe who appeared to be too much of an Anglo-Saxon puppet would not be recognised by independent Africa and NAM. That is why the US and Belgium had to sacrifice Tshombe and his puppet regime after using him.

The third but not least strategic reason for imperialist anxiety was popular African opinion inside Congo and Zimbabwe and in the rest of Africa. Through the efforts of Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere and Ahmed Ben Bella — the name “Tshombe” became the worst expression of African contempt for an African stooge and sell-out. As primary school children in Standard One and Two, we knew that to be called Tshombe was the worst curse on earth and in heaven.

This popular African opinion was also most feared and therefore
most manipulated by Anglo-Saxon powers because popular and properly informed African opinion could spell doom for their settlers, their companies, their ambassadors, spies, missionaries, journalists and NGOs who were also the main vehicles for manipulating African opinion and masking imperialist crimes. The US was, and still is, the master in creating masks and alibis. It relied on prior embedding, as John Perkins was to confirm in 2004 in his Confessions of an Economic Hitman. The CIA first attempted to kill Lumumba through poisoning. But by the time of the coup d’etat, the North Americans restricted themselves to facilitating Belgian crimes by providing logistical support and intelligence.

Through the CIA, the United States created many masks for Anglo-Saxon intervention. Within Lumumba’s coalition government the CIA was already using Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko, President Joseph Kasavubu and Cyril Adoula to make internal requests and demands consistent with the US intervention strategy. For this reason, the US could afford to ignore Bomboko’s secret request for US marines and opt for use of soldiers of co-opted Third World states under the UN peacekeeping cover still controlled by the US. Bomboko had made that request behind Lumumba’s back.

Therefore supposed UN officials, including UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, gave two sets of instructions to their subordinates in the peacekeeping mission: Secret operational orders for execution were according to US strategic goals; filed memoranda, telegrams and Press statements were only for diplomatic and rhetorical purposes and they adhered to UN rules which they pretended to enforce.

The Belgian regime in Brussels made sure that all the ministers of the government of Katanga, including Tshombe himself, were controlled by white private secretaries who reported directly to Brussels or through the Belgian Ambassador. The secret order from Brussels to have Lumumba delivered to traitor Moise Tshombe was delivered to Tshombe by his white private secretary, Jacques Bartelous.

In addition, correct information was relayed to Belgium and back either by hand or through telephone calls, while telegrams and filed memoranda carried the masking information intended to mislead the African population and the world at large.

All the governments and media of the Anglo-Saxon powers claimed that Patrice Lumumba was arrested by his own fellow African leaders and later killed by ordinary villagers because he was universally hated.

In the book From Congo to Soweto: US Foreign Policy Toward Africa since 1960, Henry F. Jackson demonstrates that the idea that Lumumba was killed by his own people because they suddenly started hating him is a blatant lie according to all the evidence available. In terms of our comparison of Congo in 1960 and Zimbabwe in 2010, it is clear that one contrast is that Robert Gabriel Mugabe is hated by Anglo-Saxon powers today for partly achieving what Lumumba could envision but not achieve in 1960: Jackson writes:

The CIA and the Belgians instigated President Kasavubu to dismiss Lumumba as Prime Minister. The CIA then instigated the head of the UN mission, a US citizen by the name of Andrew Cordier, to deny Lumumba access to any media or to his party. The UN put Lumumba under house arrest. When Lumumba successfully escaped, it was the CIA who helped Mobutu and Kasavubu to intercept him before he could reach his supporters or any media outlet.

The biggest lesson from all lessons we can learn from what happened to the African revolution in Congo in 1960 and what is happening to the African revolution in Zimbabwe in 2010 is that African interests can be secured against imperialism only if Africans unite behind those leaders who articulate national and Pan-African interests against imperialism.

Further persecution of Kurds by the Belgian government

Stern backs $100bn IMF climate fund plan

London, 11 March: A climate fund proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 has won support from climate change economics guru Nicholas Stern.
Speaking in Nairobi on Sunday, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said: “Sustainable growth in developing countries will require large-scale, long-term investments for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Copenhagen Accord suggests that $100 billion a year is needed by 2020, over and above existing aid commitments. This will be difficult to do with the standard approach – a series of ‘pledging conferences’ for decades to come.”
He said that, ultimately, financing will come from “budgetary transfers from developed countries, drawing on scaled-up carbon taxes and expanded carbon trading mechanisms”. However, these revenue sources will take time to be put in place, so an IMF ‘Green Fund’ could “act as a bridge to large-scale carbon-based financing in the medium term”.
In a subsequent interview with wire service AFP, Strauss-Kahn said that the IMF is going to publish a working paper on the Green Fund in the next couple of weeks. However, in the Nairobi speech, he stressed that the IMF would not manage the fund.
Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said: “The ‘Green Fund’ is a creative and constructive idea which shows that the International Monetary Fund recognises clearly the very serious risks that climate change creates for future global economic growth and development.”
Late last year, George Soros, the former hedge fund manager and now billionaire philanthropist, suggested that such a fund tap ‘Special Drawing Rights’, the international reserve assets held by the IMF to supplement its members’ official currency reserves.
However, Soros’ proposal was for a modest $100 billion over 25 years, rather than the $100 billion per year by 2020 apparently on the table from the IMF.
In January, Strauss-Kahn floated the idea of an IMF-led green fund, at the Davos meetings in Switzerland.

Bureaucracy holding up DOE renewables cash – GAO

New York, 11 March: The US Department of Energy (DOE) is encountering numerous obstacles to releasing funds for clean energy projects from last year’s economic stimulus package, including federally-mandated environmental reviews and monthly reporting requirements.
As of 28 February, the DOE had committed $25.7 billion or 70% of the $36.7 billion provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, but has only spent $2.5 billion or 7% of the funds, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
“It appears that it’s bureaucratic delays that have hampered spending and to no one’s surprise it appears that much of that delay could be pointed back to us and the decisions made in Congress,” said Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
For example, the DOE has only committed and spent 1% of the $3.97 billion provided to its loan guarantee programme by the Recovery Act to support renewable energy and electricity transmission projects.
The loan guarantee and other DOE programmes have stalled largely because they could have significant environmental impacts that trigger extensive reviews under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), according to the GAO report.
“DOE has SWAT teams on it now and they are working tirelessly to get those reviews done and they’ve established a pretty aggressive agenda for when they want to do that, but it is a concern moving forward,” said Michele Nellenbach, director of the natural resources committee for the National Governors’ Association.
Another major concern is a DOE requirement that states file monthly reports on energy and weatherisation programmes, which is problematic because they are reducing staff and hours because of budget issues, she said.
But the monthly reporting helps the DOE focus on assisting potentially high-risk projects, said Matt Rogers, the DOE’s senior advisor overseeing economic stimulus investments. “The challenge is without that data … we end up having to search around and find those areas in most need,” he said. “It gives us the kind of managerial data that frankly any business has.”
A major obstacle has been the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which requires that workers on federally-funded projects receive proper wages and benefits. Its provisions were applied by the Recovery Act for the first time to the weatherisation assistance programme, which forced many states to wait for wage determinations from the Department of Labor.
“I would encourage Congress to think about our experiences with Davis-Bacon before they apply that requirement to new programmes because it has been an impediment to getting dollars spent quickly,” said Malcolm Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administrator and vice-chair for the National Association of State Energy Officials.
Some Recovery Act programmes have been successful in funding clean energy projects. The DOE and Treasury Department allocated $2.3 billion in clean energy manufacturing tax credits to 183 projects, an investment that will be matched by up to $5.4 billion in private sector funding. But Rogers said he was disappointed by the agency’s inability to fund all the “terrific” projects that applied.
“We could have easily done double that,” he said, adding that the administration is asking Congress to provide another $5 billion.

Musicians look to clean up their acts

Industry gathers to discuss how to make lavish rock’n'roll tours more environmentally friendly
By Paul Bignell
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Imagine U2 clambering on to a train to take them to a sold-out stadium; Keith Richards swigging from a bottle of organic, Fairtrade booze while Bon Jovi recycle their post-gig waste. Unlikely as it sounds, it may yet come to pass as rock’n'roll’s tradition of painting the town red fades to an ethical shade of green.
Polluting private jets, excessive dressing room demands and arena-busting tours are no long sustainable, according to the biggest study so far on the effect of the live music industry on our environment.
In recent years, musicians such as U2, Kasabian and Madonna have been criticised for the size of their carbon footprint due to the huge scale of their tours. Notwithstanding Sting’s personal enviro-activism, his group, the Police, was recently condemned as “the dirtiest band in the world” in an NME survey, because of the size and length of their 2007 reunion tour.
The report, which will be published in May, is the first to map the carbon footprint of live music – from platinum-selling rock stars and orchestras to theatre groups and pub bands. Although it doesn’t name and shame, it does blame performers for releasing about 540,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases every year – the amount emitted by a town the size of Great Yarmouth in Suffolk.
Music agents, promoters and managers met in London yesterday to discuss how the industry can clean up its act but still make money.
The study was produced by Julie’s Bicycle, a not-for-profit company which was set up specifically to research the music industry’s carbon footprint. It maps everything from the number and size of tours, right down to the greenness of the band’s rider or list of dressing room demands.
The study’s suggestions range from fans car-sharing to get to gigs to bands leaving their Lear jets in the hangar and letting the train take the strain. It is also recommends that band T-shirts be ethically produced.
The organisation looked at 90 artists’ tours around the UK, Europe, US and Asia. It then interviewed dozens of people working on them.
Some bands have led the way in revealing the environmental impact of their tours. Radiohead have produced an audit of two of their tours in the US and made it publicly available. Other green champions include Sheryl Crow, John Legend and Coldplay.
Jazz Summers, the chief executive of Big Life Management and a founder of Julie’s Bicycle, said at yesterday’s event: “There is a lot of fear around the music industry getting greener. There’s a real fear that it’s going to cost the industry money. But that’s why we’re doing this report – like anything else, it’s about information.”

Wind industry calls for US RES, as first project guaranteed

New York, 11 March: The economic stimulus package has provided valuable support for the US wind energy sector, but a national renewable electricity standard (RES) is the policy tenet most critical to the industry’s development, project sponsors said.
Using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Department of Energy (DOE) this week authorised the first loan guarantee for a wind energy project. The agency’s $117 million guarantee will help finance construction and start-up of a 30MW wind project in Kahuku, Hawaii. The project, by Boston-based sponsor First Wind, aims to contribute to the state’s goal of meeting 70% of its energy needs with clean energy by 2030 – a major reversal as Hawaii currently relies on imported oil for 90% of its energy supply.
But the renewable energy grant programme has been the major source of support for the sector from the Recovery Act. Iberdrola Renewables has received the largest portion of the funds dispersed from the grant programme, more than $500 million, said Donald Furman, senior vice-president of the Portland, Oregon-based company and president of the board of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
The Recovery Act has allowed renewable energy producers to change their investment profiles to move capital to the US. For example, the looming expiration of a production tax credit in 2008 motivated AES Wind Generation to spend 80% of its $1 billion investment for 2009 outside the US, said Arlington, Virginia-based Ned Hall, executive vice-president of the firm. But the Recovery Act will allow the company to reverse that trend this year, with roughly 80% of its investment in the US, he said.
“Anything that creates additional uncertainty certainly motivates us to rethink where we focus our efforts,” Hall said.
While the stimulus funds have clearly played a tremendous role in the sector in the last couple of years, the industry needs a stable, long-term policy, said Victor Abate, vice-president for renewables for GE Energy, which has invested more than $1 billion in wind energy technology in the past decade.
“The next move from a policy perspective is demand,” he said. “We need to drive demand in the alternative energy sector through the next decade in a very stable way, a predictable way, and that’s through a renewable energy standard.”
A national RES is part of the discussions on an energy and climate legislative proposal expected to be offered soon by senators John Kerry (D-Mass), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn), said Denise Bode, CEO of AWEA.
“No, I don’t think we’re in trouble,” she said in response to a question on whether the wind energy industry was losing momentum. “I think we’re very well positioned to get something done and to get it done quickly.”

London landmark building will generate 8% of its energy needs

Rooftop turbines on the ‘Razor’ are first in world to be built into fabric of apartment block
Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 March 2010 08.00 GMT
Peering down 148 metres from the top of the latest addition to London’s skyline, the traffic-clogged Elephant and Castle roundabout and its notorious neighbour, the Heygate estate, below feel an unlikely location for a world first. But next week, this new skyscraper, nicknamed “the Razor”, will take a crucial step towards becoming the world’s first building with wind turbines built into its fabric.
While wind speeds in the concrete jungle at the tower’s base would render a wind turbine pointless, at 42 storeys up they are capable of 35mph gusts – a serious challenge for the workers who created the complex steel structure – and are projected to generate 8% of the building’s electricity needs.
The building – officially called the Strata tower – is a £113m milestone in the £1.5bn project to regenerate the Elephant and Castle area. The Strata development, which comprises the tower and a smaller “Pavillion” building, is a statement of the new demographic Southwark council hopes the area will attract – its 408 apartments range from £230,000 to £2.5m.
But the tower also marks an innovation for the building sector, which under government regulations will have to make all new buildings zero-carbon by 2019.
Justin Black, director for Brookfield, the developer, said the decision to choose wind was a “conscious decision to experiment”. He pointed out that the entire southern facade of the building would have had to be covered in solar photovoltaics to generate the same amount of energy. “The brief we gave to Hamilton’s Architects was we wanted a statement, we wanted to create benchmarks for sustainability and urban living. We wanted something bold, we wanted remarkable. It’s what I term Marmite architecture – you either love it or you hate it, there’s no in between,” Black said.
Next week the blades for the 9m-diameter turbines arrive on site and will be winched on to the roof for installation in early April, before the building is opened by London major Boris Johnson – circumstances permitting – on 1 July. The 19kW turbines, which were made bespoke for the project, will have five blades rather than the usual three to reduce noise. Vibrations to the rest of the building should be eliminated by a five-tonne base fitted with four anti-vibration dampeners.
Unlike a conventional turbine standing in a field, the three in the Strata tower are expected to use the Venturi effect — think of wind being forced between two large buildings — to suck wind in from many angles and accelerate it through the tubes. As well as generating a predicted 50MWh annually, the turbines will also generate money – an estimated £16,000-£17,000 annually – through the government’s new and controversial feed-in-tariff, which starts on 1 April.
Other attempts have been made to minimise the tower’s environmental footprint, which is 6% above the energy efficiency required under building regulations. For example it uses a natural ventilation system and there is no air-conditioning. A wholly glazed building was ruled out to increase insulation and reduce noise.
Paul King, chief executive of UK Green Building Council, hailed the building as pioneering but warned that wind power was unlikely to become widespread in skyscrapers: “You’ve got to take your hat off to the design team for delivering a building that clearly captures the imagination. I doubt whether wind power will become a common feature in high-rise inner-city projects – but without this type of bold innovation, how would we ever know? Let’s see how it works and learn from the real performance data that is gathered.”
Strata is not alone among efforts to build wind-powered “cities in the sky”. The Bahrain World Trade Centre already has wind turbines slung between its two towers, China has plans for high-rise buildings with turbines built into their fabric, and the Lighthouse tower in Paris’ La Defense district should be topped by turbines when it’s completed in 2015. Not all such wind towers have met with success though: Dubai’s Anara Tower was cancelled, while New York’s Freedom Tower, which was to replace the World Trade Centre, lost its proposed turbines in a redesign.

The innovator: Matthias Kauer

The 39-year-old inventor who created a solar cell that can generate 100 times more power than an ordinary cell

Lucy Siegle
The Observer, Sunday 14 March 2010
“Small is beautiful” is a longstanding eco mantra – and its latest example is a stamp-sized incarnation of the solar panel. Even with its minute proportions, the new solar cell generates three to four times the amount of power (10-12 watts) that a conventional cell could at the same size. “But the real point,” explains Matthias Kauer of the Sharp Solar Research & Development Laboratory, “is that once you add in a comparatively cheap bit of kit like a lens, this tiny cell can then generate 100 times more power than an ordinary cell.”
It’s exactly the power surge solar photovoltaic panels need. PV panels use a thin layer of semi-conducting material, usually silicon, to generate an electric charge when exposed to sunlight. They are often derided, the assumption being that they don’t generate a useful amount of energy, but Dr Kauer is quick to point out that even the average panel is 15 to 20 times more efficient at converting solar energy than plants.
His solar cell is superior still. It’s already 35.8% efficient in sunlight, and he’s confident that in future years that can increase to 50%. At the heart of the pint-sized innovation is the new material in the cell. The day the research team found the right proportions of indium gallium arsenide nitride, the super cell began to come together. “Those breakthrough days are good,” says Kauer. “I’ve had a couple in my 10-year career so far, and this one was major.”
If only we lived in a sun-soaked country. “That’s a common misconception,” says Kauer. “The UK has as much sun as parts of Germany, where solar panels are commonplace.” The average amount of sun hitting an area 30cm in diameter is equivalent to the power of 20,000 AA batteries. “The exciting thing is that we can keep gaining efficiency,” says Kauer, “and one day have cars, planes, ships and entire cities running on free solar power.” The outlook is sunny.

Chinese PM rebuts criticism over Copenhagen role

Wen Jiabao US on currency and defends China’s place on world stage, saying his conscience is clear on climate deal
Tania Branigan and Jonathan Watts in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 March 2010 11.43 GMT
The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, today launched a robust defence of his country’s place on the world stage, including a sharp rebuttal of what he called “baffling” criticism of his country’s role at the Copenhagen summit.
Acknowledging “serious disruption” in ties with the US and rising criticism of Chinese assertiveness on the climate, currency, trade and other issues, the premier said he wanted to set the record straight.
“Some say China has got more arrogant and tough. Some put forward the theory of China’s so-called ‘triumphalism’. You have given me an opportunity to explain how China sees itself,” Wen said.
In a press conference marking the close of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Wen said the country was still developing and would never seek hegemony even when fully modernised, but had always sought to uphold its sovereignty and territorial integrity. He said China was a “responsible” nation that took an active part in international co-operation on major issues.
In the angry aftermath of the Copenhagen climate conference, China was accused of wrecking a deal by blocking emission reduction targets for 2050 and failing to send its most senior delegates to key meetings. In his most detailed public comments yet about the conference, Wen responded to critics.
“My conscience is untainted despite rumours and slanders from outside,” he said. “It still baffles me why some people are trying to make the issue about China. Climate change is about human survival, the interest of all countries, and issues of equity and justice in the international community.”
He accused foreign leaders of a shocking breach of protocol in their attempt to press him, with advance warning, into an unscheduled meeting after a welcome banquet. “Why was China not notified of this meeting? So far, nobody has explained. it is still a mystery to me,” he said.
The final deal was the best that could be achieved in the difficult circumstances, he said, promising China’s support for the Copenhagen accord.
Asked about other areas of friction, particularly with the US, the premier responded: “The responsibility for the serious disruption in US-China ties does not lie with the Chinese side but with the US.”
He cited Barack Obama’s recent meeting with the Dalai Lama, the announcement of US arms sales to Taiwan and disagreements over exchange rates and trade. “We are opposed to the practice of engaging in mutual finger-pointing or taking strong measures to force other countries to appreciate their currencies. That is not in the interest of reform of the renminbi’s exchange rate regime,” the premier said.
There is growing pressure for revaluation from the US and Europe, where many analysts argue that the renminbi is massively underpriced. Chinese experts have also argued that a rise in the currency would be in the country’s own interests.
Wen told reporters: “I understand some countries want to increase their exports – what I don’t understand is the practice of depreciating one’s own currency and attempting to press other countries to increase theirs, just to improve exports. In my view that is a protectionist measure.”
He went on to warn the US on its own currency, as he did at his last news conference. China holds more US treasury debt than another country.
“If I said I was worried [about the US dollar] last year, I still want to make the same remark this year,” he said. “We cannot afford any mistake, however slight, when it comes to financial assets … I hope the US will take concrete steps to reassure investors.”
Turning to domestic issues, the prime minister warned that China faced “an extremely difficult task” in promoting steady and fast growth while restructuring the economy and managing inflationary expectations. Inflation, corruption and unfair income distribution taken together would be “strong enough to affect social stability and even the stability of state power,” he said.
The government is seeking to gradually withdraw from the massive stimulus that helped to see China through the global slump, particularly given soaring property prices and rising inflation, which hit 2.7% in the year to February. But it must do so without damaging confidence.
The premier warned of the risk of a double-dip in the global economy and said that while the domestic economy had stabilised, many Chinese businesses were still reliant on the stimulus measures.