- Yahoo! NewsChina's economy faces growing risks from Europe's sovereign debt crisis and from debt held by local Chinese governments but it could engineer a soft landing by easing monetary policy, the World Bank said on Tuesday.
In a semi-annual East Asia and Pacific economic update, the World Bank nudged up its 2011 growth forecast for China but expects growth to moderate from next year as overseas economies slow and Beijing steers the economy to rely less on investment and manufacturing.
The lender also slashed growth forecasts for developing Asia, excluding China, due to weak export demand from developed countries and as widespread flooding has hit Thailand's manufacturing base.
"On balance, we believe that while there are issues (in China), they are being managed and the magnitude of those issues does not add up to something that would lead necessarily to a major slowdown as some have talked about," Bert Hofman, World Bank chief economist for East Asia and the Pacific, said.
China will grow 9.1 percent this year, the World Bank said, slightly higher than the bank's previous forecast of 9.0 percent growth issued in March. In 2012, growth will slow to 8.4 percent, it said.
China can continue growing at a 9 to 10 percent per annum pace for the foreseeable future, based on the experience of other countries with a per capita gross domestic product of around $5,000, Hofman said, which is slightly more than China's per capita GDP.
China's growth this year is below last year's level as weakening external demand has hurt investment and exports, the bank said. Monetary policy tightening also slowed investment this year, but there is now more room to normalize policy as inflation is waning, the bank said.
China's Vice Premier Wang Qishan said over the weekend that a long-term global recession is certain and China should focus on solving problems in its economy.
Policies to curb gains in land prices could put some local governments that borrowed heavily under pressure, the World Bank said.
Still, deleveraging is unlikely to match the scale of the U.S. property market as Chinese households tend to put more money down in advance and have smaller mortgages, according to the report.
A recent World Bank study with the International Monetary Fund also showed that China's banking system can withstand exchange rate and interest rate shocks, Hofman said.
Excluding China, developing East Asia will expand 4.7 percent this year, much slower than the previous forecast of 5.3 percent growth, as a slowdown in developed countries and tighter monetary policy dented growth, the bank said.
Investors shifting money out of Asian countries could lead to more stock and bond market volatility, but this could help some countries that are trying to contain asset prices, the report said.
Asian countries could also face significant spillover if a disorderly sovereign debt restructuring in Europe hurts the flow of trade and financing, the bank said.
Malaysia in particular could be vulnerable if European banks suddenly curtail lending as it has loans from European banks worth more than 25 percent of its GDP, the report said.
Barring this scenario, portfolio flows could continue to favor Asia for some time to come, according to the bank.
"There is a lot of liquidity out there that will start looking for yields again once financial stability settles in again," Hofman said.
Public finances give many Asian countries room to boost stimulus spending if needed, but governments should focus on long-term investments to improve education, social security and labor productivity, the bank said.
(Additional reporting by Kevin Lim in Singapore; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
- Yahoo! NewsRecord numbers of countries voted in favor of UN General Assembly resolutions condemning human rights abuses in Iran, North Korea and Myanmar.
The Iran vote came only three days after the General Assembly condemned an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington -- which the United States accuses Iran of masterminding.
Only Myanmar's government was given encouragement in the vote, even though it complained that it should not have taken place.
The 193-member assembly passed a resolution condemning "torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" by Iranian authorities with 86 votes in favor, six more than last year, 32 against, down 12 from 2010, and 59 abstentions.
The resolution, proposed by Canada, condemned "flogging and amputations" carried out in Iran and deplored a "dramatic increase" in the use of the death penalty, particularly against minors. Many human rights groups say events have deteriorated in Iran over the past year.
Mohammad Javad Larijani, an advisor to Iran's supreme leader, called the resolution "substantially unfounded and intentionally malicious" in a speech to the General Assembly's human rights committee.
Syria, which faces a special human rights vote on Tuesday over its deadly crackdown on opposition protests, spoke out strongly for its Iranian ally.
The North Korea vote was passed with 112 votes in favor, 16 against and 55 abstentions. On Myanmar the vote was 98 in favor and 25 against with 63 abstentions.
The assembly raised "very serious concern" over the "torture" and "inhuman conditions of detention, public executions, extra-judicial and arbitrary detention" in North Korea.
It also condemned the "existence of a large number of prison camps and the extensive use of forced labor."
The Myanmar resolution welcomed recent talks between democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the military-dominated government, the release of some political prisoners and other changes over the past year.
But the General Assembly said there were still "systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
It highlighted "arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." It also raised concerns about the treatment of ethnic minorities such as the Karen people.
Western nations, which have imposed sanctions on Myanmar, have sought to encourage the tentative reforms started by the government. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to hold talks in Myanmar next month.
Myanmar's UN ambassador U Than Swe highlighted the government's efforts towards "building a flourishing, democratic society."
"We do deserve warm, welcome, kind understanding and sincere encouragements of the international community rather than unconstructive approach by adopting such resolutions," he told the assembly.
Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said the Myanmar resolution reflected "the international community?s hope for progress in the country" while expressing "continuing concern over violations of human rights."
In a statement, Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged the changes in Myanmar, but said "human rights abuses continue, especially in ethnic areas, and the level of support for this resolution shows once again that the international community has not forgotten the people" of Myanmar.
"The UN General Assembly passed these three resolutions by a record majority today, and I welcome the strong signal that sends," Hague said.
Egypt’s “nude photo revolutionary” just that, revolutionary - Bikya Masr : Bikya MasrCAIRO: Despise Aliya Mahdy or not, she has done what few revolutionaries in Egypt have been able to do: take revolutionary action. Her public display of her naked body in a blog post has seen attacks from the conservative Islamists and the liberals alike. Nudity, especially female nudity, leaves people queasy. Had she been a man, would the reaction have been so virulent against her? Doubtful. The man would likely have been praised for his use of his body as expression. Mahdy, unfortunately, is a woman living in Egypt.
Women are objects in many conservatives’ views. Things that can be owned and used for a man’s pleasure when he desires and when he wants. This is why we have seen the growth of polygamy, the shoving aside of a woman’s ability to choose her life’s goals, and the unending “debate” over the causes of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Whether we agree that one’s body should be a form of protest – which so many of Egypt’s liberals disagree with – is irrelevant. The reality is that Mahdy has been able, with her body, debunk all myths of Egyptian liberalism. Her naked image, which has seen over one million hits, has shown that Egypt is not ready for free expression.
Liberal activists online lamented that the 20-year-old university student has “ruined” her life, is “young and doesn’t know what she has done.” But in an inherently conservative society, Mahdy has created something only the truly revolutionary in today’s world can do: showing the hypocrisy of the so-called freedom fighters for expression.
In the ultra-male dominated society of Egypt, women are too often told what they should put on their bodies. Wear the veil, wear loose clothes, don’t wear this, don’t wear that, and so on. Mahdy has shown that nobody has a right to tell her, or other women for that matter, what is appropriate for a woman. Her body is her own and she can do what she likes with it, and that includes putting nothing over top it and publishing it online. It’s her right.
What Mahdy has shown is that one doesn’t have to follow the traditional cultural norms. In Egypt or elsewhere. The antagonism meted out against the young woman for showing her body publicly is part of the conservative nature that is Egypt, where a woman’s body is the de facto property of society. Her honor the honor of her family, community and country. But Mahdy, knowing it or not, told Egypt and the world that she has had enough. Time for change. Time for a woman to have the right to their property, their body.
Following our publishing of the story earlier this week, I received many angry emails from supposed “free speech advocates” who denounced Bikyamasr.com for writing about the story in a “positive” manner. One email, from a supposed “Egyptian liberal activist” summed up the struggle facing women in this country: “I support women’s rights and freedom of speech, but what this girl has done goes beyond anything that could be possibly defended. It is not honorable for a woman to publicly display her body. That is pornography and our Egyptian sensibilities do not support this.”
There are plenty of progressive views around, but in reality life is difficult for liberal-minded women in Egypt. Women are too often the scapegoats for the ills of society. Take Amr Derrag, the head of the Freedom and Justice Party in Giza – the offshoot political party of the Muslim Brotherhood – who told me recently that the societal problems facing Egypt in the past three decades are “directly related to women not staying home and building the family.”
Not only is this assumption wrong, and scary – the FJP wants to push women back into the home – it shows that the problems facing Egypt socially are being pinpointed and put on women.
There are many examples of women being “protected” from men in the Middle East.
One would think that the rise of ultra-conservatism, namely the Salafi project emanating from Saudi Arabia, would be more tolerant of Islam’s historical support for women’s rights and their mobility in public – think of the era of the prophet and the openness of that society. The prophet was adamant that all people were welcome in Medina and that women were to be treated with the utmost respect. At the time, unlike today, there was no sexual apartheid in the mosque, with men and women praying together in a show of unity. Now, what we are witnessing is the rise of a movement that is as vehemently anti-women as it is anti-progress.
“Whenever the conservatives enter a society they don’t talk politics or economics, they talk of the honour of women”, said Hibaaq Osman, the founder and chair of the women’s organisation El Karama, in a previous interview. She argues, rightly, that what is important to these conservatives – and she is quick to point out this is not a problem limited to Islam – is that women are the key to society. She added that in all societies, women are the building blocks of forward thinking. She believes that once women have shaken off the need for a male guardian and have entered the workforce, then freedoms and laws against sexual violence can be implemented for the betterment and progress of society.
But, she added: “If the woman is being portrayed as the devil in Friday sermons in the mosque, then in public people are looking for confirmation of what they are hearing.”
Men are unable to take responsibility for their own actions. Osman says that evidence shows conservative religious folk the world over, including the Middle East, are the most sex-crazed.
So when Mahdy removed her clothes, she undressed the liberals and their calls for freedom. Obviously, in their mind, she made a mistake. She was wrong. Nudity has no place in Egypt. But for the millions of women, who on a daily basis face sexual harassment, assault and categorical oppression from all sides, she did what no activist has been able to do. She won. She told the world that her body is owned by nobody other than herself. Disagree with the tactic, fine, but one must, if they truly espouse the idea of freedom of expression, support her in her cause.
At the end of the day, one may attempt to cover a woman’s body with clothes, force them into the home, but in today’s Internet world, women like Mahdy can achieve more naked than they ever can clothed and in the streets.
BM
High rate of immigration blame for population surge | Mail OnlineHigh immigration has made England one of the most crowded countries in the world, a report said yesterday.
It found that 6.6million foreign-born people live in England – and only 500,000 elsewhere in the UK.
As a result England has become the sixth most densely populated major nation, according to the analysis from the MigrationWatch think-tank. Only Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea, Lebanon and Rwanda have more people per square mile.
| Mehdi Hasan | Comment is free | The GuardianImagine, for a moment, that you are an Iranian mullah. Sitting crosslegged on your Persian rug in Tehran, sipping a cup of chai, you glance up at the map of the Middle East on the wall. It is a disturbing image: your country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies and regional rivals, both nuclear and non-nuclear.
On your eastern border, the United States has 100,000 troops serving in Afghanistan. On your western border, the US has been occupying Iraq since 2003 and plans to retain a small force of military contractors and CIA operatives even after its official withdrawal next month. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, is to the south-east; Turkey, America's Nato ally, to the north-west; Turkmenistan, which has acted as a refuelling base for US military transport planes since 2002, to the north-east. To the south, across the Persian Gulf, you see a cluster of US client states: Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet; Qatar, host to a forward headquarters of US Central Command; Saudi Arabia, whose king has exhorted America to "attack Iran" and "cut off the head of the snake".
Then, of course, less than a thousand miles to the west, there is Israel, your mortal enemy, in possession of over a hundred nuclear warheads and with a history of pre-emptive aggression against its opponents.
The map makes it clear: Iran is, literally, encircled by the United States and its allies.
If that wasn't worrying enough, your country seems to be under (covert) attack. Several nuclear scientists have been mysteriously assassinated and, late last year, a sophisticated computer virus succeeded in shutting down roughly a fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Only last weekend, the "pioneer" of the Islamic Republic's missile programme, Major General Hassan Moghaddam, was killed – with 16 others – in a huge explosion at a Revolutionary Guards base 25 miles outside Tehran. You go online to discover western journalists reporting that the Mossad is believed to have been behind the blast.
And then you pause to remind yourself of the fundamental geopolitical lesson that you and your countrymen learned over the last decade: the US and its allies opted for war with non-nuclear Iraq, but diplomacy with nuclear-armed North Korea.
If you were our mullah in Tehran, wouldn't you want Iran to have the bomb – or at the very minimum, "nuclear latency" (that is, the capability and technology to quickly build a nuclear weapon if threatened with attack)?
Let's be clear: there is still no concrete evidence Iran is building a bomb. The latest report from the IAEA, despite its much discussed reference to "possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme", also admits that its inspectors continue "to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at [Iran's] nuclear facilities". The leaders of the Islamic Republic – from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to bombastic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – maintain their goal is only to develop a civilian nuclear programme, not atomic bombs.
Nonetheless, wouldn't it be rational for Iran – geographically encircled, politically isolated, feeling threatened – to want its own arsenal of nukes, for defensive and deterrent purposes? The US government's Nuclear Posture Review admits such weapons play an "essential role in deterring potential adversaries" and maintaining "strategic stability" with other nuclear powers. In 2006, the UK's Ministry of Defence claimed our own strategic nuclear deterrent was designed to "deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means".
Apparently, what is sauce for the Anglo-American goose is not sauce for the Iranian gander. Empathy is in short supply. As leading US nuclear policy analyst George Perkovich has observed: "The US government never has publicly and objectively assessed Iranian leaders' motivations for seeking nuclear weapons and what the US and others could do to remove those motivations." Instead, the Islamic Republic is dismissed as irrational and megalomaniacal.
But it isn't just Iran's leaders who are unwilling to back down on the nuclear issue. On Tuesday, around 1,000 Iranian students formed a human chain around the uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". Their protest may have been organised by the authorities but even the leaders and members of the opposition Green Movement tend to support Iran's uranium enrichment programme. According to a 2010 University of Maryland survey, 55% of Iranians back their country's pursuit of nuclear power and, remarkably, 38% support the building of a nuclear bomb.
So what is to be done? Sanctions haven't worked and won't work. Iranians refuse to compromise on what they believe to be their "inalienable" right to nuclear power under the Non-proliferation treaty. Military action, as the US defence secretary Leon Panetta admitted last week, could have "unintended consequences", including a backlash against "US forces in the region". The threat of attack will only harden the resolve for a nuclear deterrent; belligerence breeds belligerence.
The simple fact is there is no alternative to diplomacy, no matter how truculent or paranoid the leaders of Iran might seem to western eyes. If a nuclear-armed Iran is to be avoided, US politicians have to dial down their threatening rhetoric and tackle the very real and rational perception, on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan, of America and Israel as military threats to the Islamic Republic. Iranians are fearful, nervous, defensive – and, as the Middle East map shows, perhaps with good reason. As the old adage goes, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
