The Weekly Lift - October 24, 2024

This week's selection of headlines and articles*:

International Relations: India-China Ties May See Thaw Four Years After Border Skirmish Froze Relations

The Wall Street Journal (US) reports, "India and China have reached a breakthrough in discussions over their disputed Himalayan border, signaling room for improved ties after a high-altitude skirmish froze relations between the Asian giants.

The two countries have arrived at an arrangement to resume patrolling along their de facto border, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Monday. A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday confirmed an agreement related to border issues, without elaborating.

Patrols by Indian and Chinese security forces along the border halted following a June 2020 clash between the nuclear-armed neighbors that saw security forces engage in hand-to-hand combat, resulting in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese personnel.

“Over the last several weeks Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums,” Misri said. “We have reached an agreement on the issues that were being discussed.”

Misri said the agreement on patrolling, once implemented, could pave the way for disengagement. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said China would work with India to implement the agreements.

Misri was speaking at a briefing on the eve of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival in Russia for the Brics summit—a bloc of emerging nationscomprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—which Chinese President Xi Jinping is also attending.

Speaking to reporters in Russia on Tuesday, Misri said that Modi and Xi will have a bilateral meeting Wednesday on the sidelines of the summit. He didn’t elaborate on what the two leaders intend to discuss. Modi and Xi haven’t had formal talks since the border clash.

The standoff severely damaged political and business relations between the two countries.?

Following the clash, India retaliated by banning dozens of mobile apps, including widely used video-streaming platform TikTok and the messaging app WeChat. It also made it nearly impossible for Chinese companies to bring foreign direct investments into the country by hardening government rules.

While China was India’s largest trading partner in the year ended in March, Chinese firms operating in India have faced probes over alleged tax evasion, which the companies deny, and India has levied tariffs on many Chinese products as it seeks to build up its own domestic manufacturing and reduce dependence on its neighbor.

Direct passenger flights between the two countries also haven’t resumed. An Indian security official said the scope of future disengagement is unclear, but noted that if military forces are able to resume patrolling after more than four years, it would signal a “big positive move.”??

Still, strategic experts note that China has moved to fortify its border with India, including setting up new villages along parts of the disputed boundary, efforts that are unlikely to be dismantled and that will weigh on Indian security concerns.

Shared concerns about a more assertive China have cemented closer economic and strategic ties between India and the U.S. in recent years. That includes a more than $3-billion deal for India to purchase 31 armed Guardian drones that it will use in part to track Chinese troop movements on its Himalayan border. Diplomatic experts say that a slight normalization of India’s ties with China isn’t likely to fundamentally change the U.S.-India equation, noting the U.S. has also moved to restart some lines of communication with China to manage the risks of a confrontation.

India and China have had a tense relationship since they fought a war in 1962. India also hosts the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing views as a separatist. The Tibetan spiritual leader fled to India in 1959 after China moved to assert its control over the region.

The two countries are separated along their 2,000-mile border by a vague demarcation line known as the Line of Actual Control.

Indian and Chinese security forces often used to bump into each other during patrolling of their perceived areas of control on the borders, leading to heightened tensions. Since the 2020 clash, both countries have deployed tens of thousands of security forces along the Himalayan border along with advanced artillery, weapons and surveillance devices.

“Given how difficult it has been so far, India will continue to be mobilized and not take things at face value with China,” said Harsh Pant, vice president for foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based international relations think tank.

In recent months, however, there have been signals that the two countries were looking to break the deadlock. Indian industrial groups have also lobbied for easing the ability to do business with China, including seeking faster visa clearances for specialized Chinese industrial workers.?

The meeting between Xi and Modi this week on the sidelines of Brics could make clearer whether there is indeed momentum for improving ties.

“We need to wait and watch if there is actually a political agreement between Modi and Xi,” said Pant."

Politics: Vietnam Revives Power-Sharing Arrangement With New President

The New York Times (US) reports, "Vietnam’s National Assembly approved a new president on Monday, restoring a power-sharing arrangement among four high-level leaders that has defined the country’s approach to Communist government for decades.

The assembly’s announcement that Luong Cuong, a Vietnamese Army general, would be president calms speculation about the country’s top leader, To Lam, and whether he would try to retain the presidency after rising to become general secretary of the Communist Party in August.

Under the country’s “four pillar” structure, established in part to avoid the rise of a single strongman, decision-making roles are split among the general secretary, president, prime minister and head of the National Assembly.

Vietnam’s president typically oversees the military and usually comes from within its ranks. But from 2018 to 2021, Nguyen Phu Trong, who was general secretary from 2011 until his death in 2024, also served as president.

Mr. Lam had been named president in May and initially held both roles. As minister of public security before that, he helped lead an anti-corruption campaign that pushed out several high-level figures, including two presidents and three deputy prime ministers.

It was unclear whether he would seek to keep two positions and consolidate power ahead of the National Party Congress scheduled for 2026, when the country’s next leaders will be chosen.

In a speech opening the assembly’s session on Monday, Mr. Lam praised his Communist Party colleagues for reaching an agreement at a moment when “the global and regional situation has had many complex developments, with unprecedented and unpredictable issues, posing many significant challenges to the task of building and defending the nation.”

“The passing of comrade general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong is a great loss, leaving deep sorrow among the people and soldiers across the country,” he said. “In this context, our party has shown steadfast resolve, maintaining a unified bloc in will and action, quickly consolidating the leadership of the party and state with high consensus.”

In his own introductory speech, Mr. Cuong promised to “resolutely and persistently safeguard national independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”

Analysts said a return to Vietnam’s four-pillars arrangement could help minimize political infighting as another generation of leaders seek to fulfill Vietnam’s long-held ambitions of becoming a wealthy nation with high-end manufacturing and a larger role on the world stage.

“This could help mitigate factional tensions by ensuring that the military has a prominent role in the nation’s leadership,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a research organization in Singapore.

He added, “This will help stabilize the system after a period of significant turbulence.”

Global Development: Bhutan Prays It Can Be India’s Hong Kong

The Economist (UK) reports, "King jigme of Bhutan recalls that when he was studying in America, his classmates would scoff in disbelief when he told them there were tigers and elephants in his Himalayan homeland.

Like many foreigners, they thought of it as a place of snow-clad peaks and alpine meadows. Even those who had visited were unlikely to have strayed to the subtropical lowlands that border north-east India.

Now, 25 years later, King Jigme is on a fresh mission to enlighten the world about this southern sliver of his realm. And this time, it is not just about the wildlife. In December he unveiled plans for a new city there that would ultimately cover 1,000 sq km, making it bigger than Singapore.

Powered mostly by hydro-energy, it is designed to house a million people, including digital nomads, Buddhist pilgrims, crypto entrepreneurs and wealthy expatriates. Bhutan’s current population is 780,000.

King Jigme is not the only world leader with the city-building bug. Think of Saudi Arabia’s Neom development or Indonesia’s future capital, Nusantara. But Bhutan’s project, Gelephu Mindfulness City (gmc), stands out in three ways that could help it to avoid the Ozymandian fate of many such grandiose schemes.

First, consider the geopolitics. Bhutan is land-locked between India and China. The struggle for influence across South Asia between these two countries has intensified lately with political upheavals in the Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Bhutan has long been in India’s camp. But in the past decade, it has expanded trade, tourism and other links with China, while edging towards resolving a border dispute. In 2023 it appeared close to a land swap, and possibly establishing diplomatic ties, with China.

India objected. It has hundreds of troops in Bhutan and fears that encroachment by China there could help Chinese forces, in a war, to sever India’s access to its north-east. India has since pledged $1.2bn of development support for Bhutan in the next five years, double that of the previous five.

Bhutan now accounts for 36% of Indian foreign aid, more than any other nation. India has also backed gmc. It is building road and rail links and discussing developing a new international airport there. It will provide much of the labour. And rich Indians seeking refuge from congested cities are among the prime targets for gmc’s promise of luxury homes and low taxes.

Indian firms could play an important role. On October 2nd the Reliance Group announced plans to invest $700m in two power projects, one in gmc and one nearby. Adani Group, another Indian giant, has also expressed interest. Because of India’s proximity and friendly ties, the “threshold for allowing Indian contractors would be much lower,” says Lotay Tshering, gmc’s governor.

He says there have been no talks with China about its involvement in the city, which will supposedly rely on private investment. But, he adds, there should be no “exclusion criteria”.

The second feature of gmc is its possible draw for the artificial intelligence and crypto industries. Bhutan has 2.5gw of installed hydropower but potential for over 30gw. gmc’s managers say they are talking with big data-centre investors who are scouting for sites with renewable energy sources.

One obstacle could be American export controls on ai-related technology. Tshering Tobgay, the prime minister, is confident he can satisfy American regulators and convince India to allow its data to be stored in Bhutan too.

An additional lure for tech investors is progressive regulation. gmc will be a “special administrative region”, allowing more autonomy than a typical “special economic zone”. Laws will be based on Singapore’s and financial regulation on Abu Dhabi’s.

Investors will be able to shape regulation too, especially in sectors such as ai, biotech and crypto. Fanciful as that might seem, Bhutan is already a bitcoin pioneer, with six operational mines. In September its bitcoin holdings were valued at $750m, the world’s fourth-highest.

The secrecy of that venture worries some Bhutanese. Foreign officials also fret that Bhutan could attract money from illicit sources or nations facing Western sanctions. Bhutan says it will carefully screen all investors. But how exactly is unclear, given its limited resources and ill-defined diplomatic outlook (it has no official relations with the five permanent members of the un Security Council).

The project’s third unique trait is the existential crisis behind it. Bhutan has achieved remarkable success since introducing Gross National Happiness as a development measure in the 1970s. In December it graduated from the un list of “least developed countries”. Its youth literacy rate is above 97%. Since 2015, however, more than 6% of its residents have emigrated, many of them to Australia.

King Jigme hopes that gmc will tempt them back while teaching other Bhutanese to compete at home with foreign talent. And if the project succeeds, he plans to introduce similar policies across the country.

gmc’s promoters talk a lot about “mindfulness”, touting it as a place of spiritual retreats and harmony with nature. At its core, though, the idea is much harder-edged: it is designed to be a financial centre offering a gateway to India, much as Singapore and Hong Kong do for China. It is a long shot. But as King Jigme told recent visitors, it may be the only hope for his nation’s future."

Environment: Azores Approves Creation Of The Largest Marine Protected Area In North Atlantic

The Globe and Mail (Canada) reports, "The regional assembly of Portugal’s Azores Islands approved the creation of the largest protected marine area in the North Atlantic to reach international conservation goals well ahead of time.

The approval late on Thursday places the archipelago at the forefront of global ocean conservation that aims to achieve the goals set by the United Nations of protecting 30 per cent of the Earth’s land and sea by 2030 under a global pact adopted last year.

The network will encompass almost 300,000 square kilometres and ensures the preservation of underwater mountain ranges and vulnerable marine ecosystems, including deep-sea corals, hydrothermal vents and marine species.

“We have acted in advance of the international conservation goals for 2030 with the creation of the largest marine park in the North Atlantic, with fully protected areas and highly protected areas,” Bernardo Brito e Abreu, adviser to the Azorean government on maritime affairs, told Reuters on Friday.

He explained that half of the network would be designated as a fully protected area, which means fishing activities or sea tourism are not allowed. In the other half, designated as a highly protected area, only very selective fishing will be allowed.

The nine-island archipelago is an autonomous region roughly 1,500 kilometres west of mainland Portugal and home to unique marine biodiversity.

The Azores government chief Jose Manuel Bolieiro said the region was leading by example at national, European and international levels in the management and protection of its waters and “making a significant contribution to Portugal meeting the international targets for the decade.”

Climate Change: A Major Push To Protect Nature Is Happening Now

The New York Times reports, "On the agenda is life on earth, in all its forms and diversity. The big question is how far nations will go to stop the disastrous declines underway.

Representatives from more than 175 countries are gathering to negotiate answers, starting on Monday in Cali, Colombia, at what is expected to be the largest United Nations biodiversity conference in history.

How the talks unfold over the next two weeks will help determine, for better or worse, the planet’s future. Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history, an intergovernmental panel of scientists found in 2019. It estimated that a million species were in danger of extinction.

Even many common species are in decline. Bird populations in the United States and Canada, for example, are down almost 30 percent since 1970, with widespread losses among some of the most frequently seen species.

The biggest driver of declines in biodiversity on land is habitat loss, mainly when land is taken for agriculture, the panel found. In the ocean, it’s overfishing. Climate change plays an ever-growing role, and the two crises are intertwined.

Such drastic losses of biodiversity threaten human well-being, scientists warn. Forests filled with birdsong also stash away planet-warming carbon, filter water and create rain. Healthy rivers and oceans run with fish that people need for food. Insects nourish soil and pollinate plants, birds and mammals disperse seeds, plants turn sunshine into food for the rest of us.

“When we destroy biodiversity, we are destroying the very links that help the system to reproduce life,” said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who will be presiding over the conference. “What is at stake is actually another wave of extinction, which could be the sixth general extinction on Earth.” The last one wiped out the dinosaurs.

United Nations negotiations — this session is known as COP16, meaning it is the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity — can sometimes feel absurdly bureaucratic and frustratingly toothless.

But, participants say, global cooperation is fundamental to tackling issues like biodiversity loss and climate change, sprawling environmental crises that transcend national boundaries. (The next United Nations climate conference, the 29th in that series of COPs, starts in Baku, Azerbaijan, next month.)

The United States is essentially the only country that has not ratified the biodiversity treaty. Nevertheless, it is sending a delegation of several dozen people from the State Department and other agencies. The only other exception is the Holy See, which is also expected to attend.

Here’s what’s expected over the next couple of weeks in Cali.

This is the first biodiversity COP since countries reached a landmark agreement in Montreal two years ago. In Cali, the focus is on putting it into action.

The agreement is based on 23 targets to be met by 2030 that, taken together, lay out a road map for what amounts to a new relationship with the natural world. The delegates in Montreal committed to almost eliminating the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance, to halting extinctions, to ensuring that wild species were not overharvested, to reducing pollution effects and much more. One target, known as 30x30, is a pledge to conserve 30 percent of the planet’s land, inland waters and oceans.

Now, in this conference, countries have to submit plans to show how they intend to meet those targets. The plans are due by this meeting.

Advocates for conservation are scrambling to analyze the plans as they come in. They’re also raising alarms that only a small fraction of countries had submitted them before the start of talks. The World Wide Fund for Nature has published a tracker.

“There is a worrying gap between what was promised in Montreal and the plans put in place so far to reverse the loss of nature by 2030,” Bernadette Fischler Hooper, the fund’s head of global advocacy, said in a news release.

At the same time, she acknowledged that change isn’t easy, and that countries were facing multiple challenges, including a lack of funding.

The countries that are richest in biodiversity tend to have less money to spend on protecting it. In Montreal two years ago, sharp disagreements over financing coursed through the negotiations, occasionally blowing up and threatening the entire endeavor. Ultimately, it was agreed that $200 billion per year would be mobilized by 2030.

Even more was needed. The agreement recognized a biodiversity finance gap of $700 billion per year.

Some of that could be met by reaching another target: Countries agreed to phase out $500 billion per year in subsidies that are harmful to nature — which would presumably include fossil fuels, unsustainable agriculture and commercial fishing — and to scale up positive incentives.

But governments have long struggled to redirect such subsidies. A United Nations report issued in December found that environmentally harmful subsidies had increased by 55 percent, to $1.7 trillion, from 2021 to 2022. This was “driven by fiscal support for fossil fuel consumption,” according to the report.

Finances could again be the most difficult and polarized negotiations of the conference, said David Cooper, deputy executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Another potential source of money will be on the agenda: a proposed fund that companies would pay into for access to digital genetic information. That could raise perhaps $1 billion to a few billion dollars per year for countries and Indigenous communities that safeguard biodiversity, Mr. Cooper said.

And, more generally, countries will weigh the degree to which Indigenous people and local communities are able to access funding directly, rather than through national governments.

The theme of the conference is “Peace With Nature,” signifying the need for humans to transform their relationship with the natural world.

“How can we have very prosperous lives, but at the same time that are within the limits of the planet?” Ms. Muhamad said. “What we would like in COP16 is that this question is at the center.”

But for Colombia and many other countries, there is another dimension to the slogan.

Even as environmental protection is a key pillar of President Gustavo Petro’s government, large areas of the Colombian Amazon are under the control of armed rebels, and deforestation has spiked. A group called Estado Mayor Central has “the power to slow or accelerate deforestation at will,” according to a report issued on Friday by the International Crisis Group.

In July, the rebels made what appeared to be a threat against the biodiversity conference before rescinding it a couple of weeks later.

“States don’t have real control over many biodiverse areas,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “Environmental destruction is a business. We have to face those two hard realities in order to advance.”

Last year, Colombia led in a count of people killed defending the environment. Brazil came in second. They are two of the most biodiverse countries in the world."

*Please note that certain headlines and articles may have been modified or summarized to fit the format of the newsletter.

All feedback and comments are welcome.