Chinese Counter Terror Intelligence Module
Compatibility to Nov 26 Mumbai Type Terror Attacks
Dr Sheo Nandan Pandey
China has reasons to bask under glory to have deterred Nov 26 Mumbai types of terror attacks during the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games. The fete, of course, takes caveat of real life scenario against the perceived threat.
Leave China, even in the world at large, the precedence of Nov 26 Mumbai terror attacks carry new meaning, in particular where it relates to planning, training and execution. One could find some sort of semblance just with the failed “1993 New York Landmarks Plot”.
Seen in over all perspectives, Nov 26 Mumbai terror attacks were meticulously woven around operational goals to challenge, if not tearing apart the “protective shield” of the Indian nation state with a difference. The action plan typically succeeded in its bid to neutralize and/ or cripple “watch and ward mechanism” of individual terror target while leaving aside broader outside support system gasping in utter desperation. Last but not the least, it sought to put the fabric of national resilience to test. It was thus, a handiwork of professional and seasoned operators. It was again not a sinister act hatched in just few days.
While quite a few academics, journalists and professional have hitherto found holes in the Indian counter terror intelligence system, it is but an imperative to see how best the system in vogue elsewhere could have hypothetically acquitted in thwarting a terror bid of identical nature and character.[1] The paper, for the present, goes to study the Chinese counter terror module. In its perspective, it assumes that the Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack has been a product of long planning at the behest of very special forces in the field and open society such as India suffers inevitable handicap against terror surveillance and planning at their disposal. It also assumes that the potentials and capabilities of counter terror intelligence system stands circumscribed unless social base works in tandem with the state organs to provide due insulation. Intelligence counterbalance to the terror design, in its stride, is assumed to incorporate bilateral/ multilateral institutional arrangements for viable tip off.
To get to objective reality, the paper has been organized in analytical format, where the narratives would sequentially focus on: the Conceptual Moorings and Orientation; the Legal Base and Criterion; the Institutional Framework and Operating System; and, the Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Experience and China. The data work has been garnered from the open source materials, particularly on-line resources
Conceptual Moorings and Orientation
Chinese counter terror intelligence module is distinctively focussed to handle home grown perceived threats in over all perspectives of probable Diaspora and other sets of external supports. The system has evolved in stages, keeping open eyes on ground situation. Interestingly, it has all along had nelson grip on the likely perpetrators of the terror.
The watchword for the focus of the Chinese counter terror intelligence module, both in broad and specific terms, is enshrined in the cliché “three threats/evils”. [2] The term terrorism (kongbuzhuyi) has been put on equal footing with the terms separatism (fenlizhuyi) and extremism (jiduanzhuyi). The Chinese leadership again quite frequently interchange separatism with splitism (fenliezhuyi). While the Chinese leadership can not faulted for not understanding the subtlety of the two terms, in particular the difference in connotation of the Chinese character “li” in the Chinese compound “fenlizhuyi” for separatism and “lie” in the Chinese compound “fenliezhuyi” for splitism, it speaks out the intensity of percept ional divergence to the phenomenon.
Going by the contexts, the Chinese leadership normally use the word “separatism” to refer to Taiwanese independence movement and “splitism” to dub the tryst of the Dalai Lama and his ilk to secure honourable living for the Tibetan people in the Tibetan plateau at large. In the same vein, the term extremism is being used to refer to protagonists of the “East Turkistan” movement.[3] Notwithstanding, there is now the word “religious extremism” fast in currency.[4] In Chinese counter terror intelligence module, the adherents of Falungong practices, addressed as “cult” in Chinese official jargon, stand out as prime targets.
Terrorism, extremism and separatism are on equal footing obviously as Beijing finds them violent expression of anguish on the part of antagonists, posing challenges to China’s national security, regional stability and political authority of the Communist Party of China (CPC). For all their collective malfeasance, the conceptual blending as “three evils” tend offer China a good measure of propaganda leverage.
Legal Base and Criterion
China has acceded and ratified eleven of the thirteen international conventions on terrorism formulated under the auspices of the United Nations. As for domestic legislation, in 2001, China adopted the Amendment to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (III) which contains new provisions on the punishment of several terrorist crimes. In 2006, China formulated Anti-Money Laundering Law which established the legal system for the prevention of terrorist financing. That law came into effect on January 1, 2007. Currently, China is in the process of drafting a comprehensive and integrated anti-terrorism legislation. Concerning judicial cooperation, the Chinese government has up till now concluded with 58 countries 102 treaties on extradition or judicial assistance, of which 79 have come into effect. In addition, China has signed the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and has started the domestic procedure for the ratification to that convention and the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.[5]
In its notification, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has set criterion for identifying terrorist outfits. It includes activities that the Chinese authorities come to consider prejudicial to national security or social stability. The purview of such acts extends and covers a wide range of activities within and outside China. It included: (a) organizing and/ or masterminding terrorist activities; (b) funding terrorist activities; (c) providing base or bases for terrorist activities or recruiting and training terrorists in an organized way; and, (d) collaborating with international terrorist organizations. In the same vein, the criterion for identifying a terrorist included: (a) having contact with a terrorist organization and engaging in terrorist activities at home or abroad that endanger national security and life and property of people; (b) meeting the aforementioned criteria and being involved in any of the following activities: (i) organizing, heading or taking part in a terrorist organization; (ii) organizing, plotting, instigating and inciting terrorist activities; (iii) providing funding and assistance for terrorist organizations or terrorists for terrorist activities; and, (iv)accepting funding support or training from aforementioned organizations and other international organizations or pitching in their activities.
Institutional Framework and Operating System
China’s counter terror mechanism including intelligence counterbalance follows an upside down framework. China established its national anti-terrorism coordination group (NATCG) under the command and control of the Chinese President, who is concurrently the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Down below, there is Anti Terror Bureau (ATB), responsible for the research, planning, guidance, coordination and accomplishing national level anti terror agenda. It draws all man and material resource for day-to-day functioning from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Nonetheless, the NATCG office is headquartered in the ATB. In the bargain, NATCG is just top coordination body. The ground level job is the province of the Ministry of Public Security. Besides, all the provinces have set up their anti-terrorist co-ordination group and office.
Early Warning and Prevention System (EWPS), Quick Response System (QRS), Consequence Control and Management System (CCMS) and Mass Education and Mass Mobilization (MEMS) have been set up. They have their set role, and have since proved their worth.[6]
The main charter of EWPS is to monitor the activities of terrorist groups. The objective is to forestall the impending attack, if any. It gets updates on regular basis from all the intelligence outfits. Collation, interpretation and dissemination of actionable intelligence on terror outfits stand out as the major task area of the EWPS. It does simultaneously keep a tab on intellectual writings on the issue.[7] There have been two major occasions, when the system was put to real test. First of all it was Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting held in Shanghai in October 2001. The ghost of 9/11 then loomed large. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) could seldom take chance. It identified four activist groups, fomenting troubles in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). They were: the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the East Turkistan Liberation Organization (ETLO), the World Uygur Youth Congress (WUYC) and the East Turkistan Information Center (ETIC). It simultaneously identified 11 major trouble makers: Hasan Mahsum, Muhanmetemin Hazret, Dolqun Isa, Abudujelili Kalakash, Abudukadir Yapuquan, Abudumijit Muhammatkelim, Abudula Kariaji, Abulimit Turxun, Hudaberdi Haxerbik, Yasen Muhammat, and Atahan Abuduhani. EWPS had then to work out and focus on their detailed profile. Accordingly, it got to alert both central and local security agencies in XUAR and other locations to keep through vigil on their movements. It was slightly simple job. The task was arduous during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. EWPS has had to keep eyes and set priorities for action against thousands of people falling in 11 categories and 43 sets of suspects.[8]
The QRS, in its turn, is tasked to undertake follow up in response to the specific intelligence report and/ or on terrorist activity to have taken place. QRS was raised first, in Xinjiang. It has now come to operate in every provincial capital. Immediate Action Unit (IMU) and its tactical Counter Terror (CT) unit go into action.[9] The Units are since specially trained and equipped for Close Quarter Combat (CQB) with emphasis on stealth and performing the mission with minimal casualty. Some of the IMUs hold “Take-over Force”, “Snipers”, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD)/ Impoverished Explosive Device Disposal (IEDD) experts, dog operators and counter terror intelligence officers. The IMUs have often been exposed to harsh terrain military exercises. Some of the notable ones include “Great Wall-2003” multilateral anti terror military exercise held on 26th Sep 03, which was witnessed by the Chinese President Hu Jintao himself. At places, the QRS gets operational support for such missions from the Special Armed Unit (SPU), which is again lavishly equipped with an array of weapons and equipments worth 300000 Yuan (US$ 43795) per combatant.
The CCMS focuses on an array of activities, which could limit the aftermath of terrorist attacks and restore of order in shortest possible time. It goes to be achieved with a fair amount of coordination between various players in the last go such as the designated policemen, the fire- fighters, the armed troops, the civilian rescuers and the medical personnel. It called for joint command and control. It called for training for swift action on demand.
The MEMS has been envisioned to elicit public participation in counter terror efforts. Popularization of anti-terror awareness and public emergency responsiveness are twin pillars of the system. Notwithstanding, it presupposes a measure of spadework in various disciplines of knowledge, in particular relevant work on laws, regulations, and institutions. There have been a flurry of activities prior to the holding of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, which involved officials of various departments carrying out various sets of education and training programmes among civilian populace in Beijing and other host cities of the Games. News items in Chinese vernacular papers then suggested that the PRC would step it up in wake of 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. A number school have added anti-terrorism to their curriculum, while some research institutes and universities have set up their anti-terror research centres.
Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Experience and China
China’s tryst as much as credentials to build institutional Great Wall against terror onslaught seems to fall short of some of the critical parameters to measure up the penetrability of Nov 26 Mumbai sort of terror inflictions. However, to the advantage of the Chinese state and the people, the comfort level against the Nov 26 Mumbai type of terror attack happening stand high for a variety of factors.
The ideological forefather of Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack is Pakistan’s diehard terror entity Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Jamaat-e-islami (JI), an offshoot of al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, an organization with extremist credentials with Hq in Egypt.[10] Lashkhar-e-Tayyiba, the mastermind of the Mumbai carnage under the stewardship of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and his ilk in different names represent abrasive school of thought bent upon to hold reasons and rationality at ransom.[11] With due articulation and support from the state, in particular during the epoch of Gen Pervez Musharraf, the outfit has come to expand terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and sleeper cells in a number of countries around the world.[12] With hold on the Pakistan press, charitable trusts and madrssas across the country, and operating in geo-political backdrop of hysteric state bias and hatred, Lashkhar-e-Tayyiba holds ever damning threat potential for India. While on UNSC list of terrorist organizations, East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the prime source of terror threat to the PRC, can not thus match virulence and effectiveness of Lashkhar-e-Tayyiba in any respect.
The Lashkhar-e-Tayyiba design of Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack plot is apparently an extension of 15 years ago failed 1993 New York Landmarks plot, authored then by al-Qaeda. Points of similarities are but striking. Both New York and Mumbai happened to be the financial capitals of their countries and home to their nations’ major stock exchanges. In both cities, the perpetrators of terror picked out and ravaged high-profile soft targets. Both plans also involved infiltrating hotel staff and booking rooms in the hotels to gain inside information and store supplies. In both cases, there have peripheral targets, meant for causing confusions and chaos. It was perhaps a tactical move to create a diversion from the main target.
With sufficient home work, perhaps in close consultations with the local tip man, the perpetrators of terror targeted first, transportation infrastructure such as the CST railway station. They fired indiscriminately and gave rise to panic. The terror outfit simultaneously detonated explosive devices in taxis and next to gasoline pumps. Meanwhile, part of the terror group attacked other sites around the city. It was predictably aimed at distracting the attention of the security forces from prized target: the Taj Mahal and Trident hotels and Nariman House. Attacking Cama Hospital also sowed chaos, as the injured from one scene of attack became the targets of another while being rescued. It was also aimed at playing up with psyche of the people at large.
Similarity did as well exist in the geography of the two cities. In both plots, the use of watercraft is a distinctive tactical similarity. Watercraft gave militants access at unconventional locations where security could be more lax. Both Mumbai (a peninsula) and Manhattan (an island) offer plenty of points where militants could again mount assaults from watercraft. Such an attack was difficult landlocked cities where militants would have had to enter by road, a route much more likely to encounter police patrols. Being centers of trade and surrounded by water, both Mumbai and New York have high levels of maritime traffic. This means infiltrating the area from the water would raise minimal suspicions, especially if the craft were registered locally (as was the case in the Mumbai attack). Such out-of-the box tactics take advantage of security services, which often tend to focus on established threats.
Similarity did as well exist in the choice for transportation. In addition to using watercraft, both plots involved the use of deceptive vehicles to maneuver around the city undetected. The Landmark plotters used taxis to conduct surveillance and planned on using a delivery van to approach the hotels. In Mumbai, the attackers planted bombs in taxis, and at least one group of militants hijacked a police van and used it to carry out attacks across the city. Using familiar vehicles like taxis, delivery vans or police vans to carry out surveillance or attacks reduces suspicion and increases the element of surprise, allowing militants to stay under cover until the moment of attack.
Pitted against thorough professional intelligence handiwork of the kind, and that again through cross country busy sea route of over 500 nautical miles, the Indian counter terror intelligence outfits suffered a classic faux pass. In identical scenario, it is hard to think that the Chinese counter terror outfits could have done any better. Normal intelligence gathering process could have had little avail.
This is yet no reflection on the working of different Bureaux/ Office in the Chinese Ministry of Public security right from national down to the province/ autonomous region, prefecture and county levels. Intelligence sharing at the top with the concerned Bureaux under the Ministry of State Security, the Second, Third and Fourth Department under General Staff Department (GSD) of People’s Liberation Army (PLA), International Liaison Department (ILD) and China Association of International Friends Contacts (CAIFC) under General Political Department (GPD), the Sixth Research Institute of the PLA Air Force and Naval Intelligence under PLA Navy have constantly been creditable. It was, in fact, time tested during the just concluded 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Meantime, New China News Agency, the mouthpiece of the CPC fills the gap in its own way through open source materials. EWPS and QRS, put in place since Oct 2001, tend to act as the lender of last resort for the last minute job.
Incidentally, the ETIM does not have terror potential through sea routes. All that it has hitherto attempted remained confined to land locked targets. Notwithstanding, through the mechanism of regional cooperation such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China has neutralized the scope of cross Diaspora terror cooperation in all such cases. Only in the changed scenario, there could be Nov 26 Mumbai type terror attacks in commercial centres in the coastal cities and Island business hubs such as Shenzhen, Hainan, Hong Kong and Macao. Chinese intelligence and security mandarin are alive to this grime reality. Mock exercise by the Beijing Special Armed Police Unit (BSAPU) in a Beijing hotel recently is just one example of the Chinese initiative.
[1] Counter-terror refers to practices, tactics and strategies that the state adopts to fight terrorism. It embraces a large number of fields, often referred as “first responders. Counter terror intelligence, in its perspective, refers to the task of collection and dissemination of guarded secrets on the whole set of terror designs and execution plans of terror outfits.
[2] The phrase “three evils” is being used almost as synonym to counter-terrorism operations undertaken in Central Asian countries and Russian Federation besides China.[
[3] East Turkistan is the former name of what is now Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Uyghur, a proud Turkic people, are descendents of nomadic Central Asian stock. They once ruled the region. Clash of culture and various dichotomies in Chinese policy has led to several incidents, particularly since 1990s. There are certain groups who have called for separate political identity, but the majority has not been able to unify.
[4] China came out with and enforced a statute called, “Regulations on Religious Affair” right on March 1, 2005 in the midst of pressure from the Human Rights activists. However, it recognises just five belief systems: the Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. There has been unsubstantiated news about the Chinese authorities considering expanding the list to incorporate Judaism, the Orthodox Church, the Baha’i Faith, and the Mormon Church. During the just concluded 2008 Beijing Olympics Games, the right to worship was extended to even Hindu participants to the event. The said statute yet calls for prior permission and carries a long list of do’s and do not’s. It provides for legal action against violations, and considers religious extremism as an act against the social stability to the determents of the state.
[5] Statement of Liu Zhenmin, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, 08 Oct 2008.
[6] Pan Guang, “East Turkestan Terrorism and the Terrorist Arc: China’s Post 9/11 Anti Terror Strategy”, China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 4, No 2, 2006, pp 19-24.
[7] EWPS has been holding seminars and quite often consulting scholars on terror linked issues. Going by some of the news items in Chinese vernacular papers in the recent past, some of the affiliates of the Chinese National Defence University, in particular Wang Guoqiang, Hu Fan, and Zhanyi Xue keep on advising EWPS on almost regular basis. The same is the case with He Bingsong of China University of Political Science and Law.
[8] For details, see Dr Sheo Nandan Pandey, “2008 Beijing Olympics Security Management: Myth and Reality of Intelligence Inputs on Terror Attack”, http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers30/paper2918.html; as also Strategy_India Digest No. 1167 dated 11 Nov 08
[9] IAU and its CT Unit besides Snow Wolf Commando Units (SWCU) and various Special Police Units in the PRC form parts of 1.5 million strong People’s Armed Police (Zhongguo Wujing). The number of troops engaged in various internal security jobs presently run to 800000 officers and men.
[10] Syed Abul Ala Maududi led and founded al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun in the name of Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan in 1941. While Jamaat-e-Islami does not yet figure among 40 listed terror organizations, it is both sympathiser and supporter of a number of listed terror organizations such as al-Qaida, Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (HAMAS), Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) etc. During the recent crack down on LeT, Jamaat-e-Islami leadership provided full throated support and called the action of the Pakistan government as cowardice. It has been brazenly advocating innocence on the part of Jamaat ud-Dawah (JuD).
[11] Lashkar-e-Tayyiba happens to be one of the 58 religious political parties and 24 armed Jihadi groups were originally created by the Pakistan Army and intelligence outfit ISI in the past six decades as part of covert state policy to quell internal sectarian conflicts and intimidate opponents. Since late 1980s, Pakistan is using Lashkar-e-Tayyiba to maintain its strategic depth in Afghanistan and keeping India tied through proxy war.
[12] Wilson John, Brief Number 12, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU), Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Attacks:perspectives in intelligence counterbalance
Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Attacks
Perspectives in Intelligence Counterbalance
Dr Sheo Nandan Pandey
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack transcends all terror enterprises in its awe. The planning, the training and the execution have been literally perfect. It surpasses the 1993 New York Landmarks Plot.
The design of the plot smacks a planning aimed at penetrating the very “protective shield” of the Indian state, where the operating watch and ward mechanism of the targeted individual institutions, targeted by such did not have much needed “ward off” mechanism in working state fall apart and outside support system made to gasp in utter desperation. Last but not the least, it sought to put the fabric of national resilience to test.
The incidence and impact of the event portend quite pervasive bearing far beyond India. It is pertinent that the blue print has since undergone successful laboratory test. T he miscreants in the field at large can easily recreate it elsewhere with here and there modifications and change. The way the miscreants could recreate1993 New York Landmarks Plot from one hemisphere to another in the Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Attack, it was but a matter of time that the module finds currency elsewhere. It has thus a dimension beyond time and space.
The paper is aimed at addressing the conceptual and applied framework of the Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Attack and examine where and how intelligence network of the country could turn out to be a counterbalance to the macabre design of perpetrators of this multifaceted proxy war. The methodology includes a revisit of the event and draws a parallel in historical perspective. Schematically, the paper is organized in analytical format and goes to focus: the Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Strategy; Tactical Moves and the Weapons of Carnage; Approach and Pattern of Terror Strike; and, the Lessons and Future Actions. In its perspective, the paper looks up for plausible intelligence coverage modules, some thing of which exists and some thing that the country would need to evolve.
Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Strategy
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack, seen as it happened, smacks professional statecraft, involving thorough reconnaissance of all the terror attack sites: the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel; Oberoi Trident Hotel; Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST); Leopold Café; Cama Hospital; Nariman House; and, Metro Cinema. Mazagaon docks and Ville Parle taxi stand were possibly as well the targets. This is evident from the fact that they were able to take position, much less move about in the interiors of the hotels with as much ease as very few with years long acquaintance could otherwise do.
The terrorists group worked in concert and seemed highly organized. With their hands on trigger, and eyes glued to indiscriminate killing, the terrorist group in action displayed a measure of depressive and narcissist characteristics. In over all conduct, in words and deeds, the group has had a singular value system. They reject diversity, diverse values, and see the world in black-white terms. It must not be an outcome of just personal human attribute. Corroborated subsequently in the interrogation of the captured assailant, the group have had training in several phases, which included training in handling weapons, bomb-making, survival strategies, survival in marine environment and even dietary habits.
Notwithstanding, they were thorough with the routes right from source to fan out locations in the city of carnage. Enroute, the group of 10 travelled in two watercrafts, the MV Alpha, a Vietnamese Cargo Ship and the Kuber, an Indian fishing boat. The Kuber was hijacked on Nov. 13, 2008 and its captain was found murdered. Aboard the Ship, the group used a satellite phone to make calls to Karachi. The group simultaneously made use of GPS map to cruise through. Six of the 10 terrorists disembarked from at Macchimar Nagar in the neighbourhood of Cuffe Parade area and the rest sailed beyond along the shore. There was absolute confidence lest they should have given cause of suspicion locals who had made queries about their profession and whereabouts. The same thing happened when the rest others of the group of ten miscreants disembarked from inflatable speed boat in Colaba. Hardly could it ever happen without organized institutional support.
The moves of the miscreants have been quite precise and measured. They broke up into smaller groups once arrived in Mumbai in the watercraft. As part of the action plan, a member of the group had already infiltrated into the ranks of the serving employee of the target institution. Choice for the position of intern chef and work place as Kitchen was again part of well thought of decision. It made person and his movement innocuous. It provided free and unquestioned access to attack and escape routes to the assailants. Again, as part of the plan, the miscreants must have created an aura of trust among the workers. The tactics paid great dividend as it enabled the group to stockpile firearms, ammunitions, grenades and food without raising eye brow of the watch and ward in a VVIP frequented hotel.
Tactical Moves and the Weapons of Carnage
After landing in Colaba, the terrorists moved north and attacked the Colaba police station, possibly as a single unit. The attack on the police command and control node was perhaps a calculated move to disrupt the police response and pin down police units. Early in the fight, the attackers killed the chief of Mumbai's Anti-terrorism Squad and two other senior officials. At least 14 police were reported to have been killed during fighting throughout the city.
From the Colaba police station, the terrorists broke up into smaller teams and fanned out to hit secondary targets throughout Mumbai. At least one police van was hijacked and the terrorists drove around the city, firing automatic weapons from the truck at random targets. In all, 10 locations, including the police station, were attacked. The assault teams struck at vital centres where foreigners were likely to congregate: the five-star Taj Mahal and Trident hotels, the Nariman House (an orthodox Jewish centre), the Cama hospital, the CST railway station, a cinema, and a cafe were all struck almost simultaneously. Two Taxis were also blown up near the airport in the north and the docks in the southern part of the city. Each of the ten terrorists, identified as Ajmal Amir Kasav (22), Soheb (20), Chota Abdul Rahman (21), Umar (22), Abu Ali (23), Fahadullah (24), Ismail Khan (25), Bada Abdul Rahman (25), Abu Akasha (26), Umair (28), carried AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol, magazines, a dozen hand grenades.
Approach and Pattern of Terror Strike
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack and 1993 New York Landmarks Plot carry some striking similarities in historical perspectives, which leaves ground for testing a hypothesis whether it was off the shelf plan. That be show, whether the masterminds in the Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack and 1993 New York Land Marks plot were the same and/ or carried linkage of some definite description.
Both New York and Mumbai happened to be the financial capitals of their countries and home to their nations’ major stock exchanges. In both cities, the perpetrators of terror picked out and ravaged high-profile soft targets. Both plans also involved infiltrating hotel staff and booking rooms in the hotels to gain inside information and store supplies. In both cases, there have peripheral targets, meant for causing confusions and chaos. It was perhaps a tactical move to create a diversion from the main target.
A revisit of the event in Mumbai bears out a planning with sufficient home work at hand. The perpetrators of terror targeted first, transportation infrastructure such as the CST railway station. They fired indiscriminately and gave rise to panic. The terror outfit simultaneously detonated explosive devices in taxis and next to gasoline pumps. Meanwhile, part of the terror group attacked other sites around the city. It was predictably aimed at distracting the attention of the security forces from prized target: the Taj Mahal and Trident hotels and Nariman House. Attacking Cama Hospital also sowed chaos, as the injured from one scene of attack became the targets of another while being rescued. It was also aimed at playing up with psyche of the people at large.
Similarity did as well exist in the geography of the two cities. In both plots, the use of watercraft is a distinctive tactical similarity. Watercraft gave militants access at unconventional locations where security would be more lax. Both Mumbai (a peninsula) and Manhattan (an island) offer plenty of points where militants can mount assaults from watercraft. Such an attack would not have worked in New Delhi or Bangalore; these are landlocked cities where militants would have had to enter by road, a route much more likely to encounter police patrols. Being centers of trade and surrounded by water, both Mumbai and New York have high levels of maritime traffic. This means infiltrating the area from the water would raise minimal suspicions, especially if the craft were registered locally (as was the case in the Mumbai attack). Such out-of-the box tactics take advantage of security services, which often tend to focus on established threats.
Similarity did as well exist in the choice for transportation. In addition to using watercraft, both plots involved the use of deceptive vehicles to maneuver around the city undetected. The Landmark plotters used taxis to conduct surveillance and planned on using a delivery van to approach the hotels. In Mumbai, the attackers planted bombs in taxis, and at least one group of militants hijacked a police van and used it to carry out attacks across the city. Using familiar vehicles like taxis, delivery vans or police vans to carry out surveillance or attacks reduces suspicion and increases the element of surprise, allowing militants to stay under cover until the moment of attack.
It leads to an inference that the 1993 New York Landmarks authored the Mumbai plan. Considering that the group of 10 terrorists embarked to undertake Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack from Karachi, Pakistan, and the previous involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency is a fact beyond any dispute, it is but quite likely that the Lashkar-e- Taiba took leaf from al-Qaeda who had worked out 1993 New York Landmarks plot.
Lessons and Future Actions
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack has open lessons. It is again not just for India. The perpetrators of terror have exemplified their dogged will by recreating failed 1993 New York Landmarks on Indian soils even as it related to continental shift in locale after 15 long years. The module could be extended to other such places in the world for the ghastly act of encroaching upon the right to live in brazen defiance to civil order of peaceful coexistence. Quite a few of American and European cities are literally prone to suffer Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack trauma in similar way. A Yacht could possibly slip into Miami from the Caribbean as it happened from Karachi to Mumbai unless active radar cover kept vigil on each and every watercraft. Houston, Boston, Los Angeles, California and several other cities in US are perhaps as vulnerable as Mumbai from various Karachi like locations.
Nonetheless, it is a case where so to say non-state actor is overtly working for ideological and political space under covert dispensation of state actor. As a result, it has seeds of sowing extra-state pan terror regime to the utter disquiet of centuries old human efforts to set orderly life.
The hypothesis tests positive without an iota of null proposition. 1993 New York Landmarks plot was perceived to be executed with a coordinated master act of several Tactical teams such as the Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack. The high profile soft target included Waldorf-Astoria, St. Regis and UN Plaza hotels, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and midtown Manhattan waterfront heliport servicing business executives and VIP traveling from lower Manhattan to various areas in New York. The terror outfit had prepared the blue print of the attack after extensive surveillance using human probes, hand drawn maps and video surveillance. Detailed information about the lay out was gathered beforehand as in the case of Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack. This was rendered possible due to unhindered access of people at large. It was averted solely as the plotter team was infiltrated by the FBI on the basis of tip off and in Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack the casual approach of the designated state outfits such as the coast guards and the non-state personage such the locals let the strangers get off with pleasantries.
Threat to Indian state and civil society against type Nov 26 Mumbai Terror attack shall perhaps remain real until substantial metamorphic changes in the immediate and remote socio-cultural and political environments behind the growth and development of such macabre acts take place. This has to be fought b the Indian state and non-state systems in a formal way. Reorganization of state organs such the proposed federal agency may perhaps yield little dividend unless half a dozen existing agencies of different denomination in the field come to operate like five fingers with a built-in-system to draw on information, knowledge and perception of others. Gaps are to be bridged and a compatible proactive system response to all possible dimensions created.
India can draw on the British counter terror strategy against the onslaughts of Irish Republican Army (IRA) and new home grown terror outfits, which is based on four pillars: pursue, protect, prepare and prevent. There is Chinese module as well in the field. We shall have to depend yet on our own home grown system.
Counter terror infrastructure including the proposed coastal command, setting up of 20 counter insurgency and counter terrorism schools and the like hold prospect to act both as deterrence and on-time response to the eventualities. They suffer limitations to proactive recourse like the military options in more than one way. A committed intelligence counterbalance stood chance to safeguard both soft and hard terror targets.
The existing intelligence infrastructure could possibly deliver results with a change in approach. For little reckonable rationale, one and all old and new outfits in the field tend to operate in isolation both in inter and intra organization perspectives. Notwithstanding, there is one-up against each others in presenting the inputs with twists of unimaginable proportion.
The domain of terror intelligence is relatively less challenging. A public private partnership (PPP) module with multilevel indication and warning (I&W) windows could possibly help evade slips as it happened in Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack. The system could incorporate modern techniques, such as “information visualization” to zero down broad and specific terror plots of different denominations.
(The author is a defence and security analyst with chequered 4 decades long career in the government)
Perspectives in Intelligence Counterbalance
Dr Sheo Nandan Pandey
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack transcends all terror enterprises in its awe. The planning, the training and the execution have been literally perfect. It surpasses the 1993 New York Landmarks Plot.
The design of the plot smacks a planning aimed at penetrating the very “protective shield” of the Indian state, where the operating watch and ward mechanism of the targeted individual institutions, targeted by such did not have much needed “ward off” mechanism in working state fall apart and outside support system made to gasp in utter desperation. Last but not the least, it sought to put the fabric of national resilience to test.
The incidence and impact of the event portend quite pervasive bearing far beyond India. It is pertinent that the blue print has since undergone successful laboratory test. T he miscreants in the field at large can easily recreate it elsewhere with here and there modifications and change. The way the miscreants could recreate1993 New York Landmarks Plot from one hemisphere to another in the Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Attack, it was but a matter of time that the module finds currency elsewhere. It has thus a dimension beyond time and space.
The paper is aimed at addressing the conceptual and applied framework of the Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Attack and examine where and how intelligence network of the country could turn out to be a counterbalance to the macabre design of perpetrators of this multifaceted proxy war. The methodology includes a revisit of the event and draws a parallel in historical perspective. Schematically, the paper is organized in analytical format and goes to focus: the Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Strategy; Tactical Moves and the Weapons of Carnage; Approach and Pattern of Terror Strike; and, the Lessons and Future Actions. In its perspective, the paper looks up for plausible intelligence coverage modules, some thing of which exists and some thing that the country would need to evolve.
Nov 26 Mumbai Terror Strategy
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack, seen as it happened, smacks professional statecraft, involving thorough reconnaissance of all the terror attack sites: the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel; Oberoi Trident Hotel; Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST); Leopold Café; Cama Hospital; Nariman House; and, Metro Cinema. Mazagaon docks and Ville Parle taxi stand were possibly as well the targets. This is evident from the fact that they were able to take position, much less move about in the interiors of the hotels with as much ease as very few with years long acquaintance could otherwise do.
The terrorists group worked in concert and seemed highly organized. With their hands on trigger, and eyes glued to indiscriminate killing, the terrorist group in action displayed a measure of depressive and narcissist characteristics. In over all conduct, in words and deeds, the group has had a singular value system. They reject diversity, diverse values, and see the world in black-white terms. It must not be an outcome of just personal human attribute. Corroborated subsequently in the interrogation of the captured assailant, the group have had training in several phases, which included training in handling weapons, bomb-making, survival strategies, survival in marine environment and even dietary habits.
Notwithstanding, they were thorough with the routes right from source to fan out locations in the city of carnage. Enroute, the group of 10 travelled in two watercrafts, the MV Alpha, a Vietnamese Cargo Ship and the Kuber, an Indian fishing boat. The Kuber was hijacked on Nov. 13, 2008 and its captain was found murdered. Aboard the Ship, the group used a satellite phone to make calls to Karachi. The group simultaneously made use of GPS map to cruise through. Six of the 10 terrorists disembarked from at Macchimar Nagar in the neighbourhood of Cuffe Parade area and the rest sailed beyond along the shore. There was absolute confidence lest they should have given cause of suspicion locals who had made queries about their profession and whereabouts. The same thing happened when the rest others of the group of ten miscreants disembarked from inflatable speed boat in Colaba. Hardly could it ever happen without organized institutional support.
The moves of the miscreants have been quite precise and measured. They broke up into smaller groups once arrived in Mumbai in the watercraft. As part of the action plan, a member of the group had already infiltrated into the ranks of the serving employee of the target institution. Choice for the position of intern chef and work place as Kitchen was again part of well thought of decision. It made person and his movement innocuous. It provided free and unquestioned access to attack and escape routes to the assailants. Again, as part of the plan, the miscreants must have created an aura of trust among the workers. The tactics paid great dividend as it enabled the group to stockpile firearms, ammunitions, grenades and food without raising eye brow of the watch and ward in a VVIP frequented hotel.
Tactical Moves and the Weapons of Carnage
After landing in Colaba, the terrorists moved north and attacked the Colaba police station, possibly as a single unit. The attack on the police command and control node was perhaps a calculated move to disrupt the police response and pin down police units. Early in the fight, the attackers killed the chief of Mumbai's Anti-terrorism Squad and two other senior officials. At least 14 police were reported to have been killed during fighting throughout the city.
From the Colaba police station, the terrorists broke up into smaller teams and fanned out to hit secondary targets throughout Mumbai. At least one police van was hijacked and the terrorists drove around the city, firing automatic weapons from the truck at random targets. In all, 10 locations, including the police station, were attacked. The assault teams struck at vital centres where foreigners were likely to congregate: the five-star Taj Mahal and Trident hotels, the Nariman House (an orthodox Jewish centre), the Cama hospital, the CST railway station, a cinema, and a cafe were all struck almost simultaneously. Two Taxis were also blown up near the airport in the north and the docks in the southern part of the city. Each of the ten terrorists, identified as Ajmal Amir Kasav (22), Soheb (20), Chota Abdul Rahman (21), Umar (22), Abu Ali (23), Fahadullah (24), Ismail Khan (25), Bada Abdul Rahman (25), Abu Akasha (26), Umair (28), carried AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol, magazines, a dozen hand grenades.
Approach and Pattern of Terror Strike
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack and 1993 New York Landmarks Plot carry some striking similarities in historical perspectives, which leaves ground for testing a hypothesis whether it was off the shelf plan. That be show, whether the masterminds in the Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack and 1993 New York Land Marks plot were the same and/ or carried linkage of some definite description.
Both New York and Mumbai happened to be the financial capitals of their countries and home to their nations’ major stock exchanges. In both cities, the perpetrators of terror picked out and ravaged high-profile soft targets. Both plans also involved infiltrating hotel staff and booking rooms in the hotels to gain inside information and store supplies. In both cases, there have peripheral targets, meant for causing confusions and chaos. It was perhaps a tactical move to create a diversion from the main target.
A revisit of the event in Mumbai bears out a planning with sufficient home work at hand. The perpetrators of terror targeted first, transportation infrastructure such as the CST railway station. They fired indiscriminately and gave rise to panic. The terror outfit simultaneously detonated explosive devices in taxis and next to gasoline pumps. Meanwhile, part of the terror group attacked other sites around the city. It was predictably aimed at distracting the attention of the security forces from prized target: the Taj Mahal and Trident hotels and Nariman House. Attacking Cama Hospital also sowed chaos, as the injured from one scene of attack became the targets of another while being rescued. It was also aimed at playing up with psyche of the people at large.
Similarity did as well exist in the geography of the two cities. In both plots, the use of watercraft is a distinctive tactical similarity. Watercraft gave militants access at unconventional locations where security would be more lax. Both Mumbai (a peninsula) and Manhattan (an island) offer plenty of points where militants can mount assaults from watercraft. Such an attack would not have worked in New Delhi or Bangalore; these are landlocked cities where militants would have had to enter by road, a route much more likely to encounter police patrols. Being centers of trade and surrounded by water, both Mumbai and New York have high levels of maritime traffic. This means infiltrating the area from the water would raise minimal suspicions, especially if the craft were registered locally (as was the case in the Mumbai attack). Such out-of-the box tactics take advantage of security services, which often tend to focus on established threats.
Similarity did as well exist in the choice for transportation. In addition to using watercraft, both plots involved the use of deceptive vehicles to maneuver around the city undetected. The Landmark plotters used taxis to conduct surveillance and planned on using a delivery van to approach the hotels. In Mumbai, the attackers planted bombs in taxis, and at least one group of militants hijacked a police van and used it to carry out attacks across the city. Using familiar vehicles like taxis, delivery vans or police vans to carry out surveillance or attacks reduces suspicion and increases the element of surprise, allowing militants to stay under cover until the moment of attack.
It leads to an inference that the 1993 New York Landmarks authored the Mumbai plan. Considering that the group of 10 terrorists embarked to undertake Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack from Karachi, Pakistan, and the previous involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency is a fact beyond any dispute, it is but quite likely that the Lashkar-e- Taiba took leaf from al-Qaeda who had worked out 1993 New York Landmarks plot.
Lessons and Future Actions
Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack has open lessons. It is again not just for India. The perpetrators of terror have exemplified their dogged will by recreating failed 1993 New York Landmarks on Indian soils even as it related to continental shift in locale after 15 long years. The module could be extended to other such places in the world for the ghastly act of encroaching upon the right to live in brazen defiance to civil order of peaceful coexistence. Quite a few of American and European cities are literally prone to suffer Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack trauma in similar way. A Yacht could possibly slip into Miami from the Caribbean as it happened from Karachi to Mumbai unless active radar cover kept vigil on each and every watercraft. Houston, Boston, Los Angeles, California and several other cities in US are perhaps as vulnerable as Mumbai from various Karachi like locations.
Nonetheless, it is a case where so to say non-state actor is overtly working for ideological and political space under covert dispensation of state actor. As a result, it has seeds of sowing extra-state pan terror regime to the utter disquiet of centuries old human efforts to set orderly life.
The hypothesis tests positive without an iota of null proposition. 1993 New York Landmarks plot was perceived to be executed with a coordinated master act of several Tactical teams such as the Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack. The high profile soft target included Waldorf-Astoria, St. Regis and UN Plaza hotels, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and midtown Manhattan waterfront heliport servicing business executives and VIP traveling from lower Manhattan to various areas in New York. The terror outfit had prepared the blue print of the attack after extensive surveillance using human probes, hand drawn maps and video surveillance. Detailed information about the lay out was gathered beforehand as in the case of Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack. This was rendered possible due to unhindered access of people at large. It was averted solely as the plotter team was infiltrated by the FBI on the basis of tip off and in Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack the casual approach of the designated state outfits such as the coast guards and the non-state personage such the locals let the strangers get off with pleasantries.
Threat to Indian state and civil society against type Nov 26 Mumbai Terror attack shall perhaps remain real until substantial metamorphic changes in the immediate and remote socio-cultural and political environments behind the growth and development of such macabre acts take place. This has to be fought b the Indian state and non-state systems in a formal way. Reorganization of state organs such the proposed federal agency may perhaps yield little dividend unless half a dozen existing agencies of different denomination in the field come to operate like five fingers with a built-in-system to draw on information, knowledge and perception of others. Gaps are to be bridged and a compatible proactive system response to all possible dimensions created.
India can draw on the British counter terror strategy against the onslaughts of Irish Republican Army (IRA) and new home grown terror outfits, which is based on four pillars: pursue, protect, prepare and prevent. There is Chinese module as well in the field. We shall have to depend yet on our own home grown system.
Counter terror infrastructure including the proposed coastal command, setting up of 20 counter insurgency and counter terrorism schools and the like hold prospect to act both as deterrence and on-time response to the eventualities. They suffer limitations to proactive recourse like the military options in more than one way. A committed intelligence counterbalance stood chance to safeguard both soft and hard terror targets.
The existing intelligence infrastructure could possibly deliver results with a change in approach. For little reckonable rationale, one and all old and new outfits in the field tend to operate in isolation both in inter and intra organization perspectives. Notwithstanding, there is one-up against each others in presenting the inputs with twists of unimaginable proportion.
The domain of terror intelligence is relatively less challenging. A public private partnership (PPP) module with multilevel indication and warning (I&W) windows could possibly help evade slips as it happened in Nov 26 Mumbai terror attack. The system could incorporate modern techniques, such as “information visualization” to zero down broad and specific terror plots of different denominations.
(The author is a defence and security analyst with chequered 4 decades long career in the government)
Wither Chinese Characteristics of Market Economy
Wither Chinese Characteristics of Market Economy
Horizon of China’s Fight Back against Scary Recession
Dr Sheo Nandan Pandey
Introduction
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is beset with recession.[i] It defies all public pronouncement of the Chinese leadership. Barely a fortnight after Hu Jinato’, the Chinese President, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister and Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Foreign Minister had demonstrated and displayed China’s rock bed to withstand surging global financial crisis and its cascading aftermath in the presence of 45 heads of states/governments at the 7th Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Beijing, the Chinese State Council announced a stimulus package of 4 trillion Yuan (US$ 585.5 billion) to ward off the wolf of recession as the US Congress had done in announcing US$ 700 million bail out. 15 members European Union (EU) countries and several other important actors in the world economic scene have followed the suit in their own ways as their economies continued to shrink through the third quarter without likelihood of check during the fourth quarter.
Phenomenon of recession is not some thing new for the world. It is concomitant to business/trade cycles in a capitalist system.[ii] Due to forces of globalization and interdependence of the world economies, the recessionary pressure of one country and/ or group of countries tend to breed recession in another country and/ or group of countries. The bust as such can seldom be avoided unless boom is done away with. The capitalist system does not have to be apologetic as it is reminiscent in its objective laws. There is issue just with the socialist system, which got into being as an anti-thesis to this.[iii] It is still much more in the case of the PRC, which swears by socialism while lives on long despised capitalist road. The appendage “socialist” to “market economy” in specific context of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” serves little intent and purpose except being a cloak.
In this paper, there is an attempt to bring out how best and to what extent the Chinese stimulus package could at long last pull out the Chinese economy from the quagmire of recession much less stop further slide into depression. In its perspective, the paper would shed light on the fact whether the Chinese strides in economic development had reached a stage whereby it was capable of decoupling from the push and pull factors of the global economy. The framework of the study, accordingly, examines: the Spell and Severity; Convulsion and its Inter Sector Spread; the Stimulus Package and its Outreach; and, in finality, the Outlook of Fight Back. The discussions, in the bargain, will throw light on the relative weight of the Chinese economy to square over the losses to consumer confidence. The study will rely basically on open source information to testify various constructs of the study.
Spell and Severity
In the first three quarters of the year 2008, the growth rate of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) has been lower by 2.3 percentage point over the same period last year. In absolute terms, it stood at 20.163 trillion Yuan (US$2.96 trillion). It included 2.18 trillion Yuan generated by the primary industry, 10.11 trillion Yuan by the secondary industry, and 07.87 trillion by the tertiary industry. While the primary sector clocked 0.2 higher percentage points, the secondary and tertiary industries were down by 3.0 and 2.4 percentage points respectively. While acknowledging the phenomenon of deceleration in the Chinese economy, the Chief Economist of the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Yao Jingyuan struck a justificatory note in response to media query. He said the growth rate for the January-September 2008 period was higher than the average rate of growth in the past three decades.[iv] Notwithstanding, the prospect for China’s GDP growth during the fourth quarter is still more bleak. While the estimates widely vary, the best fit range between 5.5%-7%. In the first quarter, the growth rate was 10.6%. It declined to 10.1% and 9% in the second and third quarter of the year 2008 respectively.[v] In fact, after peaking to 11.5% in the first half of 2007, the largest ever since 1994, it has been continuously decelerating. Li Xiaochao, the spokesman of the Chinese NBS, squarely attributed the phenomenon to the global financial crisis and weaker demand for Chinese exports.[vi]
There is visible sign of on set of decline in the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI).The peak of US$ 9.6 billon in June 08 has since witnessed month after month slides. For the reasons best known to China, there is yet no official data on FDI inflow for October 2008. In its latest report on 19th November 2008, the official website of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has cryptically acknowledged “a slower clip” in FDI inflow.[vii] Non-Chinese sources put the amount at US $6.7 billion.[viii] It accounts for 30.2% decline. It is again literally without signs of corrections month after month.[ix]
Interestingly, the simmers started appearing much before the crisis surfaced either in the US or it got to spread elsewhere amidst hyperbolic assessments of some of the top agencies.[x] FDI from the European Union (EU) to the PRC, excluding Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) had dropped sharply from six billion euros (US$ 9.3 billion) in 2006 to 1.8 billion euros in 2007.[xi] The same holds good in the case of FDI inflow from the US.
There is saving grace that the direction of FDI inflow to the PRC is not EU and US dependent. The bulk 87.37% inflow of late stemmed from Hong Kong (44.91%), the British Virgin Islands (17.59%), Singapore (5.07%), Japan (4.36%), South Korea (3.70%), Cayman Islands (3.23%), Samoa (2.95%), Taiwan (1.90%) and Mauritius (1.84%). Deceleration in FDI inflow was yet a point of concern as it constituted over 11.0% of the total FDI inflow to China. Zhu Baoliang, an economist at the National Information Center, predicted a negative growth next year. It is quite another thing that he has attributed higher base of the yesteryears behind the phenomenon.
The brunt of the deceleration is being borne by all the four sets of foreign invested enterprises (FIEs): the Equity Joint Ventures (EJVs), the Cooperative Joint Ventures (CJVs); the Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprises (WFOEs); and, the Foreign Invested Companies Limited (FCLS). Not until recently, they played vital role. They accounted for more or less 27% of value added production, 21% of national tax revenue, and 58% of foreign trade. With the global financial crisis and global slow down knocking at the door, there is quite discernible fall in the EU and US invested enterprises in China. During January-May 2008, for example, the number of newly established FIEs by the 15 EU member countries decreased by 24.85 % year on year basis. During the same period, the number of newly established US invested enterprises dropped by 28.13% year on year basis. The Japanese and South Korean invested enterprises did as well go down in more or less same proportion.
Chinese State Administration for Industry and Commerce recently reported that the total number of FIEs by the third quarter of 2008 stood at 424,600. In 2005, the total number of FIEs stood at 552960. It goes to suggest a straight 23.2% out movement of FIEs. It ignores cumulative accretion due to new approvals in two intervening years. The proportion of FIEs in manufacturing and tertiary industries stands at 51.3:48.7. The axe of deceleration in FDI inflow could be roughly estimated to fall in more or less same range.
In the first six months of 2008, the slowdown in exports led to closure of at least 67,000 factories across China.[xii] It works out shutdown of 11000 factories per month. The latest estimate shows likelihood of at least 100000 factories by the end 2008.[xiii] These affected factories employ nearly 50 million workers. The Chinese Human Resources and Social Security Minister Yin Weimin candidly admitted the number of jobless reaching 10.2 million in the first 10 months 2008.[xiv] This excludes reemployment of 4.5 laid off workers in alternative vocations. A just concluded survey of 84 cities by the Chinese Human Resources and Social Security Minister shows that the demand for workers in the third quarter of 2008 fell by 5.5 per cent. 120 million migrant workers have since returned to their native villages, which they had left two-three decades ago for better future. Pearl River Delta, the home of Made-In- China brand of toys is since seeped into convulsion. As of 21 October 2008, top 50 companies, Smart Union Group included, had applied for liquidation.
Convulsion and its Inter Sector Spread
Notwithstanding the impacts of global financial crisis and consequent global slow down, the crisis in Chinese economy as such is visibly a result of glitch in the export promotion policy. It took the route of FIEs to promote exports, which, in turn, assembled imported components into consumer goods for exports to select few economies. It again offered preferential tax regime for investing in selected economic zones. In the process, Chinese export industry got tied to prevailing business environment in select foreign country as much as select domestic economic zones.
While it ascended the status of world’s third largest trading economy behind the USA and the EU, it lost dynamism to switch and swap to safer pastures in short run to them as well. When it basked in the glory of crossing over US$ 1 trillion exports proceeds in 2004, the US and EU had respectively share of 21% and 18.1% in China’s export drive to the world economies. Hong Kong did as well enjoy place of pride with a share of 17% at long last. The other reckonable destinations were Japan, ASEAN and South Korea with their respective share of 12.4%, 7.2% and 4.7%. The rest of the world held share of just 19.3%. In the bargain, any change in demand for Chinese exports goods in the US and EU was bound to leave abiding impact on outcome. Nonetheless, the other two major destinations of Chinese exports such as Hong Kong and Japan did not have large enough domestic markets. Being closely integrated with the US and EU economies, they could hardly escape the spin effect of slow down.
The Chinese policy thrust in the wake of Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) got to promote indiscriminately small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as it had happened earlier when the Chinese policy thrust favoured large scale enterprises. It has since over 42 million SMEs, which accounted for 67.71% of the gross output value of all China's industrial enterprises.[xv] Notwithstanding, they hitherto employed over 75% of the Chinese workforce in cities and townships. They were again the ones who contributed 58.72% of total tax revenues paid by all Chinese industrial enterprises. Nonetheless, they are the ones which son far generated 65% of China’s patents, over 75% of its technological innovations and nearly 80% new products. Much of the SMEs owe their origin to “zhua da; fang xiao” (grasp the large; release the small) policy of state owned enterprises of late 1990s. As a result, truly private SMEs, started and run by enterprising individuals constitute less than 15% while the majority belong to collectives of yesteryears, particularly the then town and village enterprises (TVEs).[xvi] In the process, they exemplify the characteristics of “old wine in new bottle”. They are largely modelled to produce export good on the lines of FIEs. As a result, they are subject to the vagaries of elasticity of demand in foreign markets.
As of 15th October 2008, 1391 out of a total of 3631 toy factories in Dongguan in Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province were shut down. Hong Kong listed Smart Union Group Holdings Ltd, filed for bankruptcy and the Hong Kong High Court has since appointed provisional liquidators to wind it up. The decision of the company followed loss of US $ 26 million in one goes for want of sufficient demand. Harbour Ring, another company in Dongguan, has cut output and retrenched 4500 out of total of 8000 workers. There is a long list.The region turns out vast quantities of low-cost consumer goods such as toys, textiles, shoes, garments, home appliances and electronics for Western markets. Foreign investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, US and Europe have had flooded the region to set up factories since the 1980s. They are the ones who are now down and out.
Shenzhen, another major manufacturing city in the Pearl River Delta, has been a witness identical scenario. Most manufacturing firms in Baoan and Longgang districts of Shenzhen have been shut. Manufacturers of home appliances and electronics suffered the brunt first and went bankrupt. Weak demand in almost all major export destinations, particularly the United States of America and the EU, rising labor costs, expensive raw materials and the Yuan's appreciation are major contributors. The pang of the slow down is being increasingly felt in all the nine pillar industries of Guangdong province, namely electronics, household appliances, petrochemicals, textile, food and beverage, building materials, paper making, automobile, and medicines.
Shandong, the second largest economic province in terms of GDP after Guangdong has started faltering in no less severe proportion. It laid off 38000 out of 9.14 million workers as on 23rd Nov 2008.[xvii] In the first 10 months of the year, Qingdao, seaside industrial complex of the province, alone dealt with 7897 cases of labour disputes.[xviii] Going by the deliberations of the meeting of the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao with top economists and entrepreneurs on 25th Nov 08, there is mortal fear of the phenomenon of slow down inflicting Chinese economy in quite severe proportion in a wide range of fields, namely petrochemical, telecommunications, auto, steel, nonferrous metal, machinery manufacturing, logistics and real estate.[xix]
Stimulus Package and its Outreach
China has been quite quick to respond to the challenges. It did not hesitate to accept and go by Keynesian prescription in preference to Marxian alternative as well.[xx] To prop up effective demand and sustain supply, China came to resort to a novel instrument, some what similar in spirit but quite different in form to the American palliative. It was a 4 trillion Yuan (US$ 585.5 billion) economic stimulus package, hailed as China’s “New Deal” and characterized to contain elements of composed of what the Chinese tend to call “active fiscal” and “moderately active monetary policy”.
There has been conflicting reports for long about the funding plan. What has hitherto emerged out, the Chinese central government was contemplating to float 1 trillion Yuan (US$146 billion) worth of new construction treasury bonds, with 500 billion Yuan (US$73 billion) scheduled to be sold in each of the next two years. This could bring the budget deficit up to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2009 and 2010. Responsibility for the remaining 3 trillion Yuan (US$438 billion) of the total package will fall to the provinces, mainly through their own budgets and cheap (subsidized) loans provided by the nation’s major banks.[xxi] So far, the People’s Bank of China has asked the national banks to contribute a tiny 100 billion Yuan (US$14.6 billion) in loans for infrastructure projects, but this is likely only an initial push. If the State Council approves the provinces’ right to issue their own bonds, then this too could provide funding, though it will take time for this mechanism to be operable and for provinces to find markets for their bonds.
The plan initially envisaged 10 major steps: building affordable and low rent houses; improvement of roads and power grids in the countryside; expansion of transport networks, particularly dedicated passenger rail links and coal routes; beefing grass root medical system; construction of sewage and rubbish treatment facilities as part of environment protection programme; development of high-tech and service industry; speeding up construction works in disaster hit areas, particularly May 12 earthquake locations; raising average per capita incomes in rural and urban areas through an array of concessions and subsidies; reforms in value added tax rules capable of reducing corporate tax burdens; and, last but not the least, and enhancing financial support to maintain the growth rate.
Local governments are also implementing their own measures, and investment plans totaling at least 10 trillion Yuan (US$ 1.4 trillion) have been announced.[xxii] It includes 3 trillion Yuan (US$ 439 billion) investment plan of Yunnan and 2.3 trillion Yuan (US$ 337 billion) plan of Guangdong province.
Outlook of Fight back
At face of it, the Chinese stimulus package evokes awe. Little different could have otherwise been expected either from resurgent China suddenly faced with the home truth all round declines in fortune.
The Chinese module yet suffers limitation of untold proportion. The challenges before the Chinese leadership are manifold. It has to ignite and sustain first, declining consumer confidence. Figures released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on 01 Nov 08 showed that China’s Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) was 3.2 point lower than the corresponding period last year. It had fallen o.3 point in the third quarter of 2008 as against the second quarter. The CCI, which measures consumers' opinions on employment, the economy, regular income, the stock market and quality of life, was released after the disclosure of a lower entrepreneurial confidence index and a lower business climate index, both year-on-year figures for the third quarter. The NBS data showed that China’s entrepreneurial confidence index dropped to 123.8 in the third quarter, 11 points lower than the previous quarter and 19.2 points lower from the same period last year. In the similar vein, China’s Purchasing Managers Index (MPI), a tell tale measure of manufacturer’s confidence, registered 38.8 in Nov as against 45.2 in Oct 08 and 47.7 in Sep 08. It is again lowest level since the survey began 2004. No amount of rhetoric could perhaps change the ground situation.
There is again some skepticism about how much of the spending is actually new. This is true both about the stimulus package of the Central and local governments. Notwithstanding, the time lag in the case of central investment plan is two years and the provincial five years. It can not thus bear fruits in the short run. Moreover, all the laid off factory workers can not be adjusted in one or the other 10 set of work areas identified in the stimulus package. This is yet not to undermine their importance in providing some sort of succor to the lives of a large number skilled and semi skilled work force hitherto rendered unemployed. To a great measure, China’s experimentation in the fight back against the economic slow down shall be a matter of great interest both for the academics and the decision makers. Skewed industrial structure, particularly oriented to produce export goods of relatively high elasticity of demand is b
[i] The phenomenon of recession is said to take place as and when there is down slide for two or more consecutive quarters in the GDP, rate of employment and consumer confidence.
[ii] A business/ trade cycle consists of expansions occurring at the same time in many economic activities followed by general recession, contractions, and revivals, which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle in a recurrent manner. Business/ trade cycles are classified as the short kitchen cycle, the long Jugler cycle, the very long Kondratieff cycle, the Building cycle, and the Kuznets cycle in terms of longevity of impacts and incidence of the phenomenon.
[iii] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fountain head of socialist system, held that the trade cycle happened to be fundamental to capitalist system. They held free market economy as the prime mover behind the phenomenon. The adherents of socialist system invented the mechanism of planning of different form and shape to avoid the boom and bust cycles.
[iv] Press Conference, China Central TV-4, Chinese, 1130 (IST), 20 Oct 08.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid
[vii] http://www.mofcom.gov.cn
[viii] alan.wheatley@thomsonreuters.com
[ix] The Chinese official data for the first 9 months of 2008 happened to be US$ 74.3 billion. January 2008 has so far been the best period during the year when China attracted US$ 11.2 billion. It was yet down by 14.5% in comparison to the preceding month of December 2008, when the inflow had touched US$ 13.1 billion mark. The inter month rhythm of FDI proceeds during 2008 bear out typical variation. In absolute figures the FDI proceeds were: Jan US$ 11.2 billion; Feb 6.9 billion; Mar US$ 9.3 billion; April 7.6 billion; May 7.8 billion; June 9.6 billion; July 8.3 billion; Aug 7.0 billion; Sep 6.6; Oct 6.7 billion.
[x] Ernst and Young survey, polling 834 international business decision makers in June 2008, showed China as the most favoured investment destination, followed by India and Russia. There is perhaps little fault with the agency as the respondents in the Survey showed their preference on the skewed considerations such the untapped market and growth potentials of individual destination without attaching weight to other influences, such as the stock position of ready money, the risk factor and the like.
[xi] Eurostat, quoted MOFCOM, June 16, 2008, “EU Investment in China Shrinks”.
[xii] http://www.ntimes.com/2008/11/14/world/asia/14china.html
[xiii] http://www.asianews.it/index.php?
[xiv] State Council Information Office Press Conference, CCTV-4, 20 Nov. 2008; http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2008/200811/20081120/article_381380.htm
[xv] Chen Changzhi, vice chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, disclosed at the 2008 China Non-Public Economic Development Forum on November 11, 2008 that the number of small and medium-sized enterprises in China has already exceeded 42 million.
[xvi] There are now altogether 119000 large state owned enterprises (SOEs) in China. In pursuance of “zhua da fang xiao” policy of 1990s, China facilitated conversion of ownership of a large number of SOEs.
[xvii] Xinhua on line, 23 Nov 08.
[xviii] Ibid
[xix] Xinhua on line, 25 Nov 08.
[xx] In his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes talked of correlation between aggregate demand, aggregate supply and effective demand, which constitute the corner stone of modern monetary and fiscal policies in market economy. New Deal policy of American President Roosevelt was fashioned on it to fight back the great depression of 1930s, which sought to stimulate demand by providing employment and relief to impoverished populace.
[xxi] http://www.stratfor.com/20081114_china_emerging_details_radical_stimulus_package
[xxii] China Central TV-4, Chinese, 1430 hrs, (IST), 23 Nov 08.
Horizon of China’s Fight Back against Scary Recession
Dr Sheo Nandan Pandey
Introduction
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is beset with recession.[i] It defies all public pronouncement of the Chinese leadership. Barely a fortnight after Hu Jinato’, the Chinese President, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister and Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Foreign Minister had demonstrated and displayed China’s rock bed to withstand surging global financial crisis and its cascading aftermath in the presence of 45 heads of states/governments at the 7th Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Beijing, the Chinese State Council announced a stimulus package of 4 trillion Yuan (US$ 585.5 billion) to ward off the wolf of recession as the US Congress had done in announcing US$ 700 million bail out. 15 members European Union (EU) countries and several other important actors in the world economic scene have followed the suit in their own ways as their economies continued to shrink through the third quarter without likelihood of check during the fourth quarter.
Phenomenon of recession is not some thing new for the world. It is concomitant to business/trade cycles in a capitalist system.[ii] Due to forces of globalization and interdependence of the world economies, the recessionary pressure of one country and/ or group of countries tend to breed recession in another country and/ or group of countries. The bust as such can seldom be avoided unless boom is done away with. The capitalist system does not have to be apologetic as it is reminiscent in its objective laws. There is issue just with the socialist system, which got into being as an anti-thesis to this.[iii] It is still much more in the case of the PRC, which swears by socialism while lives on long despised capitalist road. The appendage “socialist” to “market economy” in specific context of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” serves little intent and purpose except being a cloak.
In this paper, there is an attempt to bring out how best and to what extent the Chinese stimulus package could at long last pull out the Chinese economy from the quagmire of recession much less stop further slide into depression. In its perspective, the paper would shed light on the fact whether the Chinese strides in economic development had reached a stage whereby it was capable of decoupling from the push and pull factors of the global economy. The framework of the study, accordingly, examines: the Spell and Severity; Convulsion and its Inter Sector Spread; the Stimulus Package and its Outreach; and, in finality, the Outlook of Fight Back. The discussions, in the bargain, will throw light on the relative weight of the Chinese economy to square over the losses to consumer confidence. The study will rely basically on open source information to testify various constructs of the study.
Spell and Severity
In the first three quarters of the year 2008, the growth rate of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) has been lower by 2.3 percentage point over the same period last year. In absolute terms, it stood at 20.163 trillion Yuan (US$2.96 trillion). It included 2.18 trillion Yuan generated by the primary industry, 10.11 trillion Yuan by the secondary industry, and 07.87 trillion by the tertiary industry. While the primary sector clocked 0.2 higher percentage points, the secondary and tertiary industries were down by 3.0 and 2.4 percentage points respectively. While acknowledging the phenomenon of deceleration in the Chinese economy, the Chief Economist of the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Yao Jingyuan struck a justificatory note in response to media query. He said the growth rate for the January-September 2008 period was higher than the average rate of growth in the past three decades.[iv] Notwithstanding, the prospect for China’s GDP growth during the fourth quarter is still more bleak. While the estimates widely vary, the best fit range between 5.5%-7%. In the first quarter, the growth rate was 10.6%. It declined to 10.1% and 9% in the second and third quarter of the year 2008 respectively.[v] In fact, after peaking to 11.5% in the first half of 2007, the largest ever since 1994, it has been continuously decelerating. Li Xiaochao, the spokesman of the Chinese NBS, squarely attributed the phenomenon to the global financial crisis and weaker demand for Chinese exports.[vi]
There is visible sign of on set of decline in the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI).The peak of US$ 9.6 billon in June 08 has since witnessed month after month slides. For the reasons best known to China, there is yet no official data on FDI inflow for October 2008. In its latest report on 19th November 2008, the official website of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has cryptically acknowledged “a slower clip” in FDI inflow.[vii] Non-Chinese sources put the amount at US $6.7 billion.[viii] It accounts for 30.2% decline. It is again literally without signs of corrections month after month.[ix]
Interestingly, the simmers started appearing much before the crisis surfaced either in the US or it got to spread elsewhere amidst hyperbolic assessments of some of the top agencies.[x] FDI from the European Union (EU) to the PRC, excluding Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) had dropped sharply from six billion euros (US$ 9.3 billion) in 2006 to 1.8 billion euros in 2007.[xi] The same holds good in the case of FDI inflow from the US.
There is saving grace that the direction of FDI inflow to the PRC is not EU and US dependent. The bulk 87.37% inflow of late stemmed from Hong Kong (44.91%), the British Virgin Islands (17.59%), Singapore (5.07%), Japan (4.36%), South Korea (3.70%), Cayman Islands (3.23%), Samoa (2.95%), Taiwan (1.90%) and Mauritius (1.84%). Deceleration in FDI inflow was yet a point of concern as it constituted over 11.0% of the total FDI inflow to China. Zhu Baoliang, an economist at the National Information Center, predicted a negative growth next year. It is quite another thing that he has attributed higher base of the yesteryears behind the phenomenon.
The brunt of the deceleration is being borne by all the four sets of foreign invested enterprises (FIEs): the Equity Joint Ventures (EJVs), the Cooperative Joint Ventures (CJVs); the Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprises (WFOEs); and, the Foreign Invested Companies Limited (FCLS). Not until recently, they played vital role. They accounted for more or less 27% of value added production, 21% of national tax revenue, and 58% of foreign trade. With the global financial crisis and global slow down knocking at the door, there is quite discernible fall in the EU and US invested enterprises in China. During January-May 2008, for example, the number of newly established FIEs by the 15 EU member countries decreased by 24.85 % year on year basis. During the same period, the number of newly established US invested enterprises dropped by 28.13% year on year basis. The Japanese and South Korean invested enterprises did as well go down in more or less same proportion.
Chinese State Administration for Industry and Commerce recently reported that the total number of FIEs by the third quarter of 2008 stood at 424,600. In 2005, the total number of FIEs stood at 552960. It goes to suggest a straight 23.2% out movement of FIEs. It ignores cumulative accretion due to new approvals in two intervening years. The proportion of FIEs in manufacturing and tertiary industries stands at 51.3:48.7. The axe of deceleration in FDI inflow could be roughly estimated to fall in more or less same range.
In the first six months of 2008, the slowdown in exports led to closure of at least 67,000 factories across China.[xii] It works out shutdown of 11000 factories per month. The latest estimate shows likelihood of at least 100000 factories by the end 2008.[xiii] These affected factories employ nearly 50 million workers. The Chinese Human Resources and Social Security Minister Yin Weimin candidly admitted the number of jobless reaching 10.2 million in the first 10 months 2008.[xiv] This excludes reemployment of 4.5 laid off workers in alternative vocations. A just concluded survey of 84 cities by the Chinese Human Resources and Social Security Minister shows that the demand for workers in the third quarter of 2008 fell by 5.5 per cent. 120 million migrant workers have since returned to their native villages, which they had left two-three decades ago for better future. Pearl River Delta, the home of Made-In- China brand of toys is since seeped into convulsion. As of 21 October 2008, top 50 companies, Smart Union Group included, had applied for liquidation.
Convulsion and its Inter Sector Spread
Notwithstanding the impacts of global financial crisis and consequent global slow down, the crisis in Chinese economy as such is visibly a result of glitch in the export promotion policy. It took the route of FIEs to promote exports, which, in turn, assembled imported components into consumer goods for exports to select few economies. It again offered preferential tax regime for investing in selected economic zones. In the process, Chinese export industry got tied to prevailing business environment in select foreign country as much as select domestic economic zones.
While it ascended the status of world’s third largest trading economy behind the USA and the EU, it lost dynamism to switch and swap to safer pastures in short run to them as well. When it basked in the glory of crossing over US$ 1 trillion exports proceeds in 2004, the US and EU had respectively share of 21% and 18.1% in China’s export drive to the world economies. Hong Kong did as well enjoy place of pride with a share of 17% at long last. The other reckonable destinations were Japan, ASEAN and South Korea with their respective share of 12.4%, 7.2% and 4.7%. The rest of the world held share of just 19.3%. In the bargain, any change in demand for Chinese exports goods in the US and EU was bound to leave abiding impact on outcome. Nonetheless, the other two major destinations of Chinese exports such as Hong Kong and Japan did not have large enough domestic markets. Being closely integrated with the US and EU economies, they could hardly escape the spin effect of slow down.
The Chinese policy thrust in the wake of Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) got to promote indiscriminately small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as it had happened earlier when the Chinese policy thrust favoured large scale enterprises. It has since over 42 million SMEs, which accounted for 67.71% of the gross output value of all China's industrial enterprises.[xv] Notwithstanding, they hitherto employed over 75% of the Chinese workforce in cities and townships. They were again the ones who contributed 58.72% of total tax revenues paid by all Chinese industrial enterprises. Nonetheless, they are the ones which son far generated 65% of China’s patents, over 75% of its technological innovations and nearly 80% new products. Much of the SMEs owe their origin to “zhua da; fang xiao” (grasp the large; release the small) policy of state owned enterprises of late 1990s. As a result, truly private SMEs, started and run by enterprising individuals constitute less than 15% while the majority belong to collectives of yesteryears, particularly the then town and village enterprises (TVEs).[xvi] In the process, they exemplify the characteristics of “old wine in new bottle”. They are largely modelled to produce export good on the lines of FIEs. As a result, they are subject to the vagaries of elasticity of demand in foreign markets.
As of 15th October 2008, 1391 out of a total of 3631 toy factories in Dongguan in Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province were shut down. Hong Kong listed Smart Union Group Holdings Ltd, filed for bankruptcy and the Hong Kong High Court has since appointed provisional liquidators to wind it up. The decision of the company followed loss of US $ 26 million in one goes for want of sufficient demand. Harbour Ring, another company in Dongguan, has cut output and retrenched 4500 out of total of 8000 workers. There is a long list.The region turns out vast quantities of low-cost consumer goods such as toys, textiles, shoes, garments, home appliances and electronics for Western markets. Foreign investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, US and Europe have had flooded the region to set up factories since the 1980s. They are the ones who are now down and out.
Shenzhen, another major manufacturing city in the Pearl River Delta, has been a witness identical scenario. Most manufacturing firms in Baoan and Longgang districts of Shenzhen have been shut. Manufacturers of home appliances and electronics suffered the brunt first and went bankrupt. Weak demand in almost all major export destinations, particularly the United States of America and the EU, rising labor costs, expensive raw materials and the Yuan's appreciation are major contributors. The pang of the slow down is being increasingly felt in all the nine pillar industries of Guangdong province, namely electronics, household appliances, petrochemicals, textile, food and beverage, building materials, paper making, automobile, and medicines.
Shandong, the second largest economic province in terms of GDP after Guangdong has started faltering in no less severe proportion. It laid off 38000 out of 9.14 million workers as on 23rd Nov 2008.[xvii] In the first 10 months of the year, Qingdao, seaside industrial complex of the province, alone dealt with 7897 cases of labour disputes.[xviii] Going by the deliberations of the meeting of the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao with top economists and entrepreneurs on 25th Nov 08, there is mortal fear of the phenomenon of slow down inflicting Chinese economy in quite severe proportion in a wide range of fields, namely petrochemical, telecommunications, auto, steel, nonferrous metal, machinery manufacturing, logistics and real estate.[xix]
Stimulus Package and its Outreach
China has been quite quick to respond to the challenges. It did not hesitate to accept and go by Keynesian prescription in preference to Marxian alternative as well.[xx] To prop up effective demand and sustain supply, China came to resort to a novel instrument, some what similar in spirit but quite different in form to the American palliative. It was a 4 trillion Yuan (US$ 585.5 billion) economic stimulus package, hailed as China’s “New Deal” and characterized to contain elements of composed of what the Chinese tend to call “active fiscal” and “moderately active monetary policy”.
There has been conflicting reports for long about the funding plan. What has hitherto emerged out, the Chinese central government was contemplating to float 1 trillion Yuan (US$146 billion) worth of new construction treasury bonds, with 500 billion Yuan (US$73 billion) scheduled to be sold in each of the next two years. This could bring the budget deficit up to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2009 and 2010. Responsibility for the remaining 3 trillion Yuan (US$438 billion) of the total package will fall to the provinces, mainly through their own budgets and cheap (subsidized) loans provided by the nation’s major banks.[xxi] So far, the People’s Bank of China has asked the national banks to contribute a tiny 100 billion Yuan (US$14.6 billion) in loans for infrastructure projects, but this is likely only an initial push. If the State Council approves the provinces’ right to issue their own bonds, then this too could provide funding, though it will take time for this mechanism to be operable and for provinces to find markets for their bonds.
The plan initially envisaged 10 major steps: building affordable and low rent houses; improvement of roads and power grids in the countryside; expansion of transport networks, particularly dedicated passenger rail links and coal routes; beefing grass root medical system; construction of sewage and rubbish treatment facilities as part of environment protection programme; development of high-tech and service industry; speeding up construction works in disaster hit areas, particularly May 12 earthquake locations; raising average per capita incomes in rural and urban areas through an array of concessions and subsidies; reforms in value added tax rules capable of reducing corporate tax burdens; and, last but not the least, and enhancing financial support to maintain the growth rate.
Local governments are also implementing their own measures, and investment plans totaling at least 10 trillion Yuan (US$ 1.4 trillion) have been announced.[xxii] It includes 3 trillion Yuan (US$ 439 billion) investment plan of Yunnan and 2.3 trillion Yuan (US$ 337 billion) plan of Guangdong province.
Outlook of Fight back
At face of it, the Chinese stimulus package evokes awe. Little different could have otherwise been expected either from resurgent China suddenly faced with the home truth all round declines in fortune.
The Chinese module yet suffers limitation of untold proportion. The challenges before the Chinese leadership are manifold. It has to ignite and sustain first, declining consumer confidence. Figures released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on 01 Nov 08 showed that China’s Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) was 3.2 point lower than the corresponding period last year. It had fallen o.3 point in the third quarter of 2008 as against the second quarter. The CCI, which measures consumers' opinions on employment, the economy, regular income, the stock market and quality of life, was released after the disclosure of a lower entrepreneurial confidence index and a lower business climate index, both year-on-year figures for the third quarter. The NBS data showed that China’s entrepreneurial confidence index dropped to 123.8 in the third quarter, 11 points lower than the previous quarter and 19.2 points lower from the same period last year. In the similar vein, China’s Purchasing Managers Index (MPI), a tell tale measure of manufacturer’s confidence, registered 38.8 in Nov as against 45.2 in Oct 08 and 47.7 in Sep 08. It is again lowest level since the survey began 2004. No amount of rhetoric could perhaps change the ground situation.
There is again some skepticism about how much of the spending is actually new. This is true both about the stimulus package of the Central and local governments. Notwithstanding, the time lag in the case of central investment plan is two years and the provincial five years. It can not thus bear fruits in the short run. Moreover, all the laid off factory workers can not be adjusted in one or the other 10 set of work areas identified in the stimulus package. This is yet not to undermine their importance in providing some sort of succor to the lives of a large number skilled and semi skilled work force hitherto rendered unemployed. To a great measure, China’s experimentation in the fight back against the economic slow down shall be a matter of great interest both for the academics and the decision makers. Skewed industrial structure, particularly oriented to produce export goods of relatively high elasticity of demand is b
[i] The phenomenon of recession is said to take place as and when there is down slide for two or more consecutive quarters in the GDP, rate of employment and consumer confidence.
[ii] A business/ trade cycle consists of expansions occurring at the same time in many economic activities followed by general recession, contractions, and revivals, which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle in a recurrent manner. Business/ trade cycles are classified as the short kitchen cycle, the long Jugler cycle, the very long Kondratieff cycle, the Building cycle, and the Kuznets cycle in terms of longevity of impacts and incidence of the phenomenon.
[iii] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fountain head of socialist system, held that the trade cycle happened to be fundamental to capitalist system. They held free market economy as the prime mover behind the phenomenon. The adherents of socialist system invented the mechanism of planning of different form and shape to avoid the boom and bust cycles.
[iv] Press Conference, China Central TV-4, Chinese, 1130 (IST), 20 Oct 08.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid
[vii] http://www.mofcom.gov.cn
[viii] alan.wheatley@thomsonreuters.com
[ix] The Chinese official data for the first 9 months of 2008 happened to be US$ 74.3 billion. January 2008 has so far been the best period during the year when China attracted US$ 11.2 billion. It was yet down by 14.5% in comparison to the preceding month of December 2008, when the inflow had touched US$ 13.1 billion mark. The inter month rhythm of FDI proceeds during 2008 bear out typical variation. In absolute figures the FDI proceeds were: Jan US$ 11.2 billion; Feb 6.9 billion; Mar US$ 9.3 billion; April 7.6 billion; May 7.8 billion; June 9.6 billion; July 8.3 billion; Aug 7.0 billion; Sep 6.6; Oct 6.7 billion.
[x] Ernst and Young survey, polling 834 international business decision makers in June 2008, showed China as the most favoured investment destination, followed by India and Russia. There is perhaps little fault with the agency as the respondents in the Survey showed their preference on the skewed considerations such the untapped market and growth potentials of individual destination without attaching weight to other influences, such as the stock position of ready money, the risk factor and the like.
[xi] Eurostat, quoted MOFCOM, June 16, 2008, “EU Investment in China Shrinks”.
[xii] http://www.ntimes.com/2008/11/14/world/asia/14china.html
[xiii] http://www.asianews.it/index.php?
[xiv] State Council Information Office Press Conference, CCTV-4, 20 Nov. 2008; http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2008/200811/20081120/article_381380.htm
[xv] Chen Changzhi, vice chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, disclosed at the 2008 China Non-Public Economic Development Forum on November 11, 2008 that the number of small and medium-sized enterprises in China has already exceeded 42 million.
[xvi] There are now altogether 119000 large state owned enterprises (SOEs) in China. In pursuance of “zhua da fang xiao” policy of 1990s, China facilitated conversion of ownership of a large number of SOEs.
[xvii] Xinhua on line, 23 Nov 08.
[xviii] Ibid
[xix] Xinhua on line, 25 Nov 08.
[xx] In his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes talked of correlation between aggregate demand, aggregate supply and effective demand, which constitute the corner stone of modern monetary and fiscal policies in market economy. New Deal policy of American President Roosevelt was fashioned on it to fight back the great depression of 1930s, which sought to stimulate demand by providing employment and relief to impoverished populace.
[xxi] http://www.stratfor.com/20081114_china_emerging_details_radical_stimulus_package
[xxii] China Central TV-4, Chinese, 1430 hrs, (IST), 23 Nov 08.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
china space infrastructure
Ground Test of China’s Space Based Infrastructure
Wenchuan Earthquake Management
Dr S N Pandey
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has consistently been improving its space based infrastructure. In 28 years since the first successful launch of Dong Fang Hong-1 Satellite into orbit on 24 April 1970, the PRC has demonstrably scaled many a reckonable technological steps. The space missions that the PRC launches today include: recovery capsules and non-capsule remote sensing satellites; communication/ broadcasting satellites; metrological satellites; science satellites; engineering test satellites; positioning satellites; and, manned space satellites. China’s goals and objectives for going into orbit with a variety of space assets including manned are predictably similar to those that drove the Russian and the US- to gain national prestige, and to signal wealth, commitments and technological prowess.
Development of space infrastructure has wide ranging applications, which includes meeting environmental challenges. Earth observation (EO), telecommunications and navigation systems together can be used to monitor evolution of fault lines, landslides, subsidence, seismic tremors and outburst of volcanoes. Some of the components of the space infrastructure such as the Global Navigation Space System (GNSS) and space based augmentation system (SBAS), Geographic Information System (GIS), miniaturized computer components, automatic control and in-field and remote sensing have veritable potential to provide useful input to disaster management information systems.
As being earthquake prone country, the PRC is live to the need to merge the traditional earthquake prediction methods, tools and techniques with the modern technology based western approaches. There have been 9 earthquakes larger than a grade of 8 on Richter scale in north-south earthquake zone from 1739, and 7 of them after 1897, when the greatest one was at Haiyun in 1920 and at Chayu in 1950, both of them measured 8.5. The Wenchuan earthquake on May 12th, 2008, measured 8, and was strong enough to sway buildings in Beijing (1500 km) and Shanghai (1700 km). In Wenchuan earthquakes, the worst hit areas included Beichuan and Qingchuan with earthquake measured at 11, with the maximum being 12 by the Chinese seismic survey standards.
It was cataclysmic natural disaster. It left 5 million people homeless, killed 69170 people and injured 368545 others. As many as 18830 people are yet officially listed as missing ones. Notwithstanding, cracks in Tangjiashan Barrier Lake in Beichuan County had posed danger of inundating area inhabited by 1.3 million people. It took six days to dig 475 meters long and 12 meters wide diversion channel to divert 89000 cubic meters of water. Life in the affected areas of Sichuan and adjoining provinces in southwest China could limp back to near normalcy not until late July 2008 despite deployment of over 133000 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF) personnel.
After five months of hectic rescue and relief operations, the Chinese State Council declared termination of its “General Headquarters of Earthquake Relief” on 14th October 2008. In its resolution, the State Council eloquently noted the contributions of “local people and officials in the affected areas, members of the PLA and the PAPF, and people from all circles under the direct leadership of the party organization and governments in the affected areas”. In finality, the State Council meeting declared that the earthquake relief had come to a phase of rehabilitation, which was to take about three years to complete. This was simultaneously the 26th and the last meeting of the General Headquarters of Earthquake Relief, set up under the Chairmanship of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to oversee the relief and rescue operations.[1] The resolution, tabled by the Chinese Premier, had unequivocal support of all those who wield present and hold prospect for future Chinese leadership such as vice Premier Li Keqiang, vice Premier Hui Liangyu, State Councilor and State Council Secretary General Ma Kai, and State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Meng Hianzhu. While a bygone issue, it is a puzzle that the Chinese leadership did not have a word about the contribution of China’s space based infrastructure in the whole gamut of disaster management.
In this backdrop, the paper goes to study the role, and thereby, throw light on the capabilities of China’s space based infrastructure in disaster management during the Wenchuan earthquake. The paper aims at bridging information gap and drawing lessons from the Chinese experience. The focus of the study, accordingly, lay on: the system requirement and China’s space assets; Wenchuan Earthquake and the Support Function of the Chinese Space Based System; and last but not the least, the efficacy of the Chinese space assets in disaster management. As space assets are characterized to have dual use, the paper would peep into the plausible military applications of the Chinese space assets. Open source Chinese and other on-line informations constitute the basic foundation and bulwark for analytical inferences.
System Requirement and China’s Space Assets
Chinese earthquake prediction research traditionally takes cue from intuitive techniques, much of which went to look into and draw inferences from unusual events before the earthquake. It included changes in the ground water levels, strange animal behaviour and foreshocks. In a blog, Li Shihui, a researcher with the Institute of Geophysics and Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), claimed absolute relationship between incidents of drought and earthquake. He credited Geng Qingguo, Wang Chenmin, Ren Zhenqiu, and Wand Dixing for their predictions, much ahead May 12 Wenquan earthquake.
While crude in form, the Chinese traditional approach to earthquake prediction does have a window on scientific factors. Earthquake produces seismic waves. The first wave detected by the modern seismological stations is called P-wave. The Chinese system goes by the premise that the animals are susceptible to sonar stimulants and hence, change in the behaviour of animals follows detection P-waves days and hours ahead of occurrences. Interestingly, the modern age earths scientists do as well draw on P-wave to track back the time and epicenter of earth quakes.
The track record of this Chinese approach has been not that bad. Haicheng city in northeast China’s Liaoning province was hit by earthquakes on 04th February 1975. It measured 7.3 Richter scale. It was again hit in November 1999. The intensity was relatively low at 5.4 Richter scale. While damage to property was inevitable, prediction in advance 4-5 days saved a large number of precious lives. However, in contrast, in the case of July 1976 Tangshan earthquakes and May 2008 Wenquan Earthquake, the Chinese systems did not have inklings, much less a clear cut prediction.
Precise prediction hitherto eludes despite reckonable scientific and technological advancements in the field of seismological studies. Among the terrestrial approaches, the use of ultrasound imaging technique, developed by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography enable onset of earthquake 10-20 minutes ahead of occurrence. The PRC did not have access to this technique until May 2008 Wenquan earthquake. It did have in place space based technology, which, inter alia, requires articulation for earth observation (EO), navigation and telecommunications systems.
Earth observation system normally constitutes of an array of the geostationary and polar satellites. They are specially designed to observe earth from orbit, similar to reconnaissance satellites. While geostationary satellites hover over the same spot, and provide continuous monitoring to a particular portion of Earth, the polar satellites provide global coverage, but only twice per day at any given spot. While remote sensing satellites play quite critical role, the contribution of weather satellites can not be glossed in EO function.
In the past three and half decades, Chinese aerospace establishments have successfully developed and launched over 50 satellites of various kinds, halves of which could be earth observation satellites. Strikingly, the technological range of EO satellites is both diverse and large. Outcome is accordingly technology dependent, in particular, the elements of sophistication in payloads. Optical earth observation satellites, launched at different points of time fall in three categories: recoverable remote sensing satellite; meteorological satellite; and, earth resource satellite.
Chinese recoverable remote sensing satellite has come to age in technological prowess. The latest one constitute of the third generation of film recovery photographic satellite FSW-3 (Fanhui Shi Weixing). The Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST) is engaged in the development of these recoverable remote sensing satellites.
15 launches of FSW-0-01, FSW-0-02 and FSW-1, carried out during1974-1996 with three failures, consisted of first generation technological marvel. They carried prism scanning panoramic and frame metric camera respectively. The focal length and swath width of FSW-1 frame metric camera was then comparable to American Space Shuttle’s Orbiter- borne Metric Camera. Design life of this set of satellites has initially been 3-8 days. FSW-2, the second generation Chinese recoverable remote sensing satellite, carried node point panoramic camera in all the three launches between 1992 and 1996. It had design life of 15 days. The first launch of FSW-3 took place in 2003. It carried payload to carry out microgravity related experiments. The design life now ranges between 24-27 days. There have been four launches with same configuration of FSW-3 thereafter. They are all low orbit 3-axis stabilization satellites, which stand oriented to the center of the earth and bear recovery modules. The PRC is scheduled to go for another launch of this set of remote sensing satellite in January 2009. Meanwhile, the PRC built and successfully launched two remote sensing micro-satellite Qinghua-1 in June 2000 and Qinghua-2 in October 2008 respectively. UK based Surrey Satellite Technology had provided necessary technological insight.
There are since three classes of Chinese metrological satellites. The latest of the three classes Feng Yun-3 (FY-3) was launched just one fortnight after the Wenchuan Earthquake from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province on 27th May 08. It carried three dimensional sensors, capable of measuring the dynamics in the Earth’s atmosphere and climate besides monitoring polar region and ocean conditions. The sensor on board is believed to be capable of measuring temperature change of 0.1 F degrees. It has spatial resolution of 250 meters. Feng Yun-1, the first generation of sun synchronous metrological satellite was divided into two batches-Feng Yun-1-01 and Feng Yun-2-02. There were two launches of Feng YUN-1-01 in 1988 and 1990 respectively. While Feng Yun-1-01 carried two 5-channel (visible and IR) scanning radiator, Feng Yun-1-02 had two 10 channel (visible and IR). Two launches of Feng Yun-2 in 1997 and 2000 adapted bi-spin stabilization methods. It had 3-channel (visible and IR) scanning radiator. The design life time of Feng Yun-2 was three years. Future launches of Feng Yun series of Chinese metrological satellites include Feng Yun-2E and Feng Yun-3B in Dec 2008 and September 2009.
The earth resource satellite, launched by the PRC, constitute of Ziyuan series. It is being developed and launched in a joint collaboration with Brazil under Shi Jian-3 Project. It has therefore come to be known as China, Brazil Earth resource Satellite (CBERS).The PRC had put the first of the series Zi Yuan-1 satellite into sun synchronous orbit on 14 Oct 1999. Zi Yuan-2 satellite came to be launched in 2000. Until now, the PRC has thereafter launched Zi Yuan-1-2 satellite, Zi Yuan-2-3 satellite and Zi Yuan 1-2B satellite respectively in Oct 2003, Nov 2004, and Sep 2007. The future launches include Zi Yuan-3 satellite in Mar 2009.
Nonetheless, the PRC then has Shijian series of satellites, the latest one Shijian-6 3A and Shijian-6 3B, launched just on 25 Oct 2008 and Shijian-9 (seedsat-2) to be launched some times in Nov 2008. The payloads in all the previous ones in the series are oriented to provide detailed data on changes in earth crust. Shijian-5 satellite, launched on 10th May 1999, was oriented to study magnetosphere. It carried semi conductor proton and heavy ion detector, static electrical analyzer, electrical potentiometer, static single event monitor, and dynamic single event monitor. All the predecessors of Shijian-5 satellites were characterized to be distinct technological missions.
To meet the requirement of navigation satellite for the purpose, the PRC has Beidou Navigation System, the latest of which was launched in February 2007. Beidou-1 system, made up of 4 satellites, happened to be experimental. Unlike the GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo systems, Beidou-1 used geostationary orbit. It did not therefore require a large constellation of satellites. In fact, Beidou satellites are based on the Chinese Dong Fang Hong-3, which is geostationary. Beidou-2 is going to have a constellation of 35 satellites, which included 5 geostationary (GEO) and 30 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites. Moreover, China is since a member of Galileo positioning system. Besides, China’s third generation imaging satellite, the FSW-3 (Fanhui Shi Weixing), uses a charged coupled device (CCD) array, and, when operating in a 700-km sun synchronous orbit, it is designed to have a five meter resolution. FSW-1 and FSW-2 were equally powerful by virtue by their payloads.
Communication is apparently a top priority. The PRC is up in sleeves with new Zhongxing Chinasat series. It launched Zhongxing-22) 0n 25 Jan 2000, which was equipped with C-Band, UHF Communication and Qudian system. It was perhaps an up date of Dong Fang Hong-3 design, and constituted first in a planned constellation of satellites to be launched through 2010. In between, the PRC has launched Zhongxing-20, Zhongxing-22A, Zhongxing-6B2 and Zhonxing-9 in Nov 2003, Sep 2006, July 2007, and June 2008 respectively. The PRC is well set to launch Zhongxing-8 in Dec 2008. Among them, Zhongxing-22, Zhongxing-20, and Zhongxing-22A are perhaps Feng Huo-1, Feng Huo-2 and Feng Huo-3 military communication satellites respectively. Reports suggest that the PRC now has one dedicated imaging reconnaissance satellite, along with one remote sensing satellite, one meteorological satellite, and one remote sensing micro satellite with potential dual use capabilities. [2]
Wide, broad and panoramic range of applications apart, the efficacy of the spaced based system in prediction, the rescue and relief mission, the prevention of and preparedness for secondary disasters, and last but not the least, disaster assessment and reconstruction efforts stands heavily dependent on compatibility of the ground based system in various forms and shape. In certain cases, the limiting factors transcend beyond corrections. E.O satellites, for example, can take images only at a specific times and dates, depending on orbit and swath width. Time lag is thus inevitable and hence, the chances of missing the incident can not be ruled out. Moreover, the strength of the space based system lay in its technological prowess in photogrammetry and remote sensing. Glitch of any kind and level has potential to affect the outcome.
Wenquan Earthquake and the Support Function of the Chinese Space Based System
Going by the Chinese official version, Wenquan earthquake displayed unusual quiet before quake of 8.0 magnitudes struck the epicenter. Xiu Jigang, Deputy Director, China Seismological Bureau (CSB) is on record to testify that the Wenquan earthquake did not produce foreshocks at all, and the activity level of minor quakes around the epicenter was low for quite a long time before the quake. Xu is again on record to reject suggestions about any kind of anomaly then detected in animal behaviour, underground water and other typical precursors.
Box-1: Li Shihui Blog on prediction of Wenchuan earthquake
“…….Today is May 12, 2008, Chinese Seismologist Geng Qingguo is suffering with tearless grief. In 2006, according to the relationship between drought and earthquake, he predicted that in recent years there would be serious earthquakes of over 7 magnitudes in Aba Autonomous prefecture. After a group discussion on April 26, 2008, the Committee on National Hazard prediction subordinate to Chinese Geophysical Society (CGS) reported that an earthquake of 6-7 magnitude could possibly occur in areas south of Lanzhou, around the borders of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. What more Geng Qingguo clearly indicated that the dangerous point of an earthquake over 7 magnitudes in Aba prefecture is May 8, 2008 (10 days before or later) in accordance with the magnetic storm combinations. Geng Qinguo, an undoubted national treasure, is being excluded by the earthquake experts of main stream, and can only depend on a meagre pension to continue his research. The pity is what this old seismologist said did not make any difference.
I am filled with grief and indignation. I am wondering if there will come a day when national treasures like Geng Qingguo, Wang Chenmin, Ren Zhenqiu and Wang Dixing are not frozen out any more, and freely work for rejuvenation of China.
This is in stark contrast to innumerable claims and counter claims, in hundreds of blogs, much less some of the news papers, about the failure of the officials to take cognizance, in face of loud and clear evidence. Li Shihui, a researcher with the Institute of Geophysics and Geology, Chinese academy of Sciences, expressed his dismay, and was rather constrained to say in his blog (Box-!) dated12th May 08 that the things could have been entirely different, provided the mainstream seismologists in China did not ignore the predictions of Geng Qingguo and others.
A news item in Chutian Dushi Bao carried vivid details how 80000 tones of water in Guanyin pool in Enshi County in Hubei province got suddenly drained out and a whirl pool created with a roaring noise. Epoch Time, the Falungong sponsored news paper published a photograph of toads crawling out of the Tong Yang canal in Taizhou, cross the Dongfang bridge, far away in Jiangsu province.[3] In some blogs, the stories quote eye witness account how swarm of ants started heading and sheep getting panicked in Beichuan county of Sichuan province.
FORMOSA-3 Taiwanese Satellite had recorded drastic drop in ionospheric density, six to 15 days before May 12, 2008. On 11th May 2008, it had dropped to half to 600000 charged particles. Chinese space based system did not have inkling about it. After the epicenter in Beichuan was hit, and colossal damage to life and property was done, the Chinese space based infrastructure picked up 10-odd pictures once the quake hit the epicenter at 1428 hrs (CST). China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station found them least useful due to poor quality of images. Chinese mainstream seismologists have tried to explain away the failure to overcast sky stalling effective penetration of both Chinese camera and Chinese infrared device with the system.
First image of the earthquake was taken by Taiwan’s FORMOSAT-II satellite. Prof. Harry Chang, of National Taiwan University immediately shared the imagery with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It showed a large forest, a school and cluster of residential houses in Beichuanxian damaged beyond recognition. It also showed landslides, covering some 1500 hectares (3705 acres) that blocked the river.
The Institute of Space and Earth Information Sciences (ISEIS) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong collaborated first with the Taiwanese University to analyze FORMOSAT-II imagery of 14th May 08 to assess the extent of damage in Qushanzhen, Beichuan County. ISEIS also collaborated with the Taiwan University to compare and contrast changes in the water level of Tangjiashan Barrier Lake, based on FORMOSAT-II imagery of 14th May 08 and 18th May 08. The first set of imagery of FORMOSAT-II, analyzed and interpreted by the ISEIS, showed formation of 30 quake dams and 34 quake lakes. It also showed areas of landslides on the mountains in Beichuan County; Barrier Lake formed in Jianyang, Tangjiashan; gradual increase in the Width of Tangjiashan Barrier Lake from 230 M (14th May 08) to 540 M (18th May 08); and, increase in the water surface in Xuanping Janzu township.[4] Until alternate channel was not dug wit use of heavy machinery, air dropped by Russian helicopters, Tangjiashan Lake posed imminent dangers to the lives and property of 1.3 million people in the affected areas.
On specific request from the PRC, German Infoterra and French SPOT Image Co., Ltd. supported China’s effort in rescue and relief operations through quality radar and optical satellite imagery. The former tasked radar satellite TerraSAR-X and the latter optical satellite SPOT-5 to acquire data of affected areas.[5] The two provide satellite imagery to China in just 7 hours after the quake. Chinese organizations in the field to cooperate with German Infoterra and French SPOT Image Co., Ltd. included China’s National Disaster Reduction Center, the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, the Ministry of Land Resources, the State Earthquake Administration and the State Council of the Satellite Imagery. They cooperated in interpretation, map compilation and rapid analysis. The rapid mapping experts of German Infoterra and French SPOT Image Co., Ltd. in Europe were largely responsible for preparation of first map sheets, and then annotated map that became available at the ground stations. TerraSAR-X is a radar satellite and operates independent of weather conditions. It has favourable resolution properties as well. Notwithstanding, it coordinated with its extensive network of global receiving stations for the job.
ISEIS of the Chinese University of Hong Kong did as well collaborate with SPOT Image Co., Ltd., Beijing and carried out building damage assessment in Dujianyan. The project team compared two satellite images , a German TerraSAR-X Band 1 M resolution radar image taken on 16th May 08 and a Quickbird optical satellite image taken on 23rd May 08, and assessed the degree of building damages in Dujianyan. IT showed 90 per cent of the buildings in the area damaged, 15 per cent of which belonged to settlements. ISEIS also compared the German radar satellite TerraSAR-X image Xuantou County, Mao County, Barrier Lake in Xuanping Qiangzu township and certain other quake affected areas in Sichuan.[6]
At the end of the day, the archived French SPOT Image Co., Ltd and Taiwan’s FOROSAT-II and TerraSAR-X imagery added valuable information in the whole gamut and enabled Emergency Work Group, set up under the Chairmanship of the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to provide succor to the victims. As part of the process, the imagery so received was sent to Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Committee (DPMC), who executed the required follow up. The same was true for the video documents of the Beijing No.1 Satellite. In turn, such data works helped DPMC in recognition and assessment of damages suffered in populated areas and to infrastructure, identification of focus areas, and action coordination at the long last. Notwithstanding, the imageries had then helped in getting to know normal levels of rivers and lakes. It helped in preventing further damage to infrastructure through correctives as well.
Efficacy of the Chinese Space Assets in Disaster Management
Quite apparently, as the foregoing discussions boil down, the existing Chinese space based infra structure then did not produce worthwhile imagery for any of the three phases of disaster management efforts. The system did not have much to contribute for disaster prevention and mitigation works for future either. Prediction of earthquake would remain enigma not until a system was in place to take cognizance of terrestrial geophysics and geology related precursors with space based cognition and identification parameters.
The role of Chinese photogrammetry and remote sensing professionals has been quite reckonable. In the company of foreign professionals, they got deep insights. In phase-I of the disaster management efforts, the Chinese photogrammetry and remote sensing professionals received on-ground-exposure of the latest techniques of interpretation of high resolution imagery that helped in locating buildings that collapsed in the worst hit areas. In phase-II of the disaster management efforts, which sought to meet out and cater prevention and preparedness for secondary disasters, the Chinese photogrammetry and remote sensing professionals got thorough with the system mechanism of handling airborne and space borne optical imagery and radar data that were used for identifying, assessing and decision making in respect of areas prone to secondary disasters like landslides and mudslides, especially those in and around the quake lakes or barrier lakes formed when a land slide plugged a river. They have benefited greatly in the third phase, which has now gone to focus on disaster assessment and reconstruction. It relates to high skills of topographic mapping at 1:10000 scales in the region with an aerial extent of 120000 kms based on the techniques of aerial photogrammetic survey without ground control points, generating information products such as DEM, DOQs and DLGs.
Box-2 System Glitch and XSSC Recommendations
(a) Strengthening studies on the sequence of serialized aftershocks
(b) Effective forecasting having tangible and substantial effects
(c) Thorough study and probe into the tectonic causes of the Wenchuan earthquake
(d) Theoretical expositions to address questions such as the formative mechanism of the nappe structure thrusting earthquakes and objective laws
(e) Nationwide survey of anti quake safety of all public buildings, particularly primary and middle school buildings, hospitals and the like. Much of the lacuna in the Chinese system came to discussions in the emergency session of Xiangshan Science Conference (XSSC) in Beijing on 19th May 08, where 40 top experts in seismology and geophysics got to discuss threadbare different shades of the issue. The top Chinese minds in the field included Prof. Zhang Peizhen from the State Bureau of Seismology (SBS), Prof. Xu Zhiqin from the China Academy of Earth Science (CAES) and Prof Wang Guanqian from Qinghua University. They came out with a wide range of recommendations, some of which speak of the process and system that the Chinese approach hitherto lacked to handle the issue.[7] Box-2 carries the glimpse. The gloat over China lacking reckonable system for forecasts of deadly earthquakes of as large as 8 magnitude is understandable. This is besides the fact that the Chinese did not have worthwhile and dependable imagery interpretation system in place to support post quake rescue, relief and rehabilitation as well.
The PRC is ostensibly not unaware of the glitch in either the terrestrial or space based system. There are efforts afoot to bridge the gap. In less than a fortnight after the Wenchuan earthquake, China launched Fengyun-III satellite into the orbit. 0n 06th Nov 2008, china launched two EO satellites, microsatellite Chuangxin-1-02 and Shiyan satellite on Long March- 2 D Carrier rocket. Nevertheless, China has plans to launch Fengyun-IV series by 2013. It will give China a jump start in earth observation mission.
In China as in the rest part of the world, the time lag in prediction of earthquake is almost razor thin. The Taiwanese FORMOSAT-II and the Japanese ALOS Radar Remote Sensing Monitoring device proved capable of getting inklings not more than a minute before the deadly Wenchuan earthquake played havoc. It shall be too much to think that the Chinese EO system will do any better in foreseeable future. It has first to develop spatial data infrastructure to contribute meaningfully to post-quake missions.
The gloat over China lacking reckonable system for forecasts of deadly earthquakes of as large as 8 magnitude is understandable. This is besides the fact that the Chinese did not have worthwhile imagery interpretation system in place to support post quake rescue, relief and rehabilitation as well. The PRC is not unaware of the glitch in either the terrestrial or space based system. There are efforts afoot to bridge the gap. In less than a fortnight after the Wenchuan earthquake, China launched Fengyun-III satellite into the orbit. 0n 06th Nov 2008, china launched two EO satellites, microsatellite Chuangxin-1-02 and Shiyan satellite on Long March- 2 D Carrier rocket. Nevertheless, China has plans to launch Fengyun-IV series by 2013. It will give China a jump start in earth observation mission.
In China as in the rest part of the world, the time lag in prediction of earthquake is almost razor thin. The Taiwanese FORMOSAT-II and the Japanese ALOS Radar Remote Sensing Monitoring device proved capable of getting inklings not more than a minute before the deadly Wenchuan earthquake played havoc. It shall be too much to think that the Chinese EO system will do any better in foreseeable future. It has first to develop spatial data infrastructure to contribute meaningfully to post-quake missions.
[1] Jiefang Junbao, 15 Oct 2008.
[2] Fong Tak-ho, “Chinese Scientists Deny spy Satellite Claim”, South china Morning Post, Aug 2, 2001; Frank Sietzen, Jr., “Micro Space Technology Comes to China”, Space.com website.
[3] http://www.enggeo.org/pic-keg/pages/ryzahtm
[4] Chinese Earthquake Administration, Jiefang Junbao, 24 May 08.
[5] http://www..german-info.com; http://www. Gim-international.com/issues/articles/id 1186-The_Sichuan_Earthquake_.html
[6]“The Sichuan Earthquake” by Timo Balz, Wuhan University, China, Bernd Scheuch, Infoterra, Germany and Deren Li, Wuhan University, China, Oct 2008, Vol. 22, Issue No. 10.
[7] China Highlights, May 2008, Helmohtize Geiminschart
Wenchuan Earthquake Management
Dr S N Pandey
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has consistently been improving its space based infrastructure. In 28 years since the first successful launch of Dong Fang Hong-1 Satellite into orbit on 24 April 1970, the PRC has demonstrably scaled many a reckonable technological steps. The space missions that the PRC launches today include: recovery capsules and non-capsule remote sensing satellites; communication/ broadcasting satellites; metrological satellites; science satellites; engineering test satellites; positioning satellites; and, manned space satellites. China’s goals and objectives for going into orbit with a variety of space assets including manned are predictably similar to those that drove the Russian and the US- to gain national prestige, and to signal wealth, commitments and technological prowess.
Development of space infrastructure has wide ranging applications, which includes meeting environmental challenges. Earth observation (EO), telecommunications and navigation systems together can be used to monitor evolution of fault lines, landslides, subsidence, seismic tremors and outburst of volcanoes. Some of the components of the space infrastructure such as the Global Navigation Space System (GNSS) and space based augmentation system (SBAS), Geographic Information System (GIS), miniaturized computer components, automatic control and in-field and remote sensing have veritable potential to provide useful input to disaster management information systems.
As being earthquake prone country, the PRC is live to the need to merge the traditional earthquake prediction methods, tools and techniques with the modern technology based western approaches. There have been 9 earthquakes larger than a grade of 8 on Richter scale in north-south earthquake zone from 1739, and 7 of them after 1897, when the greatest one was at Haiyun in 1920 and at Chayu in 1950, both of them measured 8.5. The Wenchuan earthquake on May 12th, 2008, measured 8, and was strong enough to sway buildings in Beijing (1500 km) and Shanghai (1700 km). In Wenchuan earthquakes, the worst hit areas included Beichuan and Qingchuan with earthquake measured at 11, with the maximum being 12 by the Chinese seismic survey standards.
It was cataclysmic natural disaster. It left 5 million people homeless, killed 69170 people and injured 368545 others. As many as 18830 people are yet officially listed as missing ones. Notwithstanding, cracks in Tangjiashan Barrier Lake in Beichuan County had posed danger of inundating area inhabited by 1.3 million people. It took six days to dig 475 meters long and 12 meters wide diversion channel to divert 89000 cubic meters of water. Life in the affected areas of Sichuan and adjoining provinces in southwest China could limp back to near normalcy not until late July 2008 despite deployment of over 133000 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF) personnel.
After five months of hectic rescue and relief operations, the Chinese State Council declared termination of its “General Headquarters of Earthquake Relief” on 14th October 2008. In its resolution, the State Council eloquently noted the contributions of “local people and officials in the affected areas, members of the PLA and the PAPF, and people from all circles under the direct leadership of the party organization and governments in the affected areas”. In finality, the State Council meeting declared that the earthquake relief had come to a phase of rehabilitation, which was to take about three years to complete. This was simultaneously the 26th and the last meeting of the General Headquarters of Earthquake Relief, set up under the Chairmanship of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to oversee the relief and rescue operations.[1] The resolution, tabled by the Chinese Premier, had unequivocal support of all those who wield present and hold prospect for future Chinese leadership such as vice Premier Li Keqiang, vice Premier Hui Liangyu, State Councilor and State Council Secretary General Ma Kai, and State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Meng Hianzhu. While a bygone issue, it is a puzzle that the Chinese leadership did not have a word about the contribution of China’s space based infrastructure in the whole gamut of disaster management.
In this backdrop, the paper goes to study the role, and thereby, throw light on the capabilities of China’s space based infrastructure in disaster management during the Wenchuan earthquake. The paper aims at bridging information gap and drawing lessons from the Chinese experience. The focus of the study, accordingly, lay on: the system requirement and China’s space assets; Wenchuan Earthquake and the Support Function of the Chinese Space Based System; and last but not the least, the efficacy of the Chinese space assets in disaster management. As space assets are characterized to have dual use, the paper would peep into the plausible military applications of the Chinese space assets. Open source Chinese and other on-line informations constitute the basic foundation and bulwark for analytical inferences.
System Requirement and China’s Space Assets
Chinese earthquake prediction research traditionally takes cue from intuitive techniques, much of which went to look into and draw inferences from unusual events before the earthquake. It included changes in the ground water levels, strange animal behaviour and foreshocks. In a blog, Li Shihui, a researcher with the Institute of Geophysics and Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), claimed absolute relationship between incidents of drought and earthquake. He credited Geng Qingguo, Wang Chenmin, Ren Zhenqiu, and Wand Dixing for their predictions, much ahead May 12 Wenquan earthquake.
While crude in form, the Chinese traditional approach to earthquake prediction does have a window on scientific factors. Earthquake produces seismic waves. The first wave detected by the modern seismological stations is called P-wave. The Chinese system goes by the premise that the animals are susceptible to sonar stimulants and hence, change in the behaviour of animals follows detection P-waves days and hours ahead of occurrences. Interestingly, the modern age earths scientists do as well draw on P-wave to track back the time and epicenter of earth quakes.
The track record of this Chinese approach has been not that bad. Haicheng city in northeast China’s Liaoning province was hit by earthquakes on 04th February 1975. It measured 7.3 Richter scale. It was again hit in November 1999. The intensity was relatively low at 5.4 Richter scale. While damage to property was inevitable, prediction in advance 4-5 days saved a large number of precious lives. However, in contrast, in the case of July 1976 Tangshan earthquakes and May 2008 Wenquan Earthquake, the Chinese systems did not have inklings, much less a clear cut prediction.
Precise prediction hitherto eludes despite reckonable scientific and technological advancements in the field of seismological studies. Among the terrestrial approaches, the use of ultrasound imaging technique, developed by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography enable onset of earthquake 10-20 minutes ahead of occurrence. The PRC did not have access to this technique until May 2008 Wenquan earthquake. It did have in place space based technology, which, inter alia, requires articulation for earth observation (EO), navigation and telecommunications systems.
Earth observation system normally constitutes of an array of the geostationary and polar satellites. They are specially designed to observe earth from orbit, similar to reconnaissance satellites. While geostationary satellites hover over the same spot, and provide continuous monitoring to a particular portion of Earth, the polar satellites provide global coverage, but only twice per day at any given spot. While remote sensing satellites play quite critical role, the contribution of weather satellites can not be glossed in EO function.
In the past three and half decades, Chinese aerospace establishments have successfully developed and launched over 50 satellites of various kinds, halves of which could be earth observation satellites. Strikingly, the technological range of EO satellites is both diverse and large. Outcome is accordingly technology dependent, in particular, the elements of sophistication in payloads. Optical earth observation satellites, launched at different points of time fall in three categories: recoverable remote sensing satellite; meteorological satellite; and, earth resource satellite.
Chinese recoverable remote sensing satellite has come to age in technological prowess. The latest one constitute of the third generation of film recovery photographic satellite FSW-3 (Fanhui Shi Weixing). The Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST) is engaged in the development of these recoverable remote sensing satellites.
15 launches of FSW-0-01, FSW-0-02 and FSW-1, carried out during1974-1996 with three failures, consisted of first generation technological marvel. They carried prism scanning panoramic and frame metric camera respectively. The focal length and swath width of FSW-1 frame metric camera was then comparable to American Space Shuttle’s Orbiter- borne Metric Camera. Design life of this set of satellites has initially been 3-8 days. FSW-2, the second generation Chinese recoverable remote sensing satellite, carried node point panoramic camera in all the three launches between 1992 and 1996. It had design life of 15 days. The first launch of FSW-3 took place in 2003. It carried payload to carry out microgravity related experiments. The design life now ranges between 24-27 days. There have been four launches with same configuration of FSW-3 thereafter. They are all low orbit 3-axis stabilization satellites, which stand oriented to the center of the earth and bear recovery modules. The PRC is scheduled to go for another launch of this set of remote sensing satellite in January 2009. Meanwhile, the PRC built and successfully launched two remote sensing micro-satellite Qinghua-1 in June 2000 and Qinghua-2 in October 2008 respectively. UK based Surrey Satellite Technology had provided necessary technological insight.
There are since three classes of Chinese metrological satellites. The latest of the three classes Feng Yun-3 (FY-3) was launched just one fortnight after the Wenchuan Earthquake from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province on 27th May 08. It carried three dimensional sensors, capable of measuring the dynamics in the Earth’s atmosphere and climate besides monitoring polar region and ocean conditions. The sensor on board is believed to be capable of measuring temperature change of 0.1 F degrees. It has spatial resolution of 250 meters. Feng Yun-1, the first generation of sun synchronous metrological satellite was divided into two batches-Feng Yun-1-01 and Feng Yun-2-02. There were two launches of Feng YUN-1-01 in 1988 and 1990 respectively. While Feng Yun-1-01 carried two 5-channel (visible and IR) scanning radiator, Feng Yun-1-02 had two 10 channel (visible and IR). Two launches of Feng Yun-2 in 1997 and 2000 adapted bi-spin stabilization methods. It had 3-channel (visible and IR) scanning radiator. The design life time of Feng Yun-2 was three years. Future launches of Feng Yun series of Chinese metrological satellites include Feng Yun-2E and Feng Yun-3B in Dec 2008 and September 2009.
The earth resource satellite, launched by the PRC, constitute of Ziyuan series. It is being developed and launched in a joint collaboration with Brazil under Shi Jian-3 Project. It has therefore come to be known as China, Brazil Earth resource Satellite (CBERS).The PRC had put the first of the series Zi Yuan-1 satellite into sun synchronous orbit on 14 Oct 1999. Zi Yuan-2 satellite came to be launched in 2000. Until now, the PRC has thereafter launched Zi Yuan-1-2 satellite, Zi Yuan-2-3 satellite and Zi Yuan 1-2B satellite respectively in Oct 2003, Nov 2004, and Sep 2007. The future launches include Zi Yuan-3 satellite in Mar 2009.
Nonetheless, the PRC then has Shijian series of satellites, the latest one Shijian-6 3A and Shijian-6 3B, launched just on 25 Oct 2008 and Shijian-9 (seedsat-2) to be launched some times in Nov 2008. The payloads in all the previous ones in the series are oriented to provide detailed data on changes in earth crust. Shijian-5 satellite, launched on 10th May 1999, was oriented to study magnetosphere. It carried semi conductor proton and heavy ion detector, static electrical analyzer, electrical potentiometer, static single event monitor, and dynamic single event monitor. All the predecessors of Shijian-5 satellites were characterized to be distinct technological missions.
To meet the requirement of navigation satellite for the purpose, the PRC has Beidou Navigation System, the latest of which was launched in February 2007. Beidou-1 system, made up of 4 satellites, happened to be experimental. Unlike the GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo systems, Beidou-1 used geostationary orbit. It did not therefore require a large constellation of satellites. In fact, Beidou satellites are based on the Chinese Dong Fang Hong-3, which is geostationary. Beidou-2 is going to have a constellation of 35 satellites, which included 5 geostationary (GEO) and 30 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites. Moreover, China is since a member of Galileo positioning system. Besides, China’s third generation imaging satellite, the FSW-3 (Fanhui Shi Weixing), uses a charged coupled device (CCD) array, and, when operating in a 700-km sun synchronous orbit, it is designed to have a five meter resolution. FSW-1 and FSW-2 were equally powerful by virtue by their payloads.
Communication is apparently a top priority. The PRC is up in sleeves with new Zhongxing Chinasat series. It launched Zhongxing-22) 0n 25 Jan 2000, which was equipped with C-Band, UHF Communication and Qudian system. It was perhaps an up date of Dong Fang Hong-3 design, and constituted first in a planned constellation of satellites to be launched through 2010. In between, the PRC has launched Zhongxing-20, Zhongxing-22A, Zhongxing-6B2 and Zhonxing-9 in Nov 2003, Sep 2006, July 2007, and June 2008 respectively. The PRC is well set to launch Zhongxing-8 in Dec 2008. Among them, Zhongxing-22, Zhongxing-20, and Zhongxing-22A are perhaps Feng Huo-1, Feng Huo-2 and Feng Huo-3 military communication satellites respectively. Reports suggest that the PRC now has one dedicated imaging reconnaissance satellite, along with one remote sensing satellite, one meteorological satellite, and one remote sensing micro satellite with potential dual use capabilities. [2]
Wide, broad and panoramic range of applications apart, the efficacy of the spaced based system in prediction, the rescue and relief mission, the prevention of and preparedness for secondary disasters, and last but not the least, disaster assessment and reconstruction efforts stands heavily dependent on compatibility of the ground based system in various forms and shape. In certain cases, the limiting factors transcend beyond corrections. E.O satellites, for example, can take images only at a specific times and dates, depending on orbit and swath width. Time lag is thus inevitable and hence, the chances of missing the incident can not be ruled out. Moreover, the strength of the space based system lay in its technological prowess in photogrammetry and remote sensing. Glitch of any kind and level has potential to affect the outcome.
Wenquan Earthquake and the Support Function of the Chinese Space Based System
Going by the Chinese official version, Wenquan earthquake displayed unusual quiet before quake of 8.0 magnitudes struck the epicenter. Xiu Jigang, Deputy Director, China Seismological Bureau (CSB) is on record to testify that the Wenquan earthquake did not produce foreshocks at all, and the activity level of minor quakes around the epicenter was low for quite a long time before the quake. Xu is again on record to reject suggestions about any kind of anomaly then detected in animal behaviour, underground water and other typical precursors.
Box-1: Li Shihui Blog on prediction of Wenchuan earthquake
“…….Today is May 12, 2008, Chinese Seismologist Geng Qingguo is suffering with tearless grief. In 2006, according to the relationship between drought and earthquake, he predicted that in recent years there would be serious earthquakes of over 7 magnitudes in Aba Autonomous prefecture. After a group discussion on April 26, 2008, the Committee on National Hazard prediction subordinate to Chinese Geophysical Society (CGS) reported that an earthquake of 6-7 magnitude could possibly occur in areas south of Lanzhou, around the borders of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. What more Geng Qingguo clearly indicated that the dangerous point of an earthquake over 7 magnitudes in Aba prefecture is May 8, 2008 (10 days before or later) in accordance with the magnetic storm combinations. Geng Qinguo, an undoubted national treasure, is being excluded by the earthquake experts of main stream, and can only depend on a meagre pension to continue his research. The pity is what this old seismologist said did not make any difference.
I am filled with grief and indignation. I am wondering if there will come a day when national treasures like Geng Qingguo, Wang Chenmin, Ren Zhenqiu and Wang Dixing are not frozen out any more, and freely work for rejuvenation of China.
This is in stark contrast to innumerable claims and counter claims, in hundreds of blogs, much less some of the news papers, about the failure of the officials to take cognizance, in face of loud and clear evidence. Li Shihui, a researcher with the Institute of Geophysics and Geology, Chinese academy of Sciences, expressed his dismay, and was rather constrained to say in his blog (Box-!) dated12th May 08 that the things could have been entirely different, provided the mainstream seismologists in China did not ignore the predictions of Geng Qingguo and others.
A news item in Chutian Dushi Bao carried vivid details how 80000 tones of water in Guanyin pool in Enshi County in Hubei province got suddenly drained out and a whirl pool created with a roaring noise. Epoch Time, the Falungong sponsored news paper published a photograph of toads crawling out of the Tong Yang canal in Taizhou, cross the Dongfang bridge, far away in Jiangsu province.[3] In some blogs, the stories quote eye witness account how swarm of ants started heading and sheep getting panicked in Beichuan county of Sichuan province.
FORMOSA-3 Taiwanese Satellite had recorded drastic drop in ionospheric density, six to 15 days before May 12, 2008. On 11th May 2008, it had dropped to half to 600000 charged particles. Chinese space based system did not have inkling about it. After the epicenter in Beichuan was hit, and colossal damage to life and property was done, the Chinese space based infrastructure picked up 10-odd pictures once the quake hit the epicenter at 1428 hrs (CST). China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station found them least useful due to poor quality of images. Chinese mainstream seismologists have tried to explain away the failure to overcast sky stalling effective penetration of both Chinese camera and Chinese infrared device with the system.
First image of the earthquake was taken by Taiwan’s FORMOSAT-II satellite. Prof. Harry Chang, of National Taiwan University immediately shared the imagery with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It showed a large forest, a school and cluster of residential houses in Beichuanxian damaged beyond recognition. It also showed landslides, covering some 1500 hectares (3705 acres) that blocked the river.
The Institute of Space and Earth Information Sciences (ISEIS) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong collaborated first with the Taiwanese University to analyze FORMOSAT-II imagery of 14th May 08 to assess the extent of damage in Qushanzhen, Beichuan County. ISEIS also collaborated with the Taiwan University to compare and contrast changes in the water level of Tangjiashan Barrier Lake, based on FORMOSAT-II imagery of 14th May 08 and 18th May 08. The first set of imagery of FORMOSAT-II, analyzed and interpreted by the ISEIS, showed formation of 30 quake dams and 34 quake lakes. It also showed areas of landslides on the mountains in Beichuan County; Barrier Lake formed in Jianyang, Tangjiashan; gradual increase in the Width of Tangjiashan Barrier Lake from 230 M (14th May 08) to 540 M (18th May 08); and, increase in the water surface in Xuanping Janzu township.[4] Until alternate channel was not dug wit use of heavy machinery, air dropped by Russian helicopters, Tangjiashan Lake posed imminent dangers to the lives and property of 1.3 million people in the affected areas.
On specific request from the PRC, German Infoterra and French SPOT Image Co., Ltd. supported China’s effort in rescue and relief operations through quality radar and optical satellite imagery. The former tasked radar satellite TerraSAR-X and the latter optical satellite SPOT-5 to acquire data of affected areas.[5] The two provide satellite imagery to China in just 7 hours after the quake. Chinese organizations in the field to cooperate with German Infoterra and French SPOT Image Co., Ltd. included China’s National Disaster Reduction Center, the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, the Ministry of Land Resources, the State Earthquake Administration and the State Council of the Satellite Imagery. They cooperated in interpretation, map compilation and rapid analysis. The rapid mapping experts of German Infoterra and French SPOT Image Co., Ltd. in Europe were largely responsible for preparation of first map sheets, and then annotated map that became available at the ground stations. TerraSAR-X is a radar satellite and operates independent of weather conditions. It has favourable resolution properties as well. Notwithstanding, it coordinated with its extensive network of global receiving stations for the job.
ISEIS of the Chinese University of Hong Kong did as well collaborate with SPOT Image Co., Ltd., Beijing and carried out building damage assessment in Dujianyan. The project team compared two satellite images , a German TerraSAR-X Band 1 M resolution radar image taken on 16th May 08 and a Quickbird optical satellite image taken on 23rd May 08, and assessed the degree of building damages in Dujianyan. IT showed 90 per cent of the buildings in the area damaged, 15 per cent of which belonged to settlements. ISEIS also compared the German radar satellite TerraSAR-X image Xuantou County, Mao County, Barrier Lake in Xuanping Qiangzu township and certain other quake affected areas in Sichuan.[6]
At the end of the day, the archived French SPOT Image Co., Ltd and Taiwan’s FOROSAT-II and TerraSAR-X imagery added valuable information in the whole gamut and enabled Emergency Work Group, set up under the Chairmanship of the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to provide succor to the victims. As part of the process, the imagery so received was sent to Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Committee (DPMC), who executed the required follow up. The same was true for the video documents of the Beijing No.1 Satellite. In turn, such data works helped DPMC in recognition and assessment of damages suffered in populated areas and to infrastructure, identification of focus areas, and action coordination at the long last. Notwithstanding, the imageries had then helped in getting to know normal levels of rivers and lakes. It helped in preventing further damage to infrastructure through correctives as well.
Efficacy of the Chinese Space Assets in Disaster Management
Quite apparently, as the foregoing discussions boil down, the existing Chinese space based infra structure then did not produce worthwhile imagery for any of the three phases of disaster management efforts. The system did not have much to contribute for disaster prevention and mitigation works for future either. Prediction of earthquake would remain enigma not until a system was in place to take cognizance of terrestrial geophysics and geology related precursors with space based cognition and identification parameters.
The role of Chinese photogrammetry and remote sensing professionals has been quite reckonable. In the company of foreign professionals, they got deep insights. In phase-I of the disaster management efforts, the Chinese photogrammetry and remote sensing professionals received on-ground-exposure of the latest techniques of interpretation of high resolution imagery that helped in locating buildings that collapsed in the worst hit areas. In phase-II of the disaster management efforts, which sought to meet out and cater prevention and preparedness for secondary disasters, the Chinese photogrammetry and remote sensing professionals got thorough with the system mechanism of handling airborne and space borne optical imagery and radar data that were used for identifying, assessing and decision making in respect of areas prone to secondary disasters like landslides and mudslides, especially those in and around the quake lakes or barrier lakes formed when a land slide plugged a river. They have benefited greatly in the third phase, which has now gone to focus on disaster assessment and reconstruction. It relates to high skills of topographic mapping at 1:10000 scales in the region with an aerial extent of 120000 kms based on the techniques of aerial photogrammetic survey without ground control points, generating information products such as DEM, DOQs and DLGs.
Box-2 System Glitch and XSSC Recommendations
(a) Strengthening studies on the sequence of serialized aftershocks
(b) Effective forecasting having tangible and substantial effects
(c) Thorough study and probe into the tectonic causes of the Wenchuan earthquake
(d) Theoretical expositions to address questions such as the formative mechanism of the nappe structure thrusting earthquakes and objective laws
(e) Nationwide survey of anti quake safety of all public buildings, particularly primary and middle school buildings, hospitals and the like. Much of the lacuna in the Chinese system came to discussions in the emergency session of Xiangshan Science Conference (XSSC) in Beijing on 19th May 08, where 40 top experts in seismology and geophysics got to discuss threadbare different shades of the issue. The top Chinese minds in the field included Prof. Zhang Peizhen from the State Bureau of Seismology (SBS), Prof. Xu Zhiqin from the China Academy of Earth Science (CAES) and Prof Wang Guanqian from Qinghua University. They came out with a wide range of recommendations, some of which speak of the process and system that the Chinese approach hitherto lacked to handle the issue.[7] Box-2 carries the glimpse. The gloat over China lacking reckonable system for forecasts of deadly earthquakes of as large as 8 magnitude is understandable. This is besides the fact that the Chinese did not have worthwhile and dependable imagery interpretation system in place to support post quake rescue, relief and rehabilitation as well.
The PRC is ostensibly not unaware of the glitch in either the terrestrial or space based system. There are efforts afoot to bridge the gap. In less than a fortnight after the Wenchuan earthquake, China launched Fengyun-III satellite into the orbit. 0n 06th Nov 2008, china launched two EO satellites, microsatellite Chuangxin-1-02 and Shiyan satellite on Long March- 2 D Carrier rocket. Nevertheless, China has plans to launch Fengyun-IV series by 2013. It will give China a jump start in earth observation mission.
In China as in the rest part of the world, the time lag in prediction of earthquake is almost razor thin. The Taiwanese FORMOSAT-II and the Japanese ALOS Radar Remote Sensing Monitoring device proved capable of getting inklings not more than a minute before the deadly Wenchuan earthquake played havoc. It shall be too much to think that the Chinese EO system will do any better in foreseeable future. It has first to develop spatial data infrastructure to contribute meaningfully to post-quake missions.
The gloat over China lacking reckonable system for forecasts of deadly earthquakes of as large as 8 magnitude is understandable. This is besides the fact that the Chinese did not have worthwhile imagery interpretation system in place to support post quake rescue, relief and rehabilitation as well. The PRC is not unaware of the glitch in either the terrestrial or space based system. There are efforts afoot to bridge the gap. In less than a fortnight after the Wenchuan earthquake, China launched Fengyun-III satellite into the orbit. 0n 06th Nov 2008, china launched two EO satellites, microsatellite Chuangxin-1-02 and Shiyan satellite on Long March- 2 D Carrier rocket. Nevertheless, China has plans to launch Fengyun-IV series by 2013. It will give China a jump start in earth observation mission.
In China as in the rest part of the world, the time lag in prediction of earthquake is almost razor thin. The Taiwanese FORMOSAT-II and the Japanese ALOS Radar Remote Sensing Monitoring device proved capable of getting inklings not more than a minute before the deadly Wenchuan earthquake played havoc. It shall be too much to think that the Chinese EO system will do any better in foreseeable future. It has first to develop spatial data infrastructure to contribute meaningfully to post-quake missions.
[1] Jiefang Junbao, 15 Oct 2008.
[2] Fong Tak-ho, “Chinese Scientists Deny spy Satellite Claim”, South china Morning Post, Aug 2, 2001; Frank Sietzen, Jr., “Micro Space Technology Comes to China”, Space.com website.
[3] http://www.enggeo.org/pic-keg/pages/ryzahtm
[4] Chinese Earthquake Administration, Jiefang Junbao, 24 May 08.
[5] http://www..german-info.com; http://www. Gim-international.com/issues/articles/id 1186-The_Sichuan_Earthquake_.html
[6]“The Sichuan Earthquake” by Timo Balz, Wuhan University, China, Bernd Scheuch, Infoterra, Germany and Deren Li, Wuhan University, China, Oct 2008, Vol. 22, Issue No. 10.
[7] China Highlights, May 2008, Helmohtize Geiminschart
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