India and China are building up their militaries.

Chinese troops are violating Indian territory.

What does this mean? It means that the two most populous countries on Earth are flirting quite severely with war. There is no chance in hell that such a conflict would remain contained to South Asia.

-Frank

China would have to be retarded to make a move before the Olympics. On the flip side, the PLA is an empire all to its own.

Yeah, this could be bad for just about everybody...

I doupt they'd let this escalate. Both sides have too much to loose and nothing to gain, and both have exceedingly pragmatic leaders. This isn't Sonia Ghandi or Mao any more.

The military build up is more due to the ideal of competing with the US on Chiona's part, and not fallling behind China on India's (plus, India has continuing problems with America's favourite rogue state, Pakistan).

As for the violations: they're merely testing. The Soviets and East Germans used to run Mig 21s over West Berlin back in the day, going into supersonic some 1000 feet above the city, just to probe the West's air defenses and see how they react. They're far from cordial, but wwar? I doupt that. Not least because whoever might win, they'd be far to weak to have any standing against the US, a country both consider more of ane nemy than a partner - China for obvious ideological and economical reasons, India because it is Pakistan's de facto hegemon.

Should they indeed go to war, though, I'd expect the war to become nuclear.

China might be getting cocky right now. They can get away with slaughtering Tibet, they might try to get away with this, too, just to see how far they can go. No one in the UN would give a shit if China started occupying India an inch at a time, even less if the take over some lake. Also, India seems eager to ignore or at least downplay the issue.

China is the big jerk bullying all the weaker kids around the block right now.

They do? Where? Everyone's coming down on them, their olympics and reputation are ruined, and shooting a few demonstrators isn't nice but not a slaughter either.


Nukes flying back and forth really would concern people. Two nuclear powers going to war are bound to (and India would not let them have that lake. China is, on a side note, facing incursions and raids from North Korean troops, and so far has handled that matter silently too. It's just how people do stuff over there.

Wait till resources get scarce and then we'll see. One thing that would really be interesting is water gets scarcer, both India and China are really using up their water supplies. Still, nothing anytime soon, 30 years down the road, who knows.

Desalination producers are going to make a bunch of money then, yes. Countries that cannot afford these cannot afford wars against the countries that can either, so bad luck for them.

Pfft. No-one has actually boycotted the olympics, all the teams are still showing up for the openning cermony, and no-one is saying that China's treatment of tibeteans will impact on FTA's with china, or prevent their acension to organisations like the WTO.

We need to employ a carrot and stick policy: Say if you do reform we'll let you into the big boys club, and if you don't, we'll hit you with trade sanctions. And hey, thats what we are doing today except no-one is saying that their club membership is in jeopardy at this point.

People seem to care, governements don't. That's not the definition of "coming down on them". Olympics are not ruined, by the time they start no one will even talk about Tibet anymore. The slaughter part was an overexegeration, but for all we know Tibet might now be a desolate wasteland. China did worse without anyone noticing and/or complaining.
In many ways there are similar to SR Atzlan, attitude and cover up wise.


Sure, because the moment China occupies a part of India that has no significance what so ever, nukes will start flying.

I guess it's a matter of perspective. If a single person killed more than 100 people, or ordered hits on a specific 100 people, it might look different?

one murder is a crime . . 1000 murders are statistics

Governments don't care because China has a legitimate grievance. Tibetan insurgents based in India and Nepal are coming across the order with weapons and committing terrorist attacks on Chinese sovereign territory. The PRC's response has been to shoot disidents both armed and unarmed, and to violate the sovereign territory of countries harboring these terrorists, but the United States is rather specifically not in any position to make a stink about that sort of thing right now. I believe Hu Jintao's specific response to US based criticism is something along the lines of "Call us when the death toll reaches three quarters of a million, Iraq boy."

Recall that this particular crisis started because the Tibetan dissidents seized the Olympic spotlight as a time to start an uprising. China's actions have bee draconian as they always are, but international law doesn't forbid a country from being a bully to its own people, and is even more silent about how it treats stateless violent criminals in their land. Regardless of whether you support the Tibetan cause or not, you have to realize that international law is no more with them at this point than it with El Sadr or Rev. Michael Bray.

-Frank

Depending on who you listen to it is either violent rioting or terrorist activity. China has had long experience in clamping down hard on dissent and pulling a black hole over to cover it up. Even before this, just recently, they have had a refresher how not to do things by the Myanmar government. You have to admire them for this. Their response was not only swift but also very thorough. Notice that the very first things they did was to shut down on both conventional and unconventional information sources and flooding the domestic news with info laced with appropriate propagandese. This strategy allows them to flood non-Tibet/China based information boards/forums with pro-Chinese disinformation through common Chinese netizens. I am not unsympathetic to the Tibetans, but this is realpolitik, and China and the Chinese economy have increasing clout in the global sphere. It sucks but there is really nothing much other governments can do. NGOs do not as yet have the kind of political and economic gravity like those portrayed in Shadowrun. If foreign NGOs try to pull any stunt on Chinese soil during the Olympics, it will only cement in the minds of ordinary Chinese that the Tibetans are being egged on and supported by foreign powers. Even after more than 10 years after Hong Kong has been handed over to China, interference by foreign powers in Chinese affairs easily raises the heckles of the common Chinese man.

China's arms build up has 2 strategic motivations. India and Taiwan. China might be satisfied with a startegic stalemate with India but China will not settle for total and absolute control over Taiwan if Taiwan declares independance. Note that even though the President Elect Ma has Beijing's backing he has not been making politcal overtures to the mainland government, he is limiting his policies to the economic sphere. Everyone and their brother wants a piece of the Chinese pie, and Beijing is doing a good job of stuffing multinational companies' mouths with cash.

Sure they have. They might be a little overreacting, or rather seizing the opportunity to solve some domestic issues very drastically, but no one can stop them right now without looking like a goddam hippocrit. That's why government's switched into denial mode and seem to not care.

But seriously, who in their right mind tries to piss of China? An uprising during the Olympics against a government that does not hesitate to kill it's own citizens without major backup just has to fail before it even get's in motion.

They were exceedingly close to that with Pakistan over a really unimportant mountain bunker a few years ago, so arguably: yes.


QFT. And China doesn't even have secret service commandos prowling India and Nepal to snatch suspected tibetan sympathisers off the streeet, as some other countries do with their own favourite terrorists. Because, stripped of the touchy-feely-ness of the Dalai Lama, that's what the tibetan insurgents are before internatrional law: terrorists. Whetehr or not you agree with their cause isn't important there (Tibet seems to be the West's Palestine anyway, since no matter what Tibetans do, they're right and china is wrong).


All the more because, would China order it's banks to call all loans they have given the US (and they could), the US' economy would be wiped out, the state bankrupted and overall, the US ruined.


Desperate people or religious fundamentalists. In case of Tibetans, as well as Palestinians, one could argue both apply. And yes, the Tibetans don't do suicide bombings just yet; but the first Intifada was more about street protests, either. I'm looking forward to the West's reaction once the Tibetans start to learn from the LTTE.

And the money of western do-gooders does count as major backup, if you ask me.

They need something that stops China from stomping all over them and money will not do that. A small group that had a stupid, ill devised and executed idea now ruined whatever life the Tibetans had in their chilly mountain ridges. It makes you wonder what that money was supposed to do. They acted like they had nothing to lose and now lost whatever they had.
And now China can even throw the buddhist monks into the terrorist basket. Great plan, really.


If you really believe they would have used nuclear weapons for anything but threats you are a very strange person. And actually insult the intelligence of the leaders of both countries. The only moron who might actually do that is in Korea and everyone stays clear of him.

India.
Russia.
The United States.

The uprising doesn't have to win (and it won't), it just has to bleed Chinese resources and make them look bad (mission accomplished). China has been gaining in relative strength vs. the other major world powers for some time, what you've got here is a concerted effort to get Beijing to have to contend with some of the love that Russia has had with Chechnya, the US has had with Iraq, and India has had with Kashmir.

Putting down insurrections is costly, it's painful, and it's unpopular internationally. Win or lose, you lose. And chances are you're going to lose more than a few AKs or RPGs are going to set back American or Indian coffers. It's a dick move on the part of the interfering foreign powers, but it's probably going to cost China more than it costs them. That's Realpolitik.



Mostly I consider it to be an insult to the intelligence of Nawaz Sharif. And considering that our dictator boy Pervez through a coup over Sharif's endangerment of the country that year, I am willing to entertain such insults as plausible.

-Frank

Actually, NK is less likely to use their nukes than Pakistan or India would be. Both are countries feeling pushed against a wall (though realistically, only Pakistan can claim that), and in both countries, though at least one is a viable and stable democracy, human life is worth significantly less than in Western Alliance countries. Besides, India reasons it has a lot more important cities than Pakistan has nukes, so it will srvive a nuclear exchange (no, I am not making this up; Times of India reasoned that way back in 1999).

NK keeps whatever nukes it has (two? none?) around to threat Japan and the US with them, to deter them from kicking the house of cards the regime is in. It can only do so because China is still backing the country, though NK is slowly becoming more of an annoyance to China than a useful pawn in the Great Game it plays against the West.


To be fair, I do believe Bush has honestly idealistic motives of Liberation and Freedom when funneling money and weapons to the Tibetans. He just is that kind of guy. Not that that doesn't mean the road to hell is paved with (his) good intentions, though.

I'd bet India is the main financier of the Tibetan uprising, though. And yes, considering how they embarassed china and made it make an ass out of itself - mission accomplished.

Sure, they lose, but the public mind suffers from Alzheimers and governement leaders are the first to support that. There is money to be made in and with China.
I really doubt that incident will have much impact on anything China does mid or long term. Short term it is annoying, sure. The media cannot report much about Tibet for obvious reasons, so the news won't be filled with whatever China does in Tibet.
Just think of the Tiananmen massacre (or all the other million corpses that pile up in China's closet). That was kind of extreme and went trough the media real good, but what were the consequences? Sure, we know, and remember, but that's about it. When we sell them technology we don't go "Oh, you sure killed a lot of people, so we can't sell you high-tech." We don't even charge extra. We don't even complain when they steal our stuff and break into our computers.
This time they can kill (semi) innocent people while waving the "War against Terrorism" flag and are kind of on the save side. It's not like they care for public oppinion. Much.
I'll be really surprised if anyone will talk about this in a month or two.


One part of leadership was whack, but another was there to stop him. No harm done, no real danger of a nuclear attack. My favorite singer Kim Jong-Il on the other hand is much more entertaining. But that is personel preference, I guess.

The economic strength of China will not suffer from the uprising. What would hurt China would be economic sanctions, but the problem with that is that global economy is increasingly being tied to China's and India's(to a lesser extent). Anything that hurt's China's economy would hurt the global economy as well.

Putting down insurrections is unpopular with the Western world. In Asia, to the man on the street, it is business as usual, nothing really worthy of comment. People who protest in support of other people are usually viewed as rich idle troublemakers with nothing better to do. This dicking around with Tibet is rallying the ethnic Han Chinese people. The Chinese government doesn't really care that putting down the insurrection is unpopular(with the West) and they don't really don't care about pain(as long as they aren't the ones bleeding), to Beijing, this is a show of strength. There is a Chinese saying, "Kill one to cow a hundred."

Given that China has not fought a major military engagement in the past 10 years, this would be a great test of capability. If not for the Olympics, there might not even be a need to control communications out of Tibet as tightly as they have. If not for the timing, it is a win-win situation.

QFT.

It'd add to China's image problem in the Western world - which still is the centerpiece of the global economy. And there, PR counts, because the populace can put significant pressure on their respective governments. Besides, ruining the Olympics means loss of face and will hurt China.


Propably, though it does tie down significant army ressources for a prolonged time.

PR counts? Seriously? Since when? PR exists to make sure nobody knows you make deals with dictators, and sell weapons (or about anything, really) to people who do not care about such things as human rights. And if they know, PR is used so people forget it real quick.

If the Olympics were ruined, sure that would hurt. But they are not and most likely will not be ruined. Why should they? If you don't go, someone else will. It's really that simple.

Does the name Brent Spar ring any bells?


Sure, that's propably why Greenpeace is making so much money.


If demonstrators pop up in live broadcasts and are dragged out, that'll really make China look like a nation fo assholes, meaning severe face loss (even in non-Western countries, people don't really like to see oppression, but prefer it to happen in back allleys, out of plain sight). Besides, it's still open whether or not the games are getting boycotted. Actually, given their history of boycotting games, there would be some justice in that.

I actually had to google Brent Spar. And I don't know how to understand your Greenpeace comment.

If the Chinese go comatose now there is a slim chance protesters will show up at the Olympics to be draged away and shot the day after. But that's not gonna happen, so I don't think there will be much room for any protests the Chinese don't want to happen.

I personally don't live in a happy rainbow country where a bunch of protesters can simply avoid a highly alert security force and change the oppinion of the world by proving how mean the chinese are.

China is getting nervous over sympathizers coming in from India/Nepal to Tibbet causing more problems. Nepal is beating them down but India might support them just to prove they can act too. China's military build up is missles and boats and is aimed at Formosa and Japan.

There is more of a risk of an accidental conflict with Japan. China is building its fleet. Chinese ships have 'drifted' into Japanese waters on a regular basis so Japan is responding by doing the last thing China wants. It is quietly rearming the Imperial navy, I'm sorry I mean the MSDF. this makes China more nervous and it is quietly escallating there. It is not helped by the Koreans who also probe Japanese waters and airspace.

The (North) Koreans also have this nice habit of snatching Japanese from their houses at night and torturing them for information every once in a while ... so, it's hard to blame Japan, really. Though they apparently are trying to slowly get rid of their laws limiting military action and armament ... ironically because of US pressure - who wrote that into their constitution in the first place.

A few comments.
First, I thought there was something in the terms of use about not posting political issues here. I'm not opposed, I just thought those were the rules.
second, the idea that China could simply stop trading with the US and that the US would crumble is totally ludicrous. It would at best be a murder suicide. China's main trading partner by far is the US; and even if it weren't as the US goes, so goes the world economy.
Third, "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world; indeed it often is the only thing that can."
Fourth, the situation in Tibet over the last couple decades reminds me of nothing more than the US expansion West into Indian Territory, Complete with Tibetans being second class citizens and a train to seal the deal.
Fifth the main complaint coming out of Tibet is that the Han are all moving in and getting all the benefits of economic development.
Sixth I know about Brent Spar, but I worked for GreenPeace for eight years including the time Brent Spar was going down (or not.) And I'll tell you that no one in GreenPeace is making oodles of money.
Seventh, China has fought several wars with Vietnam (four I believe) since the end of the Vietnam war. Not once did they bother shooting off aa nuke. I know this is different, but it is perfectly possible that a conflict would be limited to conventional forces. This is far more likely to be the case if the conflict is limited in scope to the border areas and India doesn't feel threatened in it's core. Remember India has many of it's own insurgencies fighting for inipendent Homelands, though those tend more to be in the Eastern part.
Finally, The Olympics won't be boycotted.

Not stop trading. Call in the money the US owes them. An important difference.


The grunts aren't. The top drawer? Less so.


And why should they? The US didn't nuke Iraq either. India, on the other hand, has nukes itself and wouldn't be shy to use them if it felt threatened enough.

I think I compared China to Atzlan, which could be enough SR relevence, so we might be safe for a few pages.

Again he is correct, if the US economy collapses due to the loans being called in, PRC loses its MAJOR trading partner, its economy dumps, alot of the world economy dumps, PRC goes back about 200 years in development, and gets nothing since the US economy goes belly up, the money owed to PRC is gone.

Yes a murder/suicide is a more correct term.

As for Tibet in SR4, interesting what large amounts of magic power can do to mundane technology.

WMS

yes i really liked the write up about Tibet in SoA. A land Enshrouded in protective magic.
The "Top Drawer" aren't making oodles of $ compared to other NGO's. Trust me, i left on rather unpleasant terms, and am not particularly interested in defending them in terms of pay, but I am more interested in the truth which is of course relative. Compared to the grunts like me, they make alot of money, compared to people in equitable jobs, they don't.
No,they don't have to stop trading with us, but even calling in the debt would have the same result. One thing to remember is that the Buan is pegged to the dollar (something that all those interventionist conservatives keep complaining about.) If they call in the debt, not only do they have alot less exports, but the value of their own money plummets. Economically, the health of both nations is so tightly intertwined as to be inseperable. The real danger is if they once PRC and other nations, like the Arabs, starts to switch their capitol reserves from $ to Euros.
Another thing to remember in Tibet, that I forgot to mention is that of the original nation of Tibet, only about a third of it is in what in today is called the Tibet Autonomous Area. The rest of the nation has been subsumed into other provinces of western China. Again fulfilling the analogy/parallels with the way the US took over Native American lands.
And since Frank started the whole post, I think it's "immune to normal rules" (new spirit power) .

The big problem here is that we now have a monolithic Communist (ha!) China, and by 2070 and SoA China has borken up. A potential conflict now might create a torn up border but by 2070 there will be a much stronger india and a much weaker warlord on the other side of the border. Likewise their missles and navy are being built up and in the region of Tiawan but who knows who will get htem. now there is a reason to track this because someone's going to get all those mislses and warships. but the question is who? As china falls apart does someone try to get the military in his provence? Or does a whily admiral keep his fleet together and acts as a power broker going to the best bidder?

Conversly a fleet of warships sailing the chinese coast like ancient pirates reborn? not cool. heck, you pull the Red October line and as the PRC breaks up, the fleet defects to Tiawan.

I wouldn't bet on it.

I think most of the PLA stayed with the provinces they were native to, though the fleet and the rather vast contingents in the Pearl River Delta would give the Guangdong Confed a notable edge over other splinterprovinces. Then again, their war with Taiwan seems to have been incredibly costly. A mercenary fleet, I could also see, contracting itself out to the highest-bidding province, though really, it'd be only either Taiwan or Gunagdong Confed, because everyone else is either dirt-poor or doesn't have a coastline, IIRC.

On a side note, today's China is neither communist (well, apart from the insignia and stuff) nor monolithic.

Ever since their description in SoA, I have wondered why the described India didn't smack around the entire world. Seriously all of the major nations in the world smaller than India are broken, but India remains whole and has the largest number of magicians on Earth. I really really think that it's a chink in verisimilitude for the setting that India hasn't also broken up into pieces.

-Frank

It is not actually possible to 'call in' US treasury bonds (which is what almost all of the dollar denoinated debt that china holds is). Just the holder of the bond on the date it vests gets paid X dollars. They are entirely within their rights to tell you to bugger off if you ask for it early and that is how it works. You could start flogging them all off, I guess, which would probably depress bond prices but.. alas?

Maybe it's because different parts broke off when the British pulled out. I think India got hit pretty hard by VITAS also just because they have magicians does not mean power or an interest. Think of the old fragger in the 2nd Indianna Jones movie. happy to sit in his village.

I may sound like an old timer here so forgive me. The books printed after 2000 show either an incredible recovery from the waves of VITAS or treat the disease like it wasn't so bad. There are lots of phrases like "its getting harder and harder to find undeveloped land". Most of the books do their best to fill holes in the old canon with updated reflections of the situation today. If the original books had described India as split, it would be split now. I know the old books were American centric, its likely a valid marketing strategy to empower a wider audience by patriotism. It worked on me when I was 14

As for the motivated magicians, yes. Like money stuffed in the mattress, its only good when you use it.

As for the conflict, it reminds me of Sino-Soviet border incidents my father would read to me while I grew up
"See <BlueMax's real name>, the commies can't even trust each other."
Not all posturing leads to war. Often, its just to keep the troops and media busy.

....and back in the 50s- 60s people here were expected to buy the notion you could survive an nuclear attack hiding under a desk or in a homemade shelter in your cellar. yeah, I remember those days. Gotta love propaganda.

[...was going to link to the original Duck & Cover film but it's 9 min long.]

...oh, and I think Fool wins this thread.

thank you thank you thank you and for my next performance....
India probably didn't wipe the floor with all the other countries because they are dirt poor. yeah they ahve tons aand tons of magic, but that only does you any good militarily if you can train and organize the mages into a cohesive fighting machine. And that takes financing.
n Also, India is a lot more like China than you'd think. They both have a single ethnicity trying to impose its will on alot of other ethnicities within the confines of their "borders". I'd imagine that in the future described in SoA that tension would still be an important factor.... maybe that old guy in the village is an assam and doesn't particularly like the central gov.
BTW one good thing about nuclear winter, it'll cure global warming.

..as MP's Life of Brian teaches us...

...always look on the bright side of life. [whistle]
...always look on the light side of life. [whistle]... :mushroomcloud:

Sorry, KK is the new winner of the thread. Can't argue with MP.

Oh I know. The Indian Government was really happy that they had gotten the Naga to give up head hunting in the 1990s, but they found a bunch of headless corpses this year so it obviously didn't stick. In 1996 Phoolan Devi ran for parliament and won on the grounds that in her days as a bandit leader she had personally shot two dozen fools right in the face for being members of a rival bandit gang that had raped a bunch of people. The chief minister of Bihar was illiterate from 1997 until 2005. Northern India is totally Mad Max right now, no Awakening and mass hysteria required.

But the presentation in Shadows of Asia is coherent, centralized, and monolithic. That's very hard to square with India today and the presented non-Indocentric world of Shadowrun outside of South Asia.

-Frank

The actual idea is that Pakistan has a very limited number of nukes. Like China, indias billion+ population means after a nuclear exchange they will have more people alive than Pakistan even at a 1 to 1 exchange.

It's rude for newspapers to minimize people by calling them NPC's. Just cause they're not Shadowrunners doesn't meant they're not PC's!

...a large percentage of whom will be suffering from radiation exposure. May not kill them outright, but give it a few years.

Yes look at the radiation induced cancers/birth defects in Chernobyl aftermath.*shudders*

WMS