Going European
Yan Wei

IT wasn’t just the demanding in-class questions. Giving challenging presentations and taking nerve-wracking oral exams were also the most difficult activities for Jiang Wei, a Chinese civil servant, who spent a year studying for a Master’s degree in European politics and policy at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
The 27-year-old was one of thousands of participants in the China-Europe Public Administration Program that started at the end of 2003. The program provides assistance to China’s economic and social reform activities, increases understanding between China and the EU and exchanges public administration knowledge between the two sides. Although Jiang did not have an easy time at the university, he believes the experience was rewarding.
“The program gave me an opportunity to learn the theories of public administration systematically and understand the political systems of European countries,” Jiang said one recent morning as he accompanied a foreign delegation on a bus trip to the Great Wall. “More importantly, it helped me develop crucial skills for analyzing problems to find solutions.”
After Jiang received his degree, he returned to his job at the Department of International Exchanges and Cooperation in China’s Ministry of Personnel, and the program chalked up another success.
Harry List, the program’s European Co-director, was also optimistic about the achievements he and his colleagues made over the past four years. “We have fully met the objectives in our work plan,” he said. “We have even done more.”
To date, some 3,000 people have been involved in various activities in the program in China. Thirty-seven short-term study visits to Europe have been organized, while 25 scholars and government officials have completed long-term study visits ranging from one to six months. Four young civil servants, including Jiang, took part in yearlong Master’s degree programs at European institutions.
Four senior public administration forums have been held in Beijing, where European experts shared their knowledge and experience with their Chinese counterparts. This year’s forum, with the theme “Public Sector Reform and the Improvement of Government Performance,” drew more than 400 participants from China and Europe on November 13-15.
Lu Linxiang, the program’s Chinese Co-director, said there is a “fundamental difference” between European and Chinese teaching methods used to train civil servants. Unlike their Chinese counterparts who usually spend most of their class time explaining key points in textbooks, European professors use various interactive approaches to enhance the capacity of the students in such fields as case studies, brainstorming sessions and presentations, he said.
Lu believes that the program will have far-reaching implications for China’s government reform and the improvement of Chinese civil servants’ capabilities and has benefited the country on both conceptual and technical levels. Given the Chinese Government’s long-term focus on economic development and investment utilization, the program’s first senior forum created a sensation when it put forth the forward-looking notion of “social services” in 2004. “Today, however, the concept is gaining currency as the China emphasizes public health, education, housing, urban development and crisis management,” Lu said. According to Du Zheng’ai, a researcher at the China National School of Administration (CNSA), training civil servants internationally is an emerging global trend.
Along with economic globalization, Du said that many problems have transcended national borders and cannot be addressed by a single country alone. “Receiving training in foreign countries can help broaden the vision of civil servants and make them more capable in the era of globalization,” he said.
The CNSA, China’s national training center for mid-level and senior civil servants, senior executives of major state-owned enterprises and policy research fellows, cooperates with more than 40 countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany and Australia. It offers a wide range of international projects to trainees. For example, it has signed collaboration agreements with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Georgia in the United States.
The school has also established cooperative ties with British organizations and universities. Among them, Britain’s Overseas Development Administration provides funds for academic seminars, official visits and book donations, with the University of Birmingham serving as the organizer. The CNSA and the United Kingdom Civil Service College have exchanged official top-level visits.
In the past decade, the CNSA has sent more 3,000 students overseas to receive training in public administration or as part of exchange programs such as the China-Europe Public Administration Program. It also has trained more than 600 foreign civil servants mainly from developing countries.
The China-Europe Public Administra-tion Program has benefited other countries, especially some East European ones. At the program’s annual forums, officials and scholars from countries such as Latvia, Slovenia and Bulgaria, always find they have much in common with their Chinese colleagues.
“Like China, these countries are in transition from a planned economy to a market-oriented one and are therefore interested in China’s experience in this regard,” Lu said. “Developed West European countries can get some insight from China’s approach to development as they work together with China on the program as well.”
Being a diversified bloc, the EU has a special advantage in cooperating with China in the field of public administration, List said. He explained that China finds the EU interesting because it is like “a Chinese meal” in which there are dishes of different flavors to choose from.
Different European countries have different social and historical backgrounds and their public administration systems develop in different ways. According to List, the China-Europe Public Administration Program makes sense because it helps China find its own way while taking into account the experiences of other countries instead of copying European or American models. That’s precisely how Jiang felt. The courses he took in Leuven presented the various social systems in Europe without providing a uniform model.
“We do not want to copy European practices,” Jiang said. “We want to learn what the Europeans have done so that we can draw on their successes and avoid their failures.” Chinese civil servants have yet to improve their team spirit and ability to make oral presentations, Jiang said. He believes it is particularly important to offer training to young civil servants.
“Overseas training can have a lifelong effect on them,” Jiang said.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)



Who killed Mir Balach Marri?
Asif Buzdar


I DREAM that one day Balochistan will be free. Mir Chakar Khan Rind’s portrait will be on our currency notes. Our red, green & blue flag with star will mast on every building. Khan of Kalat will be our Monarch (like the England’s Queen). We will have our own military force and of course a seat at the UN while having diplomatic relations with other countries even Israel. Revenue from our natural resources, taxes and strategic business development will sustain our country.” These were the views of an ‘angry young man, Mir Balach Marri, third in row of Mir Khair Bux Marri’s six sons, who died the other day in a border town of Afghanistan most likely in a NATO strike as the circumstances, evidences and the statements of the so-called Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) representatives suggest.
It was back in February 1973, when a huge arms, ammunition consignment and gorilla warfare literature was wedged by the security agencies in Islamabad. The consignment was opened in the presence of media representatives and the Iraqi ambassador. It was found that the arms were enroute to Balochistan for the insurgents of BLA mostly consist of Marri tribe people. Citing treason, Bhutto (whose daughter was seen sitting the other day with grieved Marri chieftain) subsequently dismissed the provincial government of Balochistan headed by Atta Ullah Mengal and forced governor rule by appointing Sardar Akbar Khan Bugti as the Governor. The sacking of provincial government led to the armed insurgency. Mir Khair Bux Marri formed the Balochistan Peoples’ Liberation Front (BPLF) which led large number of Marri and Mengal tribesmen into gorilla warfare against the central government. During the conflict, Pakistan army as well as the Baloch separatists suffered heavy casualties. It is on record and Akbar Bugti repeatedly confessed publicly that he made a mistake by supporting the government’s action in Balochistan. Even during his days of running from pillar to post, in an interview given to a news agency on 28th April 2006, indirectly confessed that his support to military operation in Balochistan as a governor in 1973 was a mistake. He said, “whatever happened in Balochistan in 1973, has become a part of history, and no one can deny it”. What he forgot that if he was a Baloch then the others were too and it was very hard for them to forget.
To understand the whodunit of Mir Balach Marri’s death one has to deeply understand the mechanics of the Baloch society’s social norms and the political pit-falls of Balochistan. Balochistan’s total population is around seven million and it is divided into innumerable tribes, the Raisani, Zehri, Bugti, Marri, Rind, Mengal, Lehri are few prominent ones. Each tribe has its own chieftain and insists on asserting a separate identity. Almost all the clans have longstanding feuds, running from generations. Years back, in 1980s a former governor Ghous Bux Raisani was murdered and the Rind tribe was suspected for that. Since then several dozen men from Rind and Raisani tribes have been killed in a enmity that is yet to be settled. Baloch people have a special approach towards their enemy. One that they would never call their enemy by name and second that they don’t forget and forgive their enemy. Akbar Bugti, when his son Sallal Bugti was killed by unknown assailants, ordered the killing of at least 100 persons of his adversaries. Keeping this in view imagine that how the Marris and Mengals could have forgotten the harm done to them by Akbar Bugti in 1973? This is the only reason that even when they stood against the government, apparently they displayed a unity but from the heart of the hearts non of them forgot the animosity and were ever vigilant to settle the scores against each other. When Nawab Akbar Bugti, the chieftain of the Bugti tribe was killed during the fighting with government forces, Mir Balach Marri and the late Nawab’s grandson Brahamdagh Khan Bugti were also accompanying him, however surprisingly Mir Balach Marri and Brahamdagh Bugti escaped the disaster. The people of Bugti clan’s whisper gradually turned into a gossip and finally became talk of the town that Mir Balach Marri took the revenge and later took Brahamdagh along to maintain his credibility and innocence. However Brahamdagh was warned to be cautious and not to act too much on Mir Balach’s advices. Now it was Barahamdagh’s turn to avenge. Even Mir Khair Bux Marri himself, while giving an interview to BBC’s correspondent said that, “Some people say that Balach was killed by NATO forces, other says that he was assassinated by Pakistanis while few says that he was killed by Brahamdagh. I don’t believe that Brahamdagh could do this, only if God has taken wisdom from him.”
Now when Mir Balach Marri was killed, his death was reported, by many unknown representatives, to media including his elder brother Mir Gazain Marri and Beebarg Baloch, the spokesman of the banned BLA but two things were clear. First, that they were using the satellite phones to deny the tracking down of their locations and second that non of them was willing to give the location, knowing that the indication of their hideouts would compromise not only their so-called determination to fight for the Baloch rights but would jeopardize the identity of their alien mentors as well, who have made hyper-charged consulates along the Pak-Afghan borders. Hiding of the incident site by them confirm the reports that Balach was killed during an aerial attack by NATO forces who were mysteriously tipped about a Taliban convoy’s presence in the area from where Balach had to pass with his colleagues and bodyguards. Not that Pakistan government was not looking for Mir Balach Marri but an unbiased and unprejudiced thinking would show that it was a source of satisfaction for the government as long as Mir Balach Marri was away and out of Pakistan, especially after taking the blame of Akbar khan Bugti, it was not a wise thing for the government to retake the blame of yet another radical’s killing. Why the Marris are not revealing the details and location of their Chiefs son’s death is only because they want to cash on his death by keeping the details ambiguous and don’t want their ‘real enemy’ to get alert.
Mir Balach made a long journey from Quetta to Kabul in merely 44 years. During this period he summed up his studies at Moscow University where he did Masters in Electronic Engineering. His links with the Russians and his ancestral Marxist views were known to the world. Mir Balach was very out spoken ambitious and blunt. He had an ambition to expand the ‘Free Balochistan’ movement up to Iran and Afghanistan also, which was quite irritating for both the governments. They made their best to keep this rebellious movement far away from their borders but Akbar Bugti’s death was turned as a disguised curse for them and now the ‘Greater Balochistan’ movement was knocking at their doors as well. In the light of this. all existing scenario the more convincing and appealing report seems to be of his killing by the NATO forces, through an air strike in Helmand province area, while travelling in a convoy of vehicles but that doesn’t mean that Afghans and Iranians and of all Brahamdagh can go clean. Soon it will be revealed and confirmed that Mir Balach Marri was killed certainly in Afghanistan and by whom, because this is communication era and Thuraiya (the satellite phone) speaks all.




Just click to get published!
Victor Keegan

IF THE invention of the printing press liberated books from the monopoly of the monasteries in the 15th century, then self-publishing is freeing us today from the power of publishers. Only a tiny proportion of books written ever gets into the public domain because publishers are not prepared to take the risk. This is understandable to the extent that few books make money. However, things are changing thanks to a new generation of online publishers, such as Lulu.com, which enable you to publish a 100 page book complete with colour cover for as little as $7.20 — as long as you get everything right the first time (which seldom happens in practice).
The revolution is now spreading fast to full colour books as new companies spring up offering high-quality colour reproduction in hardback or paperback for affordable prices. According to a report from Understanding & Solutions, the Western European market for photobooks has exploded from under 250,000 in 2005 to nearly 7m by the end of this year and an estimated 18m by 2010. At one end of the scale a professional photographer wanting to publish a 350-page hardcover coffee table book of their work in ‘landscape’ format measuring 13x11 inches can do so for around $160 a copy. But it is at the lower end of the market where the really interesting things are happening. A new genre of photobooks has sprung up which, apart from anything else, offers a fresh opportunity for unusual Christmas presents.
One of the most interesting recent arrivals is blurb.com, founded by Eileen Gittins — an entrepreneurial amateur photographer from San Francisco — barely a year ago. I have tried it in recent months and found it easy to use, except on one occasion when something happened and it kept crashing. If you use one of the standard formats and keep to the default layouts you can publish a book remarkably quickly. After downloading the software you can easily upload photos either from your desktop or from photo-hosting sites or blogs on the web. You write the title and author on the cover before dragging a photo you would like for the front. After choosing formats for the rest of the book (eg, colours and how many photos per page) you are ready to drag photos into the slots provided from your computer or let Blurb extract them automatically from iPhoto, Flickr or Picasa web albums.
Lulu also offers an improved service including a one-click option to alter the layout of the page from, say, one to four photos. Both have recently opened European printing presses that have reduced the previously prohibitively high cost of postage. An 80-page 7x7in full- colour book from Blurb works out at a basic $16.95 plus Euro 5.75 postage from Switzerland. If you want to sell it for more you keep all the profits.

—Khaleej Times