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Who’ll turn on the lights?
Lan Xinzhen
THE draft of China’s first energy law is currently being discussed by
all related departments and enterprises. As the discussions get deeper,
there are increasing voices calling for reestablishing the Ministry of
Energy.
The law, aimed to standardize energy supervision, covers all aspects of
China’s energy strategies and programs including energy exploration,
efficiency, security and emergency response as well as international
cooperation.
China set up the Ministry of Energy in 1988 but it was dismantled five
years later because its administrative functions overlapped with other
departments. Faced with increasing energy shortages, the government set
up an energy bureau under the National Development and Reform Commission
(NDRC) in March 2003. The bureau was crippled, however, because much of
the administrative power in the energy sector was scattered between
different government organs and major oil, power and coal companies
including the State Electricity Regulatory Commission, the State
Administration of Coalmine Safety, the Ministry of Water Resources, the
Ministry of Land and Resources, China National Petroleum Corp., Sinopec
Group and State Grid Corp. of China.
Energy issues have become one of the major bottlenecks for China’s
economic development following its rapid growth in the last decade. It
is imperative the government set up a uniform body for energy
macro-control and supervision. Economists and energy experts have called
for reestablishing the Ministry of Energy, especially after China
suffered a widespread energy crunch in 2004. Many delegates have
submitted proposals to establish a ministry of energy to the National
People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, in March of the past
two years.
Usually, creating a ministry as important as the energy ministry is only
possible when the tenure of the current government ends and the newly
elected one carries out institutional reform. As the office term of this
government will expire in early 2008, the coming March will reveal a
better chance for the energy ministry, otherwise, it might have to wait
five years for another opportunity. Overlapping decision-making
Before the Ministry of Energy was set up in 1988, four former
ministry-level organs were responsible for energy administration,
namely, the Ministry of Petroleum Industry, the Ministry of Coal
Industry, the Ministry of Nuclear Industry and the Ministry of
Electricity. During the institutional reform in 1988, the Ministry of
Energy was set up to replace the Ministry of Electricity and take over
administration functions of the three other energy-related ministries,
which were turned into three enterprises. However, the decision failed
to win support from the petroleum and coal ministries and 20-odd former
officials of the coal ministry appealed to the State Council to resume
the ministry.
During the 1993 institutional reform, their wishes came true when the
Ministry of Energy disappeared and the Ministry of Coal Industry and the
Ministry of Electricity came back. China’s energy administration was
again scattered and administration efficiency crippled. In 1997, the
Ministry of Electricity was turned into the State Grid Corp. of China
and the Ministry of Coal Industry was abolished. In 2003, the NDRC was
established and an energy bureau was set up under it to take over the
energy administration functions.
Soon, officials with the NDRC’s energy bureau became embarrassed by
their role-the administrative level of their bureau was lower than those
ministry level or vice-ministry level agencies and enterprises such as
Sinopec and the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. The related
administration functions have now been handled by a variety of
ministries, resulting in a lack of planning for energy exploration,
consumption, savings and reserves. As a solution, the State Energy
Leading Group was established directly under the State Council to help
manage the energy industry in 2005, with Premier Wen Jiabao heading the
group, and Ma Kai, Minister of the NDRC, acting as the office director.
Yet, since the main role of the group is to organize and coordinate, the
overlapping and scattered administrative pattern remains unchanged.
“This scattered administrative pattern made it nearly impossible to plan
energy strategies and failed to meet the demands for sustainable
economic growth,” said Wang Weicheng, a member of the NPC’s
Environmental and Resources Protection Committee. Wang submitted for a
third time his proposal on setting up an energy ministry to the NPC in
March this year. Strategic importance
The energy ministry should cover all related energy organs and be
entrusted with strong power to make decisions and work out energy
strategies, said Zhao Xiaohui, an official with the Ministry of
Information Industry.
“We should set up a new energy ministry as soon as possible,” continued
Zhao. “Because China has already lagged behind in terms of working out
energy policies and strategies to meet huge domestic demands for energy
and resources.” China has to enhance its administrative efficiency and
set up an energy ministry to facilitate asset restructuring and
acquisition between enterprises, look for global cooperation for oil and
gas exploration and stipulate related policies. “It’s far from enough to
rely on the government to play the coordinator,” Zhao added.
Zhao believes a breakthrough would be possible only when the Central
Government makes up its mind to overcome barriers between different
ministries which do their best to guard their own interests and power.
This is difficult in China, but it’s good for the implementation of the
state’s development strategies as well as the long-term national
interests, Zhao said.
China needs a minister of energy from the policy-making team, said Li
Puming, a researcher with the NDRC’s policy research office. He argued
that in dialogues China has with other countries on energy issues, one
energy minister instead of a dozen ministers from all energy-related
departments will definitely do the job much more efficiently.
An International Energy Agency (IEA) report said China’s increasing
consumption would make it the world’s largest consumer of energy by
2010. China’s energy demand is projected to more than double from 2005
to 2030, the report said. As the second largest oil consumer after the
United States, China has no authoritative energy administration organ,
which made problems worse during recent global oil price hikes.
Difficulties to overcome Despite all the calls about the importance of
setting up a powerful, unified energy ministry, mountains of
difficulties are ahead for the government to overcome. To set up a new
ministry means a power and personnel reshuffle among all these related
energy organs. The biggest difficulty is how to make those already
accustomed to and satisfied with their posts and duties satisfy again
with their new roles, and to break the balance of power and restore it
in terms of interests. The 1988 institutional reform during which the
former energy ministry was set up involved only four ministries, and
today it could involve a dozen. It remains unknown whether officials
from the above-mentioned ministries will disagree once the new energy
ministry takes over their administration power.
It was reported that there were four candidate plans circulating before
the leading group was formed in 2005. The idea of forming an energy
leading group should win out because the other three, to set up an
energy ministry, to form a state energy commission and to promote the
NDRC’s energy bureau as a vice-ministry level agency, all contain the
possibility of claiming energy administration power from related
ministries.
It still remains to be seen whether the energy ministry will acquire its
due authority if it is eventually established. At present, the Central
Government gives priority to energy efficiency and environmental
protection while the local governments pursue economic growth. The
authority and image of the energy ministry will be trimmed if it fails
to coordinate between these government organs.
|(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange
Items)
Boycott is out, but quest
continues
Nasim Zehra
THE outcome of the three meetings between the ARD and the APDM
alliances, led by the PPP and the PML-N, has been a 13-point Charter of
Demands (COD). These points largely focus on preventing electoral
rigging.
The key issue raised by movement politics relating to the restoration of
the pre-November 3 judiciary has been highlighted but not included as a
consensus point between the two alliances. Together these two leaders
whose parties had polled around 80 per cent of the votes during the
elections held between 1989 and 1996. The decision following the
December 3 Nawaz Sharif-Benazir Bhutto-led meeting was to jointly draw
up a COD. These demands were to essentially address issues raised in
electoral politics and in movement politics.
This convergence of the imperatives of movement politics and electoral
politics has been prompted by President Parvez Musharraf’s November 3
imposition of quasi-martial law and by the current conditions of
pre-poll rigging that exist. The obvious ones is the pro-PML-Q and
pro-Musharraf caretaker government, the provincial governors appointed
by President Musharraf, the provincial administrative structures
especially in Punjab and Sind that remain loyal to the former PML-Q
chief ministers and an Election Commission that has worked as an organ
of the Musharraf regime, not a genuinely independent commission. And
indeed this partisan context becomes the dominant force against which no
institution can provide remedy including the not-so-independent Supreme
and High Courts.
The energy on Pakistan’s current political landscape covers both
movement politics and electoral politics. Movement politics, mostly
urban based is forcing the politicians to engage with the issues of rule
of law, of Constitutional democracy and of unaccountable exercise of
state and political power.
Electoral politics meanwhile is focusing on creating an environment in
which the pre-poll rigging does not occur on a mass scale. On December
3, Pakistanis witnessed important developments within Pakistan’s
political context. Circumstances had pushed competing politicians
together despite their different priorities they chose to move forward
together on a peaceful but genuine democratic path.
Settling old accounts will have to be done through genuine electoral
politics operating within a genuinely independent Election Commission,
an independent judiciary and an independent media. All other ways of
settling old scores, by the establishment and the politicians, have only
compounded Pakistan’s tragedies.
Pakistan’s citizens, admittedly relatively small in number yet huge in
impact, commitment, conviction and moral legitimacy have occupied public
space and are leading Pakistan’s first ever movement politics in the age
of the information revolution. Initiated by the lawyers this movement is
now joined by the media, politicians, students, homemakers and others.
Together they have created the pressure that has forced the politicians
to go beyond the traditionally narrow confines of electoral politics
which focuses on merely defeating the opponent and winning the elections
election even if it requires alliance with those power players on
Pakistan’s politics whose business is not politics.
Meanwhile, interestingly, if December 3 was the high point of Pakistan’s
politics, it was also the high point of external attempts to help ‘iron
out’ Pakistan’s political problems. The American envoy and the Turkish
president did the rounds of meetings. Whoever pushes for this external
hand to overtly or covertly engage in Pakistan’s internal politics is
ignorant of the power of internal compulsions, of self-interest of the
political players and of the internal power wielders. These external
players may have their own interests, but as we have witnessed since
November 3, it has been Pakistan’s own internal struggle led by its
citizens who have forced the world to accept the post November 3
developments within the context of the need for Constitutional democracy
and accountable exercise of power.
Men in the president’s camp who have cheered him on as he continued to
remain in the political blunder land of his making are now raising
concerns. Sheikh Rashid, the most vocal of president’s men and a solid
constituency politician himself, has finally talked of the weakness of
his party’s leadership. When everyone argued incessantly that the
president must opt for a grand national reconciliation, the president’s
men tutored him in the politics of rule and divide, of manipulation and
of irreconcilability. Now the systems of political manipulation have
weakened. The attempts to roll back the clock on movement politics will
not entirely succeed. It was reported last week that President Musharraf
had told all the provincial governors no protests and sit-ins would be
allowed. Those are his orders. There is much on the ground that will
attempt to counter his orders. Both the movement activists and the
electoral politicians are at work.
Movement dynamics and electoral dynamics have converged. Old ways of
violence-based state control will not work. Pakistanis do not want
violence, but many are likely to resist the exercise of unaccountable
power. The proposed COD to be put forth by the political parties must
ensure that issues of principles and politics are all addressed. That
alone is the way to steer Pakistan’s movement and electoral politics
towards a non-violent non-anarchic path. The president too must
reconcile with this reality.
As the Opposition parties almost seem decided to contest the elections,
here are some observations. The judges issue has to be kept alive. That
will primarily happen on the non-electoral front. The pressure from the
movement politics will keep gnawing at the current status quo involving
a handpicked judiciary that is in place after collaborating to ouster a
judiciary beginning to stand up for supremacy of the Constitution and
rule of law.
PPP and PML-N will both participate in the elections. This knocks out,
unless of course something radically unexpected occurs, the best case
scenario for exerting pressure on the regime to reinstate the judges.
PML-N more and PPP relatively less will ensure that their electoral
campaign will remain focused on the deposed judges. They have already
indicated that they are opting for different ‘mechanisms’ to ensure the
“independence” of the judiciary.
Clearly no mainstream politician including the PML-N, PPP and other
opposition parties do not read today as a revolutionary moment in
Pakistan’s political journey. Entangled and enticed by electoral power,
the regime-controlled levers of electoral power and indeed its
competitive dynamic, they know that both complete unity within the
Opposition is out as is the decision to leave the electoral field open.
Alongside these pragmatic electoral moves, the movement politics in
Pakistan will continue to raise the issues that most require attention:
rule of law and Constitutional democracy.
—Khaleej Times
Why West must hug Tehran close
Simon Jenkins
ON Monday, no fewer than 16
American intelligence agencies revealed in a national intelligence
estimate (NIE) that George Bush had no clothes. Iran did indeed halt its
nuclear weapons program in response to the UN’s “48-day deadline” in
autumn 2003. International diplomacy under the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty worked and Iran has been telling the truth all along. This says
not much about present-day Iran, but volumes about present-day America.
The paradigm of Western policy toward the Muslim world is changing. The
age of paranoid belligerence may be coming to an end. With the impending
demise of the Republican ascendancy, sanity is pushing its head above
the parapet. As during the McCarthy episode, America has taken the world
to the brink of chaos and is now hauling it back. Bush’s “third world
war” is on hold.
In his investigative masterpiece, The Target Is Destroyed, Seymour Hersh
traced what happened to American intelligence after the Russian shooting
down in 1983 of a Korean airliner. As raw material rose up the
government hierarchy it was corrupted by agency politics and ideological
spin until by the time it reached Cabinet level the truth was mangled.
Intelligence became whatever a particular politician needed to bolster
his cause. The same happened before the Iraq war. In 2003 Washington’s
intelligence assessors dared not believe that Iran’s supposed nuclear
program was “no immediate threat”. Now they dare. A previous assertion
that Iran is “determined to develop nuclear weapons” becomes studied
agnosticism. “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran
halted its nuclear weapons program” — and has not restarted it. Even
assuming a policy change, Iran could not achieve critical capability
until 2010 and “may not have enough enriched uranium until after 2015”.
This is not especially enlightening. As between capability by 2010 and
by 2015, a prudent strategist would assume the former. A maxim of
Iranian politics is that even the predictable is impossible to predict.
The outlook of this big, rich and boisterous nation is not that of a
single dictator or political movement, as was the case in Iraq, but of a
rambling coalition of forces, some hieratic and fanatical, some
democratic and eager for rapprochement with the West. The former cannot
be militarily defeated; the latter can be engaged. Since the turn of the
century, Iran’s wilder heads have wanted a nuclear warhead. This is
hardly surprising with nuclear powers ruling or in alliance to its east,
north and West. Since the Iranian Revolutionary Guards appear to have at
least some control over the nuclear program, this is no joke. To rely on
“the moderates” to hold them in check would be as unwise as to rely on
America’s Democrats to hold Cheney in check.
—Khaleej Times
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