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“Punjab is a hot bed of fraud and so, in their infinite political wisdom, the Liberal Party of Canada opened a foreign mission right in the belly of the beast. Opened in 2004 to reward Sikh voting blocs for their loyal support, Canada has the only foreign mission in Punjab’s state capital. With an annual operating budget of around $25 million a year the mission serves no purpose other than to waste Canadian tax dollars by funneling scam artists, the pathetic, the mediocre, the greedy, the aged, all into Canada. But they eventually vote and isn’t that what really matters in the end?”Shut Down Canada’s Chandigarh Consulate And All of Its FraudNew record: Canadians owe $1.71 for every $1 they make - NationalCanada has nothing to sell, other than printing degrees to keep too many marginal institutes, universities, private school, some printing useless, papers.Short answer: Canada has nothing to sell, manufacturing is long gone, this country will go bankrupt eventually.AndThey have opened up, a college/school/private institute/a university/literally everywhere, they have to fill these institutes, to keep the lights on.Canada found out that India and China, where marginal kids cannot make to the higher education, but parents are willing to fund.Why not milk these cash cows, by printing more diplomas, it is a win-win situation, parents salvaged their marginal kid and Canada kept her lights on for a little bit longer.Debt delinquencies going up in Canada and likely to keep rising, warns credit monitorEquifax says total Canadian consumer debt including mortgages increased to nearly $1.91 trillion in the fourth quarter, up from $1.82 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2017. The average non-mortgage debt for consumers was $23,520, up three per cent compared with a year earlier.Debt delinquencies going up in Canada and likely to keep rising, warns credit monitorStatistics Canada says household debt grew faster than income in fourth-quarterSocial Sharinggraph showing canada debt:Is Canada dying?Sam Arora's answer to Is Canada dying?Canada is not dying, it is already dead.Read on the frauds and scams.We broke our backs in this country to have some peaceful retirements,This country has become like a prostitute, anyone who could pay can enter this country, anyone can come, fraud refugee/fraud student/fraud illegal immigrants.Some people are printing their own visa,Meanwhile:Seniors and PoveSeniors and Poverty – Canada’s Next Crisis?Canadians Spending Less On Food, Heat To Afford Prescription Drugs: Study10 Things You Might Not Know About Poverty In CanadaSeniors and PoveSeniors and Poverty – Canada’s Next Crisis?https://hoopp.com/docs/default-s...More than 1 million kids in Canada go to school hungryOpen more borders: Bring as many fraudsters you could bring.Fraudsters use bogus University of Waterloo acceptance letters to enter CanadaWATERLOO — Sarbjeet Singh landed in Canada in August 2012, telling the airport border agent he would be studying for his master's degree in engineering at the University of Waterloo the following month.To back up his story, he had a government-issued student visa, and an acceptance letter into one of Canada's most sought after engineering graduate programs.The border agent stamped his paperwork, and waved him through.On the surface, there's nothing remarkable about a young man from India being one of the more than 5,800 international students who come from abroad to study at Waterloo every semester.There was only one problem. The University of Waterloo had never heard of him.Fraudsters use bogus University of Waterloo acceptance letters to enter CanadaShut Down Canada’s Chandigarh Consulate And All of Its Fraud“Punjab is a hotbed of fraud and so, in their infinite political wisdom, the Liberal Party of Canada opened a foreign mission right in the belly of the beast. Opened in 2004 to reward Sikh voting blocs for their loyal support, Canada has the only foreign mission in Punjab’s state capital. With an annual operating budget of around $25 million a year, the mission serves no purpose other than to waste Canadian tax dollars by funneling scam artists, the pathetic, the mediocre, the greedy, the aged, all into Canada. But they eventually vote and isn’t that what really matters in the end?”Shut Down Canada’s Chandigarh Consulate And All of Its FraudCanada’s Sikh Defence Minister, Harjit Saijan, has recently admitted that he lied when he claimed to be the architect of a key NATO mission in Afhghanistan. Saijan is one of four Sikhs whom Trudeau has appointed to his Cabinet. About 1% of Canadians are Sikhs, yet they represent 14% of Trudeau’s Cabinet. Post National Trudeau has never justified this outrageous situation and in this latest Sikh scandal, has refused to fire Saijan.This article describes the rampant corruption at the Canadian Consulate in Chandigarh, the corrupt political environment in India’s Punjab from which Saijan and many of Canada’s Sikhs emerged and the continued Sikh corruption in Canada. This article was written for The Canadian Immigration Reform Blogspot in 2010, but is just as relevant, if not more relevant, today. For the Blogspot’s more recent views on “DIVERSITY”, see the following : Canadian Immigration Reform BlogShut Down ChandigarhI started Canadian Immigration Reform Blogspot with a few goals in mind. Getting Canada’s diplomatic mission in Chandigarh, Punjab, India shut down has been added to the list. Two more stories published in the Toronto Star add fuel to the fire and illustrate why Canada’s diplomatic mission in Chandigarh, Punjab, India does not serve Canada’s interest as it is a complete waste of money.The first one takes a look at the unscrupulous, unethical, lecherous face of immigration consultancy in the Indian state.Sandeep Ohri is a dashing 42-year-old who revels in zipping through the traffic chaos in his gleaming Mercedes, passing billboards touting him as the leading immigration consultant in Punjab state.But Canadian officials see someone else: an extraordinarily brazen and successful scam artist in an industry rife with deceptive swindlers willing to provide applicants with a litany of sham documents — everything from fake airline tickets and doctored bank statements to forged letters from Canadian-based funeral homes.Of the nearly 500 visa applications formally rejected this year, 228 come from Ohri and his firm, OGIC Immigration Consultants.The six visa-section staff who work at Canada’s mission in Chandigarh, Punjab’s capital, review 40,000 visa applications a year from students, family members and prospective immigrants. While official statistics aren’t available, one senior Canadian diplomat estimated at least a quarter of those applications are refused because of fraud.“More would be if the processing was completed, but sometimes you know it’s fraud and just refuse the request and close the file,” the diplomat said.India is Canada’s top source for immigrants simply because of the volume of applications the country produces due to the size of its population. Of those who immigrate, approximately half of them come from the state of Punjab. Punjab is home to the majority of India’s Sikhs. Thus there are more Sikhs in Canada than Hindus. Hindus comprise the majority of India’s population at 80%; Sikhs are only 2% (there are more Christians in India than Sikhs). In Canada, Sikhs constitute roughly 50% of the Indo-Canadian community whereas Hindus are just over 30%.In Punjab, “the average per-capita annual income of $484 is still the highest in the country” which means in relation to rest of their compatriots, Punjabis are not necessarily hurting. They have money.With that said we come to the second article. This one reveals the financial extent to which Punjabis go to send a son over-seas to secure “a better life” for the family. This can be realized in the form of remittances or the eventual importation of the entire family into western countries through family reunification schemes.Now, though the story is presented as a tragic tale of a Punjabi family who only tried to make a better life for themselves, I cannot say I share that sentiment. I believe they got what they deserved. You see, in India western citizenship is a status symbol and the article makes this clear.In the small village of Kapure, it is not about keeping up with the Joneses. It’s about keeping up with the Gills and Dhaliwals.On a narrow, dusty street, one house after the other boasts visible signs of prosperity — a fresh coat of paint, air conditioners, brick driveways and new cars. The children, playing hide and seek, wear Reebok and Nike.The neighbours share not only affluence but also a common source of it — almost every family has a son, son-in-law or nephew living abroad and sending money home.Every family, that is, except the Bhangus.In many villages, almost every house has at least one person in North America, England or Europe.Those that don’t, like the Bhangus, are considered pariahs, says Krishan Chand, who’s been studying the effects of immigration on villages with the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development. They are excluded from events and, in some cases, parents are not able to find husbands for their daughters.Thus starts the chase where these left-out families will do anything in the hope of sending a family member — usually a son — abroad.This leaves them vulnerable to the smooth talk of unscrupulous immigration consultants. But the prospective immigrant is not a babe in the woods free of blame. They oftentimes participate in the fraud.Typically, agents provide prospective university and college students, and others, with fake bank statements and other doctored documents to support their visa requests, which are usually rejected without proof of one’s ability to pay school fees and living expenses.Others provide their clients with fake passports and visas. Most are rejected.A visa officer at the Chandigarh mission’s consular section told the Star’s Rick Westhead last year that the staff is deluged with applications sent with phony documents. “Over the past year, 85 per cent of employment letters related to work visa applications have been forgeries,” he said.The Bhangus find it hard to believe they are living this nightmare.Prabhjot (Bhangu) says he resisted for some years but then started exploring various avenues, but found he couldn’t immigrate to Canada under the points system, or as a student or on a work permit.The family knew there was a better chance of finding a well-to-do husband for Hardeep (their daughter) who had turned 20, if Prabhjot was abroad.That’s when Prabhjot says a friend from the village who now lives in Toronto introduced him to an immigration agent. The agent promised to take Prabhjot to Toronto for $48,000.Things go downhill from there but at least he escapes with his life. Not so for Amandeep Kaur Dhillion. Remember her? The status seeking impulses of her Sikh family back in India sacrificed her happiness and sold her into a loveless marriage so that they can (could) use her to immigrate to Canada. She was stabbed to death on January 1, 2009, her father-in-law was charged with first degree murder.Punjab is a hot bed of fraud and so, in their infinite political wisdom, the Liberal Party of Canada opened a foreign mission right in the belly of the beast. Opened in 2004 to reward Sikh voting blocs for their loyal support, Canada has the only foreign mission in Punjab’s state capital. With an annual operating budget of around $25 million a year the mission serves no purpose other than to waste Canadian tax dollars by funneling scam artists, the pathetic, the mediocre, the greedy, the aged, all into Canada. But they eventually vote and isn’t that what really matters in the end?Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister responsible for immigration, was in India recently to specifically address the immigration abuses Canada is subjected to by Indian applicants, particularly those in Punjab. Well, good luck with that. Why should India care? Why would India want to curb the steady outflow of non-resident Indians into foreign countries who can then influence domestic politics and the economy to satisfy India’s interests?(So) Forget India. Canada needs to protect itself and the way to do that is to shut down the damn, useless mission in Chandigarh. For one thing it plays into the hands of the immigration consultants in the state by making the execution of their scams all the easier. In this regard, Canada is an accomplice to the crimes.Also, what quality of immigrant is the mission helping to import into the nation when many of the applications are clearly fraudulent? If these people are willing to go so far as to defraud the Canadian government and the people it represents, then they don’t deserve to come to Canada at all. And what kind of Canadians will they be, if you can call them that, if Canadian citizenship is nothing more to them than a status symbol on par with an expensive car and fancy golf clubs?Canada needs to shut down the mission as well as curtail immigration from India altogether. We simply accept far too many immigrants from that country to be of any worth. And of that country, a considerable sum come from one particular region. Indeed, this is characteristic of the immigration system as a whole. Almost 60% of immigrants come from Asia and of that 60%, most come from a few source countries chiefly India, China, and the Philippines. This doesn’t say much about diversity in the immigration system now, does it?Shut Down Canada’s Chandigarh Consulate And All of Its FraudQUICK IMMIGRATION FACTS----THE FOLLOWING "CLOCKS" BEGAN ON JANUARY 1, 2019 :1. Net Cost of Immigration to Canada: up to $35 Billion per year. That amounts to $95,890,000 per day, and so far in 2019,$19,052,515,580.352. Number of immigrants coming to Canada per year: an average of close to 250,000 since 1991 (Note: in 2016 and 2017, Canada took in about 300,000). That's 822 per day, 34 per hour. This unnecessary and relentless intake is an abnormality in our immigration history, and has made many Canadians feel like strangers in their own country.163,324.313. According to the Canadian Bureau of International Education (a private advocacy group), there were over 336,000 foreign students in Canada in 2014. The CBIE and many public agencies claim that International Students are a net economic contributor to Canada. However, NO Canadian study has ever been done to prove that claim. In fact, in the U.S., a study done by the National Academy of Sciences and other agencies showed that in spite of the high fees paid by International Students, U.S. sources were actually subsidizing International Students. In the case of Graduate students, the average subsidy was about $12,000 + per year. Canada continues to accept large numbers of NEW international students every year:183,590.834. Number of Temporary Foreign Workers allowed to work in Canada: We hit a record 491,547 in 2012 (5 times higher than in 2002)!! That number consisted of 213,573 new TFW's in 2012 and 277,974 TFW's already here.97,954.855. Remittances sent overseas total $24 Billion a year.Remittances represent the amount of money sent 'back home' by foreign-born workers in Canada.$13,064,637,972.906. Canada gave refugee status to 122,518 people from 2009 to 2013. That's an average of 24,514 people in each year --- 67 per day. The number of people applying for such status was probably at least twice the 24,514 number.16,330.83Fraudsters use bogus University of Waterloo acceptance letters to enter CanadaThe University of Waterloo says it’s frustrated some people are using fake acceptance letters to gain entry into Canada. - David Bebee,Record staffMore than 5,800 international students attended the University of Waterloo last term. - Brent Davis , Record staff1 / 2WATERLOO — Sarbjeet Singh landed in Canada in August 2012, telling the airport border agent he would be studying for his master's degree in engineering at the University of Waterloo the following month.To back up his story, he had a government-issued student visa, and an acceptance letter into one of Canada's most sought after engineering graduate programs.The border agent stamped his paperwork and waved him through.On the surface, there's nothing remarkable about a young man from India being one of the more than 5,800 international students who come from abroad to study at Waterloo every semester.There was only one problem. The University of Waterloo had never heard of him.Continue to read and decide yourself, Is Canada is dying or is it dead already?Here is another one:International student arrested, facing deportation for working too many hoursWATCH ABOVE: Jobandeep Sandhu, an international student from Punjab, India, was arrested on the side of Ontario’s Highway 401 for working too much. Now he could be deported.Flashback:In our time, I came to this country in the early 70 s, and went to grad school in Guelph.Before that time and reasonably until recent years, I never saw even student for undergrad degree from China/India. Almost all were grad students, almost all of them on very prestigious scholarships/or assistantships.They almost all were A-plus students basically a rock star in India/China/other developing nations.This undergrad and community college trend is new, and it is all due to more disposable income/growing middle class in India and China. And most of these kids cannot make to the very tough to get in universities/college in their native countries.It is win win-win situation,Canadian marginal institutes/programs found a way to keep the lights open.Indian/Chinese/other developing countries found a way to send their marginal stuff to Canada.Timmy and Macdonald found some reliable labor because North American kids are done with flipping hamburgers.AlsoA good percentage has come here with no intention to go to school/college/and finish the education, they are looking for a full-time settlement.Either they are on a fake visaorScheming a scheme, marriage of convenience, go underground, eventually make a compassion case,orIn case everything fails, make a fake refugee case on the bases sexual orientation, or political B.S. and the host of other religious B.S.The Chinese rich kids:I know per sure, some wealthy Chinese parents are sending their useless kids here not for study, but to understand how the systems work.Sure they may enroll in cushy courses but most of the time they sleep away and party.Questionable Indian students:2. Similarly, one Indian kid told me, he has some roommates, they hardly ever go to college/school/???Canadian student visa scam/abuse is not different than the American HIB visa scams.Where HIB, visas were obtained on the false/bogus claims and such stories are well documented. Trump is/was not crazy, he knew and knows exact abuse of the system. He put a stop to the abuse in the system. Now Canada is holding the “ tooshy” the rear end of this filth.International students in fake marriage schemes to CanadaThe newspaper ads in India are the visible tip of a booming underground industry in fake marriages involving would-be international students.The prize for the “spouse” whose family buys an instant marriage with a foreign student is back-door access to a full-time job in Canada and a fast-track to citizenship.The matrimonial ads normally promise that the foreign students’ sham marriage, plus all travel and study expenses, will be paid for by the Indian families who are determined to have their son or daughter emigrate.The type of Indian student the ads seek is usually a teenage girl, who must have passed an English-language test and therefore be in line to be accepted as an international student.Media outlets in India, such as the Hindustan Times, report there is a “booming matrimony market for ‘brides’ who can earn the ‘groom’” coveted status as a migrant to a Western country.Canada is among the most sought-after destinations for Indian foreign students, say migration specialists, because it is the most generous toward foreign students and their spouses. Australia has also been popular, but recently tightened its rules.Here is a typical recent ad from one Punjabi-language newspaper in India, Ajit:“Jatt Sikh, boy, 24 years old, 5 feet 10 inches, needs girl with IELTS band 7. Marriage real or fake. Boy’s side will pay all expenses.”The ad is listed by a high-caste “Jatt” Sikh male, or more likely his parents. It seeks a contractual marriage with a young woman who has scored well (“band 7”) on an international exam called “IELTS,” the International English Language Testing System. Almost three million IELTS exams are conducted each year.Here is another ad, from the newspaper Jagbani:“Barbar Sikh, 24, 5 feet 8 inches. Finished Grade 12. Looking for BSc or IELTS pass girl. Boy’s side will pay all expenses to go to Canada.”In this ad the family of a lower-caste “Barbar Sikh” is seeking to have their son marry an Indian female with a bachelors of science degree, or a passing mark on the IELTS test, so their son can be allowed into Canada as her spouse.As these kinds of ads illustrate, the parents of the male “spouse” typically offer to cover all expenses for the international student, who often end up attending one of the scores of private colleges in Canada with low to non-existent standards.B.C. is home to 130,000 international students, the vast majority of whom are in Metro Vancouver, which has the highest concentration of foreign students in Canada.

Silicon Valley star is now teacher in Tamil Nadu, says busy with new start-up — rural schoolSridhar Vembu, the founder of Zoho Corporation is now all set to take this “lockdown experiment” to the next level: “a rural school start-up” that will provide free education and food, a model that doesn’t believe in marks or degrees or conventional affiliations for certificates, or “credentials” as he calls it.Sridhar Vembu is the founder and CEO of privately held Zoho, a maker of cloud-based business software.Vembu, who owns a majority stake in Zoho with his siblings, started the business as AdventNet along with two siblings and three friends.Zoho has 50 million users world wide and Zoho One is its flagship product with over 45 apps.Vembu has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton and started his career at Qualcomm in 1994.Zoha is building a new 375-acre campus in Austin, Texas, which will also house its Zoho University.Sridhar Vembu at Mathalamparai village near Tenkasi where he set up a new office and home in 2019.FOR THE rest of the world, Sridhar Vembu is the founder of Zoho Corporation, a Silicon Valley star valued by Forbes at nearly $2.5 billion who decided to take the unusual step of moving to a small village in Tenkasi in southern Tamil Nadu last year. But the man himself says he is more of a teacher these days, wearing the traditional veshti and moving around on a bicycle in Mathalamparai:About Shridhar VembuSridhar Vembu is an Indian entrepreneur who founded the ZOHO software company in 1996. According to Forbes, in 2019, his company’s net worth was 1.83 billion dollars. Sridhar Vembu got a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton. In 1994, he started his career at Qualcomm. a couple of years later he started the company that focuses on web-based business tools and office suite.According to Forbes, Sridhar Vembu is the 76th richest man in India. He is 52 years old and living in Pleasanton, California. He is running the software company for 24 years. The company is counting Salesforce among its biggest competitor, now some report shows that Sridhar Vembu is looking to enlarge organization into America’s heartland and Mexico. Sridhar Vembu is a very simple man who still likes to drive an old Toyota. He wears a simple dress and reads Indian philosophy. Forbes has mentioned that ZOHO has taken a 375-acre campus in Austin, Texas for the campus. On-campus, you will also see ZOHO University.About ZOHOZOHO is a web-based online office suite that contains word spreadsheets, presentations, web conferencing, wikis, databases, project management, invoicing, note-taking, and much more application. The company global headquarters in Chennai and has seven offices in different countries. Within 24 years ZOHO has introduced 55 apps and 35 million users across the world. ZOHO corporation culture is completely different than others. one interview Vembu said, “We don’t think of it just as a company, it is also a community inside” He doesn’t like the culture replacing people every three years.History of ZOHOFrom 1996 to 2003, the company was known as AdventNet.inc. Sridhar Vembu started the company with his friend Tony Thomas. in 2001, AdventNet expended the operation in Japan. Four years later (IN 2005) ZOHO CRM was launched, followed by the release of the project, Sheet, and creator in 2006. A year later ZOHO enlarged into the collaboration space with the ZOHO Docs and introduced new features like invoicing and mail application. After introducing these features, the company had 1 million users by august 2008. despite having several competitors, the company was doing wellWatching the success of ZOHO, in 2009 the company got a name called ZOHO corporation. I got surprised by knowing that the company was raised without outside funding. Vembu and his family own 88% of the ZOHO share. According to Wikipedia, since 2005, ZOHO has launched additional apps every year, and in 2017 ZOHO launched a new app called ZOHO. Lately, ZOHO got big 50 million users all over the world. Sridhar Vembu has made name huge in the software world by himself. The company has employed more than 5000 people.Some amazing facts about Shridhar VembuYou may surprise that Vembu is running the ZOHO University in house. The university offer training to those students who have just completed 12th and have fundamental math and tech skills.Another one Shridhar Vembu his wife and son live on a five-acre ranch in Pleasanton, California. In the ranch, you can see so many goats.Shridhar Vembu has mentioned that he is more worried about the brave new world than artificial intelligence that will destroy the job.Sridhar Vembu – Founder & CEO of ZOHO - Business ConnectWhat started six months ago as home tuition for three children that took up “about two-three hours” of his spare time, Vembu says he now has four teachers and 52 students in the fold, mostly children of farm labourers from the village.Sridhar Vembu in front of his office in Mathalamparai village of TenkasiImage: Courtesy ZohoThe 53-year-old is now all set to take this “lockdown experiment” to the next level: “a rural school start-up” that will provide free education and food, a model that doesn’t believe in marks or degrees or conventional affiliations for certificates, or “credentials” as he calls it.This has become a serious project. I am also doing part-time teaching. We are trying to put it together as a model now…busy preparing papers, getting necessary approvals,” says Vembu, speaking to The Indian Express over phone from Tenkasi. He is clear though that his “start-up” will not seek affiliation with the CBSE or any other conventional educational board.It’s not a new template for Vembu. Over the last decade, his Zoho University, a part of Zoho Corporation, has successfully managed the concept of helping Class 10, 11 and 12 dropouts to become IT professionals and team leaders in his own firm and others.In the village, Vembu says, classifying children based on what they know is better than segregating by age. (Source: Shibu Alexis Francis, Zoho Corporation)But the challenge in the village, he says, was different after the Covid curbs came into force. “Practically, it was not possible for them to attend classes (online after the lockdown)…some parents had smartphones but cheap models. I had enough time, and we did some physical experiments, I taught them a little Science, Mathematics and English,” he says.On September 13, Vembu, who is an active Twitter user, posted: “Within few days, my social distanced open air class swelled from three kids to 25 and kids got unruly and I was struggling (smiley) and realised how hard it is to be a teacher.”“On the ground, what I see is poverty…I noticed that kids coming to our tuition centre are actually hungry. How can you learn anything when you are hungry? That has to be sorted. I appreciate the noon-meal scheme but that is not enough,” he says, adding that his “school” provides two meals a day, and snacks around 4.30 pm, before children are sent home.According to Vembu, policies made in Chennai or Delhi with good intentions get diluted when they reach villages. “There is not enough ground talent to do the implementation,” he says.“There are different categories of students among the rural poor. Some who really want to get credentials, and many others who are actually planning to drop out at one point, after Class 8 or 10,” he says. Retaining the dropouts, he says, is the challenge.In the village, Vembu says, classifying children based on what they know is better than segregating by age. “It is a real start-up challenge,” he says, pointing to children in Class 7 who do not know the English alphabet.“Another challenge is that teachers do not live in the village. They come and go from a town about 30-40 km away… When people who can afford to send kids to private schools even in rural villages and when teachers of rural schools refuse to send their children there, it is the kids from poorest families alone who end up in the government schools. Their parents may be having a precarious income, they may have jobs only for a few days… Alcoholism is another problem. If a father is drinking heavily, he won’t be bringing the income home and the kid will get neglected, they will go hungry. I see it here,” he says.Vembu insists that the root of most problems in the education system is “credentialism”. “Even the bright students focus only on grades, not the knowledge they acquire. There are many non-traditional learners. They are among us, in our families. We know them, they are brilliant but the exam results will not show that. The system should accommodate non-traditional learners too, those who fail in exams but still do the best in jobs,” he says.Before the school, Zoho, which clocked an operating revenue of Rs 3,300 crore in financial year 2018-19 with more than 50 million clients, opened over a dozen rural offices in Tamil Nadu during the lockdown to take software engineers back to their villages.“My only demand was to set up offices in rural areas. They decided the locations. We will open 10 more offices in three months, opening more in Tamil Nadu as well as Kerala and Andhra, each with a seating capacity of up to 100 people,” he says.In Mathalamparai, Vembu says, he has made many friends over the last year visiting tea shops and playing cricket with children. “They were very warm. They were curious but still very friendly to a stranger,” he says.Cover Story: Sridhar Vembu's Vision From The Village | Forbes IndiaSilicon Valley star is now teacher in Tamil Nadu, says busy with new start-up — rural schoolIf We Don't Have Politics, We Will Have War: Sridhar Vembu | Forbes India

Number: 310Question: Is the rise of China good for Asia?Answer: It depends on the view of each people, but in general, I think that the rise of China is good for Asia. However, from the Vietnamese view, the Chinese rise shall impact on Vietnam more complicated and brings both sides including the good and the bad for Vietnam. In this answer, I shall guide you in reading this article.The Politics of “Struggling Co-evolution“: Trade, Power, and Vision in Vietnam’s Relations with China(Foreign ministers of both countries)China’s increasing presence, economically and militarily, has the potential to lead to a Chinese sphere of influence in which Southeast Asia is regarded as China’s “backyard.” For realist scholars, China’s regional leadership constitutes an irresistible outcome of its technology, military forces, economic scale, and population. Among them, military and economic indicators are the two crucial factors determining the degree of its influence. Specialists favoring a historical-cultural approach emphasize, additionally, that Southeast Asia includes countries that belonged to the “Chinese tribute system” in the past. John King Fairbank's well-known concept of the “Chinese world order” provides a model to understand international relations in Asia, which depicts China’s centrality and superiority in this system. With the long history of hierarchical order in Asia, the prospect that the Middle Kingdom would return to the central position as the most dominant power on the regional ladder should not be surprising. Of all the countries in Southeast Asia, Vietnam has the most complicated and multifaceted relationship with China. Sino-Vietnamese interactions are far more complex than historical, cultural, or ideological issues alone. In the post-Cold War era, four factors characterized China’s main interests in Vietnam:1) to gain an advantage in territorial disputes with Hanoi;2) to keep Hanoi from veering toward the United States;3) to encourage Hanoi to pursue pro-China policies on the Taiwan issue and other international affairs,4) to encourage Hanoi to give preferential treatment to Chinese products and businesses.Since the early-1990s’ normalization of Vietnam-China ties, Hanoi has assiduously pursued a strategy of hedging its bets toward China: On the one hand, it has undertaken measures to increase economic engagement as well as deepen party-to-party relations; on the other, Vietnam has sought to diversify its external strategic relations by reaching out to other powers (i.e., Russia, India, and the United States) in order to check Chinese territorial adventurism.While Beijing and Hanoi cooperate where they can, there has also been a deepening struggle in this relationship. The context has shifted to what is aptly called “struggling co-evolution,” as the two countries are continuously searching for a “glue” to keep their relations together for both their international and domestic affairs. Meanwhile, Beijing wants to control Hanoi within its sphere of influence as much as possible, and Vietnam tries to manage the asymmetries to maintain its autonomy. The “struggling co-evolution” between both countries is more and more comprehensive: commercial, political, diplomatic, and technological, even in the “ideal” world where China tries to provide “objective and common” knowledge that supports regional planning and cooperation and create the image of a regional order led by it.Asymmetric Trade Dependence and Inclusion-Exclusion LogicEconomic interdependence rarely means economic equality; one side benefits more in such a relationship and, as a result, has powerful leverage over the other. Sino-Vietnamese economic relations exemplify this reality. While China is Vietnam’s top trading partner, Vietnam is not China’s top partner. Vietnam is strongly dependent on cheap exports from China and investment from Chinese businesses, whereas the same could not be said for China. If China closed its southern border with Vietnam, both countries would be hurt economically, but because Vietnam’s economy is smaller and more dependent on China than vice versa, it would be less able to sustain the economic consequences. China holds an important economic advantage, and its rise will pose an increasing threat to Vietnam as its power continues to grow relative to that of Vietnam. In 1991, bilateral trade was only USD 32 million. China is now Vietnam’s largest partner, with trade totaling USD 50.21 billion in 2013 and expected to reach USD 60 billion this year, while bilateral trade with the United States in 2013 was USD 30 billion. China is also the country with which Vietnam has the biggest trade gap, an imbalance that has grown wider over the years. Unprocessed goods, such as crude oil and coal, account for a significant proportion of Vietnam’s export basket to China. The problems deepen for Vietnam’s production industry, as enterprises, even export-centric ones, are becoming more reliant on Chinese inputs for value-chain production. Imported goods from China encompass various essential materials for export-specified production, including raw materials, machinery and equipment, steel, chemicals, oil, and fabrics. Vietnam is now importing nearly 50 percent of yarns and fabrics needed for its textile industry from China. If China disrupted the yarn supply, it would greatly damage Vietnam’s labor-intensive garment industry, culminating in mass unemployment.Vietnamese have concerns about being under the shadow of the dragon and being dominated in the long term by China’s increasing economic and political power, but closer economic relations may make Hanoi reluctant to adopt a policy against China in their territorial dispute. For instance, conservative Vietnamese leaders might learn the ongoing lesson from Europe as the Ukraine economy is heavily hit by Russian economic pressure and sanctions. A Vietnamese report says the impact of China’s unilateral deployment of an offshore drilling rig into Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in 2014 might cost Vietnam’s economy USD 1.0-1.5 billion. The figure could have been bigger if China had not one-sidedly withdrawn the rig sooner than scheduled.Vietnam’s trade deficit with China and the asymmetrical north-south divide between their economies are important reasons why the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is significant in Vietnamese eyes. The benefit of opening another market needs to be understood in this context: Vietnam would pay a higher cost of missed opportunities, especially after other new trade initiatives led by China are emerging. On January 1, 2010, the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) was formally established with zero-tariffs implemented between China and the six founding member states of ASEAN on over 90 percent of products. For the less developed ASEAN members, such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, the zero-tariff policy for 90 percent of Chinese products will be implemented in 2015 (and 2016).Since early 2014, however, some doubts have begun to emerge among Vietnamese policymakers. Economists question the ability to quantify tradeoffs for the economy and determine domestic losers under TPP. Other experts question the model itself, arguing for instance, that Chinese trade competition in the long term has proven very difficult for Vietnam to manage. This should mean that TPP’s “China exclusion” effect will become valuable, particularly in the textile, garment, and footwear industries, in which Vietnam’s competitiveness is expected to reap relative advantage over China’s. Still, Vietnam’s economic benefits are far from certain. The “yarn forward” rules of origin being pressed by the United States in negotiations put some of these apparent benefits in question. Vietnam’s supply chain is heavily dependent on Chinese textiles and other inputs, which are disqualified by the “yarn forward” rule that requires TPP signatories to use TPP member-produced yarn in textiles. For Vietnamese garment makers to get access to zero tariffs under TPP, they have to seek alternative suppliers inside the treaty zone.While Vietnam is striving to reduce its dependence on the Chinese economy, recent economic diplomacy under the Xi Jinping administration has put Hanoi’s leaders in a difficult situation again. China’s “One Belt and One Road” (OBOR) initiative, fully unveiled at the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing, aims at nothing less than establishing a web of traffic, transport, and communications networks between China and neighboring regions, including Central Asia, the Russian Far East, Southeast Asia, and ultimately Europe. The necessary financial backbone will be provided by several new China-led funding institutions, most notably the USD 40 billion Silk Road Fund and the USD 100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The task of both agencies is to use their financial instruments for creating “connectivity partnerships.” Beijing’s outlook is extraordinarily far-reaching, especially compared with its rather limited goals over the last three decades. The Silk Road initiatives in particular and Beijing’s foreign policy ambitions in general, increasingly embody Xi’s dream “for the great renewal of the Chinese nation. Rational calculations about the expected costs, direct and indirect, of (non-) followership lie behind Hanoi’s decisions. Exclusion from a free-trade agreement may make a small economy lose its competitiveness to other countries. China’s charm offensive from many large-scale projects and cooperative initiatives, however, have, at times, been mired in controversy over economic sovereignty and political priorities. This is clearly a dilemma since economic interests are closely intertwined with security. Not only will China be much more powerful than it is today, but viewed in Hanoi, it will also remain deeply committed to making Vietnam part of its sphere of influence. For Vietnam, joining TPP could be the second step of “Doi Moi,” or renovation, launched by the Communist Party in 1986 by opening the door to more competent, transparent governance and to pressure to overhaul domestic corporations to be more competitive. Is joining OBOR or AIIB the same? It has not been clear to Vietnam until now.Triangular DynamicsThe South China Sea (SCS), China’s front yard, is of particular importance in the context of China-Vietnam relations. Not only does it hold great economic value (e.g., due to its huge significance for global Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC) as well as its often noted yet still hard to quantify riches of energy and seafood), but it is also significant to China’s regional strategy and future regional role. Indeed, it is fair to say that the SCS is the most important waterway of our time in SLOC that connects Singapore with Northeast Asia. Years ago, the economic value and volume of goods in this SLOC surpassed that of the SLOC between Rotterdam and New York. Around two-thirds of the Asian route runs through the SCS, making it the maritime economic runway of the Asia-Pacific essential for the region’s future economic development.By attempting to incorporate the SCS into the People’s Republic as undisputed Chinese territory, Beijing is able to put strategic pressure on the SLOCs important for three regional US allies (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) to gain a potentially very energy-rich area right at its doorstep, and, thus, to further reduce Chinese dependency on ship-based energy transports from the Middle East and Africa (which are strategically vulnerable to other nations’ naval assets) as well as to demonstrate to neighboring states its ability to shape its “near abroad.” Chinese maritime thinkers such as Admiral Liu Huaqing have emphasized that nation-states are engaged in intense competition over resource-rich areas and that China’s navy has an important role to play in protecting Chinese maritime interests and in developing China into a maritime great power. China, the strongest party in the disputes, gave the appearance of a hegemonic stabilizer by leveraging the Code of Conduct (COC) negotiations with ASEAN since 1998 as a force for building a rule-based order. The resulting order based on law and norms has yet to be achieved, but a temporary outcome resulted from the establishment of a Declaration of Conduct (DOC), which has served as the conflict management mechanism in the SCS. The agreement was significant because China engaged in a “peace enhancing process” to form long-term relations with its neighbors. As the balance of power has been shifting in China’s favor since the economic crisis in 2008, China’s attitude towards the DOC/COC in the SCS has changed significantly. Contrary to its earlier relatively peaceful approach, recent actions by China have alarmed other claimants as it competed for sovereignty, jurisdiction, and control of the SCS. China is becoming too powerful and has not agreed to limit its power by institutional frameworks.This change has resulted from the regional power shift since 2008 with China’s clear-cut military superiority in the SCS over the combined forces of ASEAN countries. Although both the Philippines and Vietnam are currently engaged in territorial struggles with China over islands in the SCS, Vietnam faces two distinct disadvantages compared to the Philippines. First, it is in conflict with China in both the Paracel and Spratly Islands. While the Spratly Islands involve other SEA nations and directly affect regional maritime freedom, disputes on the Paracels remain a bilateral issue. Second, more importantly, Vietnam’s long-time “three no’s” non-alliance policy—no military alliances, no allowance for any country to set up military bases on Vietnamese territory, and no reliance on any countries for help in combating other countries—sets the country apart, although it has become more controversial.After the events linked to the HD-981 oilrig, Vietnamese strategists realized that it is difficult to make the case that territorial conflicts are tests of maritime freedom, an obvious US concern. Therefore, with neither an alliance nor military support, Vietnam will be badly hurt in physically confronting China in the Paracel Islands. A slow but steady move to military cooperation with the United States is hardly inevitable. In April 2014, two US Navy ships participated in the fifth annual six-days of joint non-combat exercises with the Vietnamese navy, symbolizing closer defense cooperation between the two former adversaries. They forge the basis for building mutual trust and understanding between the United States and Vietnam, hopefully catering to each other’s priorities. During his trip to Vietnam last December, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the Vietnamese Coast Guard would receive USD 18 million in aid with five fast patrol-boats to enhance its maritime police capacity. Vietnam is not going to establish a formal alliance with the United States in the foreseeable future, mainly because policymakers do not want to see a strengthened US relationship disproportional to frayed Sino-Vietnamese relations in a zero-sum game. Hanoi will not risk ruining its relationship with China in order to make an alliance with the United States. Vietnam and China have already established an institutionalized mechanism to undergird their bilateral relationship with annual high-ranking official visits and frequent discussions on border issues, maritime security, defense cooperation, territorial waters, and joint fishing activities. Even though China is increasingly aggressive in the SCS disputes, Vietnam keeps reiterating the critical importance of a friendly relationship with China.A fundamental problem for Vietnam’s political elite is the absence of convergence in “threat perceptions” toward China.. At the Tenth Plenum of the 11th Party Congress earlier this year, the Vietnamese Communist Party’s (VCP) chief, Nguyen Phu Trong, faced with the age-old question of whether “China is friend or foe,” emphasized that the answer could be found in the party documents and resolutions of the Central Committee. Resolution No. 28 on contemporary strategies for national defense states that the Standing Committee of the Central Committee continues to focus on identifying “partners and targets” (doi tac va doi tuong). What constitutes a strategic “partner?” The document asserts: “Those who respect the sovereignty of Vietnam, who seek to establish and expand their friendship and equal, win-win cooperation with Vietnam, are considered as our partners; however, those who plan at subverting our nation’s objectives, as well as our project of building and protecting the Fatherland are considered as our adversaries. The forces that support Vietnam’s policies and development are considered (strategic) partners. In contrast, those who disrupt and harm Vietnam are considered adversaries—necessitating appropriate counter-maneuvers. Following the above description, it is hard to put China in a specific category; China could be considered both a partner, primarily in economic terms, and a threat, especially in light of the deepening territorial disputes in the SCS. In this light, Vietnam will have to adopt a dualistic strategy, which, on one hand, preserves stable economic relations with China as a strategic partner, while simultaneously exploring means to keep Chinese maritime ambitions within Vietnamese-claimed waters in check. This is where the United States is of paramount importance.Given the US-Vietnam-China triangular relationship, the high-profile state visit of Vietnam’s paramount leader to Washington in July was expected to stir controversy, raising critical questions over the evolving dynamics of a long-standing hedging strategy toward the great powers. After considerable preparation and strategic contemplation, VCP General Secretary Trong made important visits both to China and to the United States over the summer. Some analysts have interpreted this as a sign that Hanoi continues to place greater emphasis on maintaining stable, if not cordial, ties with its giant neighbor, despite their intensified jostling in the SCS, which can undermine the VCP’s internal legitimacy. Some pundits interpreted those trips as indicative of subordination and one-sided leaning of the VCP towards Beijing. Such arguments are deeply affected by Cold War thinking and tell only one side of the story. Strategists in Hanoi’s inner circle consider “such obedience” a diplomatic means to coax China into reorienting her focus towards Hanoi’s priorities. Indeed, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the trip to Beijing was largely designed as a “shock absorber”—to offset the strategic fallout from Trong’s visit to Washington. Vietnam’s foreign policy is to enhance defense and economic times with the United States while maintaining a good relationship with the northern juggernaut. What Hanoi wants is not to defeat the Chinese military, but instead to make Beijing pay a huge price in case of a preventive strike in the SCS. They believe that with conventional deterrence, walking a delicate balancing act between these two superpowers can still work.Vietnam has good strategic motivation to be comfortable with multilateral arrangements in dealing with powerful China. ASEAN can indeed bring to Vietnam’s table two important things: the first is its normative clout. Norms are an important facet of SCS disputes. Contending parties frame their respective claims in distinct normative contexts. The main illustration is that, whereas China resorts to a concept of “historical waters” and historical legitimacy to back its expansive claims, another claimant like Vietnam, the Philippines or Indonesia opposes it with the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Interpretations of states’ rights and obligations under UNCLOS and its applicability to the SCS context also diverge from one actor to the other. From Vietnam’s stance, given the power discrepancy with China, having ASEAN defend the validity of existing rules and procedures, and their usefulness in dispute management in the SCS is a major asset. All claimants seek the moral high ground.The second is enhancing bargaining power. A multilateral framework like ASEAN tends to favor weaker actors by giving them more “voice” opportunities toward the powerful (in comparison with bilateral arrangements, where China could maximize its political leverage towards then weaker actors), just as multilateral institutions allow the weaker to raise their voice collectively to influence the decision-making process. ASEAN and its various initiatives have not only become an important consideration for stabilizing Sino–ASEAN political and economic relations but also can serve as a mechanism protecting weaker Southeast Asian states from the advantages of the hegemonic power. In the case of SCS disputes, the same argument for peaceful settlement and institutionalizing for greater political autonomy can be found in the more general attitudes of weaker states towards dispute settlement.The main challenge for ASEAN to become a harmonized group successfully employing institutionalization is its internal division. Member states can be generally divided into three groups regarding their behavior in the SCS dispute: those on the front lines of the sovereignty issue (Vietnam and the Philippines); those with significant interest in the ultimate outcomes of the conflict (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei); and those tilted towards accommodating China (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand). This division signifies a major problem facing ASEAN as a single bloc in reacting unanimously vis-à-vis China in SCS territorial disputes. Singapore’s Law Minister K. Shanmugam brilliantly summed up the prevailing state of mind of the majority of ASEAN nations when he bluntly stated: “If you start looking at ASEAN-China relations through the prism of the South China Sea, you are getting it wrong completely…The facts on the ground are the very substantial economic, security, political relationship between China and every country in ASEAN and ASEAN as a whole. The SCS forms part of it, and we will not be doing our duty for our country and our people if we forget that”. In short, the SCS disputes do not and should not define the overall texture of China-ASEAN relations. It is not worth alienating a key trading partner, so the argument goes, over disputes that are essentially bilateral in nature.One World, Different ViewsReinforcing China’s regional dominance is its scientific and engineering expertise. Drawing on its enormous experience in dam building and having a massive construction industry that operates worldwide, Chinese actors assume a dominant position when it comes to knowledge about planning, constructing, and operating large infrastructure. Hydropower development in the Great Mekong Sub-region (GMS) is an example. Other actors along the Mekong depend on the data, engineering skills, and scientific assessments delivered by their northern neighbors. This is particularly relevant for undertaking environmental (and social) impact assessments for the dozens of planned dam projects. China’s previous non-cooperative stance in information sharing between upstream and downstream-states renders trust-based common understanding as well as objective knowledge about the large-scale trans-boundary impact of dams very difficult. Nonetheless, the overall role of China could be seen as a “giver of last resort” of information, regarding the management of hydropower planning for the Mekong River.The exploitation of the river affects the interests of countries in the region. The impact on species and people living in and along the river depends on the balance among economic development, social security, and environmental issues. Besides contested images of how “sovereignty” and technologies ought to be reconciled, the vision of a “prosperous and peaceful Mekong region” presents a central controversial point. China has utilized its projects in hydropower development as a tool for pursuing its long-standing vision of “common prosperity” for the whole region. However, in building hydropower plants on the Mekong River and assessing environmental impact, one can observe a normative divergence between China and the GMS countries, especially Vietnam. This infrastructure is linked to different collective visions of the public good. While some GMS countries have accepted China as their partner supporting them to construct dams (Lao PDR and Cambodia) and others are big importers of electricity from China (Thailand and Vietnam), the three downstream states of Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam have pursued diverse benefits in the development of the GMS. Resolving environmental issues and aiming at a more sustainable future may require sacrificing short-term economic benefits by controlling the hydropower boom, which goes against the assumptions ingrained in the Chinese government’s outlook, i.e., the priority of electricity generation and economic development in general.At the core, authoritative knowledge is complex and certainly not apolitical. Thus, the question “who” provides objective knowledge that supports planning and decision-making is important. In fact, to counterbalance the overwhelming knowledge gap relative to China, the other states have undertaken major efforts. US-led cooperative initiatives such as the Low Mekong Initiative (LMI) attempt to rebalance the regional knowledge hegemony. Instead of focusing on state-sponsored mega-projects, LMI offers “projects involving the innovative technologies of Intel, the educational excellence of the Harvard Kennedy School, and advice on impact assessments and standards from the US Mississippi River Commission and US Geological Survey. As a key part of the massively expanded program LMI 2015, an action-oriented group was created in Myanmar, focusing mainly on “environment and water.” Its goal is to help increase the knowledge and research capacities of the less developed ASEAN countries Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The establishment of the DRAGON Institute in southern Vietnam is one of the best examples. DRAGON is a cooperative product of the governments of the United States and Vietnam, aiming to develop into a prominent research center on ecosystems and the sustainability of major river deltas in a changing climate. While riparian states accept China’s dominance with respect to construction and markets, DRAGON and further knowledge-oriented initiatives indicate that they are less inclined to accept a Chinese quasi hegemony over scientific knowledge production. More and diverse perspectives with respect to water management and hydropower development in the region decrease epistemological dependence on China.Social imagination plays an important role in forming “a common GMS” since it creates shared understanding, expectations, and knowledge, and, thus, orients behavior. China’s main competitors in fostering a regional order are the United States and Japan. The competition to become a “spiritual leader” is evident. It is manifested, for instance, in the struggle between an “inclusive development” idea, considering many aspects of human needs (including management of trans-boundary water resources, infectious diseases, and vulnerability to climate change) and “extractive growth,“ focusing on fostering economic dynamism with the involvement of the GMS countries in order to create a regional economy with hydropower at its center. In other words, the contest over images of hydropower is linked to the support of different outside actors.The underlying process is not one-way. It is much more complicated than the portrait of regional states that buy “into the hegemon’s vision of international order and accept it as their own. The process of finding principles and agreeing on certain value judgments for the use of the Mekong’s waters remains open-ended. These diverging visions crosscut societies, political actors, elites, populations, and interest groups between China and Vietnam. More importantly, they are part of larger images about hydropower technology in the region. To China’s detriment, the struggle about the future of hydropower development prominently entails the question of which “external” actors should be included in its governance and which forms of governance should be adopted. The persistence of differing standpoints and coalitions on both issues means that no regional order is stabilized yet.ConclusionThe strong growth of the Chinese economy is a fundamental foundation for its advanced sciences, its powerful military, and an increase in its political influence on surrounding countries. The consequences of this rise, basically, are confirmed by the growing concern of the region and the world on how China will use its power and influence. Beijing’s pursuit of either substantive policies harmonious with the common interests of other countries in the region or policies rejecting existing general rules will lead to a different impact on regional security. How other countries view China is also an important question.Chinese elites should realize that pursuing a policy of hard power could draw the attention of the United States and result in confrontation. Since 2009, China has faced the dilemma of choosing between using its growing power or complying with international law and institutions. China’s internal debates (between elites and think tanks) have discussed different approaches and viewpoints. While one side believes that the current context provides an opportunity for China to take the initiative in resolving sovereignty disputes, the other calls for more caution. The existing power gap between the United States and China means that any direct, or indirect, confrontation in the South China Sea would wreak tremendous havoc on the Chinese economy.Vietnam’s main concern is whether China’s rise will enhance or undermine its national security. Actually, this worry was aroused even before Chinese power emerged rapidly, stemming from a long history of dominance by China in the region and its policy of aggression threatening neighboring countries, notably the Vietnam–China border conflict in 1979 or current territorial disputes in the SCS. Vietnam does not own a wide range of alternatives to falling under the shadow of the dragon, which would be a “nightmare” to it. Therefore, it is crucial to create a “social contract” with powers from inside and outside the region, which includes a commitment about use of power, methods to solve common issues, and rules to be utilized as common norms of the community. For Vietnam, this is the appropriate time to foster this process, before the power scale inclines completely to one side.Link: http://www.theasanforum.org/the-politics-of-struggling-co-evolution-trade-power-and-vision-in-vietnams-relations-with-china/Lusia Millar