Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 1355

China’s water diversion project starts to flow to Beijing

On Friday afternoon, China quietly inaugurated one of the biggest engineering projects of all time: the South-North Water Diversion, a £48bn, 2,400km network of canals and tunnels, designed to divert 44.8bn cubic metres of water annually from China’s humid south to its parched, industrialised north. Read more

China remembers Nanjing massacre

State media estimated 10,000 people attended a ceremony in Nanjing to mark the 77th anniversary of the massacre, including ageing survivors – some in their 90s – of the Japanese invasion of the eastern city on 13 December 1937. Read more

Hong Kong: Taiwan’s Broken Mirror

Hong Kong functions like a mirror, in which the Taiwanese can glimpse a reflection of themselves were they to ever return to the mainland. Read more

China ivory craze kills 100,000 elephants

As prices for precious ivory goods have surged in China, the number of poached elephants has also escalated. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, said 100,000 African elephants have been killed for their ivory in just the past three years. Read more

China's Nobel Peace Laureate Sends Message From Jail

Jailed Chinese Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo has told an overseas friend that he is relatively healthy but wants the world to pay more attention to other Chinese activists in a message that was smuggled out of jail. 
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China’s Defiant Choice for Its Peace Prize: Castro

Now Fidel Castro has added one more distinction to his résumé: A Chinese group has awarded him the 2014 Confucius Peace Prize, according to reports in the state-run news media on Thursday. Read more

We’ll be back, vow defiant Hong Kong democrats as main protest is broken up

There was no danger of missing the parting message from Hong Kong’s protesters on Thursday. It was chanted as they awaited arrest, spelt out in gold balloons, chalked on to the road and formed in giant letters made from their discarded tents: “We’ll be back.” Read more

The Dalai Lama has a moral authority the leaders in Beijing can only dream of

Twenty-five years ago this week in Oslo, a man who describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk was awarded the Nobel peace prize. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and the inspiration of my life’s work, remains a towering figure on the world stage, writes Mr. Lobsang Sangay, Prime Minister in the Tibetan Government in Exile. Read more

Beijing Is Winning the Battle But Losing the War in Hong Kong

The city’s bubbling resentment towards China is reflected in the polls. The percentage of Hong Kongers who identify themselves as primarily Chinese is steadily declining and was only 31 percent in the most recent poll. Even more significant, the number of young people between the ages of 18-29 who claim an exclusively Chinese identity has dropped from 20-30 percent a decade ago to a mere 4-8

The Silk Railway: freight train from China pulls up in Madrid

The longest rail link in the world and the first direct link between China and Spain is up and running after a train from Yiwu in coastal China completed its maiden journey of 8,111 miles to Madrid.En route it passed through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany and France before arriving at the Abroñigal freight terminal in Madrid. Read more