Hussain Haroon to remain at his post

KARACHI: Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Abdullah Hussain Haroon said on Saturday that he had been granted an extension.

Haroon said that although he had made a “principled stand” to be relieved of his duties, he had been asked to continue due to important developments like floods and India’s ambitions to be part of UN’s Security Council. “My purpose is to return and do some welfare work for the people,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14th, 2010.


============

Born on 21 October 1950, Ambassador Haroon completed his education from Karachi
Grammar School and Karachi University. He began his early carrier in public service as
election Coordinator for Pakistan Muslim League in 1970. Later he served as
Councillor, Karachi Metropolitan Corporation KMC through 1979-1985, remained
Trustee Karachi Port Trust 1980-1982, Member Sindh Provincial Assembly 1985-1988,
Speaker, Provincial Assembly of Sindh 1985-1986 and leader of opposition, Sindh
Assembly from 1986 to1988. He also served as Consultant, Pakistan Herald Publication
1988-1989, delegate to UN General Assembly, Member to the Board of Governors,
Institute of Business Administration Karachi 1996-1999, Director Board of Directors
Karachi Electric Supply Corporation 1997-1999, Chairman Griffith College Karachi
1999-2005 and President, Pakistan-China Business Forum from 1999 to 2004.


He joined the post of Permanent Representative Pakistan to the United Nations in New
York on 3rd of September 2008.
Hussain Abdullah Haroon formerly speaker of the Provincial Assembly of Sindh, On
28th February, 1985 General Zia-ul-Haq hold elections on non party basis, sits on the
board of several educational institutes, sports associations and charity organizations. He
also has the distinction of being the youngest President of the Sind Club. The elder
brother of Hameed Haroon and grandson of Sir Abdullah Haroon whom Quaid-e-Azam
called one of the strongest pillars of the Muslim League.

Hussain Abdullah Haroon
belong to noble Sindhi family. He is member of many boards of educational institutes,
sports associations and charity organizations. He also has the distinction of being the
youngest President of the Sindh Club. He also been part of protest against real estate
development in Bundal Island by Emaar. Hussain Haroon is the chair of the English
speaking club of Karachi.


In July 2008, Hussain Abdullah Haroon was appointed as the Permanent Representative
of Pakistan to the United Nations, replacing veteran Munir Akram. He took over the
post on 3 September, 2008.


The PPP government has nominated Hussain Haroon, a Karachi-based businessman,
social activist and former Sindh Assembly speaker for the key diplomatic position of
Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, The News has learnt

===

Is China overtaking America?
While it is the world's second largest economy, China is unlikely to become the dominant global power.
Joseph S Nye Last Modified: 08 Apr 2011 12:52

Even though Chinese growth is outpacing the US, it is unlikely to ever replace America as a dominant powerhouse [AP]

The twenty-first century is witnessing Asia's return to what might be considered its historical proportions of the world's population and economy.

In 1800, Asia represented more than half of global population and output. By 1900, it represented only 20 per cent of world output – not because something bad happened in Asia, but rather because the Industrial Revolution had transformed Europe and North America into the world's workshop.

Asia's recovery began with Japan, then moved to South Korea and on to Southeast Asia, beginning with Singapore and Malaysia. Now the recovery is focused on China, and increasingly involves India, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the process.
This change, however, is also creating anxieties about shifting power relations among states. In 2010, China passed Japan to become the world's second largest economy.

Indeed, the investment bank Goldman Sachs expects the Chinese economy's total size to surpass that of the United States by 2027.
But, even if overall Chinese GDP reaches parity with that of the US in the 2020s, the two economies will not be equal in composition.

China would still have a vast underdeveloped countryside. Assuming six per cent Chinese GDP growth and only two per cent US growth after 2030, China would not equal the US in terms of per capita income – a better measure of an economy's sophistication – until sometime near the second half of the century.
Moreover, linear projections of economic growth trends can be misleading. Emerging countries tend to benefit from imported technologies in the early stages of economic takeoff, but their growth rates generally slow as they reach higher levels of development.

And the Chinese economy faces serious obstacles to sustainable rapid growth, owing to inefficient state-owned enterprises, growing inequality, massive internal migration, an inadequate social safety net, corruption, and inadequate institutions, all of which could foster political instability.

China's north and east have outpaced its south and west. Almost alone among developing countries, China is ageing extraordinarily fast. By 2030, China will have more elderly dependents than children. Some Chinese demographers worry that the country will get old before getting rich.

During the past decade, China moved from being the world's ninth largest exporter to its leader, displacing Germany at the top.

But China's export-led development model will need to be adjusted as global trade and financial balances become more contentious. Indeed, China's 12th Five-Year Plan is aimed at reducing dependence on exports and boosting domestic demand. Will it work?

China's authoritarian political system has thus far shown an impressive capacity to achieve specific targets, for example, staging a successful Olympic Games, building high-speed rail projects, or even stimulating the economy to recover from the global financial crisis.

Whether China can maintain this capability over the longer term is a mystery to outsiders and Chinese leaders themselves.

Unlike India, which was born with a democratic constitution, China has not yet found a way to channel the demands for political participation (if not democracy) that tend to accompany rising per capita income.

Communist ideology is long gone, so the legitimacy of the ruling party depends on economic growth and ethnic Han nationalism. Whether China can develop a formula to manage an expanding urban middle class, regional inequality, and resentment among ethnic minorities remains to be seen.

The basic point is that no one, including the Chinese, knows how China's political future will affect its economic growth.

Some analysts argue that China aims to challenge America's position as the world's dominant power. Even if this were an accurate assessment of China's intentions (and even Chinese cannot know the views of future generations), it is doubtful that China will have the military capability to make this possible.

To be sure, Chinese military expenditures, up more than 12 per cent this year, have been growing even more rapidly than its economy.

But China's leaders will have to contend with other countries' reactions, as well as with the constraints implied by the need for external markets and resources in order to meet their economic-growth objectives.

A Chinese military posture that is too aggressive could produce a countervailing coalition among its neighbours, thereby weakening China's hard and soft power.

In 2010, for example, as China became more assertive in its foreign policy toward its neighbours, its relations with India, Japan, and South Korea suffered. As a result, China will find it more difficult to exclude the US from Asia's security arrangements.

China's size and high rate of economic growth will almost certainly increase its relative strength vis-à-vis the US in the coming decades.

This will certainly bring the Chinese closer to the US in terms of power resources, but China will not necessarily surpass the US as the most powerful country.

Even if China suffers no major domestic political setback, many current projections based on GDP growth alone are too one-dimensional: they ignore US military and soft-power advantages, as well as China's geopolitical disadvantages in the internal Asian balance of power.

My own estimate is that among the range of possible futures, the more likely scenarios are those in which China gives the US a run for its money, but does not surpass it in overall power in the first half of this century.

Most importantly, the US and China should avoid developing exaggerated fears of each other's capacities and intentions. The expectation of conflict can itself become a cause of conflict.

In reality, China and the US do not have deeply rooted conflicting interests. Both countries, along with others, have much more to gain from cooperation.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is a professor at Harvard and the author of The Future of Power.

This article first appeared on Project Syndicate.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

==========


By Sui-Lee Wee Sui-lee Wee – Tue Apr 12, 6:50 am ET
BEIJING (Reuters) – A 21-year-old Chinese man who attended a proposed pro-democracy "Jasmine Revolution" protest in Beijing was sentenced to labor re-education, in the first confirmed punishment for the Middle East-inspired gatherings that were squashed by wary authorities.
The man, Wei Qiang, was sentenced to 2 years in a labor re-education camp. He was a former art student who did some work at the studio of the detained artist-activist Ai Weiwei, according to two friends of Wei, who confirmed his sentence to Reuters.

That connection may be one element that helps explain why authorities moved against Ai, whose detention sparked an outcry from Washington and other Western capitals critical of the Chinese Communist Party's crackdown on dissent.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it was unhappy with foreign support for Ai, an internationally known artist, as well as a vocal critic of censorship.

Wei was seized by police in Beijing on February 25 for participating "in an illegal assembly and demonstration" at Beijing's downtown Wangfujing shopping street on February 20 and then held in a detention center in the capital, according to two of his friends who had spoken to Wei's father.

An overseas Chinese website had spread calls for pro-democracy gatherings in Beijing and other Chinese cities, citing uprisings across the Arab world as inspiration.

Wei's parents were told last week that he had been sent to a labor re-education camp in Yan'an city in central Shaanxi province, Yang Hai, a close friend of Wei's family, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"He is full of integrity and has a strong sense of righteousness," said Yang, 43, who lives in Xi'an, the provincial capital of Shaanxi. "But to send someone to labor camp, it's such a pity. It's outrageous. For someone still so young, the mental blow will be too huge."

Another friend of Wei confirmed the labor re-education sentence. That friend spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from authorities.

DOZENS DETAINED

Chinese authorities have detained dozens of dissidents, human rights lawyers and bloggers following the calls for the "Jasmine" protests, which were poorly attended but quickly snuffed out by the authorities.

Wei's photographs of the gathering at Wangfujing on his Twitter account, which has more than 3,200 followers, showed a crowd of reporters and policemen standing guard outside the McDonald's restaurant.

"These two police officers shamelessly kept on telling me: 'Walk on, walk on, what's there to look at? Disperse, disperse!'" he wrote in a message on February 20.

China's "re-education through labor" system empowers police and other agencies to sentence people to up to four years' confinement without going through the courts.

It is a system that critics say undermines rule of law, and rights activists say it targets political prisoners, as well as prostitutes and drug users.

"This is very arbitrary, there's often no logic," said Wang Songlian of rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders. "He's not a well-known activist so they might just want to send him to a labor camp and not bother with a trial."

The EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Tuesday she was deeply concerned at the "deterioration in the human rights situation in China."

"Arbitrary arrests and disappearances must cease," she said in a statement. "I urge the Chinese authorities to clarify the whereabouts of all persons who have disappeared recently."

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the detention of Ai Weiwei was dealt in accordance with the law.

"The Chinese people also feel baffled -- why do some people in some countries treat Chinese crime suspect as a hero? The Chinese people are unhappy about this. The handling of this matter will show that China is a country ruled by law."

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Sabrina Mao; Editing by Alex Richardson)