A N A L Y S I S

Russia and China Marching Toward a Multipolar World
Dr. Sawraj Singh

THE just concluded President Hu Jin Tao’s trip to Russia is an event of great historical importance. This trip gives a clear signal that the days of a unipolar world led by the world’s only superpower are very limited and the new world order, a multipolar world, has already become a reality. The strategic partnership between Russia and China has laid the foundation of a very strong new center of power. This development shows that the balance of power has shifted from the west to the east.

Relations between the two countries are based upon four aspects. These aspects are: political, economical, cultural, and scientific and technological. Russia and China are expanding their bilateral cooperation in all of the four fields. In politics, both countries have a very identical view on the major world affairs. Both want to balance the unbalanced power of the United States and change the present unipolar world to a multipolar world. They share similar views on the other major issues before the global community, such as: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Taiwan, Korea, Africa, and South America. Their views on terrorism and the role of the United Nations are also running parallel.

The two countries are integrating their economies. China’s growing economy needs energy resources, particularly oil and gas. Russia has plenty of both. China has become the major buyer of Russia’s oil and gas. China is also helping Russia to develop its resources, particularly in Siberia. The trade between the two countries is rapidly growing. Last year, the trade was 33 billion dollars. This is expected to grow between 60 billion to 80 billion dollars by the year 2010. China is Russia’s fourth largest trading partner while Russia is China’s eighth largest trading partner. Both countries are the most important members of the Shanghai Cooperation, which has become one of the most powerful economic centers of the world. Besides China and Russia, it also includes the four Central Asian countries.

The two countries are also promoting cultural relations and understanding. There are many cultural exchanges between the two countries. The year 2006 was the year to promote Russian culture in China. The Chinese people experienced different aspects of Russian culture throughout the year. This had a tremendous impact on the Chinese people’s perception of Russia. The percentage of Chinese people who have a favorable impression about Russia has gone up very much in one year. The year 2007 will be the year to promote Chinese culture in Russia. Many Russians still do not know about the tremendous achievements of the Chinese people in the last two decades. A new Chinese culture has emerged in China. In the year 2007, the Russian people will be exposed to this new Chinese culture.

Science and technology will also play a very big role in the relations between the two countries. There was the China National Exhibition in Moscow, which has just ended. China showed the Russian people its scientific research data and results and its new technologies in the areas of electronic information, biological technology, electronic engineering, energy saving, environmental protection, biomedicine, and medical equipment. More scientific and technological exchanges have been planned in areas such as lasers, oceanology, and the environment. The Chinese and Russian business and industrial representatives in the machinery, aerospace, finance, metallurgy, high-tech information, communication, transportation, and agricultural sectors met in this week in Moscow to exchange ideas to promote investment and production.

President Hu Jin Tao’s recent visit to Russia has firmly established one of the strongest centers of power. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bipolar world changed into a unipolar world with the United States as the only superpower leading the unipolar world. The unilateralist policies weakened the global community and all the world institutions, including the United Nations, became weak and almost ineffective. The global community is now facing the dangerous consequences of this situation. The strategic partnership of China and Russia has already played a great role in reversing this situation and has proved to be a giant step in the march from a unipolar world to a multipolar world.

[Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S. Chairman, Washington State Network for Human Rights and lives in Ellensburg, USA]

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North America more vulnerable to climate change

“BY the end of this century, fires will consume twice as much forest annually in Canada, a fifth of the currently snowy Arctic will be greened by tundra and Great Lakes water levels will have plunged still lower, international scientists are going to warn this week in an authoritative climate change report” wrote Peter Calami, Science writer for the Toronto Star quoting a latest study.

Water in North America is going to come under particularly severe pressure because of climate change. For the Great Lakes and major river systems, "lower water levels are likely to exacerbate issues of water quality, navigation, hydro-power generation, water diversions and bi-national co-operation,” he wrote.

This grim regional picture is contained in the second report this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In addition, warmer temperatures affecting snowfall and rain over the Rockies by mid-century will probably reduce the summer flow in rivers and increase the risk of winter flooding. By 2050, deaths linked to smog could increase by almost 5 per cent because of higher ozone levels in cities already blighted by smog.

Also a recurring theme is higher health and safety risk in North American cities because of climate change. Economic damage from severe weather, such as hurricanes, is almost certain to continue rising in North America and city-dwellers face heightened health risks, the scientists conclude. The study finds Canada and the U.S. ill-prepared to adapt to such almost-certain impacts from climate change, leaving their citizens vulnerable.

The report summarizes the probable effects on people and the environment arising from the increase of 2 to 3 degrees C in average temperatures by 2050 forecast in the panel's first climate science study.

The scientists conclude that the temperature-spurred shift of plants and animals northward and to higher altitudes "is likely to rearrange the map of North American ecosystems."

They also caution that climate change will hit hardest at specific groups in Canada and the U.S., like the urban poor and elderly, aboriginals and resource-dependent communities, such as lumber towns. "Severe heat waves, characterized by stagnant, warm air masses and consecutive nights with high minimum temperatures, are likely to intensify in magnitude and duration over portions of the U.S. and Canada, where they already occur," the scientists say.

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Statistical Skulduggery
Vinod Anand

IT quite often happens that those who produce data seldom use them, and those who use data seldom produce them. This anomalous situation creates problems, especially for the users of data, who have to rely on unreliable secondary data and this, by and large, extremely distorts their studies.

Data are unreliable essentially in terms of

• Accuracy

• Coverage

• Uniformity

• Consistency

Let us briefly look at these.

Accuracy of data depends on

1. sufficient records;

2. efficiency of the primary reporting agencies and field workers;

3. positive response of the informants, and

4. technically skilled staff.

In the Indian context we hardly come across a situation where these conditions are met. Here are a few examples:

On the one hand, The CSO underestimates boom sectors like BPO/Software, and this, somehow, lowers the Gross Domestic Product. On the other hand, it also values government administration at cost, which is an overestimate of Gross Domestic Product.

Reliability of data also depends on the coverage of the field of operation. If the coverage is not fully achieved, the collected data will fail to represent the true situation and in that sense the data set becomes unreliable.

Uniformity of data depends on the uniformity of the assumptions and methodology adopted for collection of data. In the Indian context, different agencies follow different techniques based on different assumptions and this results into wide differences in the size and nature of data. Consistency of data is another important factor. Inconsistency occurs when different approaches and modes of operation are followed for collecting the required information. A census method may give an entirely different result from that of a sampling method. Fixing of the sample size also creates many problems. The unreliable nature of the secondary data as used by many researchers imposes a serious limitation on them. Over and above this, there is another difficulty. In cases where the secondary data are not available, the researcher has to collect primary data to fill in the gaps. To what extent these are assimilated into the given study can be anyone’s guess?

Apart from the general limitations of the economic and social data that are collected in India (and may be in other countries as well), researchers do come across a few specific problems during the course of their research. A few of these are mentioned below:

1. Sufficient data on self-employment (both legitimate and illegitimate) are not uniformly available;

2. Data on labour conditions are not sufficiently available; there is no data set on informal sector employment. In other words, there is no sufficient information on labour working under ‘other-than-organised- conditions’;

3. Unemployment figures relate only to those who are registered with employment exchanges;

4. For regional economic studies, apart from other indices, net migration out of an area is an important index to measure the inter-regional income differentials. One wonders as to why such data are not collected for the various regions of the country?

5. Unpaid services are excluded from the National Income Accounts. This goes against the very concept of national income.

The author is presently placed at the National University of Lesotho (Southern Africa) as Professor of Economics. Prior to that he was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla.

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