PHOTO STORY - 2017

PHOTO STORY
May 22, 2017 Photo Story 1
Sources : reuters.com , AP images , nbcnews.com , …
PPS by https://ppsnet.wordpress.com
China’s sinking towns
Shanghai's nail neighbourhood
Uighur heartland transformed into security state
Evidence of strained ties on China – North Korea border

PHOTO STORY
Uighur heartland transformed into security state

Vinhbinh 2010
XIAOYI, CHINA
Photography by Jason Lee.
Reporting by David Stanway
Reuters .com.
Photographer
Jason Lee
Location
XIAOYI, China
Reuters / Saturday, August 13, 2016
A group photograph hangs on a damaged
wall at Wang Junqi's cave house in an area
where land is sinking next to a coal mine,
in Helin village of Xiaoyi, Shanxi province,
August 2, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee
PHOTO STORY

Deep in the coal heartlands of
northern Shanxi province,
people in Helin village are
fighting a losing battle as the
ground beneath them
crumbles: patching up cracks,
rebuilding walls and filling in
sinkholes caused by decades of
coal mining.
Around 100 pits in Helin -
buried in the hilly rural
outskirts of the city of Xiaoyi -
have been exhausted, and
cluttered hamlets totter
precariously on the brittle
slopes of mines.
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But while local
authorities have begun
evacuating hundreds of
thousands of residents
most at risk elsewhere
in Shanxi province,
Helin's situation –
though serious - isn't
yet considered a
priority.
PHOTO STORY

"We haven't been told to leave
yet, but when the government
gives us the order, we'll be
happy to go," said Wang Junqi,
who lives in a one-room
tenement with his family. "It
isn't safe here and the people
who have a bit of money have
already gone. It's scary, but
what can we do?"
Mines that burrowed under villages and towns during China's three-decade coal boom have
left the authorities with the need to evacuate hundreds of communities in danger of sinking.
Shanxi province alone plans to move 655,000 residents by the end of next year from unsafe
old mining regions, with the cost of relocation estimated at 15.8 billion yuan ($2.37 billion).
The Shanxi government estimates coal mining has cost the province 77 billion yuan in
"environmental economic losses".May 22, 2017 Photo Story 6
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Mine-induced subsidence is not
unique to China, but its problems
dwarf those of other countries.
A notice board at a deserted
Communist Party building in an
abandoned village not far from
Helin gives an idea of the scale of
the disaster.
It lists 19 geological "disaster
zones" spread across 23 villages,
55 landslides, 950 cracks in the
ground and 808 incidents of mine
subsidence -- all in an area of just
13.25 square kilometers (5 sq
miles)
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China's land ministry said last
month it would spend 75 billion
yuan ($11.27 billion) over the next
five years to restore mined land
and treat mining waste
nationwide.
The growing environmental bill
comes at a time when China's
stricken coal sector faces
mounting debts, falling demand
and a long-term decline in prices
after the boom turned into a bust.
PHOTO STORY

Jiang Jian, a legislator from Shandong
province, said Beijing needed to draw up
detailed measures to determine how
much mining firms should pay.
Many of the worst-hit sites have been
long abandoned, making it harder to
decide who is responsible, she noted, so
Beijing also needed to set up dedicated
funds to help pay remediation costs,
including treatment and disposal of mine
waste.
To help with the clean-up, China is
encouraging developers to turn
abandoned mining sites into wind and
solar power projects. Solar accounted for
just 0.6 percent of China’s overall
electricity generation from January to
June, and wind was a mere 3.6 percent.
One solar demonstration project has
been completed in the eastern outskirts
of Datong, also in Shanxi, on ground
damaged from mining and not suitable
for farming.
The area was once a prosperous coal
region with more than 1,000 mines, but
extraction stopped after the collapse in
prices, and the local economy cratered.
"Before we got here this piece of land
wasn't suitable for any kind of planting,
but now at least some of it can be used,"
said He Xin, project manager with the
United Photovoltaics Group, which owns
and operates a 100-megawatt solar farm
at the site.
PHOTO STORY

What was once a boon for
governments has now turned
into a burden: Xiaoyi has already
spent more than 6 billion yuan
($901.31 million) to treat
subsidence, the government
said. Together with the
neighboring city of Luliang, it
plans to relocate as many as
230,000 people over 2014-2017.
Little of the money to move
communities and restore the
land is coming from the miners
themselves, although that was
supposed to be the plan in the
beginning.
Miners are required to pay
"subsidence fees" to pay for the
cleanup when their mines close.
The Datong Coal Industry Group,
the only state miner to give
breakdowns, paid just 1.4
million yuan in those fees from
January to March this year, or
0.04 percent of its total costs,
according to its quarterly report.
PHOTO STORY

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In a corner of Shanghai, surrounded by a cement
wall, lies one of the world's most valuable fields of
debris and garbage.
On paper, the Guangfuli neighbourhood is a real
estate investor's dream: a plot in the middle of
one of the world's most expensive and fast-rising
property markets.
SHANGHAI, CHINA
Aly Song and Pete Sweeney
Updated 13 May 2016
GALLERY PHOTOS
Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

But the reality is more like a developer's nightmare, thanks to hundreds of people living
there who have refused to budge from their ramshackle homes for nearly 16 years as the
local authority sought to clear the land for new construction.
The stalemate highlights a fundamental and unresolved problem in China's half-liberalised
property regime: who owns the land?
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Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

Even as the fields around
Guangfuli have bloomed
million-dollar condominium
towers, the residents live a
scrappy existence. The plot is
ramshackle and looks bombed
out. Residents grow vegetables
in Styrofoam boxes wedged
between rubble and refuse.
They freeze in the winter and
boil in the summer as many
windows lack glass and the
walls are perforated with
holes.
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Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

Most houses have the Chinese
character for "tear down" spray
painted on them by demolition teams,
although the paint has faded as the
standoff between the residents and
the developer dragged on.
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Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

Long-time resident Luo Baocheng lives
with his brother and family in a small
three-story apartment building, which he
said he inherited from his mother.
Luo said the property developer, Xinhu
Zhongbao, refuses to pay the 4.2 million
yuan (447,500 pounds) he says the house
is worth.
"They told me, I don't have a property
right certificate," he said. "I've lived here
32 years, does that or does that not mean
it's my property?"
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Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

Local real estate agents say average
prices in the area around Guangfuli are
now closing on $12,000 per metre
($1,115 per sq ft). As Shanghai property
prices accelerate – they rose 25 percent
in March from a year earlier - the
conflict over Guangfuli has intensified.
The residents said the developer has
offered to swap their homes for new
apartments in the distant Jiading
district, but the catch is that they
would have to pay.
Luo said he was asked to fork out 1.18
million yuan ($182,380) for two
apartments for him and his brother; he
wanted four apartments and balked at
the price tag.
"Where are we going to find 1.18
million yuan? I'm retired and my
brother is laid off," he said.
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Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

A vendor selling pork meat takes a nap at a half-demolished house.
As a rule, the average Chinese person's wealth is
held in the form of cash and real estate. But real
estate wealth in China rests on a tenuous
definition of ownership, particularly so when it
comes to the old houses granted to people by
their work units in the days before a property
market existed as such.
When China implemented property rights, these
people were allowed to continue using the
houses they lived in, with the caveat that the
local government could relocate them later, with
some sort of compensation.
GALLERY PHOTOS
Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

The local authority, the
Putuo district
government, said in
response to faxed
questions that it
wanted to demolish the
neighbourhood and
"make residents' lives
better" by relocating
them.
The developer, Xinhu
Zhongbao, did not
answer repeated calls
requesting comment.
Xu watches TV at her eight-square-meter house where she lives with her husband.
GALLERY PHOTOS
Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

But widespread dissatisfaction
with the compensation offered
by local governments led to
protests by residents and
engendered the "nail house"
phenomenon: residents who
refuse to accept the buyout
offer and stay put, boarding up
their homes to fend off
attempts to remove them.
The result has often been
architectural absurdities: small
houses standing in the midst
of freeways, pedestrian malls,
perched on concrete islands in
the middle of pits excavated
for underground parking lots.
But time, the great bulldozer,
has seen most "nail house"
residents in China bought out,
pushed out, or, given that
many are elderly, carried out.
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Shanghai's nail
neighbourhood

1 APR 2016 .SHANGHAI,CHINA.REUTERS/ATY SONG
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24 MAR 2016 .SHANGHAI,CHINA.REUTERS/ATY SONG
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Shanghai's nail
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North Korean farmers work in a field as a
section of the Great Wall is seen on the
Chinese side of the Yalu River, north of the
town of Sinuiju in North Korea and Dandong in
China's Liaoning province. REUTERS/Damir
Sagolj
DANDONG, CHINA
Photography by Damir
Sagolj. Reporting by Sue-Lin
Wong and Joseph Campbell.
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In the Northeast Asia Special Region
straddling China's border with North Korea,
the area around Nanping village is dotted
with half-finished buildings, cranes on empty
lots, piles of concrete pipes and a few
construction workers.
What was planned in 2011 as a 30 billion
yuan ($4.36 billion) development intended to
showcase economic engagement between
the two countries has stalled in recent
months. No reasons have been given and no
announcements have been made in official
media.
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A woman exercises near the banks
of the Yalu River.
About 700 km (430 miles) to the
south, near the city of Dandong, the
New Yalu River Bridge connecting
the two countries lies unfinished. It
was planned in 2010 at a cost of 2.2
billion yuan, but stands now as a
monument to the slowdown in
economic ties.
A Reuters team visiting the area
saw some signs of trade - trucks
coming across another bridge over
the Yalu and boats being loaded
with goods on the North Korean
side of the river.
31 MAR 2017. DANDONG, CHINA. REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
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Workers stand on pile of goods at a port near the North
Korean town of Sinuiju.
Beijing appears sensitive about the North Korea issue – a
Reuters journalist who visited the Northeast Asia Special
Region near China's city of Helong last week was escorted
out by police.
"Right now tensions are so high between China and North
Korea that even this economic zone is a sensitive topic,"
local official Wang Fusheng said.
The Helong local government declined further comment.
1 APR 2017. SINUIJU, NORTH KOREA. REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
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The sun rises through fog over the Friendship and the Broken bridges over the Yalu River
connecting the North Korean town of Sinuiju and Dandong in China.
China's relations with North Korea are
expected to be high on the agenda when
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S.
President Donald Trump hold their first
summit meeting this week. Washington
wants China to do more to rein in the
unpredictable North's nuclear and missile
programs, while Beijing has said it does not
have that kind of influence.
Trump raised the pressure on Sunday,
holding out the possibility of using trade as a
lever to secure Chinese cooperation.
China has taken steps to increase economic
pressure on Pyongyang but has long been
unwilling to do anything that may destabilise
the North and send millions of refugees
across their border.
The slowdown in the economic relationship
between the two countries became marked
after North Korea's fourth nuclear test in
January 2016 and a series of missile launches
since then.
The original development plan for the
Northeast Asia Special Region was to link
Helong with North Korea's Maofeng
International Tourism Zone and its port city
of Chongjin in an area that would feature golf
courses, blueberry fields, horse riding,
logistics hubs and trade in everything from
timber to textiles.
30 MAR 2017. DANDONG, CHINA. REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
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Tourists travel on a boat taking them from
the Chinese side of the Yalu River for
sightseeing close to the shores of North
Korea.
The region was intended to connect
China and North Korea via air, road
and freight train routes, according
to information on billboards in
China's Nanping village, where
North Korea is just across the
winding Tumen River.
The ultimate aim was to export
products from both countries
through Chongjin to Japan, South
Korea, the United States and
Europe - an aspiration thwarted by
tightening global sanctions over
North Korea's nuclear and missile
programs.
1 APR 2017. DANDONG, CHINA. REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
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A girl stands on a ferry on the North Korean side of the Yalu River.
Nanping village itself was to be
demolished and turned into the
Helong Frontier Economic
Cooperation Zone - a key part of the
Northeast Asia Special Region.
The zone will "take advantage of
North Korean labour, land,
environment and resources," one of
the signs in Nanping states,
displaying pictures of seafood
processing and light manufacturing of
clothes, clocks and car parts.
One thousand North Korean workers
were supposed to have started work
last year, a number set to increase to
10,000 this year and 20,000 next
year.
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Men rest on the North Korean side of the Yalu River.
But the dormitories for the workers are half-
completed and the economic zone hasn't
opened.
"Those signboards are more a hopeful plan
than a schedule we strictly follow. No one has
moved in yet," said the manager of one of the
construction sites, who gave his family name
as Li.
According to signboards in Nanping, there
were plans for 900 million yuan worth of
infrastructure investment in the area,
including a 10-km (6-mile) train track
connecting Nanping and nearby Luguo village
to North Korea's Musan mine, which has the
largest-known iron ore reserves in the
country.
31 MAR 2017. SINUIJU, NORTH KOREA. REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
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North Korean soldiers patrol behind a border fence.
Villagers on the Chinese side of the
border are wary of North Korea.
In 2014, in two separate incidents,
at least seven villagers were killed
by North Koreans sneaking across
the porous border into Nanping, the
latest in several such incidents over
the past few years.
China's military presence is heavy,
with khaki green four-wheel drive
vehicles patrolling the highways and
security cameras installed on border
fences. Locals say defections by
North Koreans are down amid
tighter Chinese patrols.
However, recent flooding around
Nanping has destroyed alarm
systems installed by the local
government to protect villagers
against North Korean intruders and
also much of the fencing separating
the village from North Korea.
31 MAR 2017. SINUIJU, NORTH KOREA. REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
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A North Korean soldier sits on a bank of the Yalu River.
North Korea is clearly visible from
Nanping - farmers using rudimentary
ploughs, soldiers squatting by a simple
outpost and antiquated trucks and
buses sporadically rumbling by.
Timber and other materials come in by
truck from North Korea to Nanping over
a concrete bridge, say locals, who added
that coal exports have stopped since
China's outright ban in February,
following the North's nuclear and
intermediate-range ballistic missile
tests.
Iron ore from Musan has also stopped
coming in, said Li Zhonglin, Director of
the College of Economics and
Management at Yanbian University.
"Right now, all economic projects along
the border have stalled because of rising
tensions," he said.
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Three times a day, alarms ring out through the
streets of China's ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar,
and shopkeepers rush out of their stores swinging
government-issued wooden clubs.
In mandatory anti-terror drills conducted under
police supervision and witnessed by Reuters on a
recent visit, they fight off imaginary knife-wielding
assailants. Armoured paramilitary and police
vehicles circle with sirens blaring.
March 24 , 2017
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Men install a CCTV camera in a shopping street.
State media say the
drills, and other
measures such as a
network of thousands of
new street-corner police
posts, are aimed making
everyone feel safer.
But many residents say
the drills are just part of
an oppressive security
operation that has been
ramped up in Kashgar
and other cities in
Xinjiang’s Uighur
heartland in recent
months.
As well as taking part in
drills, shopkeepers must,
at their own expense,
install password-
activated security doors,
"panic buttons" and
cameras that film not
just the street outside
but also inside their
stores, sending a direct
video feed to police.
March 23 , 2017
China says it faces a serious threat from Islamist extremists in this far Western
Xinjiang region. Beijing accuses separatists among the Muslim Uighur ethnic
minority there of stirring up tensions with the ethnic Han Chinese majority and
plotting attacks elsewhere in China.
A historic trading post, Kashgar is also central to China's One Belt, One Road
(OBOR) Initiative, President Xi Jinping's signature foreign and economic policy
involving massive infrastructure spending linking China to Asia, the Middle East
and beyond.
China's worst fears are that a large-scale attack would blight this year's
diplomatic setpiece, an OBOR summit attended by world leaders planned for
Beijing in May.
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Since ethnic riots in the
regional capital Urumqi in
2009, Xinjiang has been
plagued by bouts of
deadly violence.
The incidence of attacks
reported in state media
have actually declined
markedly, both in
frequency and scale, since
a spate of bombings and
mass stabbings in Xinjiang
and southwestern Yunnan
Province in 2014.
March 23 , 2017
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But Chinese state media say the
threat remains high and the
Communist Party has vowed to
continue what it terms its own "war
on terror" against spreading Islamist
extremism.
In Xinjiang, this can also be seen at
weekly flag-raising ceremonies at
which Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking
people who formed the majority in
Xinjiang before an influx of Han
Chinese, are required to attend to
denounce religious extremism and
pledge fealty under the Chinese flag.
At one such event witnessed by
Reuters in Hotan, a former Silk Road
oasis town 500 km (300 miles)
southeast of Kashgar, more than
1,000 people filed onto an open-air
basketball court where Party officials
checked their names against an
attendance list and inspected their
dress and appearance.
"Best you take this off or I'll send you
to re-education," said one female
official, pulling back the black hijab
worn by a middle-aged Uighur
woman to expose her forehead and
hair.
March 23 , 2017
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An ethnic Uighur man sits on the train from Hotan to Kashgar.
Hotan authorities offer 2,000 yuan
($290) rewards for those who
report "face coverings and robes,
youth with long beards, or other
popular religious customs that have
been radicalised", as part of a wider
incentive system that rewards
actionable intelligence on imminent
attacks.
Xinjiang lawmakers this week
approved legislation extending a
prohibition on "abnormal" beards
and the wearing of veils in public
places across the whole region. The
new rules come into force on
Saturday.
This month a video purportedly
released by the Islamic State group
showed Uighur fighters training in
Iraq and vowing that blood would
"flow in rivers" in China.
March 22 , 2017
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The architect of the anti-terror drills
and other new measures in Xinjiang is
Chen Quanguo, appointed Communist
Party boss in the region in August in
what analysts said was an implicit
endorsement of his hard-line
management of ethnic strife in
neighbouring Tibet.
Chen has made his mark swiftly,
culminating last month in what state
media described as mass "anti-terror"
rallies across Xinjiang's four largest
cities involving tens of thousands of
paramilitary troops and police.
One of Chen's most visible initiatives
has been to build thousands of what
the authorities call "convenience police
stations" across Xinjiang and hire some
30,000 new officers to man them.
March 24 , 2017
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A child sleeps as a riot shield leans on a stall at the bazaar in Hotan.
They are present on almost every
intersection in Kashgar, typically just
hundreds of metres apart, in what
Chen calls a "grid-style social
management" system he pioneered in
Tibet.
Local state media have praised the
initiative as a new benchmark in
community-based policing. Critics,
including Uighur and rights groups, say
the real purpose is of the convenience
police stations to spy on the
population.
March 21 , 2017
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Citizens are encouraged to use the
stations to charge their mobile phones,
have a cup of tea or shelter from the
elements.
"I don't know anyone who has been in
there," said one Han Chinese taxi
driver, who only wanted to be
identified by his surname Huang,
suggesting few have taken up on the
offer to huddle beside the riot police
and soldiers that occupy the stations.
But Huang, reflecting the region's
simmering ethnic tensions, added that
the increased security made him feel
safer.
"Some people think it's too much, that
it's just a few Uighurs," he said. "But if
they chop your family, then you'll
know."
March 23 , 2017
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A woman prays at a grave near the tomb of Imam Asim in the Taklamakan Desert.
James Leibold, an expert on Chinese
ethnic policy at La Trobe University in
Melbourne, said the focus on security
runs counter to Beijing's goal of using
the OBOR initiative to boost Xinjiang's
economy and improve its integration
with the rest of China, because it would
disrupt the flow of people and ideas.
"Those two are just fundamentally at
odds,” he said.
March 21 , 2017
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Spending on security is rising,
jumping nearly 20 percent in 2016
to more than 30 billion yuan,
according to state media.
That can be seen in the metal
detectors and airport-style security
checks in place at major public
areas, including Kashgar's ancient Id
Kah mosque, bazaars, malls and
hotels.
Police spot document checks are
carried out on pedestrians, with
mobile phones inspected for
extremist videos or use of banned
chat applications like Telegram,
WhatsApp and Twitter. Mobile
internet speeds have been slowed
from 4G to 3G.
"There's maybe 5,000 people
making trouble, but the rest of us,
10 million of us, pay the price," one
Uighur man in Kashgar told Reuters.
March 23 , 2017
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Reuters was tailed closely by local police in Kashgar. A reporter
returning to his hotel at 1 a.m. found officers waiting in the
lobby.
When asked about the reason for the security one of the officers
said Kashgar's preparations for OBOR were of paramount
importance.
"When you see military and police vehicles patrolling the street
in your country, what do you think it's for?" he said. "It's for
safety. Kashgar will be a hub for travel. Everything must be good."
March 23 , 2017
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March 21 , 2017
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March 21, 2017
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March 21 , 2017
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March 22 , 2017
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March 23 , 2017
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THE END
2017
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PHOTO STORY - 2017

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PHOTO STORY - 2017