SHENZHEN – China’s prestigious Peking University has acquired a campus in the city of Oxford in the country’s effort to boost the global standing of its top universities.

The university in late February bought the Boars Hill site for £8.8 million (S$15.4 million), reports said.

Peking University is opening a branch of its Shenzhen-based HSBC Business School (PHBS) next year at Foxcombe Hall, currently occupied by the Open University.

A statement from PHBS said China was “opening its higher education market to the world” in a bid to improve the country’s “inferior position globally over the past century”.

It added that after the Brexit vote, “the European Union and the Great Britain have become more competitive in their desire to enhance their relationship with China”.

Foxcombe Hall and its grounds have been home to the long-distance learning institution for 40 years, earlier reports said. The Open University is due to vacate the premises next month.

The sale is part of the Open University’s long-term strategy to close seven regional centres, including Oxford, and focus on three larger student recruitment and support facilities in Manchester, Milton Keynes and Nottingham, reported Oxford Mail.

Professor Wen Hai, dean of Peking University, said the university had beaten off competition from three rivals, including an unnamed Oxford college, by offering a “very tempting price” that left the sellers with “little room to say ‘no'”.

Speaking to financial magazine Caixin, he said the university had been able to do so thanks to its close ties to China’s Communist Party.

Those connections allowed it to “to expedite the transfer of money needed for the acquisition” despite tight capital controls imposed by Beijing, in an attempt to stop firms and citizens shifting large sums of money overseas.

The courses at the new Oxford campus, which is not connected to the University of Oxford, will focus on “professional knowledge of China’s economy, financial market and corporate management”.

Students will be given the opportunity to study for a year in Oxford and another year in China.

Prof Wen did not say how many students the school initially plans to enrol and how much it will charge for the two-year master’s programme.

Professor Gerhard Stahl, a visiting professor at PHBS in Shenzhen, said it is impossible to analyse major global economic issues without watching China closely.

Peking University president Lin Jianhua said in a statement: “It is our hope that the new initiative in Oxford will further strengthen the school’s international reputation, as well as its teaching and research capabilities.”

China now has two universities on the world’s top 40 list, according to the latest Times Higher Education rankings. Peking University is ranked 29th, while Tsinghua University is in the 35th position.

The purchase of the Oxford campus came just months after President Xi Jinping called for Chinese universities to be transformed into strongholds of Communist Party rule.

China’s colleges and universities must “serve the Communist Party in its management of the country”, Mr Xi told a meeting on ideology within higher education last December.

This article was first published on Apr 07, 2017.
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King Maha Vajiralongkorn endorsed yesterday Thailand’s new Constitution that is expected to further strengthen the military’s hold on power and pave the way for elections to be held late next year.

Analysts said the promulgation would help bring investor confidence back to the country, which has been under military rule for three years, but that the political environment remains fragile until a clear date for an election is set.

“Many people are looking to get over this military period but there needs to be a clear policy direction” as it remains unclear how long more the military junta will remain in office, said Dr Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.

There are questions by some observers as to whether the Constitution is meant to prolong the military’s hold on power – with provisions that orders made by the junta will continue to be in force and that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha still has absolute power to prevent any act that “undermines public peace”.

The entire 250-seat Senate will be appointed by the military under the new charter, a guarantee of the military’s controlling stake in any future government. The Senate will have a say on the appointment of a prime minister.

“The new Constitution reflects the sharing of power among the elites. More on the military, less on civil society and much less on politicians,” said Mr Kan Yuenyong, executive director of think-tank Siam Intelligence Unit.

He added that it is the junta’s way to “protect themselves after getting out of power”.

The Constitution is the 20th for Asean’s second biggest economy since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.

The document was signed by King Maha Vajiralongkorn in a televised ceremony in Bangkok yesterday afternoon, and is one of the first major acts of the monarch since the death of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, last October.

“This Constitution aims to fully rid the country of corruption, abuses of power and prevent corrupt politicians from taking office,” said the charter’s preamble that was read by an official after the signing.

The government has said that despite the charter’s promulgation, the ban on political activities remains in force until order is deemed to be “fully restored”.

The government also said it would take about 18 months to prepare for the polls, including at least eight months to pass four election-related laws.

Mr Prayut said in a pre-recorded TV address yesterday that “the government cannot set the exact date of the elections because it is not yet possible to determine the beginning dates of each successive event”, referring to the steps towards holding polls.

On Wednesday evening, just hours before the signing ceremony, a small pipe bomb exploded inside a dustbin close to the Democracy Monument, the site of pro-democracy protests over the decades.

Two street cleaners were taken to hospital but there were no other reported injuries.

Key facts about the new charter

It is an essential step towards holding an election, to restore democracy in a nation ruled by the military since a 2014 coup.

With the Constitution endorsed, Thailand’s next general election is expected to be held late next year.

The charter paves the way for a junta-appointed Upper House, and a proportional voting system likely to reduce the influence of major parties.

The Constitutional Court will be strengthened to make it easier to impeach a civilian leader.

The Thai King had ordered the junta to rewrite parts of the charter relating to his role, such as how the government should proceed in a political crisis, the procedure for appointing a regent and whether royal edicts should be countersigned by a government minister.

Unlike the previous draft, this charter does not prescribe a specific process for ending political deadlock.

This article was first published on Apr 07, 2017.
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NEW DELHI/KANPUR, INDIA – India’s $3 billion (S$4.21 billion) plan to clean the holy Ganges river is badly behind schedule with large stretches contaminated by toxic waste and sewage, forcing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene, according to government officials and documents seen by Reuters.

Much of the money allocated to the project, a flagship initiative for Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, remains unspent, say officials from the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), a government body overseeing the project.

In one slide of a presentation to a top Modi aide in late January, NMCG officials marked almost the entire length of the river within three big circles to highlight “pollution in river Ganga”.

A 2018 deadline to clean the river is “impossible”, one NMCG official said.

“If we want to meet the 2018 deadline, we should have commissioned plants to treat half the sewage already,” he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the record.

Over three-quarters of the sewage generated in the towns and cities of India’s crowded northern plains flows untreated into the 2,525-km (1,570-mile) Ganges, according to the presentation, which has not been made public.

State administrations have struggled to find land for new treatment plants, while complex tendering processes have put bidders off pitching for new clean-up projects, officials said.

The Ganges is worshipped by Hindus, who make up about 80 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion people.

They call it Ganga Mata, or mother Ganga, and believe a dip in the river absolves a lifetime of sins.

Hindus also cremate the bodies of their loved ones on its banks and strew the ashes in the river.

Recognising that the clean-up mission is in a shambles, Modi has decided to take personal control, a senior NMCG official said.

The clean-up drive is important as Modi wants to show tangible improvement before the next election in 2019.

His principal secretary, Nripendra Misra, has met NMCG officials almost monthly since November, demanding to see updates on the project’s progress, the NMCG official said. Misra did not respond to messages and calls seeking comment.

Modi, voted to power in 2014, committed $3.06 billion for the clean-up in the five years to 2020 but the January presentation showed just $205 million had been spent between April 2015 and March 2017.

India’s water resources minister, Uma Bharti, who is responsible for overseeing the clean-up and announced the 2018 deadline, did not respond to requests for comment.

“I have lost hope,” said Rakesh Jaiswal, head of a small Ganges-focused environmental group in the industrial city of Kanpur since 1993.

“There has been nothing on the ground.”

SEWAGE, POLLUTION

India’s top environmental court in February ruled “not a single drop of the Ganga has been cleaned so far”, accusing the government of wasting public money.

The river stretches from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal and is a water source for 400 million people.

But it is also the destination for waste produced by 760 industrial units described by the NMCG as “grossly polluting”.

In addition, the NMCG presentation showed, about 4,800 million litres of sewage from 118 towns and cities flows into the Ganges every day.

The functioning capacity to treat sewage is 1,017 million litres per day (MLD).

According to official data, the Modi administration has cleared the construction of plants to treat an additional 933 MLD, and the rehabilitation of existing plants with a capacity to clean an additional 1,091 MLD.

Of these, plants treating less than 160 MLD have been completed, but it is unclear if they have started operations.

The problems are striking in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state: toxic pollution from tanneries operating in the industrial city flows down slum-lined open sewers into the Ganges.

Of the 456 tanneries in the state that back onto the river, most of them in Kanpur, authorities have shut down just 14, according to the government presentation.

The government has also lagged on the simpler tasks of cleaning the ghats, the riverside steps where devotees assemble to bathe, and the sites on the banks where bodies are cremated.

Of 182 ghats to be modernised, work on only 50 has started.

Of 118 crematoria, just 15 are currently being renovated, with work awarded for another 31, the presentation showed.

“The situation has deteriorated every year, fewer people visit now and there are no prayers at this river bank,” said Ram Das, a Hindu priest at a riverside temple.

MODI TAKES CONTROL

Modi may find it easier to launch new clean-up projects in Uttar Pradesh, through which the longest stretch of the Ganges flows, after his party wrested power from an opposition party in a state election last month.

Modi’s new chief minister in the state is a Hindu priest – Yogi Adityanath – who has long championed cleaning the Ganges.

Last week he inspected a riverfront development along a Ganges tributary, calling for work to be accelerated.

“You will see improvements. We have asked the states to speed up progress and money is not an issue,” said C. V. Dharma Rao, deputy director general at the NMCG in New Delhi.

On a recent evening at a ghat in Kanpur city, workers were fixing sandstone around the steps that led down to the Ganges, one of dozens of riverfront facelifts that government has launched.

But the state of the river was unchanged – black water, full of plastic and other waste thrown by devotees, flowed slowly as mosquitos buzzed above.