links for 2007-04-28
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“So, with an eye toward a Japanese public that expects the new prime minister to get the same treatment as the old, the White House is taking pains to turn alliance into friendship, designing the Abe visit to allow the leaders plenty of time to talk subst
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“contenders included Wang Guangya, Chinese ambassador to the UN, the director of the Department for International Wang Jiarui and the present ambassador to Japan, Wang Yi.”
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Speaking during his first trip to the US as leader, Mr Abe said he felt deep sympathy for wartime “comfort women”.
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「辛酸をなめられた元慰安婦の方々に心から同情するとともに、極めて苦しい状況に置かれたことについて申し訳ない気持ちでいっぱいだ」
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“Another view expressed by Korean bloggers is that Cho Seung-hui was not actually the perpetrator, but a victim and even try to find similarities between 9/11 and this incident.”
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MENU FOR A CAMP DAVID LUNCHEON HONORING THE PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN ON FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2007 Cheeseburgers Onion Rings Fruited Slaw Apple Pie Blue Bell Ice Cream
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“Every high school student in China was supposed to get some elementary computer education. However, the fact was far from the requirements set by the country’s National Education Ministry.”
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Such a large cut means China could end up by 2010 with “by far the most aggressive global warming pollution reduction policy of any country in the world,” Douglas Ogden, director of the China Sustainable Energy Program at the Energy Foundation
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Via Observing Japan
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On Haass’ essay
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Commentators have noted that the prime minister has taken seven months since his appointment to make it to the American capital, while it took him less than two weeks to travel to Beijing and Seoul.
Obama on China: ‘Neither Our Enemy Nor Our Friend’
Barack Obama, a U.S. Senator and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, is a brilliant rhetorician. But it’s notoriously hard to pin down his opinions on discrete policy areas and questions. It’s reasonable to speculate that the campaign is intentionally avoiding staking out policy ground unnecessarily this early in the campaign. But recently, some hints about Obama’s thinking on China have emerged.
China Redux compiled two quotes, of which this is the more interesting. From his prepared remarks for a speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (when I was an intern there, it was the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations):
And as we strengthen NATO, we should also seek to build new alliances and relationships in other regions important to our interests in the 21st century. In Asia, the emergence of an economically vibrant, more politically active China offers new opportunities for prosperity and cooperation, but also poses new challenges for the United States and our partners in the region. It is time for the United States to take a more active role here – to build on our strong bilateral relations and informal arrangements like the Six Party talks. As President, I intend to forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.
This is by no means a profound statement; but Obama’s call for stronger involvement in East Asia and a “regional framework” tells us that he views the region holistically rather than as a series of bilateral relationships. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but he seems to be on the right page.
I want to add to the Redux post one more statement by Obama on the importance of East Asia and China. This is from the first Democratic primary presidential debate of the 2008 election cycle last night:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Senator Obama, what are America’s three most important allies around the world?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, I think the European Union as a whole has been a long-standing ally of ours. And through NATO, we’ve been able to make some significant progress. Afghanistan, in particular, is an area where we should be focusing. NATO has made real contributions there. Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we’ve rooted out terrorism in that region. We also have to look east, because increasingly the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia. Japan has been an outstanding ally of ours for many years, but obviously China is rising, and it’s not going away. They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region. That’s something I’d like to do as president.
This frame of China as competitor might seem to part with the cooperative answer he gave before, but the argument seems to be: We can compete and cooperate at the same time. To be sure, neither the United States nor China can compete without a baseline of security and cooperation to keep markets moving.
links for 2007-04-27
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China’s less developed western region is promoting environmentally-friendly investment and rejecting the polluters
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In a July 31, 2001, entry of his diary, published by the Asahi newspaper, the chamberlain, Ryogo Urabe, wrote that “the direct cause” was that the emperor was “displeased about the inclusion of Class A war criminals.”
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China to build harmonious society with wisdom of Taoism – Xinhua :: China Digital Times (CDT) 中国数字时代CCP’s latest “constructing socialist harmonious society” campaign has been trying to utilize traditional cultural resources.
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The phrase “regime change” is associated with the doctrine of preventive war as applied to Iraq. But another sort of regime change has been the crux of U.S. policy toward China through most of the 35 years since President Nixon’s opening to that nation in
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Beijing’s top climate change official says a claim China will become the world’s larger emitter of greenhouse gases as early as this year is “complete nonsense” and an attempt to pressure the country ahead of future global negotiations on the issu
links for 2007-04-26
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Japan said Wednesday that China became its top trading partner for the first time since World War II, unseating the United States in the past fiscal year despite strained ties between the Asian giants.
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Four US activists have been arrested at Mount Everest after calling for Tibetan independence and protesting against the Beijing Olympics, their group has said.
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A group of researchers led by the University of Tokyo has broken Internet speed records — twice in two days.
links for 2007-04-25
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Onishi: Facing calls to compensate the aging victims of its wartime sexual slavery, Japan set up the Asian Women’s Fund in 1995. It was a significant concession from Japan, which has always asserted that postwar treaties absolved it of all individual clai
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China has delayed indefinitely its national “action plan” on climate change, which was due to be released on Monday after exhaustive consultations among ministries in Beijing and provincial and local governments.
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A computer simulation projected that China could land forces on rival Taiwan, but they would be repulsed after two weeks of fierce fighting and harsh losses to both sides, Taiwan’s military said Tuesday.
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The Chinese government said Tuesday that it had approved rules to increase official transparency but added that state secrets had to be safeguarded and social stability preserved.
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Nine Chinese oil workers have been killed in Ethiopia’s remote Ogaden region, Chinese state media reports.
links for 2007-04-23
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Japan is set to launch its first lunar orbiter this summer, but exploring the moon is just part of the mission.
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(Kyodo) _ China, with projected broadband revenues of more than $19 billion, will surpass Japan as the world’s second-largest broadband market by 2011, an economic forecasting body predicted in a report released Friday.
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Japan and the United States will lead a five-nation project to develop a coal-fired power plant which discharges no carbon dioxide into the air, a press report said Sunday.
links for 2007-04-22
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Japan will join the United States in its complaint to the World Trade Organization about violations of intellectual property rights in China with the status of a “third party” or an “observer,” government sources said Friday.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is unlikely to visit a controversial war shrine during a festival in late April as he wants to continue to improve ties with China, Kyodo news agency said quoting aides.
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Japan is responsible for the conditions in which women were forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese soldiers during World War II, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an interview with foreign press organizations,
links for 2007-04-21
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Asian stocks have rebounded in Friday trading, buoyed by America’s main Dow Jones index breaking records for a second straight day at Tuesday’s close.
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Japan is set to launch its first lunar orbiter this summer, but exploring the moon is just part of the mission. The other goal is to catch up with China, the new leader in Asia’s space race.
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Local environmentalists have appealed to the country’s top economic policymaking body to resume environmentally adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) accounting.
