links for 2007-11-29
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Japan’s wartime leaders, hanged as war criminals, were martyrs like Jesus Christ, says the Japanese director of an upcoming film backed by nationalists that argues that the 1937 Nanjing massacre was a fabrication by China.
links for 2007-11-28
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Kevin Rudd’s election as prime minister of Australia could mean a substantial shift in Japan-Australian relations. Japan has found a valuable friend and ally in Australia in recent years. The relationship blossomed under the departing John Howard
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With usual caveats against sweeping generalization, what this made me think was: Japan is all about the way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding a way to
links for 2007-11-27
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With this in mind, I sent a mass e-mail to about 100 of my friends back home, hoping to show the students a small slice of American-style democracy.
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The head of China’s central bank says Beijing wants a strong dollar, a government news agency said Thursday.
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Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton Friday slammed China for calling her criticism of made-in-China toys “slander,” and urged Washington to take “immediate, decisive steps” to protect US children.
Australia’s Leader as Canada’s Downfall With China?
Chinese in Vancouver has a post arguing that Kevin Rudd, Australia’s newly elected, Mandarin-speaking leader, may lead his country into a position that challenges Canada’s China relations. Noted without comment:
Australia will almost surely become the most China-friendly country in the West with Kevin Rudd becomes the next Australian prime minister. How would that affect Canada?
The quick answer is: Canada will tail behind more.
Rudd has already said that he would make Australia a Western country that understands China and Asia most. [more]
links for 2007-11-22
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Japan plans to pledge 1.8 billion dollars worth of low-interest loans to Asian countries to help them combat environmental pollution at a summit next week in Singapore, reports said Friday.
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The directive, issued in June, called for burdensome new safety inspections for foreign-made medical devices — but not for those made in China. The Bush administration is crying foul.
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The already strained diplomatic relations between China and Germany worsened sharply on Thursday when German finance minister Peer Steinbrück was forced to cancel a visit to Beijing because his Chinese counterpart refused to meet him.
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Congress should pass legislation giving US companies a new tool to fight China’s “currency manipulation” and also put pressure on the White House to take action at the World Trade Organisation, a congressional watchdog panel said on Thursday .
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China’s commerce ministry warned on Thursday that a slowing US economy would trigger a drop in Chinese exports that would mark a “turning point” for China’s rapid economic growth.
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Students in Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan significantly outperform American students on math and science tests, according to a new study from a U.S. nonprofit organization.
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A human rights activist lamented on Thursday that no one from the Japanese government would meet the Dalai Lama during his nine-day visit to the country centred on Buddhist events.
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Recently some foreign correspondents have been detained, harassed and physically roughed up — two incidents Tuesday alone.
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The United States and China are working on a pact to promote use of ethanol and other biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and could announce an agreement as early as next month, an American official said Friday.
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A Chinese naval ship left Wednesday for a port call to Japan for the first time since World War II in a further sign of easing in the Asian neighbors’ often tense relations.
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Japan and China on Tuesday announced their first cabinet-level forum on closer business co-operation, highlighting the warmer political ties between Asia’s two largest economies after years of strain.
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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attended the third East Asia Summit (EAS) which opened here Wednesday.
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The award marks the second straight year an imprisoned Chinese journalist has won the Golden Pen of Freedom
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The U.S. International Trade Commission voted on Tuesday to deny proposed duties on imports of glossy paper from China in a case that had prompted the U.S. Commerce Department to change a decades-old policy.
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Yasuo Fukuda, making his Asian diplomacy debut after taking office in September, held his first summit with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and also had lunch with the Chinese leader on the sidelines of an Asian leaders’ meeting in Singapore.
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JAPANESE Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao agreed to work together to improve bilateral ties at their first one-on-one meeting.
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The workers carried out a half-day nationwide walkout in response to a proposal to reduce their benefits.
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Climate change dominated the agenda at the one-day East Asia Summit, which included the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
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Hundreds of relatives of crew members of the Kitty Hawk had flown to Hong Kong to celebrate Thanksgiving with them.
Ecotourism in China Not Always Ecological
From my friend and TreeHugger Alex Pasternack comes an introduction to so-called ecotourism businesses in China, some of which are far from sustainable.
On a trip to the south of Yunnan province last year, in the sub-tropical Xishuangbanna region near Myanmar, friends and I eagerly undertook a trek only to discover that the path had become a large dusty road. Here we competed for space with large machinery preparing to pave the way, apparently, to eventually accommodate tourist buses. Our hopes of discovering wild China had been dashed by thousands of similar hopes. It was a quick lesson in the state of tourism in China, and it was a powerful one.
Read the entire post with a battery of good links at TreeHugger.
Plus, here’s a quick introduction to the principles of ecotourism, if you’re not familiar with the term:
According to the Quebec Declaration on Ecotourism, ecotourism
“embraces the principles of sustainable tourism… and the following principles which distinguish it from the wider concept of sustainable tourism:
- Contributes actively to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage,
- Includes local and indigenous communities in its planning, development and operation, contributing to their well-being,
- Interprets the natural and cultural heritage of the destination to visitor,
- Lends itself better to independent travellers, as well as to organized tours
for small size groups”.
Hillary, in Toys Warning, Claims She ‘Stood Up’ to China in 1995
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has added a level confrontation to her rhetoric on China, warning in a phone call with Iowa voters that toy and food imports from China could be a threat during the U.S. holiday season. “One of the things I don’t believe we should have to worry about is the safety of our food that is served for Thanksgiving or the toys that we buy our children for Christmas,” she said.
“I’ll improve the safety of children’s toys and stop dangerous toys from getting into our children’s hands by completely banning lead in children’s toys,” she said.
“If China expects to do business with the United States, they’re going to have to meet higher standards.”
And if American companies think that they can get a cheaper deal by going to China, well, they’re got another thing coming, because they’re going to have to meet the same standards.”
Clinton also claimed experience confronting China, referring to her speech at the U.N. World Conference on Women as first lady in 1995. “I went to Beijing in 1995 and stood up to the Chinese government on human rights, women’s rights,” Clinton said.
Or did she? Here’s the portion of her speech that most directly addresses the Chinese government:
I believe that, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Bejing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights. [...]
It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. [...]
Women must enjoy the right to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.
It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend — or have been prohibited from fully taking part.
Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing they, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions. [emphasis mine]
The second to last paragraph refers to the fact that some members of NGOs were unable to attend the conference because of Chinese government objections. This does not seem to me to be a particularly strong statement, though it certainly would not have gone unnoticed by the diplomatic class.
Indeed, the remarks may have been carefully calibrated to make headlines without being especially disturbing to U.S.–China relations, which at the time were strained because of a visit to the U.S. by then President of Taiwan Lee Teng-hui. From The New York Times’ report on Sept. 6, 1995:
A senior Administration official traveling with Mrs. Clinton was at pains after the address to explain that it did not mark a return to a more vocal confrontation with China over its poor human rights record. In recent months, Washington has sought to tone down its public remarks on human rights abuses in favor of a more private dialogue that had few results.
“There is nothing in her speech that in any way deviates from our approach on China,” the official said, “or on our desire to get the relationship stabilized and to get some momentum going. This is a United Nations conference and she was speaking out on a global problem.”
At the time, the first lady told a press conference, “To me, it was important to express how I felt and to do so as clearly as I could.” I’d say the message could have been more clear, but clearly the message got to the Times.
ALSO: In my Googling on this issue I found that Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap has picked up on this as well.
(h/t The China Game)
Björk in Tokyo and Osaka this February
I think this may be the final impetus for my trip to Japan: Among Björk’s newly announced tourdates:
02-19 Tokyo, Japan – Budokan
02-22 Tokyo, Japan – Budokan
02-25 Osaka, Japan – Osaka Castle Hall
This Blog’s Reading Level: Why a Bit Lower is Better
China Economics Blog finds that it’s reading level is quite high. In fact, according to this automated rating site, you’d have to be a “genius” to understand their work. I don’t know how these ratings are generated, but I did get a little curious about how bright (or educated) someone’s algorithm thinks you should be to read Transpacifica.
This site is written with the goal of being useful both for casual readers with little Asia background and for people with Ph.D.’s and careers in Asia scholarship. This means that sometimes I consciously use simple language where longer words could do the job. It also means I identify people like Fukuda Yasuo in every post, in case a reader doesn’t know he’s Japan’s prime minister. That said, I suppose I’m glad if this blog is at a lower reading level.
The writer of China Economics Blog considers what that blog’s genius rating means.
The implications are as follows:1. Only clever people read this blog (is that so bad?)2. I could get more readers if I simplified the language (is that so good?)
My take: If only clever people read your blog, that’s not so bad, but if you can write more simply and make your material helpful to more readers, that’s great! Of course the ratings are just for fun. I don’t think CEB is especially tough to read, and I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed by now if I were a genius.
More Reporting on ‘E-Waste’: Domestic Waste and a Reporter Detained
After the recent In These Times piece on Guiyu, a center for the recovery of valuable substances in old electronics, comes an Associated Press report that does some more digging on the noxious conditions for workers there. The article, by Christopher Bodeen, includes some good sourcing and a short mention of reporting conditions for some visitors:
Those who control the business in Guiyu are hostile to outside scrutiny. Reporters visiting the area with a Greenpeace volunteer were trailed by tough-looking youths who notified local police, leading to a six-hour detention for questioning.
Government departments from the provincial to township levels refused to answer questions. The central government’s Environmental Protection Agency did not reply to faxed questions.
The article also reminds us that China produces its own e-waste—some 1 million tons a year, according to Greenpeace China. It also quotes a Qingdao businessman who says he is not breaking even with a business that recycles electronics safely, and it points out that many people in Shanghai prefer “guerrilla recyclers” who offer good prices, despite the city’s opening of a dedicated e-waste recycling center. Anecdotal evidence from this central Beijing hutong suggests the same type of recycling is common here.
(If the detained reporter story sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it’s not an isolated incident. In one high-profile case, New York Times reporter David Barboza publicly told the story of being detained by a factory staff. And in his case, even the police were not able to arrange for his immediate release.)
h/t to my mom for forwarding the story.
