Howard W. French (http://www.howardwfrench.com)

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A Continent for the Taking

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to… read more

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Commentary & Reviews · Interviews

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2005

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut Within days of the last Marine helicopter lifting off from the American Embassy in Saigon on April 30, one could see a new regional power balance taking shape.
It was a very different order from the one that the Kennedy administration had feared when it committed troops to Vietnam more than a decade earlier. Instead of triggering the fall of Southeast Asian dominoes into China’s lap, Vietnam was emerging as a barrier against the very influence that Washington had fought - Beijing’s.
A few days after watching North Vietnamese tanks crash through the gate of the presidential palace, I met a North Vietnamese colonel in a music store. Hoping to gauge the North’s political leanings, I had asked him if they read the Peking Review in Hanoi.
“Yes,” he said, nodding approvingly, “it’s very good paper, good to roll cigarettes.”
Nor did North Vietnamese troops entering Saigon show any affection for China. Mao portraits and flags hoisted in China town as a welcoming gesture to the Communists were swiftly ordered taken down.
The sound coming from the Chinese capital was not one of applause for Vietnamese comrades-in-arms. The People’s Daily headlined the threat from Soviet hegemonists, relegating the communist victory in South Vietnam to a secondary place.
This was the anticlimactic denouement of an American involvement in Vietnam that had been premised on stopping the Chinese.
Instead, as the North Vietnamese Army took control of Saigon, they made no attempt to interdict the evacuation, treating the U.S. helicopter evacuation as a temporary withdrawal. They refrained from raising their flags at the U.S. Embassy, sparing the United States the humiliation of its ignominious departure.
Meanwhile, in the north stood giant China, locked in a struggle with the Soviets and deeply suspicious of a pesky Vietnam that had fought repeatedly against Chinese attempts at domination. Thus, despite its success in driving out America, Vietnam continued to view the U.S. presence as a guarantee for its independence.
If there was ever any doubt about the wisdom of considering the Vietnamese as China’s puppets, it was removed four years later when China sent troops across the border to “teach Vietnam a lesson.” Deng Xiaoping had given advance warning of the “lesson” to President Jimmy Carter and received tacit American support for his actions.
Of course, by then, Vietnam, facing Chinese hostility and bloody border raids by Beijing’s ally, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, had signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. Vietnam invited the Soviet Navy to Cam Ranh Bay, and, with Soviet aid, ousted the Khmer Rouge from power.
In another era or another context, the Vietnamese might have been applauded for bringing about regime change in Cambodia and liberating their neighbors from a genocidal nightmare. What instead followed the ouster of Pol Pot from Cambodia was nearly two decades of isolation and punishment of Vietnam. By July 1995, when the Americans finally returned to restore diplomatic relations with Vietnam, Asia’s geopolitical picture had again changed dramatically.
An economically vibrant and militarily resurgent China was well on its way to claiming leadership in Asia. Drawn together by the mutual need for a balanced situation in Asia, Hanoi and Washington had quietly begun taking baby steps in military cooperation.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld welcomed his Vietnamese counterpart Pham Van Tra to the Pentagon in 2003, when the two reached an agreement allowing U.S. Navy warships to call at Vietnamese ports. U.S.-Vietnam relations came full circle in November 2003, when - exactly 38 years after the first American marines landed in Danang - the U.S. frigate Vandegrift made a port call in Vietnam. It has since been followed by other warships.
A dispute over the positioning of the American and Vietnamese flags was resolved when the Vietnamese dropped their demand for the visiting ship to fly Vietnam’s red and gold flag above the Stars and Stripes. As the Vandegrift steamed into Saigon port, both flags flapped gently in the breeze, hanging side by side.
(Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal Online, covered the fall of Saigon for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He is the author of ”Brother Enemy: The War After the War.” )

Posted at 11:02 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2005

WASHINGTON One of America’s most important entrepreneurs recently gave a remarkable speech to a summit meeting of the nation’s governors. Bill Gates minced no words. “American high schools are obsolete,” he told the governors. “By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed and underfunded. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools - even when they are working exactly as designed - cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.
“Training the work force of tomorrow with the high school students of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. Our high schools were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting - even ruining - the lives of millions of Americans every year.”
Let me translate Gates’s words: “If we don’t fix American education, I will not be able to hire your kids.” I consider that, well, kind of important. Alas, the media squeezed a few mentions of it between breaks in the Michael Jackson trial. But neither Tom DeLay nor Bill Frist called a late-night session of Congress - or even a daytime one - to discuss what Gates was saying. They were too busy pandering to those Americans who don’t even believe in evolution.
And the president stayed fixated on privatizing Social Security. It’s no wonder that the second Bush term is shaping up as “The Great Waste of Time.”
On foreign policy President George W. Bush has offered a big idea: the expansion of freedom, particularly in the Arab-Muslim world, where its absence was one of the forces propelling the Sept. 11 attacks. That is a big, bold and compelling idea - worthy of a presidency and America’s long-term interests.
But on the home front, this team has no big idea - certainly none that relates to the biggest challenge and opportunity facing Americans today: the flattening of the global economic playing field in a way that is allowing more people from more places to compete and collaborate with America’s kids than ever before.
“For the first time in our history, we are going to face competition from low-wage, high-human-capital communities, embedded within India, China and Asia,” President Lawrence Summers of Harvard told me. In order to thrive, “it will not be enough for us to just leave no child behind. We also have to make sure that many more young Americans can get as far ahead as their potential will take them. How we meet this challenge is what will define our nation’s political economy for the next several decades.”
Indeed, we Americans can’t rely on importing the talent we need anymore - not in a flat world where people can now innovate without having to emigrate. In Silicon Valley today, “B to B” and “B to C” stand for “back to Bangalore” and “back to China,” which is where a lot of America’s talent is moving.
Meeting this challenge requires a set of big ideas. If you want to grasp some of what is required, check out a smart new book by the strategists John Hagel 3rd and John Seely Brown entitled “The Only Sustainable Edge.” They argue that comparative advantage today is moving faster than ever from structural factors, like natural resources, to how quickly a country builds its distinctive talents for innovation and entrepreneurship - the only sustainable edge.
Economics is not like war. It can always be win-win. “But some win more than others,” Hagel said, and today it will be those countries that are best and fastest at building, attracting and holding talent.
There is a real sense of urgency in India and China about “catching up” in talent-building. America, by contrast, has become rather complacent. “People go to Shanghai or Bangalore and they look around and say, ‘They’re still way behind us,”’ Hagel said. “But it’s not just about current capabilities. It’s about the relative pace and trajectories of capability-building.
“You have to look at where Shanghai was just three years ago, see where it is today and then extrapolate forward. Compare the pace and trajectory of talent-building within their population and businesses and the pace and trajectory here.”
India and China know they can’t just depend on low wages, so they are racing Americans to the top, not the bottom. Producing a comprehensive U.S. response - encompassing immigration, intellectual property law and educational policy - to focus on developing American talent in a flat world is a big idea worthy of a presidency. But it would also require Bush to do something he has never done: Ask Americans to do something hard.

Posted at 10:57 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2005

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut Spring usually brings out lovers strolling through parks and students lounging on college quadrangles. In China and South Korea, however, spring has brought out demonstrators stoning Japanese restaurants and diplomatic missions and chanting “kill the Japanese.” The protests have even managed to overshadow the continuing North Korean nuclear crisis.
What’s going on? Is this simply a temporary blip or a preview of even greater conflict ahead? And why is Japan the target of both the Chinese and South Koreans?
The spring protests are releasing long-suppressed nationalist passions in East Asia. The region seems frozen in time, with 19th-century-style border disputes threatening peace and stability. Beyond the major problems of Korean reunification or the future of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have all but thrown away the years they spent rebuilding relations because of a clump of useless rocks in the sea while Japan and China clash over the tiny Senkaku Islands close to Taiwan.
Such problems are almost insoluble, since each is linked to larger political and economic concerns. Japan cannot relinquish its claim to what it calls the Takeshima Islands, as demanded by South Korea, for fear that the Russians will use it as a pretext to end discussions over returning the Kurile Islands, as demanded by Japan. China, similarly, can allow no surrender of what it considers its territory, since that would give the Taiwanese, Tibetans and others a precedent for declaring independence. Moreover, the seas around these island outcroppings are rich in natural gas and fish stocks, and thus valuable in the larger competition for natural resources in Asia.
Beyond those issues, however, Chinese mobs claim that it is Japan’s efforts to get a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council that must be stopped, though why factory workers from Shanghai should care about that is a question few have stopped to ask. More understandable is Chinese and Korean outrage over Japanese school textbooks that both countries say whitewash Japanese atrocities during World War II. Yet if such textbooks, used by an insignificant fraction of Japanese schools, are enough to cause Chinese to assault Japanese exchange students, then the countries of East Asia indeed seem trapped by history.
The fundamental problem, however, is not the memories of World War II, bitter as they still are, but growing competition among the great powers of East Asia and the absence of a durable, indigenous security mechanism there. Because of this, there is neither trust nor a normal working relationship among these countries. No region-wide organization exists, as in Europe, to arbitrate disputes, build confidence or keep the peace. Conflicts are solved by ad hoc means. Only in the case of North Korea, whose nuclear weapons program potentially threatens every player in the region, has there been an effort to involve several nations in negotiations, though that, too, may have run its course.
That must change if East Asia’s leaders want to prevent the present from fettering the future of one-fifth of humanity. They must take the short-term risks of setting aside their passions and build a mechanism to give birth to a new era of cooperation. The alternative may be a flame that erupts into an uncontrollable conflagration.
(Michael Auslin, an assistant history professor at Yale University, is the author of ”Negotiating With Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy.”)

Posted at 10:55 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

When I say that I could live in airports, I’m not speaking metaphorically: a few years ago, I worked out that (like many FT readers, I’m sure) I spend 40 days a year either in an airport or an aircraft - in short, in the physical equivalent of jet lag, neither here nor there.

Extrapolated across a lifetime, this figure (of almost six weeks a year, more than 10 per cent of my existence) could come to eight or nine years in all, while my friends who work in consulting or international banking may spend as much as 11 or 12 years of their lives in mid-air. More time in anonymous passageways than in a single home often and yet we never stop to think of it until, perhaps, it is time to make a summation of our lives.

It was this sense of a whole life spent in transit that moved me once to go and spend two weeks in and around Los Angeles airport, taking it as a model of this new form of lifestyle, and an exemplum of the modern world, in which people live in between destinations, not so much in one culture or another as in the cracks between them.

Sometimes, just to get my work done, I’ve had to fly from Damascus to London to New York to Los Angeles to Kyoto in a week; and many times, when I’ve headed off to somewhere I think of as exotic - North Korea, say, or Bhutan or Easter Island - I’ll notice that the marvels and incongruities I experience en route are just as startling as anything I’ll see at the other end.

Flux has become a country in itself, I often think, and yet, unlike most other countries, it remains uncharted, neglected by the history books, and with no guidebooks yet to explain

its curious customs and sights.

I think this intuition of mine - that travel might become not just a means but an end in itself - must have begun soon after I was born in Oxford, to parents from India, and we moved to California - I rejoicing in the fact that I belonged to none of these places but could claim some native acquaintance with them all.

By the age of nine, I had begun, in the classic imperial fashion (though a vicarious subject of Empire myself) to go to school (in England) by aircraft.

Home in California, where my parents lived, was formalised, somewhat foreign and curtained; school was the realm of the barbarians, overseen by some feudal chieftain. The aircraft, the airport - the fact of being in the passages between the fixed points, under the legislation of no government, waited on by solicitous cabin attendants and offered films and Cokes and furtive glimpses of Raquel Welch a few rows ahead of me - began to seem the place to be.

It’s common to think of travel, nowadays, as an alternative life and whole parallel universe, a complete Fourth World with its own holy scriptures (the Lonely Planet guidebooks), its own soundtrack (the Lionel Richie and Eric Clapton tunes that are the mainstay of every third world bar), its own odd constituency (bangled Danes and young Israelis who’ve just been released from their country’s armed forces).

There are some who travel in a spirit of flight, or pilgrimage, acutely aware of what they’re leaving behind or what they’re permanently moving towards - fugitives, perhaps, who call themselves seekers; but there are many of us who travel just by habit. It’s the only home we know.

For us - for me, at least - it’s domesticity that is the foreign country where we don’t entirely trust the natives. It’s the notion of community that’s alien, and stasis that seems a nice word for paralysis. If I stay more than three months in any country, I start to feel unsettled (or prompted to seek out unsettledness of a more fruitful kind); it’s not that I have an itch to stir or cabin-fever, it’s just that I feel I’m betraying something in myself and have gone over to the other side. I therefore have made travel the portable home I take everywhere I go. I have been largely based in Japan for 12 years now, but live there on a tourist visa. As soon as I finished my A-levels, I took off for the summer to see the India that was technically my motherland but remains terra incognita to me even now.

After returning for a final term at school, I hived myself off to a Mexican restaurant in California, where I used my chameleon complexion to serve as a sub-waiter, courteously pouring hot sauce into customers’ laps and distributing glasses of water over their freshly made tacos. With the money I earned from this, I got on a bus in Tijuana and travelled through Central America and then Colombia, Educador, Peru and Bolivia before flying up the eastern coast of South America, through Rio, Salvador and Surinam, and hopping through Trinidad and Barbados back to Miami, where I got a bus home to California. By the time I arrived at college, therefore, I knew my only education would come on the road. Pan Am was my Harvard, to paraphrase Melville, poet laureate of mad explorers, and BOAC (as it was then) my Yale.

I went to get a post-graduate degree in literature, and spent much of my time at the university writing guidebooks to Italy, Greece, Britain and France. I finally got myself a job in New York and promptly took off on a holiday in Burma and Thailand. And then another holiday to Bali. And then another in India, finally acknowledging that my rewards would have to be internal ones and I would have to trade the security of a steady job for the familiarity of an unsteady life. Ever since, I’ve switched passports as if they were credit cards. As I draw close to 50, I’ve never owned a home.

The currency in which I earn my living really does at times seem to be frequent flier miles, and I horrify friends by saying that my ideal domestic environment is a hotel (I write this in a small guest-house in the foothills of the Himalayas, where I’ve been staying for six weeks). It is not that I necessarily think travel is better than fixity, only that it is better for me. Staying in one place would be a form of maximum security prison in which I would be no use to society or myself.

If you are living a life of constant movement, the one thing you most need is stillness. Stillness is something deeper than mere settledness, and something physically and metaphysically different from staying put: the Dalai Lama travels constantly round the world but what he carries to people everywhere is, to some degree, the focus and gravitas of his stillness.

Four times every year, I go for weeks at a time to a Catholic hermitage where (though no Catholic) I seldom leave my little cell and look out on an ocean that never moves. For much of the rest of the year I choose to base myself in a two-room flat in rural Japan where I have no car, no bicycle, no internet, no TV: I move only as far as my legs will take me. Travel that leads to travel would lead only to a different kind of fixity of routine.

And yet, in my places of stillness, what I am doing, as much as anything, is preparing myself for movement: as an archer does when pulling back his bow. As a boy I used to think myself unusual in going to school by aircraft. Now - though such frequent movement is of course still the province of only a minority (and of the 100m exiles who never sought to leave their homes, for whom displacement is a misery) - I see movement slowly becoming a greater part of almost every life.

The still life of my grandparents’ age has fractured into the MTV fragmentation of our own. This brings with it discordance, anarchy and confusion (jet lag, you could say, accentuated by culture shock and altitude sickness). It also brings with it possibility. Cyberspace has given us a new way to think of distance and geography, and movement for me has become one of the languages it is wise to speak because the very notion of home, community and self is being reformed.

Learning fluency in movement - the new nation I inhabit - I look around and find that I am in a country that constantly expands and is already more dynamic and more populous than most of the fixed states of the world.

Pico Iyer is the author of ‘Sun After Dark’ (Bloomsbury/Knopf), ‘The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home’ and ‘Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World’

*Pico Iyer’s most recent book of travels, ( published by Bloomsbury in the UK/Knopf in the US), is SUN AFTER DARK: Flights into The Foreign. He is also the author of The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home and Falling off The Map: Some Lonely Places of the World

Posted at 1:17 PM · Comments (0)

Posted April 25, 2005

This review appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.
——-

For Russia, the last century was one bitter cruelty after another—the Tsar, war, revolution, famine, Stalin, war, Communism. Her people lived under totalitarianism for seven decades, longer than any one else. Something happens to a society under the total state. In time, fear, lies, denunciation, and arrest fray the bonds that hold a healthy society together. In Russia’s case, these strains have left it much like an ocean: cold, vast, and swarming with strange creatures.

James Billington’s Russia in Search of Itself is a wise reflection on Russia’s destiny by a lifelong student. It has a somewhat uneven feel, as if it were written first as a series of essays. But Billington, who has served as the Librarian of Congress since 1987, is an eminent authority, and the insights found in his book transcend its faults.

Billington catalogues Russia’s quest for the National Idea. “No nation,” he says, “ever poured more intellectual energy into answering the question of national identity than Russia.” Nor has the search ever been more urgent; an answer could mean salvation. But Russia’s pursuit is schizophrenic. Its lost empires have spread both pious Orthodoxy and militant atheism. Since the Middle Ages, it has been divided into serfs and masters with little in between. And in the 1830s, it was divided again by the contest between Westernizers and Slavophiles—Turgenev looked West, Tolstoy East. The Soviets officially put that question on hold, but if you want to spark a dinner-table debate, ask Russians whether they belong to Asia or Europe.

Throughout her history, Russia’s misfortune has been to watch mounting discord reach a breaking point, and then snap violently in one direction or the other. Billington observes that each time Russia has reconstituted itself—in 1861, with Alexander II’s abolition of serfdom; in 1917, with the Bolshevik’s seizure of the state; and in 1991, with the USSR’s dissolution—it has been swift, unexpected, and a self-declared break with the past.

Russia prides herself on a long and celebrated cultural tradition, but some of it is borrowed. Her early art and religion, for example, were appropriated from Byzantium. (In 988 C.E., Prince Vladimir I converted Russia to Orthodoxy; legend says he considered Islam, but it had a fatal shortcoming: no alcohol.) Peter the Great modeled his state on Sweden, his Baltic rival. During the Silver Age, Russia’s nobility spoke French, bought Italian art, and, “most fatefully of all,” says Billington, thought in German. And when Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II pushed Russia into the Industrial Revolution, their beau ideal was Germany, with whom they would war twice in the next 60 years.

Finally in 1991, Russia announced that it would adopt the markets and democracy of her Cold War adversary. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as many hoped. Privatization became a giant swindle in which well-positioned bureaucrats divvied up amongst themselves the vast Soviet carcass. Russians would vote, but active and participatory civic associations would never develop. Within a matter of years, power and wealth were once again highly concentrated. Former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin remarked, in superlative Russian fashion, “We wanted it to go better, but it turned out as always.”

Since 1991, failure and uncertainty have opened the floodgates to a number of strange ideologies. Billington focuses on the most influential and dangerous school, the “Eurasianists,” who combine nationalism with a foundation myth that places Russia back at the center of history. They intend to raise Russia from its knees so that it can once more face down the West. Billington calls them the “troubadours of autocracy.”

A.S. Panarin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for example, calls for a “United States of Eurasia,” in which Orthodox Christianity and Islam would form a popular front against Western secularism and individualism. Activist Alexander Dugin dreams of an anti-Atlantic axis of Berlin, Tokyo, and Tehran, each led by “charismatic theocrats.” Politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky threatens to restore Alaska to Russia and spread radioactive waste across Germany. (One of his campaign slogans was “A man for every woman and a cheap bottle of vodka for every man.”) This January, he called on the Russian government to ban Jewish organizations, which, he explained, amount to “nothing less than Satanism.”

Eurasianism is an eccentric and bigoted movement, but Billington insists on taking it seriously. Most Westerners, however, dismiss the clownish Zhirinovsky. This would be a lot easier if he did not command Russia’s third-largest party, which doubled its vote in the December 2003 elections. Dugin, for his part, directs Russia’s burgeoning nationalist movement. Eurasianism boasts of disciples in the highest echelons of the Russian military and security services. The question of Russia is really the question of how authoritarian it will become.

Fascism has once again invaded Russia, this time without the aid of an army. It seems inconceivable in the land that lost 20 million of its own to Nazism, yet walls in Moscow are defiled with swastikas. Skinheads carry out hundreds of attacks annually against minorities—one Moscow rights-group estimates skinhead ranks at 50,000—and the number of attacks rises by a third every year. Meanwhile, in Russia’s parliament, a thriving Red-Brown alliance unites those nostalgic for departed glory and order. Marxist theory was always an overlay, but nationalism is not. According to Billington, the appeal of the new xenophobia has yet to peak.

Russians once ruled half the world, and now their decrepit military watches as its nuclear submarines sink and its helicopters crash. Former “brotherly nations” like Poland and Lithuania are isolating Russia by joining the E.U. President Bush promises Ukraine entry into NATO should it stay on the democratic course, a prospect which appears to Russians the way Russia’s stationing troops in Canada would appear to us. It’s hardly just nationalists who are frustrated by a West that classifies them as a “developing” nation alongside former client states, and that allows Mongolia into the World Trade Organization, but not them.

* * *

In a 1996 poll of political attitudes commissioned by Boris Yeltsin, three categories ended in a tie: democrats, Communist revanchists, and apoliticals. But one category beat them all: nihilists. Historically, Russia is the only country in which nihilism became an actual popular movement, and now, 150 years later, it has returned: Russian ballots feature the option “Against all.” In a March presidential poll, it placed second.

Russia in Search of Itself argues that most Russians understand success as the product of either good luck or immorality. Eighty-four percent believe themselves unable to influence decision-making. Consider that the term parliament comes from the Old French parlez, to talk. The word for Russia’s legislative body, on the other hand, the Duma, comes from dumat, to think: The politician’s job is to think for the people, and the people’s job is to accept it.

Billington worries that demagoguery will advance, not because of popular support, but because of popular indifference. Could a worrying New York Times headline, “Mounting Discontent in Russia Spills Into the Streets,” thus represent progress? Perhaps the spirit that moved hundreds of thousands of orange-clad Ukrainians to contest their December elections will make its way to Russia. Street protests might be the closest thing Russia has to an opposition.

For centuries, a Kremlin oligarchy, whether comprising Muscovite and Kievan princes, the Romanov court, or the General-Secretary’s Politburo, has governed Russia. But this seems to have finally given way to a rough and imperfect liberty. This does not mean, of course, that thousand-year-old traditions disappear overnight, or for that matter, over a decade of nights. The tiny parasitic elite is back, this time in the form of the superrich “new Russians,” and the siloviki, the super-bureaucrats. These groups, as Billington notes, are the chief obstacles to democratic change.

If you wish to understand the nature of arbitrary power in Russia, look no further than a little flashing blue light, the migalka. Available to elites with cash and connections, it confers on its owner the right to disregard any and all traffic laws. I’ve seen migalka-equipped Mercedes 600s and Land Rovers drive on sidewalks and fly through red lights at busy intersections.

During the Yeltsin era, a handful of “oligarchs” built financial-industrial clans that came to control nearly half the Russian GDP. Such a concentration of wealth, especially in the absence of reliable legal and financial institutions, distorts the growth of markets. Some estimate that this thievery has created a gap between rich and poor wider than the one that preceded the Revolution. By most indicators, Russia is now a Third World country, yet it is second only to the U.S. in its number of billionaires.

With the end of the Cold War, Russia lost half its industrial output. Each year, Russia’s population declines by a stunning one million people. At this rate, by 2050 its population will have shrunk by a third. Male life expectancy is 58 and falling (it’s 75 in the U.S.). One cause, according to a parliamentary report, is “stress generated by people’s lack of confidence in their futures and those of their children.” Another is alcoholism. The suicide rate between 1995 and 2000 was quadruple that of Europe. A sodden, depressed Russia can only be further eclipsed on the international stage.

President Vladimir Putin is working to reverse this. In his mind, a good number of Russia’s problems—poverty, terrorism, mafiosi, Chechnya—are the result of a weak and semi-dismantled state, and so he has set about rebuilding it. His soft authoritarianism, coupled with various tax, legal, and benefit reforms, has contributed to economic growth averaging 6.5% per year since 1998—though Russia’s economy is still only slightly larger than that of Los Angeles County. Putin has also taught the country’s most powerful men that they are nothing compared to his state. But if Russia is to democratize, the state cannot always win.

* * *

Everyone knows that the historic Iraqi elections in January were a breakthrough. Fewer know that the first constitutional transfer of power in Russian history took place only in 2000, when Putin succeeded Yeltsin. Though Russia’s democracy is in its adolescence, with all the immaturity and hesitancy typical of that difficult age, we often judge it by European standards. Russia is again trying to import institutions without the traditions that uphold them.

Remarkably, Russians see America as a country much like their own—large and multiethnic, unfurled across a continent. They also see the society—creative, open, tolerant, rich, and free—they wish for themselves. This gives Billington hope. But a fair prediction is that Russia’s fate is unpredictable. In the course of the last century, Russia made an unlikely metamorphosis from the bastion of reactionary monarchism, to the exporter of world revolution, to a struggling, dysfunctional democracy.

But one thing is certain. Russia possesses one-third of the world’s natural gas, 7% of its oil, one-fifth of its precious metals, endless forest and farmland, ports on seven seas, the world’s second-largest nuclear stockpile, and 140 million patient and educated citizens—all spread across eleven time zones. This means that no matter how stormy its progress, Russia will matter. Like the ocean, the strength of a nation is a matter of ebb and flow.

Posted at 4:43 PM · Comments (0)

Monday, Apr. 25, 2005 - Copyright Time
…But he isn’t through talking about racism, black actors — and why he doesn’t read Shakespeare

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August Wilson’s mom, a cleaning woman trying to raise four kids in the Pittsburgh slums, won a radio contest once. She named the product that went with the ad slogan “When it rains, it pours” (Morton salt), and the prize was a new Speed Queen washing machine. When the station found out she was black, Wilson recounts, his mother was offered instead a certificate for a used washing machine from the Salvation Army. Friends told her to take it anyway; it was better than the old washboard she was using to scrub her kids’ clothes. But she refused. “Something,” she said, “is not always better than nothing.”

Like many of the tales in August Wilson’s plays, this one reverberates across generations. Years later, Paramount was trying to make a movie out of Wilson’s play Fences, and Barry Levinson was interested in directing. Wilson thought of his mother when he nixed the idea, insisting that the play—about a former Negro League baseball player struggling to support a family in 1957—must be directed by an African American: “Man, I’m thinking, ‘Something is not always better than nothing.’ She influenced me in ways like that.”

Fences never did get made into a movie (though Wilson has written a new script, and producer Scott Rudin is trying to bring it to the screen). But that kind of principled pigheadedness seems perfectly in character for a man who has spent two decades of his creative life on a single mission: a cycle of 10 linked plays, each representing one decade in the black experience in 20th century America. The plays have received wide critical acclaim, Broadway runs, two Pulitzer Prizes (for Fences and The Piano Lesson) and upwards of 2,000 productions in regional theaters across the country. And now, finally, they are complete: the 10th play, Radio Golf, will open this week at the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, Conn. Wilson, an inveterate rewriter, will keep fine-tuning the play as it moves in August to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and later, presumably, to Broadway. And then we can truly take the measure of one of American theater’s monumental achievements—and an artist who, in creating something where there was almost nothing, realized that for a project this big and this close to your soul, you have to invest everything.

Wilson’s plays already stand apart from virtually anything else in contemporary theater. The overarching subject of his epic is the legacy of slavery, yet the plays teem with vibrant, idiosyncratic, fully imagined characters who are never reduced to political placards. The plays are realistic, even old-fashioned, in style but sprinkled with mysticism and magic: ghosts, visions, seers and a matriarchal figure named Aunt Ester, who recurs throughout the series and lives to the age of 366. With their poetic, often meandering dialogue, the plays typically start slow (anyone who says his eyes have never drooped in the first act of an August Wilson play probably isn’t being honest), but build to thrilling, sometimes violent, often otherworldly, climaxes. And although the last one, Gem of the Ocean, almost didn’t make it to Broadway (after an investor pulled out, producer Carol Shorenstein Hays, who had backed Fences, put in $1 million to save it), they have drawn black theatergoers in droves to a street that is still known, without irony, as the Great White Way.

Radio Golf brings the cycle into the 1990s. It is set in an inner-city redevelopment office, where two black businessmen (one of them running for mayor) are seeking to clear space for a new commercial development. There are purposeful echoes of earlier plays: descendants of two characters from Gem of the Ocean (set in 1904) are on hand, as is a character from Wilson’s 1960s play Two Trains Running; and Aunt Ester’s home is the last one marked for demolition. The social message is more overt than most in Wilson’s canon: the play is about the “failure of the black middle class,” he says, “who failed to return their expertise, participation and resources back to the community.” Yet the last chapter of this 10-part journey full of tears and tragedy ends with an affirmation, a hopeful sign for the future. “We got to be united and come together,” says Wilson, “before we can proceed on, into the 21st century.”

Wilson, who turns 60 this week, is sitting in an outdoor café on the Yale campus. A polite, doughy-faced man, he likes the outdoors because it allows him to puff on his Marlboro Lights, but on this unusually hot spring afternoon, he looks a bit formal and out of place in coat, tie and newsboy cap. He grew up in Pittsburgh’s predominantly black Hill District, dropped out of school in the ninth grade and set out to educate himself by devouring books in the library. One of the first was anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture. “In my plays I sort of work as an anthropologist,” he says, “finding those parts of culture, habits and whatnot that embody these people.” He soaked up the life of his neighborhood, even dropping in on funerals of people he didn’t know just to get a sense of the generations that came before—until one day a woman came up and asked, “Did you know my father?”

He started writing poetry, then poetic plays, and then (after moving to St. Paul, Minn., where his work was first staged at the Penumbra Theater Company) developed a realistic style laced with melodious dialogue inspired by the early blues songs he loved. He was influenced by the work of playwright Ed Bullins—who showed him that “you could put black folks on stage as black folks”—but was pretty much a theatrical naif. He hadn’t read Shakespeare (except for The Merchant of Venice in school) or Tennessee Williams or virtually any of the other modern American classics. There was some calculation there. When he started writing poetry, Wilson immersed himself in poets like Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell and Dylan Thomas—and “as a result, it took me from 1965 to 1973 to find my own voice.” In his plays, by contrast, “I was free to find my own way.” Says Marion McClinton, who has directed several of Wilson’s plays, including Jitney and King Hedley II: “He pulled his whole artistic style and breath and soul from who [black people] were. He wasn’t writing to get validation from the dominant cultural forces in this country. He didn’t care about that.”

Wilson has caught up on his reading a bit since then; he is a fan of Chekhov and has seen a few more (but only a few) Shakespeare plays. He goes to movies rarely and says that for 11 straight years, starting in 1980, he didn’t see a single one. (The last film he saw before he quit was Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro; the first one when he came back was Scorsese and De Niro’s Cape Fear, so he figured he hadn’t missed much.) He avoids the media spotlight, living in Seattle with his third wife, a costume designer, and their seven-year-old daughter. He moved there in 1990, after his second divorce, because he liked the quiet.

He remains a passionate, often politically incorrect, advocate for the black community. In 1996 he caused a ruckus with a speech in which he called for a separate African-American theater, castigated black playwrights and directors for participating in an “art that is conceived and designed to entertain white society” and decried the increasingly fashionable practice of “color-blind casting”—i.e., blacks playing traditionally white roles. The outcry was fierce; the drama critic Robert Brustein, in a blistering rebuttal in the New Republic, disparaged Wilson’s plays and denounced his words as the “language of self-segregation.”

Wilson’s views haven’t changed. The plight of black theater, he says, is even worse today, while color-blind casting has exploded—Denzel Washington in Julius Caesar and James Earl Jones in On Golden Pond on Broadway this spring alone. “If I see a production of Gem of the Ocean with a white cast, maybe I’ll change my mind. But Death of a Salesman with a black cast—that’s not the way blacks respond to this problem. It’s a white play. It’s intended to be.” He realizes that is not a popular view among African Americans in the theater. “I understand the rules of war too. The actors go, ‘There ain’t no work.’ That’s your fault. Start some theaters.”

Asked about the black political movement today, he responds, “What movement?” Black leaders? “We have Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, but it does not mean anything to black America, which is still under assault from the social practices of this society.” Bill Cosby’s criticisms of black parenting? “A billionaire attacking poor people for being poor. Bill Cosby is a clown. What do you expect? I thought it was unfair of him.” His modest, soft-spoken manner belies what is obviously a deep sense of grievance. He describes sitting down at a counter not long ago and watching a white man next to him snatch $2 off the table. “He thinks I’m going to steal his $2. That’s reality; that’s the world I live in.”

Now that he’s finishing up his 20th century cycle, Wilson can finally get to some projects he’s been putting off for years. He has finished 80 pages of a novel, and he wants to write a comedy, about a strike of coffin makers, featuring cameo appearances by Queen Victoria, Benny Goodman and the Platters. It’s a far cry from tortured Wilson characters like Herald Loomis, the itinerant searching for his wife after spending seven years in bondage in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Wilson’s favorite among his works. But the closing line of that play might just as well apply to a playwright ready for the next leg of his remarkable career: “You shining like new money!” —With reporting by Kate Novack/New York City

Posted at 4:36 PM · Comments (0)

Editor’s note: Unnecessarily provocative title aside, this makes for very interesting reading. For the complete article, please see the Atlantic URL at the bottom.

Copyright The Atlantic Monthly | June 2005

The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was…

…In any naval encounter China will have distinct advantages over the United States, even if it lags in technological military prowess. It has the benefit, for one thing, of sheer proximity. Its military is an avid student of the competition, and a fast learner. It has growing increments of “soft” power that demonstrate a particular gift for adaptation. While stateless terrorists fill security vacuums, the Chinese fill economic ones. All over the globe, in such disparate places as the troubled Pacific Island states of Oceania, the Panama Canal zone, and out-of-the-way African nations, the Chinese are becoming masters of indirect influence—by establishing business communities and diplomatic outposts, by negotiating construction and trade agreements. Pulsing with consumer and martial energy, and boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate, China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America’s liberal imperium.

How should the United States prepare to respond to challenges in the Pacific? To understand the dynamics of this second Cold War—which will link China and the United States in a future that may stretch over several generations—it is essential to understand certain things about the first Cold War, and about the current predicament of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the institution set up to fight that conflict. This is a story about military strategy and tactics, with some counterintuitive twists and turns.

From Atlantic Unbound:

Flashbacks: “Cold War, Part II?” (February 1997)
Atlantic articles discuss the history and possible future of NATO

The first thing to understand is that the alliance system of the latter half of the twentieth century is dead. Warfare by committee, as practiced by NATO, has simply become too cumbersome in an age that requires light and lethal strikes. During the fighting in Kosovo in 1999 (a limited air campaign against a toothless enemy during a time of Euro-American harmony; a campaign, in other words, that should have been easy to prosecute) dramatic fissures appeared in the then-nineteen-member NATO alliance. The organization’s end effectively came with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, in the aftermath of which, despite talk of a broad-based coalition, European militaries have usually done little more than patrol and move into areas already pacified by U.S. soldiers and Marines—a job more suggestive of the United Nations. NATO today is a medium for the expansion of bilateral training missions between the United States and formerly communist countries and republics: the Marines in Bulgaria and Romania, the Navy in Albania, the Army in Poland and the Czech Republic, Special Operations Forces in Georgia—the list goes on and on. Much of NATO has become a farm system for the major-league U.S. military.

The second thing to understand is that the functional substitute for a NATO of the Pacific already exists, and is indeed up and running. It is the U.S. Pacific Command, known as PACOM. Unencumbered by a diplomatic bureaucracy, PACOM is a large but nimble construct, and its leaders understand what many in the media and the policy community do not: that the center of gravity of American strategic concern is already the Pacific, not the Middle East. PACOM will soon be a household name, as CENTCOM (the U.S. Central Command) has been in the current epoch of Middle Eastern conflict—an epoch that will start to wind down, as far as the U.S. military is concerned, during the second Bush administration.

The third thing to understand is that, ironically, the vitality of NATO itself, the Atlantic alliance, could be revived by the Cold War in the Pacific—and indeed the re-emergence of NATO as an indispensable war-fighting instrument should be America’s unswerving aim. In its posture toward China the United States will look to Europe and NATO, whose help it will need as a strategic counterweight and, by the way, as a force to patrol seas more distant than the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic. That is why NATO’s current commander, Marine General James L. Jones, emphasizes that NATO’s future lies in amphibious, expeditionary warfare…

…In the Pacific, however, a Bismarckian arrangement still prospers, helped along by the pragmatism of our Hawaii-based military officers, five time zones removed from the ideological hothouse of Washington, D.C. In fact, PACOM represents a much purer version of Bismarck’s imperial superstructure than anything the Bush administration created prior to invading Iraq. As Henry Kissinger writes in Diplomacy (1994), Bismarck forged alliances in all directions from a point of seeming isolation, without the constraints of ideology. He brought peace and prosperity to Central Europe by recognizing that when power relationships are correctly calibrated, wars tend to be avoided.

Only a similarly pragmatic approach will allow us to accommodate China’s inevitable re-emergence as a great power. The alternative will be to turn the earth of the twenty-first century into a battlefield. Whenever great powers have emerged or re-emerged on the scene (Germany and Japan in the early decades of the twentieth century, to cite two recent examples), they have tended to be particularly assertive—and therefore have thrown international affairs into violent turmoil. China will be no exception. Today the Chinese are investing in both diesel-powered and nuclear-powered submarines—a clear signal that they intend not only to protect their coastal shelves but also to expand their sphere of influence far out into the Pacific and beyond.

This is wholly legitimate. China’s rulers may not be democrats in the literal sense, but they are seeking a liberated First World lifestyle for many of their 1.3 billion people—and doing so requires that they safeguard sea-lanes for the transport of energy resources from the Middle East and elsewhere. Naturally, they do not trust the United States and India to do this for them. Given the stakes, and given what history teaches us about the conflicts that emerge when great powers all pursue legitimate interests, the result is likely to be the defining military conflict of the twenty-first century: if not a big war with China, then a series of Cold War—style standoffs that stretch out over years and decades. And this will occur mostly within PACOM’s area of responsibility…

…The relative shift in focus from the Middle East to the Pacific in coming years—idealistic rhetoric notwithstanding—will force the next American president, no matter what his or her party, to adopt a foreign policy similar to those of moderate Republican presidents such as George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon. The management of risk will become a governing ideology. Even if Iraq turns out to be a democratic success story, it will surely be a from-the-jaws-of-failure success that no one in the military or the diplomatic establishment will ever want to repeat—especially in Asia, where the economic repercussions of a messy military adventure would be enormous. “Getting into a war with China is easy,” says Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret who developed the weapons strategy for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s as a CIA officer and is now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in Washington. “You can see many scenarios, not just Taiwan—especially as the Chinese develop a submarine and missile capability throughout the Pacific. But the dilemma is, How do you end a war with China?”

Like the nations involved in World War I, and unlike the rogue states everyone has been concentrating on, the United States and China in the twenty-first century would have the capacity to keep fighting even if one or the other lost a big battle or a missile exchange. This has far-reaching implications. “Ending a war with China,” Vickers says, “may mean effecting some form of regime change, because we don’t want to leave some wounded, angry regime in place.” Another analyst, this one inside the Pentagon, told me, “Ending a war with China will force us to substantially reduce their military capacity, thus threatening their energy sources and the Communist Party’s grip on power. The world will not be the same afterward. It’s a very dangerous road to travel on.”…

…Whatever we say or do, China will spend more and more money on its military in the coming decades. Our only realistic goal may be to encourage it to make investments that are defensive, not offensive, in nature. Our efforts will require particular care, because China, unlike the Soviet Union of old (or Russia today, for that matter), boasts soft as well as hard power. Businesspeople love the idea of China; you don’t have to beg them to invest there, as you do in Africa and so many other places. China’s mixture of traditional authoritarianism and market economics has broad cultural appeal throughout Asia and other parts of the world. And because China is improving the material well-being of hundreds of millions of its citizens, the plight of its dissidents does not have quite the same market allure as did the plight of the Soviet Union’s Sakharovs and Sharanskys. Democracy is attractive in places where tyranny has been obvious, odious, and unsuccessful, of course, as in Ukraine and Zimbabwe. But the world is full of gray areas—Jordan and Malaysia, for example—where elements of tyranny have ensured stability and growth…

…At the moment the challenges posed by a rising China may seem slight, even nonexistent. The U.S. Navy’s warships have a collective “full-load displacement” of 2.86 million tons; the rest of the world’s warships combined add up to only 3.04 million tons. The Chinese navy’s warships have a full-load displacement of only 263,064 tons. The United States deploys twenty-four of the world’s thirty-four aircraft carriers; the Chinese deploy none (a principal reason why they couldn’t mount a rescue effort after the tsunami). The statistics go on. But as Robert Work, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, points out, at the start of the twenty-seven-year Peloponnesian War, Athens had a great advantage over Sparta, which had no navy—but Sparta eventually emerged the victor.

China has committed itself to significant military spending, but its navy and air force will not be able to match ours for some decades. The Chinese are therefore not going to do us the favor of engaging in conventional air and naval battles, like those fought in the Pacific during World War II. The Battle of the Philippine Sea, in late June of 1944, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Surigao Strait, in October of 1944, were the last great sea battles in American history, and are very likely to remain so. Instead the Chinese will approach us asymmetrically, as terrorists do. In Iraq the insurgents have shown us the low end of asymmetry, with car bombs. But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art. That is the threat.

There are many ways in which the Chinese could use their less advanced military to achieve a sort of political-strategic parity with us. According to one former submarine commander and naval strategist I talked to, the Chinese have been poring over every detail of our recent wars in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf, and they fully understand just how much our military power depends on naval projection—that is, on the ability of a carrier battle group to get within proximity of, say, Iraq, and fire a missile at a target deep inside the country. To adapt, the Chinese are putting their fiber-optic systems underground and moving defense capabilities deep into western China, out of naval missile range—all the while developing an offensive strategy based on missiles designed to be capable of striking that supreme icon of American wealth and power, the aircraft carrier. The effect of a single Chinese cruise missile’s hitting a U.S. carrier, even if it did not sink the ship, would be politically and psychologically catastrophic, akin to al-Qaeda’s attacks on the Twin Towers. China is focusing on missiles and submarines as a way to humiliate us in specific encounters. Their long-range-missile program should deeply concern U.S. policymakers…

…What should be our military response to such developments? We need to go more unconventional. Our present Navy is mainly a “blue-water” force, responsible for the peacetime management of vast oceanic spaces—no small feat, and one that enables much of the world’s free trade. The phenomenon of globalization could not occur without American ships and sailors. But increasingly what we will need is, in essence, three separate navies: one designed to maintain our ability to use the sea as a platform for offshore bombing (to support operations like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan); one designed for littoral Special Operations combat (against terrorist groups based in and around Indonesia, Malaysia, and the southern Philippines, for example); and one designed to enhance our stealth capabilities (for patrolling the Chinese mainland and the Taiwan Strait, among other regions). All three of these navies will have a role in deflecting China, directly and indirectly, given the variety of dysfunctional Pacific Island republics that are strengthening their ties with Beijing…

…Andersen Air Force Base, on Guam’s northern tip, represents the future of U.S. strategy in the Pacific. It is the most potent platform anywhere in the world for the projection of American military power. Landing there recently in a military aircraft, I beheld long lines of B-52 bombers, C-17 Globemasters, F/A-18 Hornets, and E-2 Hawkeye surveillance planes, among others. Andersen’s 10,000-foot runways can handle any plane in the Air Force’s arsenal, and could accommodate the space shuttle should it need to make an emergency landing. The sprawl of runways and taxiways is so vast that when I arrived, I barely noticed a carrier air wing from the USS Kitty Hawk, which was making live practice bombing runs that it could not make from its home port in Japan. I saw a truck filled with cruise missiles on one of the runways. No other Air Force base in the Pacific stores as much weaponry as Andersen: some 100,000 bombs and missiles at any one time. Andersen also stores 66 million gallons of jet fuel, making it the Air Force’s biggest strategic gas-and-go in the world.

Guam, which is also home to a submarine squadron and an expanding naval base, is significant because of its location. From the island an Air Force equivalent of a Marine or Army division can cover almost all of PACOM’s area of responsibility. Flying to North Korea from the West Coast of the United States takes thirteen hours; from Guam it takes four.

“This is not like Okinawa,” Major General Dennis Larsen, the Air Force commander there at the time of my visit, told me. “This is American soil in the midst of the Pacific. Guam is a U.S. territory.” The United States can do anything it wants here, and make huge investments without fear of being thrown out. Indeed, what struck me about Andersen was how great the space was for expansion to the south and west of the current perimeters. Hundreds of millions of dollars of construction funds were being allocated. This little island, close to China, has the potential to become the hub in the wheel of a new, worldwide constellation of bases that will move the locus of U.S. power from Europe to Asia. In the event of a conflict with Taiwan, if we had a carrier battle group at Guam we would force the Chinese either to attack it in port—thereby launching an assault on sovereign U.S. territory, and instantly becoming the aggressor in the eyes of the world—or to let it sail, in which case the carrier group could arrive off the coast of Taiwan only two days later…

…I have visited a number of CSLs in East Africa and Asia. Here is how they work. The United States provides aid to upgrade maintenance facilities, thereby helping the host country to better project its own air and naval power in the region. At the same time, we hold periodic exercises with the host country’s military, in which the base is a focus. We also offer humanitarian help to the surrounding area. Such civil-affairs projects garner positive publicity for our military in the local media—and they long preceded the response to the tsunami, which marked the first time that many in the world media paid attention to the humanitarian work done all over the world, all the time, by the U.S. military. The result is a positive diplomatic context for getting the host country’s approval for use of the base when and if we need it.

Often the key role in managing a CSL is played by a private contractor. In Asia, for example, the private contractor is usually a retired American noncom, either Navy or Air Force, quite likely a maintenance expert, who is living in, say, Thailand or the Philippines, speaks the language fluently, perhaps has married locally after a divorce back home, and is generally much liked by the locals. He rents his facilities at the base from the host-country military, and then charges a fee to the U.S. Air Force pilots transiting the base. Officially he is in business for himself, which the host country likes because it can then claim it is not really working with the American military. Of course no one, including the local media, believes this. But the very fact that a relationship with the U.S. armed forces is indirect rather than direct eases tensions. The private contractor also prevents unfortunate incidents by keeping the visiting pilots out of trouble—steering them to the right hotels and bars, and advising them on how to behave. (Without Dan Generette, a private contractor for years at Utapao Naval Station, in Thailand, that base could never have been ramped up to provide tsunami relief the way it was.)…

…The first part of the twenty-first century will be not nearly as stable as the second half of the twentieth, because the world will be not nearly as bipolar as it was during the Cold War. The fight between Beijing and Washington over the Pacific will not dominate all of world politics, but it will be the most important of several regional struggles. Yet it will be the organizing focus for the U.S. defense posture abroad. If we are smart, this should lead us back into concert with Europe. No matter how successfully our military adapts to the rise of China, it is clear that our current dominance in the Pacific will not last. The Asia expert Mark Helprin has argued that while we pursue our democratization efforts in the Middle East, increasingly befriending only those states whose internal systems resemble our own, China is poised to reap the substantial benefits of pursuing its interests amorally—what the United States did during the Cold War. The Chinese surely hope, for example, that our chilly attitude toward the brutal Uzbek dictator, Islam Karimov, becomes even chillier; this would open up the possibility of more pipeline and other deals with him, and might persuade him to deny us use of the air base at Karshi-Khanabad. Were Karimov to be toppled in an uprising like the one in Kyrgyzstan, we would immediately have to stabilize the new regime or risk losing sections of the country to Chinese influence…

The URL for the complete article is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200506/kaplan.

Posted at 3:22 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright - The Boston Globe
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2005

BOSTON North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il is acting up again. This time, he has shut down the country’s 5MW nuclear reactor. This could be for routine maintenance. Or it could be the start of a process to extract plutonium from the reactor to build more nuclear weapons. The CIA believes North Korea already has two, plus material for perhaps six to eight more. A third possibility could be a bluff to strengthen his bargaining position.

In deciding how to respond, the Bush administration should remember the adage that to overcome your adversary, you must imagine how he thinks.

Imagine, for example, you’re the leader of an isolated country whose conventional military is increasingly ineffective, whose economy has collapsed, whose benefactor has pulled the plug on you, and whom the world views with contempt.

Now pretend you have one card up your sleeve: a fledgling plutonium-based nuclear program that is frozen under a controversial agreement and a nascent, illegal uranium-based nuclear program to back it up. What would you do if the U.S. president:

1) Lists you as one of three members in an “axis of evil” (the other two being Iraq and Iran)?

2) Implements a national strategy of preemptive defense, allowing for a first-strike attack against you?

3) Employs this strategy to invade Iraq, which turns out not to have nuclear weapons, and deposes its leader?

4) Refuses to join European allies in engaging Iran - the other member of the “axis” - whose nuclear program is far less developed than yours (even though he now says he doesn’t oppose their efforts)?

As leader of this isolated nation in question, you can:

1) Give up your nuclear program and hope that the president who despises you lets you stay in office.

2) Sit by quietly while the president polishes off Saddam Hussein in Iraq and turns his attention to the “totalitarian” regime in Iran, knowing that when he’s done in the Gulf, he’ll likely come after you as the last standing member of the axis.

3) Unfreeze your nuclear program, build as many nuclear weapons as quickly as possible, and try to hold off what looks like a near certain attempt to force your country’s collapse.

If you’re sitting in Pyongyang, the choice isn’t very difficult. Kim may be ruthless and immoral, but he is not stupid. He has acted as any leader would to ensure his and his nation’s survival.

So where do we Americans go from here? Attacking North Korea militarily isn’t an option. We don’t know where all of its nuclear installations and material are located. A military strike would also likely start a war in a region that is home to 80,000 to 90,000 U.S. troops. It would further rupture vital alliances, particularly with China and South Korea, our third and seventh largest trading partners.

A hard-line policy short of a military strike isn’t the answer either. To date, the administration’s muddled approach to North Korea has only elicited the very reaction it sought to avoid. In 2001, the North had zero to two nuclear weapons. Today, it may have six to eight. In 2001, the North’s plutonium program was frozen and monitored by international inspectors. Today, the North has unfrozen the program, reprocessed the plutonium and is on the verge of reprocessing more.

All this means that the only option is meaningful engagement, a policy we have avoided by demanding that the North dismantle its entire nuclear program before it receives anything concrete in return other than heavy fuel oil. But there are few leaders foolish enough to give up the one card that guarantees their nation’s survival based only on promises of future concessions by an adversary they don’t trust.

To be sure, Kim knows that he cannot survive without opening his country. He has studied China and Vietnam to see how leaders there embraced economic reform while holding on to political power. He has begun to implement some of the changes he has seen with modest success. Visitors report seeing more goods in stores and more activity on the streets.

Kim can’t do it alone, however. He has to have outside help. If the United States, China, South Korea and Japan do not help him open to the world, he will revert to whatever he has to do to survive - peddling nukes or nuclear material for much needed currency. This would be our worst nightmare.

We must therefore hold our noses in seeking to bring the North into the world community, including securing its membership in security forums, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, etc.

In taking this approach, we must make clear that we will engage the North only on the condition that it does not conduct a nuclear test or sell its nuclear know-how or stockpile to others. Crossing this red line will bring the severest consequences immediately - with an iron-clad guarantee from China that it will not use its veto in the Security Council to prevent this. To be sure, the prospect of doing another deal with Kim Jong Il is unpalatable. But letting the situation spiral further out of control is unpardonable.

(Jason T. Shaplen was policy adviser at the Korean Peninsula Energy Organization from 1995-1999. James Laney was U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 1993-1997. This article appeared in The Boston Globe.)

Posted at 1:26 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright - Slate
Posted Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The yellow brick road to riches
As I reach the end of my China experiment—ship a Sino-ignoramus across the Pacific and see what he learns—it’s time to answer the two questions I posed at the outset. First, is the China gold rush real enough that adventurous, fortune-seeking young people should enroll in Mandarin classes and go east? And, second, should I, a former Internet analyst, try to cash in on the gold rush by buying a Chinese Internet stock?

The first bet is what Wall Streeters would call a “layup.” Definitely go east. The best way to stack career odds in your favor is to hitch yourself to long-term growth trends (that way, even if you make boneheaded career mistakes, you’ll still be dragged along). Based on the last 30 years, China’s long-term growth trend is as powerful as any in history, and the majority of the country’s consumers and workers are still waiting to get into the game. A reversal in government policy seems unlikely—the disaster of the Mao years is the historic exception rather than the rule—and most other serious threats to the economic miracle (Taiwan, Japan, overcapacity, class instability) would likely have temporary rather than permanent impacts. Even if China’s economy stumbles—which, at some point, it will—those with China experience, connections, fluency, and expertise should be able to find some way (or someone) to employ them.

Just because the long-term trend is up-and-to-the-right, of course, doesn’t mean that growth will proceed in a straight line or is in any way guaranteed. Fifteen years ago, it seemed all but certain that the last Asian tiger, Japan, was going to blow past the United States, buy up all of our companies and real estate, and win with money a war it had lost with guns a half-century earlier. Alas, Japan is now mired in its second decade of stagnation. The same uncertainty holds for China. With respect to the economy, no one knows what the future holds, and there’s no sure thing. Still, if I were 21 and fancy-free, I might be cramming at Berlitz and preparing to move to Shanghai.

The second question is tougher. The idea of buying a Chinese Internet stock is tempting, especially if done in the spirit of education and entertainment. Some of the leading NASDAQ-listed Chinese Internet companies—Sina (portal), Shanda Interactive (gaming), and others—have demonstrated staying power and profitability. Even with the application of a hefty China-uncertainty discount, their stocks do not seem expensive, especially relative to the long-term opportunity. The stocks have also, of course, demonstrated preternatural volatility, so much so that buying them with less than a five-year time horizon would be nuts (or, rather, would be like going to Vegas, bellying up to the craps table, and consigning your hard-earned wad to the luck of the dice—entertaining, but stupid).

In its five-year trading history, for example, Sina, one of the leading candidates to be “the Yahoo! of China,” has traded as high as $59 and as low as $1 and now bounces around between $20 and $35. Sina came public in early 2000, at the height of the Internet fever, and immediately blasted to the moon (“One-point-three billion people—you do the math!”). A few months later, when everyone remembered that there was no advertising to speak of in China, it collapsed. Then, after latching onto a revenue stream that didn’t exist in the United States, cell-phone messaging, Sina blasted off for $45 again … until everyone realized that the keys to the cell-phone kingdom were firmly in the hands of the cell-phone companies, whereupon it cratered. Then Shanda was going to buy Sina at a humongous premium. Then the government cracked down on Internet cafes. And so on. The good news is that, today, Sina is trading at about the same level as it was when it went public five years ago, has built a diversified business, and (according to its financial statements, anyway) is earning about $1 per share. The bad news is that one could wake up tomorrow, learn that the Chinese government has tweaked a policy, and be the proud owner of a Cayman Islands shell corporation.

Such uncertainty is par for the course for those who try to trade individual emerging market stocks, especially from half the world away. Emerging market stocks do have a (small) place in the average portfolio, but the safest way to own them is through diversified emerging-market mutual funds. That way, the risk of any particular company or country is minimized, and one is simply betting that, over the long term, emerging economies will continue to develop.

If one were able to invest in the growth of the Internet in China, instead of in individual companies, this would be a much safer bet. China has, by and large, missed out on the worldwide development of the television, radio, film, and newspaper industries, so the Internet should rapidly garner an even larger share of media and communications usage and spending in China than in the West. This said, the China Internet leaders do not appear to be as dominant as, say, Yahoo!, eBay, and Amazon were at the beginning of the industry’s development in the U.S., and the Internet is a winner-take-most game. The “Yahoo! of China” and “Google of China,” in fact, might end up being Yahoo! and Google, which would make Sina, et al., the equivalents of Lycos and Excite. So, unless you are willing to construct a diversified basket of stocks that tracks the growth of the Internet medium in China, as opposed to particular companies, you should just hang on to your wad.

Epilogue
The trouble with a series like this is that only now that it is ending do I feel prepared to write it. My four-month crash course just scratched the surface of the China business landscape, leaving me with more questions than answers. What helped this project most were the thousand-odd notes I received along the way from Slate readers, the vast majority of which were intelligent, supportive, and helpful.

A few readers did resent the send-the-rookie approach, and others were annoyed by my requests for help, as if I were offloading work that I should have been doing on my own. To this I would say again, with deep gratitude, that many of the better stories in the series were gifts from Slate readers to Slate readers, with my playing the role of grateful delivery boy. And I would also say that—in this age of blogs and grass-roots investigative reporting—readers and listeners will continue to play an ever-greater role in programming the mainstream media, something we can all be thankful for.

Thanks again for all the help, feedback, and thoughts. Please continue to send ideas and comments to chinagoldrush@yahoo.com.

Posted at 1:19 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright - Slate
Posted Wednesday, April 27, 2005

A menu from the 1900s
“Have You Eaten Yet?,” the wonderful Chinese restaurants exhibit now on view at New York’s Museum of Chinese in the Americas, takes a Babel of ephemera and makes it speak. One’s visit begins with an absence: the never-photographed first Chinese eateries in America, known as “chow chows.” These sprung up in California in the mid-19th century to serve Cantonese laborers—true holes in the wall, it seems, marked, as per a Chinese tradition, with yellow cloth triangles. No menus have survived, if ever there were any; who knows but that they served stir-fried buffalo. Still, we may gather that the workers liked the fare, for we do have the advertisements of competitors, who suddenly began offering free potatoes with their meals. The spud strategy was ultimately for naught, though: The Chinese restaurant had been born.

Would anyone have bet the bank on Chinese food back then? According to Chinese Restaurant News, there are now more Chinese restaurants in America than there are McDonald’s franchises—nearly three times as many in fact. In the 19th century, though, the Chinese were scorned as rat-eaters; nothing could have been more revolting than eating what they ate. An 1877 magazine cartoon titled “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” shows various immigrants happily eating their national dishes—a Frenchman, for example, tucks into his frogs—while an officious African-American manservant conveys a turkey to Uncle Sam. All is harmony, right down to a Native Indian who, unable to abide a chair, squats peaceably beside his fellow guests. Only one personage draws horror from the other diners—the Chinaman, about to eat a rodent.

Click image to expand.

A Chinese restaurant in the 1900s
Yet despite this prejudice, and despite the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which categorically barred further Chinese immigration, Chinese restaurateurs strove to make a place for themselves. With trepidation: Chinese food was often embedded in the familiar. For example, one early menu lists “Grilled Dinner Steak Hollandaise” and “Roast California Chicken with Currant Jelly,” with “Fine Cut Chicken Chop Suey” presented as just another option. As if to counter stereotypes, early interiors featured stunningly sophisticated wood-carving; early images, too, include a surprising number of tuxedos. Observes show curator Cynthia Ai-Fen Lee, “It’s as if the owners are trying to say, It’s OK. Don’t be scared.” And indeed, the phrase “Try it” recurs hypnotically throughout the exhibit. Still, despite the best efforts of the restaurateurs, something disreputable remained, not only about Chinese food, but about people who ate it. In 1903 the New York Times described the Chinatown clientele: “It is the men and women who like to eat after everybody else is abed that pour shekels into the coffers of the man who knows how to make chop suey.”

Shekels. What an interesting currency to have gratuitously cited. Let me just say that one of my favorite parts of this exhibit is the wonderful collection of kosher Chinese menus from New York restaurants, sporting names like “Glatt Wok” and “Shang-chai,” and serving dishes like Matzoh Foo Young. Lee speculates that East European Jews, themselves marginalized, flocked to Chinese restaurants as a way of forging a new, modern, “cosmopolitan” identity—as a way of becoming American. Not that things “Chinese” were generally recognized as American; it took outsiders to see the obvious. Visiting Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, for example, was amused and amazed by a restaurant he visited in the early 1940s. “It was called a Chinese restaurant,” he wrote, “but … nothing made me feel the slightest at home.”

Dance makes it onto the menu
After the Second World War, mainstream Americans, too, began to see the Americanness—eureka!—of some “Chinese.” And Chinese Americans celebrated this: On a menu from the 1950s, a man smilingly paints characters on his “Chinese Easter Eggs.” By this point, though, Chinese restaurants were about more than East Meets West. They were sites where not only Chineseness but ethnicity in general was made and made fun of. Fei Xiaotong noted how, “Looking up from the table, I saw right in front of us a troupe of half-naked women doing Spanish dances. … Suddenly the dancing stopped and, to the same kind of ‘music,’ a young woman whom one would guess to be Cuban came on … various cultures of different origins came helter-skelter together …” Concoctions like Mani-shaigetz Cocktails—half Manischewitz wine and half Christian Brothers brandy—were served.

A menu that spoofs “Chineseness”
But of course “China” and “Chinese” food remained the focus. Menus gave history lessons and told origin stories—explaining the beginnings of chop suey, or the fortune cookie, or takeout. And in the 1960s, they spoofed “Chineseness,” too—citing Confucius freely and frequently and warning things like, “We take care special banquet dinnas but can only takee limit numbers. First comes first serve, you please placee order early for no disappoint.”

Chinatown was not the only purveyor of “Chineseness” in the 1960s. In 1967, the Ideal Toy Company brought out a Chop Suey board game, which involved picking things up with chopsticks. (“You don’t have to be Chinese to play the Chop Suey game!”) Companies like Chung King and La Choy likewise encouraged housewives to “cook Chinese” with cheerfully proffered, sanitized products; visitors to the exhibit should not miss the exuberantly un-PC commercials on CD, or the numerous “how-to” pamphlets with their inspired recommendations: “Either boiled or broiled, frankfurters dipped in Shou-you sauce make excellent sandwiches,” for example. The “Try it!” that so often punctuates these entries has a distinctly new, profit-oriented tone—the all-American tenor of a toothpaste ad.

Happily, change was on its way. The 1965 liberalization of immigration laws brought new arrivals and new food, from Sichuan and Hunan and Shanghai. Multiculturalism—and Nixon’s visit to China in 1972—inspired an “authenticity revolution”; this transformation was further fueled by the demands of the growing immigrant clientele. Charles Lai, the director of the museum, recalls wandering into a Chinatown restaurant as a boy in the ’60s and realizing that everyone else in the place was white. “I felt like, what am I doing here?” he says. But no more: Today, Chinese and Chinese Americans are important customers, as are other Asians and Asian Americans, and some restaurants are once again catering to newly arrived workers. How “authentic” they are, though, depends on how you define “authentic.” “It is and isn’t a return to the way things were at the beginning,” says Lee. She points out that with globalization, food is changing quickly even in Asia; what constitutes Chinese food is evolving.

In the kitchen at a family restaurant, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1950
The epic kitsch of the exhibit is balanced by touching recollections, on video and in notebooks, of what it was like to work and grow up in Chinese restaurants, both in America and abroad. I loved the many humble, vivid accounts and encourage others to take these in, as one may, sitting atop rice-sack-cushioned stools. While resting there, one might also appreciate the beauty and intelligence of the exhibit and the absence of cliché. There is no red; there are no lanterns or fortune cookies. Here, in the heart of Chinatown, in a kitsch-filled room, one finds, happily, kitsch-free thought.

Gish Jen is the author, most recently, of The Love Wife.

Posted at 1:11 PM · Comments (0)

I have been getting some “hate e-mail” lately from readers of Chinese ethnicity. Basically, they are furious with my columns for strongly supporting permanent UN Security Council membership for Japan. They think that Japan is no good and cannot be trusted. There seems to be no reasoning with them.

But when all reason and civilised discourse are abandoned, serious danger looms. Fortunately, the elders of both China and Japan have come to their senses and turned to their wise diplomats to cool things off.

This is why Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and his Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura, are to be warmly congratulated for taking steps to move their countries away from further corrosive tension.

So is Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi: in Jakarta recently, at a major international conference, he apologised sincerely and effusively for his country’s past history of aggression and colonialism.

That very public apology should mark the beginning of the end of it - but it will not. I, for one, do not doubt his sincerity. But there are those who will not believe Japan’s apologies, no matter how often or how very sincerely they are uttered.

One reason is that some people simply do not like and do not trust the Japanese. But there is another reason for this stereotype: some Japanese individuals say things in public that tend to only fuel people’s fears and make them think the very worst about Japan, one of the world’s great cultures.

Take Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, one of Japan’s most popular politicians (alas), and the co-author of the infamous, angry book, A Japan That Can Say No.

In an exclusive article distributed by the Los Angeles-based Global Viewpoint, Mr Ishihara attacks China from almost every conceivable angle. And given the timing - in the heat of the worst political atmospherics in East Asia in recent memory - his gratuitous attack is deeply regrettable.

The governor virtually dismisses all Beijing’s arguable claims of sovereignty, whether over Taiwan, Tibet or disputed islands, as conclusive evidence of its expansionist ambitions. He condemns China for lacking the very basics of “civil society” and explains away the country’s fantastic economic growth as fuelled solely by exploitation and designed entirely to feed its aggressive-minded military expansion.

Of course, China has its problems, such as lopsided wealth distribution, a too-tenacious Communist Party and a cruel and ham-fisted system of stifling dissent. But Mr Ishihara, while entitled to his views, goes too far and paints Beijing as endlessly malevolent.

The truth is that if an objective opinion poll was taken of people’s views in Asia, the results would probably suggest that more people worry about military aggression originating from Japan at some point, rather than China. Not Mr Ishihara. He said: “Economic growth serves to maintain Beijing’s military modernisation. China’s economic rise also acts to justify the authoritarian rule of the Communist Party, which has achieved success through its hegemonic stance towards the rest of Asia…”

He then asks: “Can we really allow China, an outright defiant nation with massive political energy, to blatantly pursue its economic interests in the Asian region?” To which, I might ask Mr Ishihara: Well, what do you plan to do about it?

Actually, I do not think I will ask that question. I think I know his answer. And it would be the answer that many people in Asia would most fear about Japan.

Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is the founder of the Asia-Pacific Media Network.

Distributed by the UCLA Media Centre

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KORARO, Ethiopia

For seventh graders here, class is held under the shade of a ficus tree because there are only six rooms in the village school. On a recent day, students sat and listened as a visitor from Addis Ababa, hundreds of miles away, asked which of them expected to go on to the eighth grade.

Twenty-nine hands went up - the entire class. Their Addis Ababa visitor, Hailay Teklehaimanot, looked at them with frustration. “How will you get there?” he asked gently.

Seventh grade is the highest class offered at the Koraro Primary School, and the nearest eighth grade is nearly 20 miles away. That’s a good six-hour walk because the village has no car.

For a while, no one answered, and most students looked down at the dirt. Then Kahsay Gebneslasie, 14, spoke up. “We heard maybe they might open an eighth grade here,” he said. The school’s principal, Gidey Haileslassie, was standing nearby and gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.

A year ago, Koraro villagers scraped together the money to pay for a seventh-grade teacher, then put the class under the tree since there was no room in the school. Paying for an eighth grade is beyond the village’s means at this point.

If the rich world is actually going to deliver on its promise to halve global poverty by 2015, then it has to start somewhere. It may as well be here in this village, deep in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Province, where food is scarce and water even scarcer, but 14-year-olds still cling to the hope that they will be able to go to eighth grade.

Koraro, which was recently chosen to be a United Nations test case in the fight against poverty, is where the rubber meets the road. It is one of the poorest and most isolated villages in the poorest and most isolated province of one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries.

If poverty can be whipped here in Koraro, it can be whipped anywhere.

The place has nothing. Some 5,000 villagers live their short lives - life expectancy here is about 40 years - out here in the red dust and rocks, eking out a subsistence living. There is no topsoil and the land is eroded, so farming is an uphill battle.

Half of Koraro’s children - and there are some 1,500 of them - are underweight and malnourished. Only 34 families out of 1,500 have access to clean drinking water. The rest walk four miles round-trip to haul buckets of dirty water, and the water-borne illnesses they carry, into their homes for drinking, cooking and washing up. There’s no electricity, no doctor, no industry, no market, nothing.

But Koraro is drop-dead beautiful, with jagged red cliffs that look like skyscrapers towering over wide expanses of drylands. The centuries-old churches, most carved deep into the cliffs, testify to how long villagers have been here, in one of the world’s oldest cultures. Indeed, while it would appear easy for Koraro residents to decamp to a more hospitable site closer to the regional capital, Mekele, most of the villagers refuse to leave.

Zafu Tsegabu, who is 18, watched with her 2-month-old daughter as her husband moved to a bigger town about 25 miles away, and refused to join him. “This is my home here,” she said simply.

As soon as the people here were told that they had been singled out to be one of the United Nations’ test villages on poverty reduction, they organized themselves into committees to figure out how to get the job done. There’s a water committee and a school committee, an energy committee and a health committee. The United Nations plan, spearheaded by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, calls for the participation of foreign donors, the Ethiopian government and the village of Koraro.

Since Koraro has no money to offer, the villagers are supplying the labor and local materials. On a recent day, some 1,500 villagers - just about every able-bodied man, woman and teenager, were hacking rocks out of the earth and moving them into piles. The rocks will eventually be transferred to the site where they hope to build a village clinic.

Mr. Sachs’s proposal allots Koraro $250,000 a year for the next five years to turn itself around. The government of Ethiopia will kick in technical expertise, including help to build a proper road to link Koraro with the rest of the world.

The list of what the money will buy is as basic as it comes: five metal doors for the clinic, one diesel generator to provide occasional electricity to the village, three windows for the school, one grinding mill so villagers can turn their cereal crops into food, and a village truck that could serve a variety of needs.

But there is no eighth grade on the list. There are too many other basic necessities that have to come first.

Still, Koraro, if it works, can become a model for scaling up this type of development for villagers all over Africa - provided the rich world makes good on its promise to donate 0.7 percent of G.D.P. to foreign aid. The Group of 7 summit meeting in July, when leaders of rich countries will get together in Scotland, will probably provide critical answers to that question.

Britain, Germany and France have all provided timetables to ramp up their aid money to 0.7 percent by 2015. But the United States has yet to do the same.

In the meantime, the people in Koraro continue to hope and make plans. In the twilight of her life at age 30, Kidan Hagos, a mother of seven, leaned against a shady tree as she took a break from hacking rocks for the new clinic. Her youngest child, Haregeweini, 9 months old, was propped against her, nursing. Mrs. Hagos, for her part, took a moment to dream big.

Asked what she would ask for if she could have anything in the world, she spent a good three minutes carefully considering her answer.

“A food market close by,” she said, “and a well with good water.”

Posted at 5:20 PM · Comments (0)

Taught is a cliche in a spy-fiction review. This 1975 novel is a masterpiece of the genre, though - a genre I have little patience for unless the writing is top drawer.
The story unfolds in the wake of JFK’s assassination, which McCarry relates to the plot to kill Diem. The way he sustains atmosphere as the hero, Paul Christopher moves around the globe, is worthy of close study. The dialogue, too, crackles. There are some rather old-fashioned monologues about women, which haven’t aged well. What’s best here, though, is the book’s examination of the workings of power, high and low, which fills nearly every scene. Heartily recommended.

Posted at 4:12 PM · Comments (0)

A 400-plus page look at the way Western men — and history — have treated or regarded “Asian” women.
Prasso is really on to something when she attacks the stereotyping and the obsessions of Western men for “Asian” women. A newcomer to the subject, or to the region, will learn a lot, and others, I suspect, will find a lot that is already familiar.
I’ve put Asian in quotations because Asian womanhood is a totally artificial construct, and this gets back to one of the book’s problems. It is trying to lecture knowledgeably on the whole content, and this inevitably leads to a good deal of surface-skimming, and a good bit of repetition.
I also find it interesting that the cover bears an alluring picture of a geisha, one of the most fetishized images of “Asian” women around.

Posted at 4:03 PM · Comments (0)

I read this late in highschool, it made a deep impression, even though it left me more confused than I cared to admit to myself at the time. Then I forgot it. Or almost forgot it.
Something reminded me of it recently. Perhaps it was the long road trips I’ve taken in various parts of China, and a fair amount of religious and philospohical writing related to my China assignment.
Don’t be scared away by the preceeding sentence. The book is a delight, especially the quiet ways in which it explores relationships between family members and friends, and in the way Pirsig talks about our relationship with technology, as well.
There’s not a whole lot of Zen, as the intervening years have taught me. Rather, you’ll find a fair amount of philosophical rumination, relieved by the author’s gift for landscape and other descriptive writing.

Posted at 3:42 PM · Comments (0)

A contest for China’s soul is under way in the country, pitting two powerful forces and two very different stances towards the outside world against each other. The outcome will have a major impact on whether China succeeds in becoming a nation capable of having truly constructive and durable relations with the rest of the planet.

On one hand, the nation’s economic revolution has helped position it as a confidant powerhouse of trade, a more responsible global powerbroker and even as a reassuring military presence. On the other, China remains trapped by a past and a mindset steeped in a sense of victimisation, which tempts it to export blame for internal problems.

The main question is whether China can escape the pull of this old psychological syndrome - which kept it preoccupied throughout the 20th century with debilitating sentiments of weakness, insecurity and humiliation - and allow itself to be guided by a new outlook on the world, and even on old enemies.

The anti-Japan demonstrations are a symptom of the old syndrome, fuelled by grievances born at a time when China was, indeed, aggrieved and humiliated. With China’s growing economic clout, rising standards of living, and increasingly respected place in the world, one would hope that the Chinese and their leaders would find a way to let go of the dead. Yet, even as the lustre of the “China miracle” dazzles the world, the Chinese seem loath to leave behind their dark feelings of victimisation. Instead of assuming a new national paradigm based on the reality of their accomplishments, China’s leaders cling to the old one of their country as the victim, the “sick man of Asia” being “cut up like a melon” by predatory imperial and colonial powers like Japan. That bitter memory of oppression and exploitation lingers in the minds of too many Chinese.

Of course, Japan did occupy China, committed unimaginable savagery, and has since paid no reparations or apologised in a convincing way. Nevertheless, what benefit does China gain by continuing to raise these issues? What is worth the risk of alienating the world’s second-largest economy and one of China’s most important trade partners?

First and foremost, aiding and inciting the expression of popular anger against Japan gives Communist Party leaders a powerful and readily available vehicle for rallying domestic support, thereby legitimising their own power. At the same time, the demonstrations represent China’s experience of the world as an unequal place where the weak are inevitably bullied, exploited and humiliated. This mindset suggests that despite the panoramic skylines and five-star hotels, China has a long way to go before it truly comes to understand and appreciate its actual accomplishments and status.

Of course, China’s wounded psyche and the desire for restitution from its former tormentors deserve sympathy. In this sense, China, like many countries, could be said to have something of a bipolar personality. Much of the emotional force of Mao Zedong’s revolution derived from the widespread sense of unequal treatment and humiliation by foreign powers, and this revolutionary fervour has never been properly interred.

Just as Mao’s portrait has never been taken down from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, so whole elements of his revolution continue to survive in China’s institutions, ways of thinking and modes of interacting with the world. Like recessive genes, they sometimes suddenly re-express themselves.

The role of victim is all too familiar to the Chinese, perhaps even somewhat comforting, for it provides a way to explain (and explain away) China’s problems. But it is also dangerous, because it derives from China’s old weaknesses rather than its new strengths. The era of Japanese militaristic and imperialist power has long gone, and the world is beating a path to China’s door. The last thing it needs is to remain trapped in the past.

Orville Schell, one of the foremost experts on China, is a dean at the University of California at Berkeley.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

Posted at 11:31 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2005

SALZBURG On Friday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan expressed “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology” for the Japanese atrocities committed during World War II. It was not unlike the “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology” that his predecessor, Tomiichi Murayama, expressed in August 1995, or similar “remorse” expressed that same year by Hisashi Owada, then a senior foreign office official and now a judge on the International Court of Justice in The Hague, when he attended the Beijing Women’s Conference to apologize for Japan’s exploitation of 200,000 “comfort women” as sex slaves for its soldiers.

The Japanese have been apologizing and remorsing for decades, but no one seems to be listening, or, at least, willing to believe them. For many Japanese, the international community’s unwillingness to recognize their efforts seems both frustrating and unfair.

Like the Germans, the Japanese saw their wartime leadership tried and executed for their crimes against humanity. Like the Germans, the Japanese paid vast sums of money in compensation. And like the Germans, the Japanese have been unsparing in their history books, so much so that today Japanese speak wearily of jigyaku shikan - “masochistic historiography.” Nevertheless, six decades after the war, while Germany is embraced in a union of European nations, Japan is barely on speaking terms with its Asian neighbors. And still apologizing.

As the Japanese enter this new round of apologia and remorse, they may want to draw some lessons from the German experience. Few nations in history have perpetrated such heinous crimes. Fewer still have practiced public contrition and national introspection so convincingly and effectively. Germany has entered what may be described as the post-post-Holocaust era, in which German troops can return to territories once occupied by their Nazi predecessors and the German people can engage in public discussion of the “victims” of allied bombings without accusations of historical relativism.

But the path to public absolution has been long, slow and often arduous. Initially, most Germans were content to leave their guilt hanging on the gallows with the “main war criminals” in Nuremberg, but subsequent generations have confronted the past with an accelerating sense of moral responsibility.

In 1970, Willy Brandt made an historic visit to Poland where he fell to his knees before a monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. His “knee fall” appeared to be as spontaneous and heartfelt as it was, the most powerful man in Germany pulled to the ground by the weight of German guilt. The image seared itself into public memory: a single picture worth a single word. With Brandt’s gesture, a new symbolic word entered the German political vocabulary, Kniefall.

A decade and a half later, President Richard von Weizsäcker recognized the notion of “collective responsibility.” In the last two decades, the Germans have met this responsibility collectively and successfully. German governments, Social Democratic and Christian Democratic alike, have played central roles in rebuilding the societies of the former Soviet bloc. German industry has paid hundreds of million of dollars in compensation to former slave laborers. The Berliners have blotted out prime commercial real estate for a sprawling memorial to the Holocaust. When it comes to the wages of guilt - and compensation - the Germans have set the gold standard.

The Japanese have hobbled far behind their former axis allies. Their efforts have been sporadic, awkward and generally unnoticed by the international community. The difficulties are as much cultural as political or economic. Willy Brandt’s Kniefall was so memorable because it was so unexpected, but what was surprising for a German, may be unthinkable for a Japanese. As a former Japanese diplomat told me recently, such a gesture by a Japanese would not only seem disingenuous to the international community, it could appear absurd even embarrassing to the Japanese.

Another obstacle may be the Japanese attitude toward forgiveness. They can mourn the victims of Hiroshima while harboring little or no resentment toward those who dropped the bomb. He told me the Japanese are a “forgiving” people. But he admits that while it may be noble to forgive the victimizer when you are the victim, it is a bit more awkward to expect same sentiment when you are the victimizer.

With Friday’s apology, Koizumi has opened a new opportunity for the Japanese to confront their past and seek reconciliation with their Asian neighbors. They should be thoughtful, ideally introspective, as they move forward. Before Brandt, it was difficult to imagine any German leader falling to his knees in remorse. Brandt’s Kniefall helped redefine the Germans’ image not only to the world, but also to themselves. The Japanese may require a similarly transformative moment. Before they can overcome their past, it could well be that they will have to overcome themselves.

(Timothy W. Ryback codirects the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation at the Salzburg Seminar.)

Posted at 7:20 PM · Comments (0)

By China’s Biggest Gamble: Can it have capitalism without democracy? A prediction.
Posted Friday, April 22, 2005, at 9:38 AM PT

Tiananmen Square

Western-style laissez-faire expected any minute now
On my last evening in Beijing, I walked west on the long blocks of the city’s main drag toward Tiananmen Square. The sun was setting when I arrived, and, on the north side of the road, beneath the portrait of Chairman Mao on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, crowds of tourists were streaming out of the Forbidden City. On the south side, in Tiananmen Square itself, kites and flags were flying, and entrepreneurs posing as “students” were cruising around entreating foreigners to visit a nearby art “exhibit” in which their works were purportedly displayed. The students’ story was clever and well-choreographed, but I’d already fallen for it once that day (enduring a guided tour of machine-made paintings being sold to fund a “trip to America”). So, I just wandered around the square and watched the sun set over the Chinese flag.

The story of what happened in Tiananmen in June of 1989 is different in China than the one we tell in the United States. In America, we remember the student protests as a plea for democracy, for our form of government (who has forgotten the students’ mock-up of the Statue of Liberty?). But in China, people describe the students’ goals as not democracy, per se, but as the end to corruption, the ability to air grievances, and the right to more control over their lives (or, as one person put it, the right to refuse to be shipped off to some dumpy factory for 40 years—a fate that would drive anyone into the streets). Although these ideals were closer to our form of government than China’s was in 1989, they were not the “one man, one vote” system we hold so dear, the one that, in America, we herald the Tiananmen students as having died for. And, by local estimation, Chinese have gotten much of what the students were really hoping for 16 years ago.

In Beijing, as in Shanghai, the businesspeople I spoke to seemed more concerned about preserving their ability to make money than about gaining the ability to vote leaders out of office or to express themselves however they pleased. One expects businesspeople to tend toward this end of the idealism scale, but in the U.S., democracy and freedom of speech are so fundamental to our sense of ourselves and our country that even our businesspeople can’t imagine life (or economic success) without them. So, it is interesting to see China succeeding—on the surface, anyway—without them.

The question remains: Can the Chinese model—capitalism without elections or free expression—succeed forever? The common Western theory is that the more China’s wealth grows, the more the pressure will build, until one day, the Communist Party’s chokehold on power will break and American-style freedom of speech and democracy will follow (or, alternatively, that, in a desperate attempt to preserve itself, the party will revert to Cultural Revolution-style oppression and stop the economy cold). Both theories presume that free speech and elections are high on the average Chinese citizen’s agenda, but, for now, a strong economy seems to take priority. (“The average guy wants to buy a car, eat vitamins, and get his kids into Berkeley,” said one Beijing entrepreneur. “As long as the government doesn’t screw that up, he’s willing to play along.”) The Western theories also presume that the transition from socialism to capitalism inevitably includes a transition from one-party rule to elected, multiparty democracy, but perhaps this isn’t so. Especially when the leaders of the one party know exactly what keeps them in power—fat consumer wallets—and are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to control the spread of potentially destabilizing ideas.

For China’s economy to continue to thrive—and for its companies to grow strong enough to compete globally on something other than price—the government will have to continue to reduce corruption, strengthen property and legal rights, and develop a more efficient capital allocation system (including a securities market in which government connections are not a prerequisite for raising cash). In a democracy with a free press, the pressure that forces such changes often comes from decision-makers’ fear of being ravaged in the media and/or voted out of office. In China, the repercussions may not be so immediate and direct, but based on the government’s actions over the last decade, it knows well that continued economic reform and success are not only good for the country but key to its survival. The pressure is there, in other words, with or without the media, and the government continues to make progress in reducing corruption and buttressing legal and property rights.

The government also seems to be deciding that, at least in the realm of business and finance, greater press freedom helps advance its economic goals and lessen its regulatory burden. Business journalism keeps companies honest and makes customers and investors comfortable that they at least have a forum in which to complain. Such freedom is not all good—in the media’s eagerness to advance its own economic agenda, it often manufactures scandals where there are none and spins normal free-market processes into institutional or regulatory failures. But just as a free market is more effective than central planning at, say, managing crop production and pricing, a free press enhances the regulatory abilities of a government and creates the information flow that capitalism requires.

But the Chinese government will probably continue to stifle the press’s freedom to criticize it. As demonstrated by the government’s subtle, sophisticated control of all forms of media and its ongoing penchant for firing, beating up, jailing, and perhaps even killing journalists who cross vaguely defined lines, we won’t see a Michael Moore of China anytime soon (see Perry Link’s essay in the New York Review of Books). But I doubt this will hinder the ongoing development of China’s vibrant economy.

The key test of China’s version of capitalism, of course, will be during the bust that inevitably will follow the current boom (some day). If elections were held today, many in China suggest, the current leaders would win the popular vote. On the whole, thanks to the economy, people feel they have done a good job. During the bust, the pressure for change will increase, with or without the press. If the government is to maintain control in such an environment, it will probably have to engage in a practice that has long been a fixture of oligarchies and democracies alike: blame. As long as the countrywide pain can be laid at the feet of an individual or group, instead of the system—and as long as the scapegoats can be tossed out on their respective rears—the public pressure for revolutionary change can probably be controlled. If China can survive that inevitable economic crisis without a political uprising, we will probably be able to conclude that a dynamic free-market economy need not, in fact, go hand in hand with democracy.

Posted at 6:58 PM · Comments (0)

April 23, 2005

Days of Empire

Genghis Khan would have applauded the US use of shock and awe to take Iraq. And why not — it worked for him 750 years ago

If history repeats itself, the story of Baghdad is perfect evidence of it. Nothing much has happened there recently that the ancient city has not seen before.

The military methods used by its latest conquerors two years ago were exactly the same as those employed when it was first taken almost 750 years earlier. Like the Mongols and their Christian allies, who conquered Baghdad in 1258, the Americans and their friends converged on it in several columns, overwhelming anything that was sent to meet them with hugely superior mobility and firepower. With token support from a few cautious Shia, they slipped into the suburbs, surrounded the city and softened it with a devastating bombardment before making their final assault. But the similarity does not end with a general summary of their strategies. The tactical details were identical, too.

In 1927 Britain’s leading strategist, B. H. Liddell Hart, wrote that the tank and the plane were the heirs to the Mongol horsemen. In his view the same tactics applied; and there were many, including Germany’s Heinz Guderian, the father of blitzkrieg, who agreed with him. Before long the campaigns of Genghis Khan were being studied in British, French, German and American military academies, just as they had always been in Russia. The Second World War began with blitzkrieg, a mechanised version of the swift, crippling attacks carried out by the Mongols in the 13th century; and in the course of the war two of the leading tank commanders, Rommel and Patton, acknowledged that they were students of Genghis Khan.

Like all soldiers of the steppes since the days of the Parthians more than 2,000 years ago, the Mongols were mounted archers. By timing the release of their arrows to come between the footfalls of their horses, they could maintain their accuracy even at the canter, just as stabilisers enable guns to keep their aim while the bodies of their tanks roll up and down. But none of their commanders used this skill as devastatingly as the Great Khan.

The characteristic which made Genghis Khan the most successful conqueror in history was his genius for organisation. He mustered his army in multiples of ten, subjected it to regular and rigorous training, issued it with standardised equipment, including long-range, short-range and armour-piercing arrows, and selected and promoted his officers entirely on merit, not breeding.

There was little about his army that would not have been familiar to any modern professional soldier. His capacity to manoeuvre was so bafflingly brilliant that most of his enemies assumed that his armies were much larger than they were. Using an exaggerated version of a traditional steppe tactic, the feigned retreat, he could lure an entire army into a prepared position, suddenly surround it with huge formations of mounted archers and then destroy it with his withering firepower — just as Patton’s tanks were to do with part of the Afrika Korps.

A modern army advances on a broad front. So did the Mongols. But the Mongols were the first to do it. When Genghis Khan moved west towards Samarkand his right flank was in the desert north of the Aral Sea and his left was more than 800 miles southeast of it in the Pamir Mountains. When his sons invaded Europe, their front was even broader, with its right on the Baltic and its left in Transylvania.

For a 20th-century general, command and control of such a front are made possible only by modern communications, but the Mongols managed equally well with what were then leading-edge communications of their own. By day they kept contact over short distances with flags — the Mongols invented semaphore — and over longer distances their network of mounted couriers and staging posts was faster than the Pony Express.

On the invasion of Europe, the first objective was the conquest of Hungary and the destruction of its army, which had assembled to the west of the Danube. But the Mongol flanks were threatened by large armies in Poland and Transylvania. In consequence, when the Mongol centre reached the east bank of the Danube it halted and waited. On April 6, 1241, after learning that the threatening armies on its flanks had been located, it turned and started to retreat. Next day the Hungarians set out after it. On April 9 the Polish army was annihilated at Liegnitz, On April 10, 500 miles to the south, the Transylvanian army was defeated at Hermannstadt. On April 11 the Mongols in the centure turned and routed the pursuing Hungarians. Their co-ordination was perfect. They could not have done better if they had been issued with radios.

One of the most familiar images of the recent fighting in Iraq was that of troops or tanks crossing a bridge with their artillery firing over their heads to push back the Iraqis on the other side. Once more the Mongols were the pioneers. The first record of a “rolling barrage” appears in the chronicles of that battle with the Hungarians, when the Mongols began by crossing a bridge unopposed while their trebuchets (huge mechanical slings) lobbed smoke bombs and explosive grenades over their heads and pushed back the Hungarians “to the accompaniment of thunderous noise and flashes of fire”.

At the end of that terrible day the Mongols opened a gap in their encirclement, allowing the Hungarian survivors to escape. Then, just as the allies attacked the Iraqis when they withdrew from Kuwait in 1992, the Mongol mounted archers swarmed in on either side of the desperate column; and for 30 miles, according to the chronicles, the road back towards the Danube was strewn with corpses “like stones in a quarry”.

Genghis Khan has suffered even more than most conquerors at the hands of Hollywood. His undoubtedly spectacular atrocities have been given much more emphasis than his genius; and he has been the victim of the most ludicrous miscasting — John Wayne and Omar Sharif, for heaven’s sake! One can only hope that a new drama-documentary by the BBC will go some way to straightening the record.

This time, at last, the film is shot in Mongolia with a mostly Mongol cast; and it depicts the Mongols’ transformation from tribal warriors to professional soldiers. If George W. Bush ever gets to see it, it may come as a surprise to him — and a delight to his critics — to learn that he and his generals have so much in common with Genghis Khan and his warlords. The differences between a mounted Mongol horde and a modern mechanised army are all differences in technology, not technique.

The Devil’s Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe, by James Chambers (Phoenix, £9.99; offer £8.49 from Books First, 0870 1608080) .Genghis Khan, BBC One, Monday, 9pm

Genghis Khan: fighter, lover
# Genghis Khan (1162-1227) was orphaned at 13. He began with a mere handful of followers, united the Mongolian tribes, and rose to become the most successful conqueror in history.

# His empire was the largest ever conquered by a single commander. It included the lands now known as Mongolia, northern China, most of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

# At its height, in the reign of his grandson Kublai, it was the largest continuous empire in history, stretching east from the borders of Hungary, through Russia, the Middle East and reaching the Pacific Ocean.

# The Mongol empire was the first to know religious tolerance. In the capital, Karakorum, churches, mosques and temples stood side by side.

# In his empire, women had equal rights with men, even among subject peoples.

# His laws prescribed the death penalty for merchants who allowed themselves to go bankrupt for a third time.

# He had 500 wives and concubines.

Posted at 11:53 PM · Comments (0)

Teetering on the verge of success, but with failure always threatening to knock at the door, Ghana has lately taken up the mantle of what passes for a success story in Africa. It is the new darling in the halls where donors like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United States and Britain talk about making sure foreign aid does not end up in the hands of corrupt regimes.

What they have in mind are people like Kofi Asare, who labors mightily on his modest farm high in the hills near his village SamSam, carrying his ripe yellow pineapples on his head to get them from the fields to his truck. Dripping with sweat, the 28-year-old Mr. Asare is the very picture of Africa getting its act together. Last year, he made $10,000; enough to make the transition from mud hut to cement house. This year, with an eye warily on the future, he has planted 2,500 of a new “low acid” pineapple pioneered by the Del Monte Foods Company that threatens to smoke the Ghana “smooth cayenne” variety out of Europe’s supermarkets.

But Ghana is a good kid in a really bad neighborhood. Its West African neighbors, from Liberia to Sierra Leone to the Ivory Coast, have bred so much fighting in the last 10 years that they make Ghana seem like Iowa. Ghana does not have insurgents running around its hinterlands dressed in wedding gowns and wigs (like Liberia and Sierra Leone) or 8-year-old rebel soldiers toting machine guns (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast).

It has had four successful elections since 1993, and has actually experienced a peaceful transfer of power between democratically elected governments, another rarity in the neighborhood. Indeed, it is becoming a haven for refugees who come not only from Ghana’s unruly neighbors to the west, but also from other conflict zones in Africa. Last week, a group of refugees from Darfur, Sudan, showed up. It remains unclear how they made it across the continent, crossing the Togolese border from five countries away, but the Accra government is busy making plans to settle the Sudanese refugees.

Ghanaians like to brag that they have passed the point of no return in making their humid patch of West Africa a functioning democracy with all the perks that brings: a free and vibrant press, steady though slow economic growth, tourism. There is even a shopping mall with a multiplex cinema going up in Accra. With such obvious payoffs for adopting good governance, many Ghanaians say it is inconceivable that the country will turn back to the failed-state practices that have taken so many other African countries down the drain. “If anyone tried anything like a coup here, this place would immediately become ungovernable,” says Kweku Sakyi Addo, the host of one of Ghana’s innumerable political talk shows. “We’ve seen what happens in other African countries. There is no way people will put up with that here.”

But for all the talk of what a model African country Ghana is, it is still, literally, dirt poor, a fact of life that demonstrates just how removed Africa is from the proverbial rising tide of the global economy that is supposed to be lifting all boats. Ghana has a per capita income of $421 a year; most people survive here on $300 to $400. Ten-year-old girls still run barefoot up to stopped cars in the sweltering midday heat trying to sell anything they think will bring in money - from oranges to cellphone batteries to toilet paper. Street children still sleep on the median separating highway lanes.

And while the Ghanaian government appears to have a clear idea of exactly what steps it must take to try to alleviate the huge divide between Accra’s growing middle class and the country’s rural poor, some goals are already slipping. Child mortality rates, already high, increased in 2004; nobody seems to know why. A huge gender gap remains in primary-school education: far more boys make it to school than girls.

Almost half of Ghana’s national budget comes from foreign aid; Britain is its largest single-country donor. But the size of the country’s budget, a scant $3 billion, supporting some 20 million people, is testament to just how far Ghana still has to go, and just how much more it still needs to climb out of poverty. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s proposal for rich countries to drastically increase their aid to Africa in a Marshall Plan approach would be a huge step toward helping to bring the continent back into the folds of the rest of the world.

Ghana shows what a tough road this is going to be. But it also shows that bringing Africa back is eminently doable.

Posted at 11:34 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2005

It happens all the time: during an airport delay the man to the left, a Korean perhaps, starts talking to the man opposite, who might be Colombian, and soon they are chatting away in what seems to be English. But the native English speaker sitting between them cannot understand a word.

They don’t know it, but the Korean and the Colombian are speaking Globish, the latest addition to the 6,800 languages that are said to be spoken across the world. Not that its inventor, Jean-Paul Nerrière, considers it a proper language.

“It is not a language, it is a tool,” he says. “A language is the vehicle of a culture. Globish doesn’t want to be that at all. It is a means of communication.”

Nerrière doesn’t see Globish in the same light as utopian efforts such as Kosmos, Volapuk, Novial or staunch Esperanto. Nor should it be confused with barbaric Algol (for Algorithmic language). It is a sort of English lite: a means of simplifying the language and giving it rules so it can be understood by all.

“The language spoken worldwide, by 88 percent of mankind, is not exactly English,” Nerrière says. “I don’t think people who think this gives them an edge are right because it’s not useful if they cannot be understood by English speakers.” His primer, Parlez Globish, is an attempt to codify worldspeak and since its publication by Eyrolles in Paris last year, he says, his Web site www.jpn-globish.com has had almost 36,000 hits.

A retired IBM marketing executive, Nerrière speaks excellent English but switches to Globish if he is not getting through. “I look at their faces. Lack of understanding is very easy to decipher.”

The main principles of Globish are a vocabulary of only 1,500 words in English (the OED lists 615,000), gestures and repetition. Grammar will be dealt with in the next volume, “Découvrez le Globish,” due next month.

The Web site also includes song lyrics because Nerrière reckons this is an excellent way to learn words, even if they are not on the Globish 1,500. “Strangers in the Night” is one choice, but what is the student to do when Sinatra goes “scoobie-doobie-do”?

“Doesn’t matter,” Nerrière replies buoyantly. “I saw ‘A Chorus Line’ three or four times on Broadway and I know all the songs by heart. I never understood the line ‘If Troy Donahue can be a movie star you can be a movie star,’ but I managed to reproduce it well enough in a way it could be understood.”


The point, he says, is to reach the threshold of understanding. But neither threshold nor understanding is on the 1,500-word list. “In Globish it would be the target, the goal, the objective. I use three words to reach the point where you would be understood everywhere.”

The list goes from “able” to “zero.” Niece and nephew, for example, are not included, “but you can replace them with the children of my brother,” Nerrière says. He feels he erred in putting in both beauty and beautiful and in including “much” and “many” but not “lot.”

“Much is for ideas, many is for things you can count. A lot works for both cases, the others require a little more understanding.”

The seeds for Globish came about in the 1980s when Nerrière was working for IBM in Paris with colleagues of about 40 nationalities. At a meeting where they were to be addressed by two Americans whose flight had been delayed, they started exchanging shoptalk in what Nerrière calls “une certaine forme d’anglais perverti.” Then the Americans arrived and beyond their opening phrases, “Call me Jim,” “Call me Bill,” no one understood a word. And Jim and Bill, needless to say, did not understand perverted English.

One might say that, except for Jim and Bill of course, everyone was speaking Globish though they didn’t know it. “They all, like me, spoke low-quality English, not really Globish. One might have a vocabulary of 2,000 words, another of 1,200 and not the same words. One of the things of interest in Globish is that with 1,500 words you can express everything. People all over the world will speak with the same limited vocabulary.”

With many corporations imposing English as the lingua franca wherever their base, Nerrière sees a great future for Globish, which he has trademarked. Learning it by computer and practicing it by free-access telephone will make things even easier. And there is a new law in France that gives employees the right to 20 hours per year of instruction in a given subject.

“The idea is to increase their employability by teaching them skills unrelated to their present employment. For me, the odds of someone asking for a course in macramé are very small and the odds of asking for a course in Maltese are also small. Why not Globish? If it could be of use in this small grocery shop where I work maybe it will help me in the big hotel where I hope to be.”

There is an other advantage, he argues. “At 20 hours a year you need 24 years to learn English with no result whatsoever since it would be spread too thin for the learner to remember what had been said two weeks earlier. With Globish you not only have free telephone access via the Internet but you could get cheap lessons in places like India where people speak good English and wages are low.”

Nerrière reckons that with 182 hours plus learning “Strangers in the Night,” the student should be able to communicate in Globish. It is not a pretty language - full of redundancies and lumpy constructions - but Nerrière repeats that it is nothing but a tool when proper English is not understood. “It is not the language of Hamlet, Faulkner or Virginia Woolf,” he explains.


But the worst thing for the French about this international language is that it isn’t French. Nerrière argues rather subtly that if people learned Globish, the French language would remain unsullied because franglais would die out.

“It would end this crazy French terror about English and francophonie. The French say you are killing the French language and I say, no, we are saving it from being killed by English.”

There is one possible hiccup in this scheme. The fluent Globish speaker will not be understood by native English speakers. No problem: Nerrière already is preparing a Globish version in English in addition to the Italian and Spanish editions, which will be out shortly. So he is not only protecting French from invasion but he is getting Americans to become, so to speak, bilingual.

“Absolutely!” Nerrière says triumphantly. “This is the way to get Americans to learn another language.”

Posted at 2:28 PM · Comments (0)

2005-04-05

The Allies wrestled for control of the world while the civilian population was taken hostage.

“The train tracks crossing the city,” states the US governmental report on the effect of the Hiroshima bomb, “were back in working order by August 8, two days after the attack.” Only then did the gamma waves and neutrons manifest themselves in human bone marrow and start taking deadly effect. Even thin cement slabs near Ground Zero had stopped the radiation. The majority of the 80,000 deaths were caused by heat radiation, shock waves and flying debris.

40 year old Shugita Chiyoko, searching for her husband among the body parts strewn under the Shosoji Temple on August 7th, only recognised him by his feet. “My husband had a very high arch.” The neighbours were amazed. “‘We’ve been married for 20 years,’ I said. ‘I can tell by his feet that it’s him.’ Around his ankles were the leggings he’d worn when he left that morning. The rest was cut off.”

Only in 1950 did American physicists start researching nuclear heat waves, measured in calories per square centimetre (cal/cm2). President Truman had had the thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb built in January. Its destructive potential, measured during the first test in November, was the equivalent of ten million tonnes of TNT, compared with twenty thousand tonnes for the Hiroshima bomb. But the real advantage of the new weapon lay in its thermal effect. Since the heat waves outstripped the shock waves, the data from the 1945 explosions were reviewed.

The fire storm that enveloped the area around Hiroshima had a radius of 1.5 km and a thermal output of roughly 10 cal/cm2. A one million tonne bomb would achieve 22 cal/cm2. But fire damage was hard to predict, as too many other variables are involved. What role is played by wind, temperature, humidity and the individual incendiary properties of each city?

Data to answer such questions had only existed for ten years. The Luftwaffe had pioneered bombing raids over Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry. But it was only since 1943 that the incineration of cities from the air had amounted to deliberate mass killing. The fire bombing of Hamburg killed 45,000 people overnight, more than the Luftwaffe had achieved in nine months of dropping bombs on England. Only eight weeks earlier,the fire in Wuppertal had resulted in 3,000 deaths, an unprecedented figure until then.

The fire in Wuppertal burnt in the air circulation pattern particular to enclosed river valleys. In Hamburg it was the dry summer heat; in Heilbronn, Dresden and Pforzheim it was winter snow. Tokyo was built almost entirely of wood and paper, Darmstadt of sandstone, Munster of brick. Hildesheim and Halberstadt were criss-crossed by narrow streets lined with half-timbered houses, Mannheim was divided into classic quadrants, Dortmund and Duisburg were made up of sprawling 19th century blocks. The thermonuclear planners delved into the fund of knowledge left by the area bombing of the Axis powers. This was the only way to understand how individual cities burn.

The historic fires in San Francisco, Hamburg and London had nothing in common with the procedure whereby in only 17 minutes (Würzburg) or 21 minutes (Dresden), cities were showered with hundreds of thousands of incendiary bombs. These sparked thousands of fires, which within three hours became a flaming sea, several square kilometres wide. Large natural fires normally have a single source, and are driven for days by the wind. But war statistics showed that such winds played a minor role in fires caused by bombs. The real destructive power was not in the wind that drives the fire, but in the fire itself, which unleashes its own hurricane on the ground.

Neither buildings nor people can escape the logic of the elements of fire and air. A fire starts, it sets the air in motion, fire and air form a vortex extinguishing life and all that belongs to it: books, altars, hospitals, asylums, jails and jailers, the block warden and his child, the armourers, the people’s court and all the people in it, the slave’s barracks and the Jew’s hideout, the strangler as well as the strangled. Hiroshima and Dresden, Tokyo and Kassel were transformed from cities into destructive systems. The agent of change is the bomb war, and the bomb war is its construction site. Work continues to this day, it’s a work in progress. There is hardly a nation not working at it, and the numbers are growing.

When 40 years ago, a handful of atomic scientists studied the complex chemistry and mechanics which the war generation had used to raze cities, they were seeking what no one had experienced since the war: military mass destruction in real time, the laboured route from Warsaw to Hamburg to Nagasaki.

The effectiveness of the methods – a carpet of bombs dropped from a thousand choreographed planes on holy Cologne in 1942, the flash of energy in 1945, brighter than a thousand suns, deadlier than 200,000 tonnes of TNT – sent a message: it works! And that which works, anyone can do. And if everyone can do it, it is highly unlikely that nobody will. This ‘if’ is purely a matter of belief and luck; it is actually the realm of hope and prayers. The ‘how’ on the other hand is a practical occupation. Since Hiroshima and Dresden, this ‘how’ has been worked on feverishly. How could similar death zones be made to be safer, more manageable, more cost-effective and larger?

The downfall of the two cities also tells an ugly story about the ‘if’ of the weapon of mass destruction. With the know-how in place, the grounds for deployment practically took care of themselves. In 1939, a few weeks after Otto Hahn’s splitting of uranium had brought him closer to the laws of matter, research was launched into whether something like this could be used in a bomb. To describe this new source of energy, physicists Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Siegfried Flügge used an image: that the chain reaction in a cubic meter of uranium oxide would be sufficient to catapult Berlin’s Wannsee lake into the stratosphere.

The Wehrmacht understood immediately saw that this image was on its head. Far more practical would be to drop a force like the Wannsee onto a city like Berlin. Either way this was a practical application of Einstein’s formula E = mc2. Einstein, who fled to the USA to escape the Nazis, understood better than anyone the identity between understanding the world and destroying it. After Hahn’s uranium experiments, phenomenal capacities for energy and destruction were available to all. In his day, immense resources, a monstrous character and access to uranium were required. Everything is much simpler today; you can just buy it.

When the monster Hitler battered France in May 1940, taking Belgium on the way, he also gained access to the world’s uranium chamber: the Belgian Congo. This prompted Einstein to write President Roosevelt, advising him to counter the destructive potential in his formula. America should build an atom bomb as a preventive measure. To stop the annihilator Hitler from possessing it first, the free world must have a monopoly on it. Their bomb would arrive before his - to some extent, the weapon expression of his character: a machine of hell to overthrow the prince of hell. The only problem was that the bomb had to be built before the war was decided.

While the industrial giant USA embarked on the most formidable development project of all time, the military giants Germany and Russia competed for victory. Germany seemed to have the advantage in the autumn of 1942 as it stood at the heights of Caucasus and the banks of the Volga. Just next door lay Kazakhstan and Iran. Aside from these two front lines, thousands of kilometres apart, the Germans had another front about four kilometres over their heads. In the sky above Germany, the men of Prime Minister Churchill and Air Marshall Harris were fighting doggedly and with heavy losses. Since 1942 they had stopped bombing key military targets and started burning cities.

Because Germany had more factories than England had bombers, precision strikes on steel and hydrogenation plants were less painful than precision strikes on sparse aircraft. At the beginning of 1942, the 400 or so bombers did not present an insurmountable force for Germany’s anti-aircraft guns and fighter pilots. Understandably, the bombers took refuge in the darkness of the night sky where they were more difficult to see. But they couldn’t see much either, at most the vague outlines of a city.

A city like Hamburg, with 1.5 million inhabitants, cannot be bombed in 30 minutes with 3,000 tonnes of bombs. More time and more tonnage are needed. The British had to learn to burn cities. As one of their foremost fire strategists, Horatio Bond, explained, the navigational problem of “hit or not hit” could be solved by dropping 600,000 incendiary bombs on Dresden. The detonation bomb intended for the Krupp factory in Essen which lands instead on the Krupp hospital is a waste in military terms. Not so the incendiary bomb, because the hospital spreads the fire. All of the bombs pay off, because the city itself multiplies their effect. But the city fights them too, by extinguishing and choking the flames. The Royal Air Force and the US bombing fleet took three years to halfway master the technique of airborne fire bombing: the preparation of an inextinguishable inner city fire.

Between February and August 1945, in Dresden, Pforzheim, Würzburg, Halberstadt, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Tokyo etc., a total of 330,000 people died in conventional incendiary attacks, 120,000 in nuclear ones. Four fifths of Japanese victims were buried without being identified. Dr. Shigenori, military air defence commander, wrote: “Countless bodies, clothed and naked, black as coal, were floating in the dark waters of the Sumida River. It was unreal. They were dead people, but you couldn’t tell if they were men or women. You couldn’t even tell if the objects floating past were arms, legs or burnt wood.” Before they died, they had jumped into the water to escape the fiery air which braised their lungs and set their clothes alight. People ran from the burning zones with their belongings strapped to their backs, failing to notice when these caught fire. One mother slung her baby over her shoulder and only noticed when she stopped to catch her breath that the child was engulfed in flames. Those who jumped into the water were no better off. The liquid was bubbling like the air, and the swimmers cooked in it.

Had the Hiroshima bomb hit Tokyo instead, there would have been four times the number of dead. Theoretically, 1,000 bombers each loaded with 10 tonnes of conventional munition could also have achieved 300,000 dead, but it would have been more laborious and far less certain of success. In Germany in 1945, death rates in the tens of thousands were only achieved three times: in Dresden, Pforzheim and Swinemünde.

The difference between the methods of destruction is, put simply, that nuclear weapons themselves produce the pressure and heat energy that pulverises buildings, sears people and generates fire. The combination of burning and explosion in conventional operations takes a less direct path via the materials of the city. These must react to the various impulses of the finely tuned munition: roofs are torn up, windows shatter. Otherwise, the houses wouldn’t become ovens, nor the cellars crematoriums; fire requires draught. The stone facades must channel the heat down to the foundations where the people are cowering.

There were cities like Berlin that did not work right. The width of the streets, the firewalls, the abundance of greenery and canals opposed the fire-injections and responded wrong. But Dresden’s narrow streets, decorative old town and wooden buildings fed the fires according to plan. The carefully selected triangle between the Ostragehege park and the main railway station functioned as a “fire-raiser”. The old cities, bent with age, testimonies to the distant past, were best suited to such attacks. Freiburg, Heilbronn, Trier, Mainz, Nuremberg, Paderborn, Hildesheim, Halberstadt, Würzburg: this avenue of German history shared the lot of Dresden in these months. For the allied fire bomb strategists, the study of their material composition was a science in itself.

In Watford, England, as well as in Eglin Field, Florida, and Dugway Ground, Utah, dummy towns were built complete with German and Japanese materials and inventories. This sort of thing requires thoroughness. Only real Japanese floor matting can be used, only the right number of real German toys in the German house. More woollen coats are stored in Germany than in Japan, in solid cupboards of oak, pine and beech. How many books, which curtains, what type of cushions? The German roof beams provide the crowning touch. Then the practise can start.

The practise is a success when the right combustibles meet the right materials. That is the most difficult part, because it has to be carried out from four kilometres up in the night sky.

Red and green lights mark the death zone as if drawn with a coloured pen. To drop all the munition into this lit frame, a new flight technique was developed in August 1944 over Königsberg, known as “the fan”. The oncoming squadron crosses a designated point, in Dresden a sports field. That is the hinge. When the point is crossed, the aeroplanes fan out from each other, to the north-east and the south-east. Each plane breaks off at its own angle, and knows a distance measured in seconds from the hinge, called the overshoot. Each pilot is allotted a different overshoot. When it shows on the display, the bomb bay opens.

The fan flies at three altitudes. With exact wind calculation, the munition from all three altitudes fall in parabolic trajectories over the target segment, equally distributed. Then it’s saturated. When an air force has achieved such a feat, it does not ask too probingly whether mass destruction is worthwhile from military perspective. There’s nothing wrong in showing what you can do. What does not count now will count later, and then it should be done well. One can only rehearse for future wars in current ones. That hardens people in a different way.

When soldier Jack Couffer walked among the houses of the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah in 1943, which, according to the Air Force “correspond to the type of housing in which 80 percent of the German industrial population lives”, he started imagining things. “I looked in the empty windows and imagined with terrible clarity that the houses were inhabited, bursting with life, with people walking through the narrow alleys on their way to and from the factories, street traders, shoppers, children playing. It is easier to set a sterile place like that on fire if you whisk such fantasies away”. The coming air war was no longer to be won with scruples. Five years later Curtis Le May, warhorse in the campaigns over Germany and Japan and then head of the US Strategic Air Command, comforted himself with the thought that as there were no longer any civilians, there was no longer anyone to protect. Otherwise he could not have run the office that developed the “Reaper” and “Trojan” plans in 1949 – 1950, in which 100 atom bombs were to be dropped on 70 Russian cities causing 2.7 million deaths. The plan was based on assessments General Le May had brought home from Japan. “We knew when we burned a city back then, that we would kill many women and children. The aim of the strategy is to destroy the enemy’s war-making potential. All that had to be obliterated.” The Japanese had a complex and broad-based manufacturing system. “You only needed to walk through one of our roasted targets and take a look at the ruins of the countless tiny houses. Some kind of drill press stuck out of every pile of rubble. The entire population was involved in building aeroplanes or war munition. Men, women and children.” That’s why they were slaughtered in the Second World War. “There are no innocent civilians. Nowadays you fight a people, not armed forces.”

When whole populations have to be exterminated, it is no wonder that 10,000 US nuclear warheads were amassed at the time of the Berlin and Cuba crises. Four hundred would have been enough to wipe out a third of the Russian population, which was 200 million in 1960. Defence Secretary Robert McNamara wanted to keep US casualties below 20 percent in the event of a skirmish. More would not be acceptable. As a result, 10 percent – a loss of 18 million – would be accepted.

Einstein had long lived in horror of his bomb, which was supposed to erase evil from the planet. It was evil itself and the evil was his creation. The special weapon against Hitler lost its addressee before it was ready. And already in November 1944, secret service intelligence suggested that it was a false alarm. Hitler’s weapon of mass destruction didn’t exist. The Germans were lagging way behind in these arts and would not achieve much more in this last of their foreseeable wars. General Eisenhower was already in Aachen, and Marshall Zhukov was on the Vistula. Both the same distance from Berlin.

While the armies raced against each other to take Hitler’s last bastions – the economic one in the Ruhr region and the political in Berlin - the atomic physicists were racing against the end of the war. It looked as though the military campaigns would be over before the bomb was ready. If Hitler – the bomb’s cause and intended object - was no longer a viable target, Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed that, under certain circumstances, Japan might serve the purpose. But these circumstances were being taken care of, one after another. Like the Third Reich, the Empire of the Sun was militarily and economically knocked out, cut off from the sea and without a supply of oil, metal and foodstuffs. It was defenceless against Le May’s fire attacks. Moreover, the US de-coding service, which had broken the diplomatic code to the Japanese Embassy in Moscow, reported breathlessly that Tokyo was imploring Stalin to intercede for peace.

The uranium bomb was also non-essential because the fire hurricanes were capable of equally respectable damage. Moreover, it had just been established in Germany that surgical strikes on oil lines and transport routes caused far more military damage. With the German fighters grounded for lack of fuel, attacks could be carried out with practically no losses. This also made conventional mass destruction unnecessary. The relatively ineffective emergency stopgap would not, thankfully, be necessary; now there was something better. It was clear that the Allies would be victorious, Hitler and Albert Speer knew it as well. On January 30th, Speer, the Minister for Armaments and War Production, announced to Hitler that the country’s economy would be demolished in four to eight weeks. “After this collapse, the war can not be continued, also from a military perspective.” An accurate calculation.

But none of the war lords were clear on what kind of a political circumstance was to be established after these eight weeks on the shattered continent. At least Stalin knew what he wanted. Hitler knew things were out of his hands. All he could do was drag as many people as possible with him into death and leave all that remained standing in Germany to be decimated. Hitler’s instructions to Speer and the regional Nazi leaders dovetailed with those of the two remaining war leaders; Churchill and Roosevelt unleashed with their 3,000 aeroplanes an “around-the-clock-bombing”, which Basil Liddell Hart, the greatest British military historian of his day, termed “the Mongol devastations”. Two thirds of the bomb tonnage of the five year air war fell in February, March and April of 1945, most of it on militarily insignificant targets. The tiniest part of this tonnage, the precision strikes on the 16 major train routes connecting the Ruhr region with the rest of Germany, had the greatest effect.

The Western Allies had assigned most of their resources to building up their strategic air forces. Their future empire was to be based on this weapon, even better when combined with a nuclear load. Even if there was no suitable recipient for the nearly complete super bomb other than the mortally wounded Japan, War Secretary Henry Stimson, the bomb’s greatest advocate, already saw himself in possession of the “most terrible weapon ever known in human history”. The bomb had cost two billion dollars. A huge amount of money at the time, but little compared with the sums invested in the worst, or possibly second worst, despot in human history. The lord of the Gulag received ten billion dollars in war goods and supplies to conquer the lord of Auschwitz. The investment paid off.

At the price of over 20 million dead, Stalin had defeated the strongest army ever assembled, which in four years had put a total of eight million men on a breadth of front spanning a maximum of 2,500 km. No other military leader was capable of such a defence. But it was only possible thanks to 17 million tonnes of supplies from his Western partners. For them, the postwar balance sheet looked as follows:

On the assets side were the two billion dollars invested in the military trump card, the atom bomb. On the other side were liabilities of 10 billion dollars, which had promoted the monster Stalin to ruler of the continent. The way the war had progressed, the downfall of Hitler’s Germany could only lead to the hegemony of the Soviet Union over Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. And how the impoverished peoples of Southern and Western Europe – Italy, Greece, France – would situate themselves with respect to the political ideology of the invincible Soviet Union was uncertain. The outcome, unavoidable as it was, was not what the two leaders wanted. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt could come to terms with this disaster.

At the Crimea conference of the big three in Yalta, Churchill recalled why his country had marched against Hitler. “Great Britain entered the war to defend Poland against German aggression. We stand beside Poland because it is a question of honour. Great Britain will never accept a decision which does not give Poland the security of ruling on its own territory.”

Stalin, whose forces had now been in Polish territory for three weeks, responded that he understood Churchill’s code of honour. “For Russians, however, the Polish question is not only one of honour, but also of security.” Russia had previously sinned against Poland, he said, and the Soviet government was keen to make good. “But the core of the problem lies significantly deeper. In the course of the last 30 years, the Germans have marched twice through Poland to attack our country. Why could the enemy march so easily through Poland until now? Above all because Poland was weak.” Stalin had by then installed his own followers to form a government that would make the Polish strong, free and independent.

“The British government”, said Churchill, “believes that this government does not represent even one third of Polish people.” Stalin responded that he would like to speak in his capacity as a military man. “As a soldier, what do I demand from the government of a country liberated by the Red Army? I demand that this government guarantee peace and order in the hinterland of the Red Army, prevent a civil war behind our front, and not stab us in the back.” In his view, neither the men of the government who had fled to London in 1939 nor their underground fighters had done that. They had attacked Russian weapons depots, had already murdered 212 Red Army soldiers, and violated his orders concerning the operation of radio broadcasts. When they are arrested, they complain. “If these forces continue attacking our soldiers, we will shoot them.”

Because these forces were already acquainted with Stalin when he and his partner Hitler divided Poland and liquidated its officer corps, they blamed the Russians for the annexation of their territory in 1939. East Poland had now been re-conquered; it was and remained White Russia. Stalin did not want his current partners to steal from him what Hitler had given him in the past. He offered the Poles one third of Germany as compensation. To keep this territory in the long run, they should get used to being protected by him.

“The Polish question has given the world headaches for five hundred years,” sighed Roosevelt. In Churchill’s view, it was necessary to ensure this would not continue. “Absolutely!” agreed Stalin. His headaches had diminished somewhat. All the ground in the East and South-East that Hitler had once subjugated was under Soviet control within a short period of time. And there was no one in sight to challenge him for it. Since advancing onto German territory in September, his Western allies were making extremely slow progress.

When the Germans started a counter-offensive from the Eiffel into the Ardennes killing 76,000 men, the nerves of the Western chiefs of staff were frayed. In Italy, their troops had been crawling for a year and a half up the boot and had hardly made it past Ravenna. Churchill wrote Stalin inquiring “whether we can count on a major Russian offensive on the Vistula front, or elsewhere, during January. I see the situation as urgent.” The Red Army, which had beaten the Wehrmacht colossus from the Volga back to Warsaw with incomparable martyrdom, had to quickly relieve the pressure on the inexperienced troops on the allied Western front.

Four weeks later in Yalta, Churchill expressed his admiration for the power of the operation which had begun on January 12. “The winter offensive was the fulfilment of our duty of comradeship,” said Stalin, adding that he had recognised “that the Allies needed them desperately.” They got a lot:

In 18 days, according to deputy chief of staff Aleksei Antonov, the Soviets had advanced up to 500 kilometres in the general thrust of the attack. “On average, we advanced 25-30 km in 24 hours.” 400,000 Germans had been killed or taken prisoner.

The Western powers remained where they had stood for the last four months, on a line roughly between Aachen and Saarbrücken. The respective distances of the Allied and Soviet troops from Berlin, more or less equal until the second week of January, had now changed dramatically. Marshal Zhukov was poised on the Oder near Küstrin, 70 kilometres from the German Reichskanzlei.

“How Poland was freed, and how the Red Army drove its enemy from the country,” said Churchill cryptically to Roosevelt, “is a development of major importance”. In Roosevelt’s cabinet it had been discussed for some time. At the end of October 1944, Averell Harriman, the US ambassador in Moscow, reported to War Secretary Stimson “how the Russians are attempting to force their rule on the countries they have ‘liberated’, and the use they make of their secret police in doing so.” For Harriman there was no difference between the Gestapo and the GPU, the Soviet secret police. US liaison officers had reported similarly on the cold contempt of Poland’s liberators, their plundering, murders and rapes. Churchill wrote to Roosevelt in April that it was necessary to get as far east as possible to curtail Stalin’s excesses.

From autumn to the following spring, the Western Allies came to see that their “war comrade”, who had won the liberation campaign, had his own way of reading the events. Making him see things differently was impossible. In late March and early April, the other Allies were just warming up their military muscles with the encirclement of the Ruhr region. No wonder; they outweighed the German forces 12 to 1. The German Western Army stopped fighting. Their tanks stopped moving. Petrol and the will to fight ran out at the same time. But in the military twilight of February – March, the West took a nervous look at the Soviet military steamroller, rolling forward with no regard for casualties, and loaded the bombs. The occidental Mongol devastations could begin.

Stalin had nothing comparable to this airborne might. While his men could walk 30 kilometres a day, Churchill’s bombers could fly at 300 kilometres per hour. The Russian army took 18 days to get from the Vistula to the Oder. But the British planes reached Dresden from the British Midlands in just five hours! After a 40 minute operation, the city is a heap of rubble, strewn with 35,000 dead. At a distance of 110 kilometres from the first lines of Marshall Konyev’s troops which were in the process of liberating Upper Silesia, this is, to put it mildly, the demonstration of a capacity. If not a military capacity, then at least the capacity of a military. Konyev, the conqueror on the ground, did not profit militarily from the attack and took no notice. Zhukov would later castigate the barbarianism of his allies in Dresden; from that point on, they were his arch enemies. But what were they in February 1945? And what was Zhukov for them in September 1939? An ally of Hitler’s in the subjugation of Poland. In one and the same war, enemies became partners, partners rivals and then partial enemies once more. The Cold War fronts replaced those of the World War as if by an invisible hand. The interfaces are Dresden in Europe and Hiroshima in Asia. In these theatres of slaughter, it is no longer possible to distinguish between partnership and enmity.

In Yalta, where bluffs were camouflaged in rhetoric and threats wrapped in hugs, Russia requested the help of its Western comrades in the storming of Berlin. Perhaps a final courageous ground initiative in the Rhine valley or Italy to join and engage the German troops. Or an air attack on the rail systems in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden that would disrupt the transfer of Wehrmacht forces from the Western to the Eastern front. There was more courtship than need in the request and it didn’t cost anything to ask. The Western colleagues promised air support, although this was the last thing they were interested in providing. Yes, they smashed every railway station and train wagon they could find. But to stop troops that were taking off for the East before their eyes? Why, to let themselves be shot by them?

The British documents on Dresden give troop transports as the target of the attack. But this was not the objective of the night attack. At noon the next day, the Americans superficially bombed the railway installations, which were the first to be repaired. But they did not start a fire storm. The British flew a perfect fire storm attack, not at all interested in the important shunting areas and bridges. The paltry weapons parts produced in Dresden appear nowhere in the otherwise very detailed RAF inventories. They were irrelevant when compared with what Zhukov possessed: five times as many tanks, seven times as much artillery an 17 times the number of aeroplanes. The local military barracks remained unscathed by all these waves of attacks.

Like the bombing of Hiroshima, Dresden’s destruction has ever since been bound up with the question: “Why?” Two attacks with maximum overkill, each on a hopelessly defeated people! In the final spurt between the German and the imminent Japanese capitulations, the atomic physicists perfected their work with a test explosion whose lightning a blind woman claimed to have seen. Some of them started to grumble: “Why?” What had begun as an attempt to stop Hitler’s world domination was being directed at the last convulsions of a checkmated aspiring power. Certainly, the last Samurais would have prepared a bloody welcome for the invading forces. But what was forcing the marines onto the treacherous beaches? America could rely on the strangling grip of its sea blockade, its airborne superiority and its precision bombing. Time was on its side.

Perhaps, said the sceptics, we could simply demonstrate the omnipotence of the wonder weapon, without using it on people. We could drop it over the ocean! Scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer, in contrast, saw through the logic of mass destruction: “It needs the impression”. Threats don’t impress, willingness does. If you don’t kill 100,000 defenceless people, nobody will believe you. Technical know-how must be accompanied by an iron will. A nation must act with a clear conscience, the proof will suffice for a generation.

The puzzle of who President Truman wanted to impress has been solved by the records. He was hoping the test explosion would coincide with the opening of the Potsdam Conference in July. Oppenheimer named the test after the godhead: Trinity. But the three gods disagreed on many points, such as Russia’s entry in the Japanese War. At Yalta, in a moment of weakness, Stalin had promised to attack the Japanese protectorate in Manchuria, the industrial paradise just north of Beijing. The strongest defence troops were stationed there.

But after all that had happened with Stalin in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, his comradeship was turning into something sinister. The two Atlantic empires now wanted less of it, but couldn’t rid themselves of their Eurasian third, the devourer of continents. What was stopping Bolshevism from taking over China, and then Korea? Russia had always had its eye on Japan; invasion losses were of no importance to it. The only thing that could keep the giant in check were the apocalyptic ‘Little Boy’ – the slim uranium bomb – and ‘Fat Man’, the pot-bellied plutonium bomb.

Decisive was not Japan’s capitulation; that was already decided. But it had to capitulate as quickly as possible, and exclusively to the USA. The sequence of events speaks louder than words: August 6: ‘Little Boy’ on Hiroshima. August 8: the Soviets invade Manchuria. August 9: ‘Fat Man’ on Nagasaki. August 14: Japan capitulates to the USA. August 21: Japan capitulates to Russia. August 28: Japan capitulates to Mao Tse-Tung. The war ends.

But the principle of mass destruction has no natural end. After killing 100,000 random souls, no command prohibits the killing of ten million. It is not a matter of principle, but of what you can accept. Mao Tse-Tung, who forged Red China in 1949 out of the collapse of Japan, said he could easily replace 300 million losses. In a population of one billion, that’s 30 percent. One would take the Maos and McNamaras for blusterers, were it not for the fact that the tools for putting their words into practise do indeed exist.

In figures, Dresden and Hiroshima were short steps in the war of mass destruction. They lie just one generation back, and have deterred repetition, because they were seriously realised. Not that there was no other way out. From a military perspective, both cities burned to cinders needlessly. When Churchill gave the order to set Dresden alight, he thought of the hordes of refugees from Breslau and Silesia: “Tan the Germans’ hide as they retreat from Breslau”, “create panic and confusion on the administrative and evacuation routes”, “terror with military pretence”, as he wrote six weeks later. In this way the Royal Air Force was somehow a player in the collapse and reconstruction of the architecture of power in Central Europe. It gave the signal, even it could not control the ensuing events.

The forced partnership with Stalin’s fractious rogue state also made necessary the spectacle of the two atomic mushrooms. The liberators of East and South-East Asia curbed the oppressor at their side, to prevent him from gaining ground in this hemisphere as well. Yet another signal that had little effect. China was lost, and so was North Korea, over which the next war would have to be fought. Tiny, specious advantages, acquired with the curse of a weapon of mass destruction that will never go away, but is set to grow. Its first deployment went without a hitch. The know-how was there, and there was no alternative. Some people are probably still saying that.

*

The article originally appeared in German in Die Welt, on 10 February, 2005.

Jörg Friedrich was born in 1944. Since the 70s he has written extensively on the legal history of the Second World War, and the NS war crimes. His Book “Der Brand”, on the Allied bombing of Germany, achieved international acclaim. Jörg Friedrich lives as a freelance author in Berlin.

Posted at 2:25 PM · Comments (0)

Sunday, April 24, 2005; Page B06

THE BUSH administration’s challenge on Darfur is to persuade the world to wake up to the severity of the crisis. On his recent visit to Sudan, Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick took a step in the opposite direction. He said that the State Department’s estimate of deaths in Darfur was 60,000 to 160,000, a range that dramatically understates the true scale of the killing. If Mr. Zoellick wants to galvanize action on Darfur, he must take a fresh look at the numbers.

The lowest Darfur mortality number previously cited came from the World Health Organization. Last year it reported that 70,000 people had died, and many observers repeated this number without explaining it. WHO’s estimate referred only to deaths during a seven-month phase of a crisis that has now been going on for 26 months. It referred only to deaths from malnutrition and disease, excluding deaths from violence. And it referred only to deaths in areas to which WHO had access, excluding deaths among refugees in Chad and deaths in remote rural areas. In other words, the 70,000 estimate from WHO was a fraction of a fraction of the full picture. The 60,000 number that Mr. Zoellick cited as low-but-possible is actually low-and-impossible.
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Other authorities suggest that mortality is likely to be closer to 400,000 — more than twice Mr. Zoellick’s high number. The component of this estimate involving deaths by violence is based on a survey by the Coalition for International Justice, a nongovernmental organization operating under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which asked 1,136 refugees on the Chad-Darfur border whether family members had died violently or gone missing. These interviews yielded a death rate of 1.2 per 10,000 people per day. Extrapolating for all of Darfur’s displaced people, John Hagan of Northwestern University estimates that 140,000 people have died violently or gone missing since the start of the conflict. It’s possible that the refugees in Chad experienced atypical rates of violence, making that extrapolation unfair. But a study of camps for displaced people within Darfur, published last October in the Lancet, a medical journal, found that more than 90 percent of fugitives had fled their villages because of violent attacks, making the extrapolation appear justified.

What of nonviolent deaths? According to the WHO’s misquoted survey, which is based on interviews with nearly 17,000 internally displaced people, the mortality rate from malnutrition and disease comes to 2.1 per 10,000 people per day. Again, extrapolating for all displaced people, Mr. Hagan estimates that 250,000 people have died from malnutrition and disease since the conflict began, so that the total of violent and nonviolent deaths comes to 390,000. Mr. Hagan suggests that this number is conservative, because it assumes that only displaced people are at risk. Many people who remain in their vil- lages have been exposed to violence and food shortages.

Mr. Hagan’s estimate is similar to that of Eric Reeves, an independent Sudan watcher, whose reading of the available surveys is that 380,000 people have died so far. Both Mr. Hagan and Mr. Reeves say that civilians continue to die at a rate of 15,000 per month in Darfur. Of course, these analyses cannot be precise. But the consensus is that the death toll is more than three times higher than the midpoint of the numbers that Mr. Zoellick attributed to the State Department.

Mr. Zoellick deserves credit for visiting Sudan and declaring that “what has gone on in Darfur has to stop.” He may feel that the precise mortality numbers don’t matter. But his international partners will continue to drag their feet unless they are forced to confront the full horror of the killings. If they are allowed to believe that the death toll is one-third of its real level, the Russians and Chinese will pursue their commercial interests in arming Sudan’s government and extracting its oil; Europe will make inadequate humanitarian gestures; the Arab world will ignore the murderous policy of a fellow Muslim government; and the African Union, which has a peace-monitoring force in Darfur, will not step up its intervention enough to stop the killing. Mr. Zoellick needs to shake everyone awake. Next time he should cite better numbers.

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The Japan Times - April 24, 2005

Internationally recognized journalist and author Howard W. French was awarded an honorary doctorate Saturday in Tokyo in recognition of his years reporting on Asia as chief of The New York Times’ Tokyo and Shanghai bureaus.

The University of Maryland University College — which can accommodate more than 90,000 students worldwide through campus, overseas and online courses — bestowed the award during its 49th annual commencement ceremony for the Japan class held at the New Sanno Hotel.

In his keynote address, French urged the 90 graduates — more than half of them military personnel stationed in Japan — to apply their new skills to improving global human relations.

“Combat prejudice. Fight narrowness. Reject ethnocentricism. Reject the seductiveness of nationalism — which we Americans, too, are susceptible to under the cloak of what we call patriotism,” he said.

“This does not mean do not love your country,” added French, who was in Tokyo from 1999 until he moved to the Shanghai post in August 2003. “It means love everyone.”

The 47-year-old French, a Pulitzer Prize nominee whose 2004 book “A Continent for the Taking” — a searing analysis of centuries of exploitation of Africa — received broad acclaim, called the award his highest honor yet.

The Japan Times: April 24, 2005

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Long-running regional hostilities threaten the stability of east Asia

Martin Jacques
Saturday April 23, 2005
The Guardian

After being obliged by Tokyo to provide a seemingly endless series of documents, the cheerful official at the Japanese embassy in London eventually informed me that the person who helps to look after my little boy - and who happens to be Filipino - would be granted a visa to join us in Nagoya for four months. Alas, when she arrived at the airport, immigration officials interrogated her for over two hours, told her at one point that she would not be allowed in, and then finally agreed to admit her.

Japan does not like immigration. That is self-evident from even the most cursory observation of a street in any large Japanese city. It is difficult to see anyone who is not Japanese. That said, it seems highly unlikely that this kind of indignity would have been inflicted on a white person. It is directed especially at Japan’s near neighbours, particularly those from south-east Asia. As if to ram home the point, all visitors from that part of the world are required to go through a special health check before being allowed into the country.

The story is a metaphor for Japan’s attitude towards its east Asian hinterland. After centuries of isolation, Japan’s rapid industrialisation after 1867 catapulted the country into the ranks of the advanced world and left its neighbours trailing in its wake. This disparity served to further distance Japan from Asia and fuelled the kind of supremacist attitudes which saw Japan colonise Korea and Taiwan, north-east China and then briefly, during the second world war, most of south-east Asia, often with considerable barbarity.

After Japan’s defeat in the war, it grudgingly admitted partial responsibility for its actions but it never went through anything like the kind of cathartic process that was to transform Germany. Guilt was confined to an ambiguous and cryptic form of words, plus an economic largesse towards its Asian neighbours, China included. For Japan, money was easier and less costly than coming to terms with its past. The United States, which governed Japan for a brief period after the war and which has remained its protector and ally ever since, made little or no attempt to persuade Japan to do more; its interests lay in resisting communism in China, Korea and Vietnam, in which it saw Japan as a valuable ally.

Not surprisingly, Japan’s reluctant expressions of remorse, repeated again yesterday by prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, have never measured up to the profound sense of grievance felt by its neighbours, especially China and South Korea. As a consequence, the issue has festered and the wounds remain; unlike in Europe, there has been no closure. It is one of the reasons why Japan has never been able to exercise the kind of regional influence that its status as an economic giant would imply.

Indeed, Japan has remained peculiarly aloof from its own continent. In many respects, it likes to consider itself part of the west. But as east Asia has been economically transformed over the past 30 years, that mindset has become increasingly unsustainable. East Asia is no longer its impoverished backyard, but a vibrant and increasingly powerful region that demands respect. Japan’s ostrich-like attitude towards its own past has left it with feet of clay. It seems uncomprehending towards the huge resentments that animate not only the Chinese, but also the Koreans, Filipinos and many others. Indeed, it appears almost nonplussed by the latest protests, a sentiment reflected in Koizumi’s statement yesterday, which merely represented a repetition of previous utterances. It would not be difficult - in theory at least - for Japan to disarm its critics by a sincere display of remorse, by a willingness to engage in open bilateral investigations of the past, in a heartfelt rather than grudging mea culpa. If anything, though, it is moving in the opposite direction, becoming more inflexible and less willing to demonstrate contrition.

This is summed up in the person of Koizumi. Despite widespread protests both within Japan and from its neighbours, he has insisted on making an annual visit to the Yasakuni shrine in Tokyo, where Japan’s war dead are symbolically buried, including 14 class-A war criminals executed in 1948 after the Tokyo war-crimes trials. Earlier this week he dismissed the idea that these visits were provocative towards the Chinese. Meanwhile, he is gently steering Japan in the direction of a more high-profile regional role, as illustrated by the joint US-Japanese state ment on Taiwan, the move towards revising article 9 of the constitution concerning Japan’s military role, and the pursuit of a permanent seat on the UN security council.

It would be wrong to believe that the feelings displayed on the streets of numerous Chinese cities over the last three weeks do not accurately reflect the feelings of ordinary Chinese people. They resent Japan’s failure to atone for its past, not least the Nanking massacre in which, according to the author Iris Chang, 300,000 were slaughtered. The recently revised junior high school textbook - which glosses over such events and which was one of the causes of the recent demonstrations - serves only to add insult to injury. None of this, of course, is new; what has changed is the context. A more self-confident and nationalistic China, expressed most obviously in the young who took to the streets, now feels that it is time for the Japanese to make amends.

It is difficult to feel optimistic about the prospects for relations between the two countries. True, there are growing economic ties, with China now Japan’s biggest trading partner, while China is widely credited with having finally pulled Japan out of its long-running recession. Their economies, moreover, are remarkably complementary. But the sources of friction are deep and intractable.

East Asia is frozen in time. Unlike in Europe which, since the war, has been through a profound transformation, relatively little has changed in east Asia - ironic perhaps, given the extraordinary economic growth. Old conflicts remain as relevant as they were half a century ago - Taiwan, the division of Korea, and Japan’s colonisation of its neighbours. Given this backdrop, the rise of China is likely to result in a growing contest with Japan for regional hegemony. The wider implications should not be underestimated; these are the second and third largest economies in the world, and east Asia will soon be the second most powerful economic region in the world.

The attitude of the US is likely to reinforce this outcome. As the major military power in the region, it sees its relationship with Japan as the main means by which to resist growing Chinese ambitions. The Americans will surely encourage the Japanese to play an increasingly active military and diplomatic role in the region; indeed, there are strong signs that they are already doing this. Japan will, in part, be a surrogate for the US in its own growing rivalry with China.

Japan, meanwhile, has few allies in the region. In the present Sino-Japanese spat, it is difficult to think of a single country - with the possible ambiguous exception of Taiwan - which sides with Japan. South Korea’s sentiments, for obvious reasons, lie overwhelmingly with China. Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore have all expressed sympathy with Chinese sentiments. Japan has only itself to blame: it is the author of its own estrangement and it shows no sign of being willing to do anything about it.

· Martin Jacques is a visiting fellow at the LSE Asia Research Centre

Posted at 11:10 AM · Comments (1)

Copyright - The Telegraph

Khartoum
(Filed: 23/04/2005)

A metallic maze of chimneys, pipes and vents glitters
on the horizon in the desert outside Khartoum,
dominating the landscape for miles around.

This new oil refinery is the jewel in the crown of
Sudan’s military regime. It forms the vital artery of
a thriving oil industry that poured £1 billion into
government coffers last year.

Without this windfall gain - likely to be far larger
this year - President Omar al-Bashir could not
maintain his military machine, let alone wage war
against rebels in the western region of Darfur. Nor
could he hope to withstand the international pressure
that his bloody campaign in Darfur has brought upon
him.

Moreover, the oil that started to flow as recently as
1999 has given President Bashir an indispensable
international ally.

Almost unnoticed by the outside world, China has
become the key player in Sudan’s oil industry.

Beijing has invested £8 billion in Sudanese oil
through the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), a
state-owned monolith. The cost of Khartoum’s new
refinery alone was about £350 million.

Freshly painted billboards in Khartoum carry pictures
of smiling Chinese oil workers and the slogan: “CNPC -
Your close friend and faithful partner”. But this
faithful friend is secretive about its stake in
Africa’s largest country. China’s embassy in Khartoum
and its commercial office declined to talk about oil.

A CNPC spokesman said: “We are a shareholder in a
number of operating companies here. We conduct our
operations through them. If you want to learn more,
you must contact the mines and energy ministry.”

Yet CNPC’s annual report discloses that about half of
all its overseas oil comes from Sudan. It deployed
10,000 Chinese workers to build a 900-mile pipeline,
linking Heglig oilfield in Kordofan province with Port
Sudan on the Red Sea.

The company’s report trumpets this achievement as its
“first long-distance crude pipeline constructed and
operated abroad”.

In fact, China shamelessly curried favour with Mr
Bashir by speeding up this mammoth project so it could
be finished in June 1999 - the tenth anniversary of
the coup that brought him to power.

China is now dependent on Sudan for seven per cent of
all its oil imports. Hence Beijing has gone to great
efforts to shield Mr Bashir.

Last September, the United Nations Security Council
passed resolution 1564, threatening Sudan with oil
sanctions unless it curbed the violence in Darfur. But
China immediately rendered this meaningless by
pledging to veto any bid to impose an embargo.

Critics accuse China of being Sudan’s chief
international protector.

“It’s very clear that’s what is happening,” said
Georgette Gagnon, the deputy director of the Africa
desk at Human Rights Watch.

“China is now the largest foreign investor in Sudan so
it has an economic interest in ensuring that the
Sudanese government is not penalised too harshly. It
has been opposed to sanctions from day one.”

Beijing needs Sudan because its appetite for oil is
insatiable.

China’s economic boom means that oil consumption is
forecast to grow by at least 10 per cent every year
for the foreseeable future. If so, China’s domestic
reserves will be depleted in the next two decades.

So the quest for overseas oil is one of Beijing’s
central goals. On Thursday China signed a “strategic
partnership” with Nigeria, a major oil exporter, and
has oil interests in at least three other African
countries.

In its scramble for Africa, China portrays itself as a
more benign partner than the colonial powers and the
modern-day multinational companies.

President Hu Jintao told an Asia-Africa summit in
Jakarta yesterday: “In pursuit of world peace and
common development, China will always stand by, and
work through thick and thin, with developing
countries.” America has already snapped-up the world’s
largest reserves. Saudi Arabia and Iraq - with 370
billion barrels between them, 45 per cent of the
world’s total - are effectively closed to China.

Sudan, by contrast, is a no-go area for western oil
companies. American investment was officially banned
in 1997 and European multinationals steer clear of the
avalanche of protest that would accompany any dealings
with Mr al-Bashir’s regime. China, however, has no
such scruples.

So far, Sudan has only 563 million barrels of proven
reserves, but the energy ministry estimates that at
least five billion barrels lie beneath its deserts.

Sudan’s few independent voices say this has brought
disastrous consequences. “The crisis in Sudan is being
fuelled by the issue of oil,” said William Ezekiel,
editor of the Khartoum Monitor. “The government is
ready to ally with Satan if it can protect its own
interests.”

Posted at 11:05 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright: International Herald Tribune

DATELINE: DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania

BODY:
Tanzania has reinvented itself twice. The first time was in 1964, after a bloody revolution had overthrown the Omani-descended sultan who ruled the neighboring spice island of Zanzibar.

Tanganyika, as it was then, persuaded the successful African-led rebels to join their island with the mainland, and Tanzania came into being. This union remains precarious because of latent Zanzibari nationalism after too many years of misrule.

The second time was when Julius Nyerere, the founding father of Tanzanian independence, stepped down in 1985. Two successive presidents over the last 20 years have ushered in free-market reforms, fundamentally altering the direction of a once moribund socialist economy.

But the legacy of the Zanzibari revolution of 1964 and of Nyerere who died four years ago still hang over the country. Nyerere, who had been a teacher, became Tanzania’s headmaster: He was incorruptible and unpretentious, but authoritarian. His great accomplishment was that he inspired his people to resist the tugs of tribalism and pull together as one people.

Nyerere’s Christian socialist ideology led him to dream of new ways of organizing society, even though there were barely the rudiments of modern structures. Tanzania became riddled with loss-making state industries, banks and plantations.

His biggest mistake of all was what he called “ujamaa” a kind of collectivization inspired by the Israeli kibbutz. This momentous exercise, which uprooted people whose families had farmed the same scattered plots for hundreds of years, failed totally, after having consumed enormous resources and alienated many aid donors. Tanzania fell into increasing disrepair as the economy plunged downward.

The president today is the unassuming Ben Mkapa, once Nyerere’s press secretary. Later this year he will step down, having completed two terms in office, leaving the country transformed into a possible capitalist success story, but with Zanzibar’s volatile politics still rumbling offshore.

Although Mkapa’s governing party dominates Tanzanian politics, he encourages internal debate and multiple rival candidates in elections. The press is free, although not particularly vigorous. Death sentences have been suspended and thousands of prisoners pardoned while he has been in office. Security at his residence is barely visible.

When I asked Mkapa what Nyerere would say if he could revisit his country, he replied that “he would be uneasy that I have given away too much of what was publicly owned and he would probably be upset that I had built up such a prosperous middle class.”

But no one I talked to, either in the ministries or the villages, wants to wind back the clock. Free-market reforms and privatization have propelled Tanzania out of its economic lethargy.

A handsome annual growth rate of 6 percent and burgeoning tax revenues have enabled the Mkapa administration to make sure there is a primary school in every village and to start to expand secondary education and health centers.

When I visited the villages in the district of Iringa, eight hours by road from Dar es Salaam, the capital, I could hardly believe my eyes. When I worked here as an agricultural extension agent 40 years ago, there used to be in the market place just a few heaps of vegetables.

Now there was a cornucopia of produce zucchini and pineapples, eggplant and guavas, fresh peas being podded and a truckload of fresh cabbages being unloaded.

Where once you could only buy maize, now there were sacks of rice from local paddies and Nile perch from Lake Victoria. There was sunflower oil, brought in from the fields that dazzle the countryside with their yellow flowers among the green maize. And everywhere tomatoes enormous baskets of them, with a local sauce factory consuming the surplus.

All this is quite new, as are the cell phones that reach 90 percent of the villages in Iringa district, enabling traders and farmers to cut out the middlemen and find the best price on their own.

Can this continue? Tanzanian economists and the president speak of growth rates of up to 9 percent. World Bank and International Monetary Fund officials are more cautious. But no one thinks that it will fall much below 6 percent unless Zanzibar, with its evenly balanced two-party struggle, explodes.

After the governing party has selected its presidential candidate in May, Mkapa says he will spend a good deal of time talking to the militants on both sides in Zanzibar to defuse the talked-about confrontation at the coming general election in October.

If the country can get past that milestone then we can start to believe that Tanzania, maneuvering at the end of the runway, is ready to get in line for take off.

Posted at 1:23 AM · Comments (0)

The Chinese call it a war crime. The Japanese describe it as an ‘incident’. David McNeill reports from Tokyo on how the Nanjing massacre still haunts an uneasy relationship

20 April 2005

Last weekend, 15-year-old Akari Shimoda sat down to dinner in Tokyo and watched in amazement as snarling protesters in Shanghai shouting “Japanese pigs out” filled her television screen. The demonstrators surrounded the Japanese consulate in the city and pelted it with rocks and bottles before smashing shop windows, overturning cars and beating Japanese students.

“It’s a scary country,” said Akari, who says she does not understand the phrase “repent for war crimes” on the placards of the protesters. “The police just stand around and let them act.”

Does she know why the protesters are angry? “Not really. I think Japan did something to China in the past, I’m not sure what. It was so long ago.”

Japanese children’s ignorance of Asian history, thanks to a curriculum that glosses over imperial Japan’s brief but brutal colonial adventure until 1945, has been a source of controversy in Asia for decades. The contrast in China, where every 15-year-old is taught that wartime Emperor Hirohito’s brainwashed troops butchered and looted their way across their country for 14 years, could not be starker.

This contested history, stoked by growing economic and regional rivalry, helps explain why distrust and suspicion lurk beneath the surface of a booming bilateral trade relationship.

“There is so much hate between our two countries,” says Alice Lee, a saleswoman in Guangzhou, southern China. “Even though I like Japanese culture and products, we Chinese find it hard to forgive them for what they did to us in the past.”

Japanese troops poured into the wartime capital city of Nanjing on 13 December 1937, after suffering heavy casualties in Shanghai. They then began a six-week orgy of medieval raping, killing and looting, carrying out what the United Human Rights Council called “the single worst atrocity during the World War Two era in either the European or Pacific theatres of war”.

An American eyewitness, Minnie Vautrin, who kept a diary, wrote on 16 December 1937: “There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today.” Witnesses said soldiers practised with bayonets on tied-up prisoners, burnt others alive and set dogs on children.

Pregnant women were raped and bayoneted, decapitated heads were put on spikes or waved around like trophies, hundreds of unarmed civilians were mown down with machine guns and dumped in rivers and open graves.

Tillman Durdin, the New York Times reporter who called the rape of Nanjing “one of the great atrocities of modern times”, described a car journey to the city’s river front. “The car just had to drive over these dead bodies. And the scene on the river front, as I waited for the launch … was of a group of smoking, chattering Japanese officers overseeing the massacring of a battalion of Chinese captured troops.”

The most famous witness was John Rabe - the so-called Good Man of Nanjing, an Oscar Schindler-type businessman who ran the local Nazi party but became leader of an international safety zone that reportedly saved 250,000 lives.

After weeks watching children and old women being repeatedly raped then murdered, often with extreme cruelty, he wrote in his diary that the suffering “dumbfounded” him. Exactly how many were killed in Nanjing is one of the most bitterly contested statistics of the Second World War.

The best-known account, by the Chinese-American author Iris Chang, who committed suicide earlier this year and who said she “felt rage” and suffered nightmares during her research, claims more than 300,000 Chinese died and at least 20,000 women were raped. Her 1997 book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, was the target of a vitriolic campaign by neo-nationalists in Japan who said it was full of lies and exaggerations.

Today, Nanjing is another of China’s booming, rapidly modernising cities, a metropolis of more than four million people with wide tree-lined streets and a new highway stretching to Shanghai. The city memorialises the winter of 1937 in a sparse concrete bunker in the south-western suburbs where the figure “300,000” is carved in four-foot black lettering on the museum wall. Inside, an exhibition of pictures of mutilated corpses and glass cases containing the bones of the victims concludes with a visitors’ book.

“I cried when I learnt what my country did,” reads a comment from one of the many Japanese visitors.

In the catalogue of Japanese war crimes in China, Nanjing is rivalled only by the gruesome experiments of Unit 731, which was then the most elaborate biological warfare programme ever created; a four-mile complex of squat buildings in Ping Fang, south of Harbin, that turned diseases such as typhoid, anthrax, smallpox, cholera and dysentery into mass-produced killers.

The atrocities included dissection of live prisoners in an attempt to determine the effects of pathogens on the human body.

Yoshio Shinozuka, who was just 16 years old when he was dispatched by authorities in Tokyo to help the Unit 731 scientists, remembers the first time he assisted in an experiment on one of the prisoners who were known asmurata, or logs.

“I knew the Chinese individual we dissected alive,” he recalls. “At the vivisection I could not meet his eyes because of the hate in them. He was infected with plague germs and, as the disease took its toll, his face and body became totally black. Still alive, he was brought on a stretcher to the autopsy room, where I was ordered to wash the body. I used a rubber hose and a deck brush to wash him … The man’s organs were methodically excised one by one.” The results harvested by military scientists from these experiments were, by 1940, being used to spread typhoid, cholera and plague across China.

Teams of soldiers were sent to dump pathogens in rivers and water supplies. When these methods proved too slow and soldiers ended up poisoning themselves, military brains were racked for more efficient delivery systems. Shinozuka and his colleagues were put to work cultivating fleas.

When Japanese planes flew over Chongshan village in Zheijiang Province in 1942, the residents remember seeing a black cloud descending from the skies. Within days, many residents developed high fevers, headaches and swollen lymph nodes; the symptoms of flea-borne plague - the same disease that wiped out much of the European population in the Middle Ages. Within two months, about 400 people, or one-third of the village’s population, had died.

Estimates of casualties from Japan’s germ warfare programme in China from 1932 to 1945 vary, but the most careful English- language study so far, by the American historian Sheldon H Harris, says that even by late 1942 the casualty count “fell into the six-figure range”. Outbreaks of disease continued long after the scientists - whose parting gift was to release thousands of disease-ridden rats before dynamiting the germ factories - melted back into post-war civilian life back home.

Few Japanese students know anything about Unit 731, even though, after years of denial, a Japanese court ruled in a landmark lawsuit three years ago that the germ warfare programme did exist. Most Chinese know the whole sordid tale, including the bitter sting at the end.

While Shinozuka and other Unit 731 minions were sent to Chinese prisons as war criminals, the military mandarins who had built the programme and boasted of its war-winning potential to Tokyo were protected in exchange for their research findings.

In newly released documents published by historians over the past decade, American military scientists emphasised the “extreme value” of the intelligence information gained in Japanese germ-warfare tests. “The value to the US of Japanese biological warfare data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from ‘war crimes’ prosecution,” wrote one. The military seal of approval meant immunity for the key figures, including the programme’s architect, Shiro Ishii, who died in Tokyo in 1959 without ever spending a day in court.

Many went on to have lucrative post-war careers in the medical industry. Unit 731 and its aftermath ranks, according to the veteran Japanese civil rights lawyer Keiichiro Ichinose, with the worst of the Nazis’ war crimes. “The government here has got to come to terms with this before it can move forward with the rest of its Asian neighbours,” he says.

Japan’s way of moving forward since the war has been to sign normalisation agreements with its former enemies, ending all claims for compensation, and to hand over billions of dollars in development aid, an apology of sorts that means not having to say the word sorry.

But its failure to make a clean break with the past has allowed the issue of war guilt to be manipulated by Beijing, which has ratcheted up patriotism, anti-Japanese and anti-US rhetoric as the social fallout from two decades of breakneck capitalism has grown. And as disputes over resources and territory worsen, this patriotism threatens to take on a life of its own.

As Japanese businesses and consulates in China cleaned up after another weekend of rioting, one of the sadder sights on television was diplomats on both sides insisting that they had not said sorry. “It is Japan who should apologise first for its war history,” said Wu Dawei, the Vice-Foreign Minister. Meanwhile, Japan’s Foreign Minister, Nobutaka Machimura, was telling the press in Tokyo that he had not expressed “deep apologies” during a private meeting with Li Zhaoxing, his Chinese counterpart. “I said no such thing,” he said. After all these years, sorry, it seems, is still the hardest word.

What it says in the Japanese textbooks

The history textbook at the centre of the dispute between Japan and its neighbours is just one of eight selected by Japan’s Ministry of Education for use in secondary schools. In it, the Japanese invasion of Asia is called the “war in Asia and the Pacific” and the word “invasion” changed to “advancement”, or replaced with neutral phases like “extension of the battle line”.

References to Unit 731 are dropped. The 1937 Nanjing massacre is changed to the “Nanjing incident” and the casualties played down, with the implication that China invented the episode - a common contention among Japanese nationalists; Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo’s governor, famously called the massacre a “Chinese lie”.

References to “comfort women”, or an estimated 100,000-200,000 sexual slaves from across Asia forced to service imperial troops, are not included.

The 1943 Greater East Asia Conference, held in Tokyo, was said to be working for the “cooperation of each country and the elimination of racial discrimination”, even as imperial scientists were experimenting on Chinese prisoners in Unit 731 like animals in a zoo.

The benefits of Japan’s brief colonial rule of the Korean peninsula are extolled and China is essentially blamed for its own subjugation for rebuffing Japan’s attempts in the 1920s to deal with the country “in a spirit of co-operation”.

War in China was prolonged, the textbook says, because of the tactics of the Chinese Communist Party, which formed an alliance with the Nationalists in the 1930s. The population in Japan’s colonial outposts around Asia “co-operated” to defeat Western imperialism.

This approach is combined with the sometimes selective use of facts: readers are told that Japanese people tried to save Jews from the Nazi Holocaust but not that imperial scientists were also conducting Nazi-style experiments on Chinese and other Asian prisoners; that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been judged a crime on a par with the Holocaust and the African slave trade, but not that the Japanese war machine also enslaved millions of Asians.

The Japan that emerges from the pages is moderate, stoic and put-upon; a reluctant warrior steering a tortuous path between the Scylla of national security and the Charybdis of Western colonialism. It is a comforting picture, but not one that the rest of Asia is likely to agree with.

Posted at 11:12 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright - The International Herald Tribune

DATELINE: CALCUTTA

BODY:
During his visit last week, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao dazzled Indians with the oblique diplomacy at which the Chinese excel. Resisting pressure to proclaim China’s recognition of India’s 1975 annexation of the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, he nevertheless delighted his hosts by quietly handing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a map that showed Sikkim as just another Indian state.

Indians are hoping that similar sophistication also explains Wen’s refusal to commit himself to India’s claim to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. All he would say in this context was that “China understands and supports India’s aspirations to play an active role in the UN and international affairs.” Jubilant listeners interpreted this as effective support, arguing that only Japan’s embarrassing candidature prevented an explicit endorsement.

More likely the Chinese are waiting to see which way the Indian cat jumps in the emerging pattern of alignments. The stakes were underlined when the United States, which has been wooing India with the prize of global status as a future counterpoise to China, pressed its suit during Wen’s visit with the offer of a range of military network systems of far greater consequence than the controversial fighter jets promised to both India and Pakistan.

China’s objective is to redraw Asia’s strategic map so that a booming but friendly India replaces Japan as the other regional pole, and also supplements, if not replaces, the United States as a virtually bottomless market for inexpensive Chinese consumer goods.

Hence a $20 billion trade target for 2008, rising to $30 billion by 2010, that would oust the United States as India’s largest trading partner. The intense interest Wen, himself an engineer, took in India’s information-technology industry confirmed plans to develop former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji’s imaginative proposal for a marriage between Indian software and Chinese hardware, presumably one day to mount an Asian challenge to the West’s industrial supremacy.

There is no denying the temptation for India in this replay of cold war games. The “guiding principles” for settling boundaries could pave the way for peace along the long Himalayan border by swapping disputed territories over which the two neighbors fought a brief but bitter war in 1962. Moreover, their new “strategic and cooperative partnership for peace and prosperity” acknowledged parity between the two sides, whereas in the past China treated India as a regional power, important in South Asia maybe, but of no more global consequence than Pakistan, which has one-fifth India’s area and one-seventh the population.

Though the partnership arrangement’s content and purpose have not been defined, Indians see it as setting an Asian imprimatur on U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s highly gratifying description of India as “a major world power in the 21st century.” It is a moot point whether Wen would have been so forthcoming without this earlier U.S. overture.

Despite last week’s bonhomie, India remains wary of Chinese moves and maneuvers in South Asia and surrounding seas. Continuing military (including nuclear) help for Pakistan, where Wen stopped off before flying to Bangalore to start his Indian tour, remains a sore point, the $250 million deep-sea port China is building at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea being a particular cause for anxiety. When ready, it will enable the Chinese, already entrenched in Myanmar across the Bay of Bengal and with a surveillance station in the Coco Islands, to restrict India from both flanks.

China’s pointed cordiality toward King Gyanendra of Nepal is another irritant. In contrast, the United States is as severe with the king as India is.

Similar rivalry in the 1950’s enabled India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to hold the world’s spotlight. A revival of heady diplomacy is a reminder that the Indian Dream is not so much to exercise world power as to be hailed as a world power. Having said goodbye to Wen, India’s external affairs minister, Natwar Singh, flew to Washington for parleys with Rice. Pakistan’s strongman president, Pervez Musharraf, will be in New Delhi this weekend, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan a few weeks later.

The lesson of all this shuttling is that in the emerging Great Game, India will neither forsake its American alliance for a Chinese version of the Concert of Asia, nor help the United States to contain China. A John Foster Dulles among the neoconservatives would undoubtedly find this neutrality immoral.

***

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, a former editor of The Statesman in India, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

Posted at 10:57 AM · Comments (0)

LETTER FROM ASIA
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

Published: April 21, 2005 - Copyright The New York Times

SHANGHAI, April 19 - The banners had been carefully printed, the slogans memorized, and the students and young unleashed onto the streets of China’s largest, most sophisticated city, where they were to speak sacred truths and make the enemies of the people tremble.

Chinese today have little experience of mass organized protests, so when the Government tolerated - some would say encouraged - a huge anti-Japanese demonstration here that flirted with turning into a riot over the weekend, for many it bore echoes of the mass manipulation of students of another era, the Cultural Revolution.

For hours on Saturday, thousands of Chinese, from teenagers to people in their 30’s, lay siege to the Japanese consulate in this city, smashing its windows and defacing its walls with a copious rain of rocks and bottles. But for all the expressions of anger against Japan by people far too young to have memories of China’s brutal subjugation by its neighbor, at its most basic level this was a festival of runaway nationalism, of a government-nurtured Chinese-ness.

Declaring themselves to be all one people, the demonstrators proclaimed their love of the police who escorted them as they marched to the consulate, smashing Japanese shops along the way. Banners extolled Chinese greatness, in contrast to little Japan, chanters called for their homeland to stand tall, and talk was dominated by Chinese “feelings,” a word repeated over and over, as if no other feelings counted.

Revealingly, people who had lived through the real Cultural Revolution, not the sanitized one taught in China’s history books, watched from the sidelines with looks of amazement and worry. They were old enough to remember just how badly things can go when intoxication is the order of the day, and laws are swept aside by feelings.

“I watched the police cars escorting the demonstrators and felt this all looked familiar, like an official event in the Cultural Revolution, but those drew bigger crowds and were more emotional,” said Zhu Xueqin, a historian at Shanghai University who emerged from a public library to watch the march go by. “I observed it as a bystander, and the people observing around me looked indifferent, seemingly full of reservations.”

Shanghai is the most dazzling symbol of a China that has changed so much since the Cultural Revolution as to be almost unrecognizable. But in some important ways, most notably the government’s will to control information and through it people’s minds, the events of the weekend here and their aftermath show that this country has barely changed at all.

The Maoist slogans of 40 years ago have been replaced by anti-Japanese watchwords, and then as now, few of those caught up in the excitement paused to examine the relationship of today’s slogans to the truth. Here were students mouthing such claims as “Japan has never apologized to China,” or “Japanese textbooks whitewash history.” Many Japanese textbooks have recently de-emphasized atrocities committed in China, and some have been widely distributed. But in China, the most tendentious of them is the one cited as a representative sample, although it is used by less than 1 percent of Japanese schools.

Others said, trembling with conviction, that Japan wants to keep China down, or even instigate the country’s breakup. Never mind that for over two decades, Japan has been a leading source of development assistance for China - to the tune of $30 billion in low interest loans - helping build everything from Shanghai’s futuristic airport to expensive highway and water systems in the country’s vast, impoverished west.

Few in the Chinese crowds, including many educated in the country’s best schools, seemed aware of facts like those, or of any other side to the story save what could be fit into the dichotomy of a China that is essentially good and a Japan that is predatory, evil, conniving or, in a word heard over and over, “disgusting.”

Like anything that involves information in China, this ignorance seems the result of careful planning. Since diplomatic relations between the two countries were normalized in 1972, for example, Japanese officials have apologized numerous times to China for the suffering their country inflicted in the 20th century. In 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, for example, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama spoke of the ” tremendous damage and suffering” his country had caused, adding, “I regard, in a spirit of humanity, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology.”

But China’s state-controlled media have usually focused on finding fault with each Japanese pronouncement, sustaining the belief that Japan has indeed never apologized.

The largest question, perhaps, is why China would so carefully sustain anger at Japan.

One possibility is that in recent years, the legitimacy of China’s leadership has rested on few things so much as the idea of inevitability - a destined ascension of the country to prosperous world-power status and a return to the unquestioned pre-eminence in the East that it enjoyed before the 20th century. In this picture there is little room for Japan, a country that has derailed China’s ambitions before, and suddenly seems unwilling to fade.

This could help explain China’s reactions to Tokyo’s bid for a United Nations Security Council seat and discussions under way in Japan about revising the country’s so-called peace constitution, as well as Chinese nervousness about Taiwan, which Japan, together with the United States, recently called a joint security concern.

By midweek, signs were multiplying that China’s leaders were rethinking their confrontation with Japan, at least at the level of public relations. With the ugliness toward their neighbor threatening a loss of international sympathy on other issues, China first reportedly made a quiet offer to repair Japan’s damaged consulate, and on Tuesday urged an end to demonstrations.

Left aside in the weekend’s atmospherics in the effort to dispel them was the question of whether China has done a better job teaching history than its neighbor. In the West, it is accepted as fact that more Chinese were killed by the policies of Mao Zedong than by the Japanese, including many by summary execution and other atrocities that are glossed over in Chinese textbooks. In those books, Mao is still treated with reverence.

China also claims never to have seized territory from a neighbor, but China attacked India by surprise in 1962 and the details of other campaigns, from Korea and Xinjiang in the north to Vietnam and Tibet in the country’s south and west, are also absent from textbooks.

More remarkable than any glance at the receding past, however, was the way news of the anti-Japanese demonstrations has been treated in China in the here and now. Chinese authorities televised notices that the protests had not been approved on the eve of Saturday’s anti-Japanese demonstration, which served as much as anything else as an announcement of the event. The news the next day avoided all mention of disorder. Similarly there were no images of young people pelting the Japanese consulate at their leisure, within arm’s reach of paramilitary police.

The seeming contradictions in all of this were not lost on all Chinese, however. Discussions have raged all week on the Internet, with many questioning their countrymen’s behavior and the government’s permissiveness toward anti-Japanese violence. “How shameful is it that to release our emotions we damaged the property of our countrymen and bullied the weak,” wrote one forum participant? “You call yourselves patriotic? Patriotic what?”

Posted at 1:09 AM · Comments (0)

In an interview, columnist and author Thomas L. Friedman says globalization has outpaced its critics

YaleGlobal, 18 April 2005

Nayan Chanda:

Reading the book, one gets the impression that you took a dive into the innards of globalization and came out with some amazing tales of how things are happening behind the scenes that we don’t see. What are, the main forces changing the globalized world today?

Thomas L. Friedman:

In doing this book, I didn’t really read a bunch of other books, I really dove into the companies themselves who were spearheading this process. And the book, in that sense, is very inductive. I looked at what companies were doing and then tried to tease out the general patterns.

To begin with, my primary tutors for this book, were two Indian entrepreneurs: the president of Wipro, Vivec Paul, and the CEO of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani. So, how did I happen to end up with two Indian entrepreneurs? It’s because they’re actually at the epicenter of it now.

Secondly, I really dove into some key companies that are now globalizing and are really the source for understanding globalization. Wal-Mart, UPS – these are companies we don’t traditionally think of as being goldmines of insights into globalization, but in fact if you understand what’s going on inside these companies, you can get an amazing view of the flattening of the global playing field and the forces that are doing it.

Nayan Chanda:

Both these companies you mention do not produce anything. They agglomerate or repackage others’ products. So how are they tapping the resources from this flat world?

Thomas L. Friedman:

Well, in the case of Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart’s great innovation, as you say, is that Wal-Mart doesn’t make anything. But what they do is draw products from all over the world and get them into stores at incredibly low prices. How do they do that? Through a global supply chain that has been designed down to the last atom of efficiency.

In the case of UPS, they’ve designed a global delivery system that allows them to deliver their products with that same efficiency; they literally have a phenomenon at UPS called “end-of-runway services.” Right before your product gets shipped, they’ll attach something: a new lens to your camera … a special logo to your tennis shoes. That’s how efficient these systems have become.

Nayan Chanda:

Now of course, there have been a lot of criticisms of the business model of Wal-Mart, because it is driven by the single motive: maximizing profits for shareholders. And in the process, they give products at a cheap price to the consumers. But people are complaining that this model leaves the workers out of the equation. … So, is this a good model to promote?

Thomas L. Friedman:

Well, Wal-Mart to me, really demonstrates one of the phenomena of a flat world. I would call it “multiple-identity disorder.” I have to tell you, the consumer in me loves Wal-Mart. Wow, you can go there and get really quality goods at really low prices. … The shareholder in me loves Wal-Mart. The citizen in me hates Wal-Mart, because they only cover some 40 percent of their employees with health care … and when a Wal-Mart employee that doesn’t have health care gets sick, what do they do? They go to the emergency ward at general hospital, and … then we tax-payers pay their health care. The neighbor in me is very disturbed about Wal-Mart. Disturbed about stories about how they’ve discriminated against women, disturbed about stories that they’ve locked employees into their stores overnight, disturbed about how they pay some of their employees. So when it comes to Wal-Mart, Nayan, I’ve got multiple identity disorder, because the shareholder and the consumer in me feels one thing, and the citizen and the neighbor in me feel something quite different.

Nayan Chanda:

How do you resolve the dissonance you have between the citizen in you and the consumer in you?

Thomas L. Friedman:

I really support consumer activism that will say to Wal-Mart, that we as neighbors and consumers will say to Wal-Mart, “I love your low prices, but you know what? We’re ready to spend five cents more … if you’ll use two of those five cents to cover more of your employees with health care.”

Nayan Chanda:

One of the few views that have come out of your book, the criticisms seem to be that in your flat world, the poorest of the countries, like Africa, don’t really figure. So why are you leaving Africa behind in your discussion of the flat world?

Thomas L. Friedman:

I have a chapter in the book called “The Un-Flat World,” in which I talk about the countries that are still the majority that still aren’t flat. You know, the job of the analyst is really to identify a trend, just when it reaches the tipping point, but before anyone else sees it. And the trend is this flattening process, which I think has reached this tipping point, as evidenced by the degree that China and India – one-third of the planet – have been able to use and exploit this platform.

But I fully recognize that although it’s reached the tipping point, there are still a lot of people who are not part of it. Africa is not part of it because it hasn’t learned to globalize. Our job, as citizens of the planet, let alone as citizens of the wealthiest country in the world, is to help create the tools and conditions for places like Africa to be part of it.

Nayan Chanda:

Another point that becomes clear in your book is the role of the individual. And these individuals, who are either part of the flat world or outside of the flat world, are not geographically confined to one area. And at the same time, these people have political power, influence. How can these people’s influence be not destructive?

Thomas L. Friedman:

It’s a problem actually. The flat world is a friend of Infosys and of Al-Qaeda. It’s a friend of IBM and of Islamic jihad. Because these networks go both ways. And one thing we know about the bad guys: They’re early adopters. Criminals, terrorists – very early adopters. The person who understands supply chains almost as well as Sam Walton [founder of Wal-Mart], is Osama Bin Laden. We have an issue there with the most frustrated and dangerous elements of the world using this flat planet in order to advance their goals. Our job is to try to soak up those tools, so that we can use these collaborative tools in a more constructive way.

Nayan Chanda:

Another element which is interesting compared to “Lexus and the Olive Tree,” is that olive trees have not disappeared; olive trees still have strong roots. So how do nationalism and a flat world intersect?

Thomas L. Friedman:

You know in Lexus I wrote that no two countries would fight a war so long as they both had McDonald’s. And I was really trying to give an example of how when a country gets a middle class big enough to sustain a McDonald’s network, they generally want to focus on economic development.

In “Flat World,” I take that theory one step further into what I call the “Dell Theory” – you know, Dell Computers. The Dell Theory says that no two countries that are part of the same global supply chain will ever fight a war as long as they’re each still part of that supply chain.

Do I think this guarantees that there won’t be a war? No, I understand olive trees; people will do crazy things over their olive trees. But here’s what I predict: If you do go to war and you’re part of one these supply-chains, whatever price you think you’re going to pay, you’re going to pay ten times more.

Nayan Chanda:

From the United States, it seems that the olive tree is simply turning away. There is barely a discussion in political circles or in media circles. How do you explain that, and what can one do about it?

Thomas L. Friedman:

I think there are four factors; it’s a kind of “perfect storm” that’s come together. … First of all, there’s 9/11, which completely distracted everyone – including myself – from this. Number two, there’s the dot-com bust. A lot of very silly people equated globalization with the dot-com boom. And so when the bust came along, all these people said that globalization was over. Well, actually a flat world drove globalization to a whole new stratosphere. And the third factor is Enron. Enron made all CEOs guilty until proven innocent. As a result, people weren’t interacting with them. Fourth is what’s going on in the world of academia and basically the anti-globalization movement – which is basically dead today – because China and India have embraced this process and this project. I would argue that the anti-globalization movement and the people who have been its intellectual leaders, have been kind of dining out on the carcass of Globalization 2.0. And they’re kind of like jackals that have been eating and picking away at this carcass all these years. They’re all still talking about the IMF and the World Bank and conditionality – as if globalization is all about what the IMF and World Bank impose and force on the developing world. Well when the world is flat, there’s a lot more globalization that’s about pull. This is people in the developing world – in China, Russia, India, Brazil – wanting to pull down these opportunities.

So for all these reasons, right when we’ve reach this incredible inflection point – the world is getting flat, which I believe this is the equivalent of Gutenberg and the printing press – nobody is talking about it.

Posted at 11:42 AM · Comments (0)

China’s growing economic power and diplomatic clout may portend a turning of the tide against the US in Asia

YaleGlobal, 20 April 2005

Winning friends, influencing people: Premier Wen Jiabao is greeted by people in Vientiane waving Lao and Chinese flags. (Photo: Reuters)

WASHINGTON: In a recent poll of Australians conducted by the Lowy Institute in Sydney, 69 percent of those surveyed had “positive feelings” towards China, while only 58 percent had such sentiment for Australia’s staunch ally, the United States. Equally striking is that 72 percent of respondents agreed with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s expressed view that the United States should not automatically assume Australia’s assistance in the event that US becomes embroiled in a conflict with China over Taiwan.

Other surveys over recent months in South Korea and Thailand – which, together with Australia, the Philippines, and Japan are the formal US allies in Asia – have revealed similar shifts in perceptions. The Thai and South Korean publics clearly hold very positive images of China, while their esteem for the United States has declined.

What is going on here? At the governmental level, all five allies profess their official allegiance to the US alliance architecture that has maintained peace and stability in East Asia since at least 1975. But these polls do reflect rather dramatic shifts in public opinion throughout many Asian societies – in favor of China and against America. The significant exceptions to this rule are in Japan and Taiwan – where the opposite trend has occurred.

Underlying these shifting public perceptions lie three phenomena.

First – particularly relevant in the South Korean case – Seoul finds itself much more in tune with Beijing’s views (and vice versa) than Washington’s approach to the North Korean nuclear problem. Publicly, the South Korean and US governments profess their agreement on the Six Party Talks and how to handle the North – but underneath, the ROK government shares many perspectives with China.

Second, many Southeast Asian governments are frustrated by Washington’s myopic focus on the war on terrorism in the region, while not being attentive to a variety of other regional concerns.

Third, and of greater importance, has been China’s “charm offensive” and very successful diplomacy in recent years throughout the Asian region. Taken together with Washington’s twin preoccupations with the North Korean nuclear problem and the war on terror, China’s proactive approach to its neighbors has contributed to this shift in regional perceptions.

China’s increased economic power and these changing perceptions have prompted countries along China’s periphery to readjust their relations with Beijing. As China’s influence continues to grow, many of these countries look to Beijing for regional leadership or, at a minimum, take into account China’s interests and concerns in their decision-making. Although China is far from being the only consequential power, its desire for a larger role has become a principal catalyst in shaping a new order in Asia. The region’s increasing view of China as a status quo power is even more pronounced when compared with the frequently negative images of China in the past.

China’s new proactive regional posture is reflected in virtually all policy spheres – politically, multilaterally, economically, and militarily. Politically, China’s bilateral relations with its neighbors have never been better; many formerly antagonistic relationships (Russia, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia) are now thriving.

Multilaterally, China’s deep engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries in Central Asia reveals a key element in Beijing’s enhanced regional profile: It reflects an increased appreciation by the Chinese government of the importance of norms and “soft power” in diplomacy. Chinese print media, television, music, food, and popular culture are spreading around the region as never before. So, too, are Chinese tourists fanning out across the region, often filling the void left by American tourists staying home after 9/11, the Bali bombing, and tsunami; 800,000 Chinese toured both Thailand and Singapore in 2004.

Beijing’s growing appreciation of “soft-power diplomacy” is also evident in China’s efforts to train future generations of intellectuals, technicians, and political elites in its universities and technical colleges. China increasingly sees higher education as an instrument of statecraft. Approximately 80 percent of the 78,000 foreign students studying in Chinese universities last year came from other Asian nations. Calculating the influence of this academic training on future generations of Asian elites is difficult to measure with any precision, but their experiences will certainly sensitize them to Chinese viewpoints and national interests. Those who enter officialdom may be more accommodating of Chinese interests and demands. They will also share personal connections with former classmates and will move up through professional hierarchies simultaneously.

China’s growing engagement with the Asian region is perhaps most evident in the economic domain. According to official Chinese customs statistics, trade between China and the rest of Asia topped US$495 billion in 2003, up 36.5 percent over 2002. During the first eight months of 2004 (final year-end figures are not yet available), China’s exports and imports continued to surge; exports to its 13 neighbors grew by an average of 42 percent, while imports surged on average 66 percent. Trade growth has been stimulated particularly by sharp rises in China’s imports of components and semi-finished products from around the region (which jumped 42 percent to US$272.9 billion), much of which is assembled into final-demand goods and exported to the United States and Europe. Today, nearly half of China’s total trade volume is intra-regional, and unlike China’s trade with the United States and Europe, it is relatively balanced.

In the security sphere, considerable anxiety remains about the pace and scope of China’s military modernization program, as well as Beijing’s refusal to renounce the use of force against Taiwan. The recent passage of China’s “Anti-Succession Law” only heightened these concerns.

Yet, in recent years, Beijing has become much more sensitive to these regional concerns and has worked hard to try and assuage them. China has been able to offset concerns about its buildup against Taiwan with a series of confidence-building measures of four principal types:

• bilateral security dialogues initiated with several neighboring countries (to date with Australia, India, Japan, Mongolia, and South Korea),

• military-military exchanges (including joint naval exercises),

• increased participation in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which Beijing sees as a potential catalyst for establishing a regional cooperative security community, and

• increased military transparency, as demonstrated by its publication of several defense white papers and invitations to observe Chinese military exercises.

Again, while regional concerns remain regarding China’s military capabilities and ambitions, these efforts have gone some way towards ameliorating the angst.

Despite the significance of China’s regional rise, it is tempting – but premature – to conclude that the Asian regional system has become Sinocentric or dominated by China. This is decidedly not the case. China shares the regional stage with the United States, Japan, ASEAN, and increasingly India. The United States remains the region’s most powerful actor, although its power and influence are neither unconstrained nor uncontested.

Today, the Asian regional order is an increasingly complex mosaic of actors and factors. China is certainly among the most important of these, and its influence is being increasingly felt. Nonetheless, the shifting public perceptions of China and the United States – as reflected in the polls mentioned at the beginning – is an indicator of current trends and perhaps a harbinger of things to come.

The author is Professor of Political Science & International Affairs, and Director of the China Policy Program, in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Portions of this article are drawn from his recently-published article “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order, published in International Security, Vol. 29, Issue 3 (Winter 2004/2005), available at: http://mitpress.mit.edu.

Rights:
© 2005 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Posted at 11:33 AM · Comments (0)

20 April 2005

Where is the origin of human beings? From where did
the ancestors of today’s ethnic groups worldwide
migrate? An explorative program on human races’
migrations was initiated on April 18.

To uncover the centuries’ mystery, scientists with ten
research centers of the participant countries ¨C
including China, Russia, France, Britain — will
collect 100,000 human DNA samples in five years to
outline an accurate genetic structure of peoples in
the world.

The School of Life Science of Fudan University in east
China’s Shanghai municipality is the only institution
in East Asia and Southeast Asia designated to the
program. It will be dedicated to collect over 10, 000
DNA samples in the region.

China started independently in 1997 on the Chinese
part and has made some achievement, according to Dr.
Li Hui from the School of Life Science of Fudan
University. From the nearly 20, 000 DNA samples
collected on different ethnic groups in China, it is
found that Chinese ancestors set off from northeast
Africa about 50, 000 years ago, across the Middle
East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, arrived in
today’s Yunnan and Guangxi about 30, 000 years before
now.

They evolved into 56 ethnic groups throughout tens of
thousands of years, among whom, Han and Tibetan people
were the latest to branch out therefore were the
closest in terms of blood tie. This provides strong
evidence for the concept that “Han and Tibetan people
had the same ancestors”.

Every cell in the human body has a whole set of
genome, in which 99 percent of the DNA sequence
information is the same and one percent is
individually specific. If the samples are huge in
amount, the one percent of individual information will
converge into a large database through which
scientists can easily find the common characteristics
of different groups.

As for gene security, which draws much concern, Fudan
University has specially established an ethics
committee committed to monitoring the research on the
DNA samples on China’s part. Personal information will
be stored anonymously and can not be shown without
personal password.

Posted at 1:34 AM · Comments (0)

Note: I’ve talked extensively about this beautiful book in the Reading Table section and elsewhere. hf

Pankaj Mishra

An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World
by Pankaj Mishra

Farrar, Straus and Giroux,422 pp., $25.00

In his new book, Free World, Timothy Garton Ash remembers the friends he had behind the Iron Curtain who used to tell him, “We are the West trapped in the East.” There are many kinds of East, as Garton Ash quickly acknowledges, and yet sometimes they seem to be linked by this theme of imprisonment and what arises out of it, a longing for enlightenment and liberation (in a secular form). We in the West have watched for years would-be refugees going off to find—or lose— themselves in India, or in a Buddhist monastery, eager to absorb the “wisdom of the East.” Yet what’s awaiting them at the other end, increasingly, is people hungering for the wisdom of the West.

The West, for those far away, means a haven of modern thinking, reason, and clear-headedness, qualities not always apparent at home, and a refuge from ritualism and superstition; those who long for it are Occidentalists in a hopeful sense. And though such admirers are to be found in every traditional or impoverished culture, they are especially conspicuous in countries such as India, where centuries of British rule have left many people thinking of London or Oxford as the natural culmination of their ambitions, social or intellectual. Nirad Chaudhuri was able to complete his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, in some sense, by moving to North Oxford; V.S. Naipaul, though growing up far from Asia, began to take an interest in his Eastern and colonial roots only after he had established himself in England, and felt he could bring a Western sense of history and critical inquiry to his often disheveled homelands. The note of sorrow and even bitterness one increasingly hears in his work comes in part from his sense that, having arrived at last in the West, he finds it crumbling all around him.

Pankaj Mishra is the latest distinctive heir to this tradition, and his deepest theme is how the dream of the West at once inspires and confounds a hopeful young man in small-town India who longs to escape the “cruel, garish world of middle-class India” and to remake himself, much as Naipaul has done, through books and reflective wanderings alone. Mishra’s first book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana (1995), describes his travels around a provincial India where a new video-and-Vegas culture is creating a bumptious bourgeoisie that has taken in the latest toys from the West, but has no sense of how to use them. His first novel, The Romantics, in 2000, brought the theme closer to home by describing an Indian student in Benares, his head full of Flaubert and Turgenev, watching, in bewilderment and with mingled wonder and disappointment, the Western visitors around him picking up and dropping philosophies and partners with an ease unimaginable to him. These drifters look nothing like the people he has met in the pages of Edmund Wilson or Schopenhauer; more hauntingly, though having had the benefits of Enlightenment cultures, they seem lost themselves, confused and disenchanted. The book is moving because it shows us the passage to the East as it looks from the other side of the fence, Siddhartha, you could say, as it might seem to one who looks for the answer to life’s riddles to Germany.

In An End to Suffering Mishra carries his quest further by recounting his reflections, over a dozen years, on the Buddha. The Buddha has obvious appeal to him as a fellow rebel against the abstractions and corruptions of the Hinduism of his day, spurning the unending speculations of Brahmins who tell those of a less fortunate caste that karma means their fate is fixed, and their duty is to defer to Brahmins. The Buddha, though entirely Eastern by origin, provides an example, in fact, of the very qualities that Mishra has long admired in the West: reason, rigor, and the power of the mind (Buddhism can more easily be called a highly empirical “science of mind” than a religion). In his account of the Buddha’s life, Mishra presents us with a restless young seeker who becomes almost a model of roaming meditation and unflinching self-inquiry. Not the least of the ironies that lie behind this deeply serious and thoughtful book is that perhaps the greatest philosopher the Indian subcontinent has ever produced is increasingly fashionable in India because he is regarded as an icon of the West.
1.

An End to Suffering is, in effect, three different books woven together: a searching account of the author’s own coming of intellectual age; a patient and meticulous retelling of the Buddha’s life and philosophy; and an attempt to place the Buddha in the setting of Western thought, from Plato to Borges. In other hands, such an ambitious mosaic might seem like two books too many, and there are times when Mishra’s efforts to connect almost everything in his life, from his travels in Kashmir to his talk with the brother of Gandhi’s assassin to the precedent set by the Buddha, can seem strained. But he is the rare writer who is at ease as a historian, philosopher, traveler, and memoirist, and the combination of roles allows him to produce a book that few others could even have attempted.

Readers of The Romantics will recall that Mishra can evoke an earnest young Indian’s experience of his world with uncommon beauty and plangency, and his account begins with a heartfelt description of how, in flight from the chaos and confusion of urban India, he settled, many years ago, in a tiny village in the hills of northern India “facing the empty blue valley and remote mountain peaks in the north.” There, with nothing for company but his books and his own thoughts, he set about excavating the Buddha’s history and identity, in part, perhaps, to help acquire a sense of history and identity himself. To recover a past, it could seem, might be the first step to charting a future.

Mishra’s strength in such passages lies in his ease with his own vulnerability, his readiness to present himself as questing, uncertain, full of hopes for the West that the West is unlikely to fulfill. He responds to the Buddha as one who questions everything, even the mind and the world we think we know; but he also turns this questioning spirit on the Buddha, asking how his ideas for individual transformation can help the social order, and how much they merely encourage the unfortunate to accept their lot in life.

Most Indian writers now prominent in the West—Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Amitav Ghosh, for example —were educated and have long resided in the West; Mishra’s work gains particular force from the fact that he grew up entirely in India, in a railway town “that had no bookshop or library,” the son of an improvident Brahmin family displaced by Independence. His father, he writes, grew up “several hours away by bullock cart on an unpaved road” from the institutions of British India, and his own story (as the dust jacket of the Random House edition of The Romantics describes his fictional character Samar) is that of the “classic young man from the provinces, propelled by curiosity and passion beyond his comprehension.”

Many scenes in the new book are strikingly similar to those in his novel (fiction and nonfiction seeming to flow together in Mishra as a single insistent attempt to resolve questions of belonging). He gives us an articulate college friend, and a return to the friend’s home village; Western women flirt with Eastern traditions, as if unsure of whether it’s exoticism or wisdom they’re after; there is a description of the Sunday morning Brahminical rites of the narrator’s father, reminding the son of how estranged from his ancestors he is; and the young man takes himself off to a quiet village in the hills (in The Romantics, this is Dharamsala). In both books, the wish to find a voice of one’s own in cacophonous India, and to understand a West that exists mostly in one’s head, has a special urgency for a young man who cannot be confident that he will ever travel farther than Nepal.

Anyone who has been to India knows how calm and settled its mountain communities can seem after the swarming intensity of the plains, and Mishra evokes with perfectly modulated lyricism a world few of us have seen from within, describing the rhythms of daily life in Mashobra (population 2,000), where he savors at last the luxurious phrase he’d met only in books: “I read all morning.” You can feel the meditative quiet and seclusion of his surroundings, “the soft bells of the old English church” chiming in the distance, and much as Naipaul in his Enigma of Arrival evokes a landlord next to his solitary cottage who comes to stand for imperial anomie and decline, so Mishra, in what could be called The Enigma of Transit, describes a landlord, Mr. Sharma, who, in his lonely scholarship and air of unfulfillment, embodies for the young writer the destiny he wishes to escape.

It is central to Mishra’s story that we owe the rescue of the Buddha from complete obscurity to Europeans: it was Europeans, he tells us, who invented the very word “Buddhism,” around 1820 (though he doesn’t tell us, as Karen Armstrong does in her recent biography of the Buddha,[*] that in the nineteenth century many scholars believed the Buddha himself was an invention of Buddhism), and it was European amateurs who worked hard to recover texts that had been lost and even to dig up the Deer Park at Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first discourse. To Hindus like Mr. Sharma, we learn, the Buddha is just another local god, a figure of legend more than of history; Buddhism for them is in any case often a refuge for low-caste Hindus who wish to escape the hierarchy into which they were born (in 1956, more than 300,000 Dalits, or “Untouchables,” converted to Buddhism in a single stroke, to get rid of their dead-end status). For Mishra, as for Hegel, Indians are sunk in a “magic somnambulic sleep”; as recently as the nineteenth century, he tells us, many British scholars thought the Buddha was Egyptian or even Ethiopian, so forgotten was he in the region of his birth.

It’s possible at times to hear an intelligent young man’s impatience with his surroundings in some of this: Mishra’s India sounds as hostile to self-realization and ambition as the bourgeois Germany of many of the novels of Hermann Hesse. When The Romantics came out, some readers in India pointed out that in its very first paragraph its Indian author alluded to Benares as the “holiest of pilgrimage sites that Hindus for millennia have visited,” a little as if an American writer were to call New York in one of his books “the dynamic commercial center that many Americans dream of visiting.” Their fear that his work was aimed principally at a foreign audience was quickened by the fact that a major figure of fascination in the book is actually called Miss West. Yet Mishra is poignantly alert to the insufficiencies of the West, and he unfolds his narrative with such candor and such modesty that it soon becomes evident that self-definition is a matter of real importance to him.

All of us create a Buddha (or any icon) out of our own needs, perhaps, and Mishra’s Siddhartha is very much a creature of the head more than the heart, a solitary, displaced traveler a little like himself. In place of the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am” (as Armstrong also notes), the Buddha radically cut through virtually all our conventional concepts of being and selfhood, to the point where “I” and “think” and even “am” all cease to exist. One of the striking achievements of An End to Suffering is its careful and lucid attempt to set the French notion of Enlightenment against the Buddhist one. In Europe, after all, the Enlightenment was a matter of philosophers offering new visions of society; in the case of the Buddha, typically, it refers only to the individual learning to still the mind, to go beyond the place where systems and theories of all kinds exist, and so see through the mind, in every sense.

Like most other writers, Mishra presents the Buddha as more physician than metaphysician, a deeply pragmatic soul simply concerned with easing the burden of suffering. A large part of his liberation came in the man’s very modesty; he was, he stressed, not an exceptional being; he had no special powers; he was just an ordinary person, doing what any ordinary person can do if so he applies himself. “Mere faith in what the guru says isn’t enough,” he always insisted, in Mishra’s paraphrase (much as his most visible follower in the world today, the Dalai Lama, does even now). “Be your own refuge” was the heart of his doctrine. “Seek no other refuge.”

Karen Armstrong begins her recent biography of the Buddha by saying that “there is not a single incident in the scriptures that we can honestly affirm to be historically true”; and yet, like Mishra, she describes the Aryan culture of small towns and wandering ascetics into which the Buddha was born, six centuries before the birth of Christ, and emphasizes that there was a “spiritual hunger” abroad then, rising from “a widespread malaise and bewilderment resulting from the change and upheaval that urbanization brought with it.”

The comparisons with our own time are evident, both for her and for Mishra (and as Mishra does, Armstrong finds correspondences with the Buddha’s ideas in Hume). Where Mishra goes beyond Armstrong is in attempting to see how the Buddha’s life can throw special light on his own; he approaches the story not as a scholar, or as one who feels any need to call himself a Buddhist, but as a thinker, moved by the Buddha’s almost scientific program of self-discovery. “I had never been religious-minded,” he writes at one point. “I didn’t think that mystical self-absorption was the best way to approach an objective historical reality, [but] I began to meditate, thinking that it might somehow help me understand the Buddha.” There is little in his book of the radiance and uplift of Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, or Andrew Harvey’s A Journey in Ladakh, two enduring general introductions to Buddhism in practice; and yet in their place Mishra’s book has a depth and deliberation that earn our trust.
2.

Mishra’s larger aim is to put the Buddha in the setting of Western thought, as if to resolve the breach in himself between Western learning and Eastern circumstance, and, with his erudition and range, he is able to tell us that Wagner planned to write an opera on the Buddha, Rilke carried a small bust of the Buddha around with him, Einstein called Buddhism the religion of the future (since it was compatible with science, refusing to hold to what could not be empirically proved), and Claude Lévi-Strauss said that all that he had learned and thought was no more than was found by the “Sage at the foot of the tree.” Many of the freshest pages in the book offer striking correspondences between the Buddha’s ideas and those of Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, even Adam Smith and Montaigne. Perhaps the central figure among such thinkers is Nietzsche, who saw early on that the fading of the Christian god might propel people toward a rational philosopher from the East who proposed a struggle against suffering rather than a struggle against sin. Buddhism, for Nietzsche, “is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity—it has the heritage of a cool and objective posing of problems of its composition, it arrives after a philosophical movement lasting hundreds of years; the concept ‘God’ is already abolished by the time it arrives.”

At times, these comparisons can seem abrupt (“like Rousseau, the Buddha disliked selfishness, and upheld the value of compassion”), and I was reminded of the Dalai Lama pointing out, as he often does, that, though the Buddha and Marx have much in common, it is the differences between them that are ultimately more important: they can no more see eye to eye than a man looking at his thought processes and one staring at a factory. The intellectual history in An End to Suffering is impressive, but never quite so moving as the single image of Samar in The Romantics (though it could be Mishra) wistfully admiring a postcard picture of Proust on his windowsill in a dusty Indian town.

In the second half of the book Mishra discusses myriad figures from the history of civilization and thought, from Alexander the Great, through the Emperor Ashoka, to Tagore, and sometimes the names go by in a blur. At one point, for example, of his dream of being a writer not bound by India’s past, he writes:

That ambition was inseparable from the modern bourgeois civilization of the West; and from my earliest days as a reader I had sought, consciously or not, my guides and inspirations in its achievements—in the novels of Flaubert, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Proust; the music of Brahms and Schubert; the self-reckonings of Emerson, Thoreau and Nietzsche, and the polemics of Kierkegaard and Marx.

It was clear from the works of these men that to be a writer was to engage rationally with, rather than retreat from, the world; it was to concern oneself particularly with the fate of the individual in society.

In fact, if anything is clear in Emerson and Thoreau, it is that they deliberately chose to see the individual and society as entirely separate; the individual, for them, could find his self only outside conventional society. Indeed, both “Self-Reliance” and “Civil Disobedience,” like almost everything they wrote, seem to argue that to be a writer is not to engage with the world, but to make a better life outside of it. In any case, 203 pages later, Mishra writes, “The individual figures I had admired in India—Montaigne, Flaubert, Proust, Tolstoy, Emerson, Nietzsche—[were] people who had been marginal within their own societies, alienated from, and often actively opposed to, their main political and economic tendencies.” (Other readers may alight on the word “men” in that first excerpt, and note that there are no traces of George Eliot or Virginia Woolf cited here to illuminate the Buddha’s thought.)

As his personal story draws to an end, Mishra describes, touchingly again, how he arrived in London at long last, found work as a broadcaster and writer, and yet, attaining the place he had always dreamed of, found himself strangely unsatisfied, homesick even, much like the Western seekers he had observed in Benares. He travels to America, happily unencumbered for him by expectation, and even goes through an extended Buddhist retreat near San Francisco. Amid the violent nationalisms that he has witnessed from Afghanistan to India, Mishra turns more than ever to the Buddha for his concentration on the mind alone as the place where we can control our own destinies, free of ideologies or received ideas; unlike most philosophers, after all, the Buddha not only diagnosed the world’s delusions, but offered a solution to them to which all of us have access.

But the book is really Mishra’s story rather than the Buddha’s, and at its best it gives the so-called “clash of civilizations” an inward and urgent intensity. For millions today the conflicts of East and West are matters far from abstract, as they find themselves tugged one way by their traditions, which may seem increasingly moribund, the other by modern technologies and institutions that seem foreign and often menacing.

There are times here when a reader may feel the shadow of V.S. Naipaul, the secular master of solitary wandering and unsparing introspection, hang quite heavily over Mishra’s writing. Here is the same impatience with would-be revolutionaries, the fascination with historical travelers at the expense of contemporary ones, and, most of all, the search for self in a culture that is seen as having lost all contact with itself and with its history.

But Mishra’s very willingness to practice meditation in his little cottage, the tenderness he brings to lost Westerners whom Naipaul is more apt to see in terms of pride and humiliation, his very interest in the Buddha (where Naipaul has reposed his faith at times in a distinctly secular vision of human civilization) all show that he can go where the older writer has not. Indeed, the place that Mishra and others of his generation have found in the cultural conversation of the West is to some extent the result of what Naipaul and his contemporaries achieved. When Naipaul and R.K. Narayan, Derek Walcott and Samuel Selvon were beginning to make their way in English letters, there were few precedents for them; the weight of colonialism was felt firsthand; and when Naipaul, for example, left Trinidad, he could not be sure he would ever see his family again. Now history has moved so quickly that the West is ever more hungry for voices from the East.

Posted at 1:18 AM · Comments (0)

Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A17

China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has made clear that it doesn’t think Japan is deserving of similar status.

You might wonder why not. After all, Japan is one of the world’s largest contributors of foreign aid and most generous backers of the United Nations, a successful democracy for more than a half-century, with a powerhouse economy and a constitution that forbids aggression.

But here’s the problem, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao explained last week: “Japan needs to face up to history squarely.” After another weekend of anti-Japanese protests and riots in China, China’s foreign minister yesterday amplified that “the main problem now is that the Japanese government has done a series of things that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people … especially in its treatment of history.”

Truth in history is an interesting standard for great-power status. One intriguing response would be for Japan to embrace it and suggest politely that, if China wants to keep its Security Council seat, it ought to do the same.

There’s no doubt, as Premier Wen implied, that some Japanese have a hard time admitting the terrible things their troops did in China, Korea and other occupied Asian countries before and during World War II. Apologies sometimes seem to be mumbled, and textbooks sometimes minimize past crimes.

Recently, for example, Japan’s education ministry approved a textbook that refers to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre as an “incident” during which “many” Chinese were killed, though some estimates of civilian deaths run as high as 300,000. News of these textbooks helped spark the anti-Japanese riots in Chinese cities.

But put the issue in some perspective: Many textbooks receive ministry approval in Tokyo, and no school is forced to use any particular one. Issues of war guilt or innocence, and of proper historiography, are debated endlessly and openly in Japanese newspapers, magazines and universities. Some Japanese demonstrate against politicians who won’t go to Yasukuni Shrine — where Japan’s war dead, including some who were judged war criminals, are honored — while other Japanese demonstrate against politicians who do go.

Compare this to the situation in Premier Wen’s China. There is only one acceptable version of history, at least at any given time; history often changes, but only when the Communist Party decides to change it.

For example, according to a report by Howard W. French in the New York Times last December, many textbooks don’t mention that anyone died at what the outside world knows as the 1989 massacre of student demonstrators near Tiananmen Square. One 1998 text notes only that “the Central Committee took action in time and restored calm.” Anyone who challenges the official fiction is subject to harsh punishment, including beatings, house arrest or imprisonment.

And if the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre are slighted in some Japanese textbooks, what of the 30 million Chinese who died in famines created by Mao Zedong’s lunatic Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962? No mention in Chinese texts; didn’t happen.

Well, you might say, how a nation treats its internal history is less relevant to its qualifications for the Security Council than whether it teaches its children honestly about its wars with other nations. A dubious proposition, but no matter; as the Times found in its review of textbooks, Chinese children do not learn of their nation’s invasion of Tibet (1950) or aggression against Vietnam (1979). And they are taught that Japan was defeated in World War II by Chinese Communist guerrillas; Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima and Midway don’t figure in.

“Facing up to history squarely” isn’t easy for any country. Americans don’t agree on how to remember the Confederacy. Russia can’t yet admit to Soviet depredations in the Baltic republics. And, yes, Japan too often sees itself purely as a victim of World War II.

But in countries that permit open debate, historical interpretations can be constantly challenged, revised, maybe brought closer to the truth. In dictatorships that use history as one more tool to maintain power, there’s no such hope.

China’s Communists used to find it useful to vilify Russia in their history texts. These days, for reasons of China’s aspirations to lead Asia, Japan makes a more convenient villain. Next year might be America’s turn. The reasons may be complex, but none of them has much to do with facing history squarely.

fredhiatt@washpost.com

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Posted at 2:10 AM · Comments (0)

“When we first opened the shop, we were getting about 20 customers a month. Now, six months later, it’s up to 150 a month. We’ve franchised our system to 40 shops nationwide, and their monthly turnovers average between 300,000 yen and 3 million yen. We expected most of the clients to be “otaku” (geeky) types, but as it turned out, most of them are ordinary salarymen in their 30s and 40s.”

Speaking to Nikkan Gendai (April 16) is Hajime Kimura, manager of Doll no Mori (Forest of Dolls), a business that opened last August in Tokyo’s Ota Ward. It specializes in deliveries of “Dutch Wives” to homes and hotels. For those unfamiliar with this term, Dutch Wives are life-size latex mannequins used by men as a sex substitute.

The most popular “gal” in Doll no Mori’s stable of four silicone hookers is a realistic-looking adolescent female that, if purchased at retail, would cost 600,000 yen. Rental rates range from 13,000 yen for one hour to 45,000 yen for 24 hours, with an additional charge of up to 6,000 yen for pick-up and delivery. For customers who wish to dress up their dollies in suitable costumes, options (charged at 1,000 yen each) supplied include wigs and items of apparel, such as French maid, nurse and school uniforms, negligees and bathing suits.

“Although they have realistic skin texture, they’re cold to the touch,” Kimura continues. “So many men will first warm them up in the bath or with an electric blanket before they start playing.”

According to a writer who covers the sex trade, the dolls are typically used to provide company while men view steamy adult videos.

“Some use them to snap photos,” he says. “I’ve heard others say that they prefer them because they don’t want to risk contracting a disease by patronizing sex shops. Others have told me they wanted to practice on them as a sort of trial run before giving up their virginity.”

“People have been saying for a long time that men have lost their desire for real women,” sex therapist Kim Myung Gun explains to Nikkan Gendai. “Rather than have sex with a woman who doesn’t fulfill their expectations, they would rather play with something that corresponds to their fantasy, even if she’s not real.”

The Doll no Mori website can be viewed (in Japanese only) at http://www.dollnomori.com/main.html

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Posted Friday, April 15, 2005 - Copyright Slate

You can’t take it anymore. All this yammering about how much money everyone is making in China. (You don’t know anyone actually making money in China, but from what you read, hear, and see, you gather everyone is.) Real estate, cell phones, video games, chewing gum, cement—1.3 billion people, it seems, are in the process of striking it rich. And China is not some silly hallucination like the Internet. China is … China—the next great economic superpower, the biggest growth story in the history of the world. You can’t afford to miss it.

Note that this is probably similar to the way you felt about the Internet in the 1990s (or the way you feel about real estate now). Then review your options. Assuming you’re not up to the most labor-intensive and least risky way to cash in on the boom—moving to China, learning the language(s), buying or starting a company, and settling in for a decade or two—you’ve probably been daydreaming about the fortune to be made in China stocks.

Well, keep dreaming. Because, on the off chance that you happen to buy a China stock that appreciates 10 or a hundred-fold, you’ll probably sell too early and miss the gains, or hang on too long and end up where you started. Or, you will also buy a dozen China dogs that go to zero and, between these losses, trading commissions, taxes, lost wages, and stress-induced therapy bills, you’ll eventually conclude that you could have done better selling insurance in Toledo. Should this happen, don’t beat yourself up too much: Most casual investors who mistake the stock market for a ticket to riches have a similar experience.

But you’re not going to take my word for it, are you? You still want to know how you, Joe Laowai, can put some money to work in the latest-greatest-surefire investment scheme the world has ever seen. You’ll probably be sorry, but it can be done—with difficulty.

Most Chinese stocks aren’t available—at least not to you. China’s domestic stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen feature two classes of stock: “A-Shares,” which are denominated in yuan and, until recently, could be owned only by Chinese citizens, and “B-Shares,” which are denominated in dollars and can be owned by foreigners. With an account at a global brokerage firm like Merrill Lynch, you might be able to buy some “B-shares,” but, in the tradition of Groucho Marx and all clubs willing to have him as a member, you probably wouldn’t want to own any (the “B-Share” market is rumored to include the sorriest lot of public companies on the far side of the Pacific). So how do you buy “A-Shares”?

Well, if you happen to be a bank, fund, or brokerage firm with $10 billion in assets, a multiyear track record, and the willingness to commit at least $50 million, you may be able to qualify as a Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor, which will allow you to buy up to 10 percent of the outstanding stock in any listed company (provided you and other QFIIs don’t own a total of more than 20 percent—China is not about to let foreigners abscond with its crown jewels). If you’re short of $10 billion, then you may be able to strike a deal with an established QFII like UBS, in which the QFII buys the stocks you want, then sells you a “swap” that passes some of the profits and losses through to you (“some” because the QFII won’t do this out of the goodness of its heart). Of course, to make this worth the QFII’s while, you’ll still need to commit a few million.

So, forget about A-shares. Instead, turn your attention to the Hong Kong and New York stock markets. Chinese companies can sell stock in Hong Kong (known as, respectively, “H-Shares” and “Red chips,” depending on whether the companies are incorporated in China or just have assets there). Most of these companies are controlled by the Chinese government, but they tend to be, as one hedge-fund manager put it, “real companies” (as opposed to some of the horrors listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen).

If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of global brokerage trades (with every middleman taking a cut), cross-border ownership, foreign taxes, and currency conversion, issues that go with investing in Hong Kong, you can buy the American Depository Receipts or “ADRs” of Chinese companies that have listed in New York. If you go this route, though, you should be aware that what you are often buying is not the actual stock of a Chinese company, but the stock of, say, a Cayman Islands company that has a contractual relationship with a Chinese company, one that you and every other poor sod who buys the stock must pray will last longer than many contractual relationships in China (Tim Clissold and others report that, in China, contracts are often viewed as a snapshot of an ever-evolving arrangement). You should also be aware that the same Chinese companies occasionally list stock on all three markets, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and New York; that the three stocks often trade at different prices; and that arbitrageurs a thousand times more nimble than you forever exploit the difference.

If this sounds as nerve-racking as it is, your other option is to leave China stock-picking to professional investors who live in China, visit the companies, and speak Chinese (in other words, people who possess the basic advantages that, in any industry but this one, one might assume were essential to the task), and buy a mutual fund instead. This is wise. But here, too, beware. Even dime-a-dozen, U.S.-focused mutual funds often charge egregious fees, so you can imagine what most foreign funds charge. It may be true, as some argue, that China’s markets are so inefficient that fund managers can justify fat fees by delivering above-market performance (the opposite of the case in the United States, where they seldom do), but we don’t have enough history to know for sure. In any case, you’re probably best off seeking low-cost active funds, passive index funds, or exchange-traded funds (single securities designed to track an index).

The paradox of China investing right now is that even though the economy is screaming along, China’s domestic markets are sucking wind—and have been for years. To experienced investors, this is not so surprising—economic performance and stock performance often diverge—but it has left most of China’s tens of millions of retail investors feeling surly and begging for government handouts to cover their losses. Normally, this is an excellent time to buy (when everyone else thinks you’re crazy), but in the case of China’s domestic markets, the half-decade decline has only rendered stocks “expensive” instead of “outrageous.” Sadly, they’re still miles from “cheap.”

In Hong Kong and New York, China stocks may actually be cheap (it’s hard to know for sure given the uncertainties surrounding the economy, legal system, accounting system, currency, Taiwan situation, etc.) This said, a China-stock synopsis would not be complete without the caveat that there is absolutely no reason for you to buy them. Buying any stock, even an American one, is far more dangerous than the mainstream media would have you believe (low-cost, diversified funds offer a better risk/reward profile). Buying a single emerging market stock, meanwhile, is akin to playing Russian roulette. Unless you have a massive portfolio—or an unusually high appetite for risk—you can get all the China exposure you’ll ever need by owning U.S. companies that do business there, or, if you’re aggressive, small helpings of Asian or emerging-market funds.

If you simply can’t stand not having some direct China exposure, then toss a few dollars at a low-cost, diversified country fund. But make sure it’s only a few dollars. And recognize that, in addition to the possibility of posting impressive gains, you may 1) lose most of your money; and/or 2) sit tight for 20 to 30 years before you break even. Remember Japan, the last great Asian investment opportunity? Its chief stock index, the Nikkei, currently trades at approximately one-q

Posted at 11:09 PM · Comments (0)

The Africa You Never See

Sunday, April 17, 2005 - Copyright The Washington Post

In the waiting area of a large office complex in Accra, Ghana, it’s standing room only as citizens with bundles of cash line up to buy shares of a mutual fund that has yielded an average 60 percent annually for the past seven years. They’re entrusting their hard-earned cash to a local company called Databank, which invests in stock markets in Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana and Kenya that consistently rank among the world’s top growth markets.

Chances are you haven’t read or heard anything about Databank in your daily newspaper or on the evening news, where the little coverage of Africa that’s offered focuses almost exclusively on the negative — the virulent spread of HIV/AIDS, genocide in Darfur and the chaos of Zimbabwe.

Yes, Africa is a land of wars, poverty and corruption. The situation in places like Darfur, Sudan, desperately cries out for more media attention and international action. But Africa is also a land of stock markets, high rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of Africa that functions. And this Africa also needs media attention, if it’s to have any chance of fully joining the global economy.

Africa’s media image comes at a high cost, even, at the extreme, the cost of lives. Stories about hardship and tragedy aim to tug at our heartstrings, getting us to dig into our pockets or urge Congress to send more aid. But no country or region ever developed thanks to aid alone. Investment, and the job and wealth creation it generates, is the only road to lasting development. That’s how China, India and the Asian Tigers did it.

Yet while Africa, according to the U.S. government’s Overseas Private Investment Corp., offers the highest return in the world on direct foreign investment, it attracts the least. Unless investors see the Africa that’s worthy of investment, they won’t put their money into it. And that lack of investment translates into job stagnation, continued poverty and limited access to education and health care.

Consider a few facts: The Ghana Stock Exchange regularly tops the list of the world’s highest-performing stock markets. Botswana, with its A+ credit rating, boasts one of the highest per capita government savings rates in the world, topped only by Singapore and a handful of other fiscally prudent nations. Cell phones are making phenomenal profits on the continent. Brand-name companies like Coca-Cola, GM, Caterpillar and Citibank have invested in Africa for years and are quite bullish on the future.

The failure to show this side of Africa creates a one-dimensional caricature of a complex continent. Imagine if 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and school shootings were all that the rest of the world knew about America.

I recently produced a documentary on entrepreneurship and private enterprise in Africa. Throughout the year-long process, I came to realize how all of us in the media — even those with a true love of the continent — portray it in a way that’s truly to its detriment.

The first cameraman I called to film the documentary laughed and said, “Business and Africa, aren’t those contradictory terms?” The second got excited imagining heart-warming images of women’s co-ops and market stalls brimming with rustic crafts. Several friends simply assumed I was doing a documentary on AIDS. After all, what else does one film in Africa?

The little-known fact is that businesses are thriving throughout Africa. With good governance and sound fiscal policies, countries like Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Senegal and many more are bustling, their economies growing at surprisingly robust rates.

Private enterprise is not just limited to the well-behaved nations. You can’t find a more war-ravaged land than Somalia, which has been without a central government for more than a decade. The big surprise? Private enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu has the cheapest cell phone rates on the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern city of Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest satellite phone technology. The electricity works. When the state collapsed in 1991, the national airline went out of business. Today, there are five private carriers and price wars keep the cost of tickets down. This is not the Somalia you see in the media.

Obviously life there would be dramatically improved by good governance — or even just some governance — but it’s also true that, through resilience and resourcefulness, Somalis have been able to create a functioning society.

Most African businesses suffer from an extreme lack of infrastructure, but the people I met were too determined to let this stop them. It just costs them more. Without reliable electricity, most businesses have to use generators. They have to dig bore-holes for a dependable water source. Telephone lines are notoriously out of service, but cell phones are filling the gap.

Throughout Africa, what I found was a private sector working hard to find African solutions to African problems. One example that will always stick in my mind is the CEO of Vodacom Congo, the largest cell phone company in that country. Alieu Conteh started his business while the civil war was still raging. With rebel troops closing in on the airport in Kinshasa, no foreign manufacturer would send in a cell phone tower, so Conteh got locals to collect scrap metal, which they welded together to build one. That tower still stands today.

As I interviewed successful entrepreneurs, I was continually astounded by their ingenuity, creativity and steadfastness. These people are the future of the continent. They are the ones we should be talking to about how to move Africa forward. Instead, the media concentrates on victims or government officials, and as anyone who has worked in Africa knows, government is more often a part of the problem than of the solution.

When the foreign media descend on the latest crisis, the person they look to interview is invariably the foreign savior, an aid worker from the United States or Europe. African saviors are everywhere, delivering aid on the ground. But they don’t seem to be in our cultural belief system. It’s not just the media, either. Look at the literature put out by almost any nongovernmental organization. The better ones show images of smiling African children — smiling because they have been helped by the NGO. The worst promote the extended-belly, flies-on-the-face cliche of Africa, hoping that the pain of seeing those images will fill their coffers. “We hawk poverty,” one NGO worker admitted to me.

Last November, ABC’s “Primetime Live” aired a special on Britain’s Prince Harry and his work with AIDS children in Lesotho. The segment, titled “The Forgotten Kingdom: Prince Harry in Lesotho,” painted the tiny nation as a desperate, desolate place. The program’s message was clear: This helpless nation at last had a knight — or prince — in shining armor.

By the time the charity addresses came up at the end, you were ready to give, and that’s good. Lesotho needs help with its AIDS problem. But would it really have hurt the story to add that this land-locked nation with few natural resources has jump-started its economy by aggressively courting foreign investment? The reality is that it’s anything but a “forgotten kingdom,” as a dramatic increase in exports has made it the top beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a duty-free, quota-free U.S.-Africa trade agreement. More than 50,000 people have gotten jobs through the country’s initiatives. Couldn’t the program have portrayed an African country that was in need of assistance, but was neither helpless nor a victim?

Still the simplistic portrayals come. A recent episode of the popular NBC drama “Medical Investigation” was about an anthrax scare in Philadelphia. The source of the deadly spores? Some illegal immigrants from Africa playing their drums in a local market, unknowingly infecting innocent passersby. Typical: If it’s a deadly disease, the scriptwriters make it come from Africa.

Most of the time, Africa is simply not on the map. The continent’s booming stock markets are almost never mentioned in newspaper financial pages. How often is an African country — apart, perhaps, from South Africa or Egypt or Morocco — featured in a newspaper travel section? Even the listing of worldwide weather includes only a few African cities.

The result of this portrait is an Africa we can’t relate to. It seems so foreign to us, so different and incomprehensible. Since we can’t relate to it, we ignore it.

There are lots of reasons for the media’s neglect of Africa: bean counters in the newsroom and the high cost of international coverage, the belief that American viewers aren’t interested in international stories, and the infotainment of news. There’s also journalists’ reluctance to pursue so-called “positive stories.” We all know that such stories don’t win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what’s happening in Africa doesn’t need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That’s not a “positive” story, that’s news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. I imagine a lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.

My independent film was made possible by funding from the World Bank, for which I am extremely grateful. But the bank wouldn’t have had to step in if the media had been doing their job — showing all Africans in all facets of their lives. In a business that’s supposed to cover man-bites-dog stories, the idea that Africa doesn’t work is a dog-bites-man story. If the media are really looking for news, they’d look at the ways that Africa, despite all the odds, does work.

Author’s e-mail: capineau@aol.com

Carol Pineau, a journalist with more than 10 years of experience reporting on Africa, is the producer and director of the film “Africa: Open for Business,” which premiered last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Posted at 9:50 AM · Comments (0)

(The pictures which go with this article are classic. I’ve got some dozing shots of my own here, too. Click to read more

Train carriages filled with white-collar workers dozing off on each other’s shoulders are one of the most striking sights in Japan.

Two comotose commuters on a Tokyo train

It’s no wonder that a nation notorious for its sluggish economy and apathetic citizenry can’t seem to set a course out of the doldrums, because — according to a global survey on sleep habits — half the country is blundering through life half asleep.

The study by market research firm ACNielsen, published last month, found that 41 percent of Japanese people manage six hours or less zzzzs per night, making it the most sleep-deprived nation on Earth.

Even the somnolent and slothful authorities have acknowledged the extent of the problem, listing sleep as one of the targets for action under the government’s Healthy Japan 21 campaign. In this, it lists “ensuring sufficient sleep” as one of the goals “to ensure the maintenance of mental health.”

Sleep deprivation certainly isn’t healthy — it has been used as a torture technique since Roman times — and prolonged lack of sleep induces psychosis and causes victims to lose their sense of self-identity.

But according to a 1999 study by Penn State’s College of Medicine, even one night of disrupted or missed sleep by a healthy person can drastically alter their chemical balance, and also cause daytime sleepiness and fatigue. The research found that interrupted sleep also disrupted immune systems, leading to an increase in the likelihood of infections and disease, and that even such mild sleep deprivation drastically reduced productivity and increased the chances of accidents at home or at work.

According to Yuriko Doi of the National Institute of Public Health, Japan, white-collar workers with poor sleep quality are more likely to take sick leave, suffer from poor physical health and have problems in occupational activities as well as personal relationships.

Time for a few zzzs between trains

“The effects on performance are wide-ranging and severe,” she says. “In terms of quality of life, poor sleep quality causes all sorts of misery.”

After the last 10 years of downsizing, many office workers have to work very late. According to Makoto Uchiyama, director of the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, sleep loss is hitting Japan’s millions of middle-aged men particularly hard.

“When it comes to relationships at work and at home, sleep loss seems to be having a devastating effect,” he said. “And it is possibly linked to the huge numbers of men driven to suicide in middle age.”

Men in their forties and fifties now make up 40 percent of the 35,000 people ending their own lives in Japan every year, and the current upsurge in the suicide rate can be mostly attributed to a massive rise in suicides among this group.

Although the effects of sleep loss on the vast majority of the population are far less dramatic, they have a profound influence on the way the nation operates. One of the most obvious effects is rendering workers less efficient. Perhaps Japan’s dozy workforce has something to do with its poor labor-efficiency rating — it ranks 18th out of the 30 OECD countries.

Yuriko Doi says that although a precise figure has not been calculated, the cost of sleep loss to the Japanese economy could amount to tens of trillions of yen. She cites “Wake Up America,” a 1990 study conducted in the United States, which estimated that poor sleep quality cost the world’s largest economy $15.9 billion a year. The mind boggles at what it must be costing the world’s second-biggest economy every day of every week of every year right now.

It’s no secret that in these days of restructuring and downsizing, Japanese office workers are being forced to work inhumanly long hours. Taisuke Aimono, a 28-year-old white-collar worker, said that on weekdays he gets by with as little as four hours sleep a night.

“I finish work after 10 p.m. most week nights,” he explained. “After drinks with colleagues, the commute home and a couple of hours winding down in front of the TV, it’s 2 a.m. and I have to be up 4 hours later.”

But Aimono says that he often feels dozy during the daytime, and most of his colleagues push themselves to the limit. “Everybody in my office looks exhausted all the time,” he says. “They’re always complaining of being tired and feeling depressed. We all think we’re tough, but sooner or later one of us is going to collapse.”

Sayuri Tenmizu, a 31-year-old saleswoman, says she knows she should get more sleep, but she can’t fit more than six hours into her daily routine. “Magazines say your skin and general health suffer if you don’t get enough rest, but I just can’t get to bed before 1 in the morning,” she says. “I wish I could sleep more, I feel like I’m always half asleep — like I’m always numbed to life.”

Both Tenmizu and Aimono admit that they spend a large portion of their evenings in front of the television, and watching TV may well have something to do with Japan’s chronic lack of sleep. According to the annual Eurodata TV Worldwide study published last week, Japanese people spend more time in front of the TV than any other nation, with an average daily viewing time of 5 hours 1 minute.

The health and wealth of the nation is at stake — and it’s high time Japan turned off the TV and went to bed.

The Japan Times: April 17, 2005

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Published: April 16 2005 03:00 | Copyright The Financial Times

Some Nigerians refer half-jokingly to the “coup from heaven” that took place in 1998 - the sudden death of General Sani Abacha, the repressive military dictator, a few months after a visit by Pope John Paul II.

For many in Africa it would take another miracle for Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Vatican-based Nigerian who was part of that papal delegation, to succeed as pontiff. The continent has not produced a Pope for more than 1,500 years, since St Gerasius I, believed to have been of African parentage, in the 5th century.

A combination of three factors underpins Cardinal Arinze’s potential for the papacy which Vatican watchers believe make him a favourite to succeed Pope John Paul II.

First is the rapid increase in the number of Catholics in Africa, now estimated at 135m, or 13 per cent of the world total. The second is his experience in reaching out, like John Paul II, to other religions, coming from a continent where established Christian churches bump up against Islam and a fast-expanding Pentecostalist movement. The third and most controversial is his adherence, again in the mould of the late pontiff, to rigid Catholic mores with respect to the family, gay unions, abortion and contraception.

Among Cardinal Arinze’s posts during his 20 years in the Roman Curia he has served as president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, an ecclesiastical institution that aims to promote links between the world’s religions. Hailing from a nation that lies on the fault-line between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, his knowledge of Islam is seen as an asset by many Catholics who think the next Pope should bridge the gap between the west and Islam in much the same way as John Paul II was a bridge to the Communist countries during the cold war.

As Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Arinze enjoys high standing as a cleric, appealing to the traditional wing of the church. But his conservatism places him at the heart of the heated debate about the church’s stance towards contraception, particularly in Africa, which is grappling with the combined impact of rapid population growth and the spread of HIV/Aids.

While the Catholic Church in Africa has become increasingly involved in the response to the epidemic and awareness about the disease, its continued opposition to the use of condoms outrages many HIV/Aids activists. Placing the emphasis instead on sexual abstinence, Catholic leaders have frequently challenged the effectiveness of condoms as a weapon against infection and argued that they encourage promiscuous behaviour.

At a local level, this position is sometimes muted, and individual priests and nuns have distributed condoms for disease prevention. But only a minority of senior Catholic churchmen have condoned condom use.

One, Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenberg in South Africa, has maintained that condoms can be seen “not as a means of preventing the transmission of life, but rather as a means of preventing the transmission of death to another”. Bishop Maurice Piat of Port-Louis, Mauritius, has described condoms as “a stopgap, a lesser evil”, while arguing that HIV/Aids should be fought “not with rubber but with human resources”.

As the epidemic took root in Africa, Cardinal Arinze did not openly address the issue of whether condoms should be promoted. “He opposed poor moral values, just as John Paul II did. It wasn’t a question of whether condoms are a good or bad thing, but more about discouraging promiscuity,” said Father Felix Ajakaye, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Catholic secretariat. “Being a good Catholic does not mean you are old-fashioned.”

Experts say upholding strict Catholic marriage doctrine is problematical in many African societies, in view of the widespread practice of traditional weddings, informal unions, polygamy and inter-denominational marriages, in a continent where different brands of Christianity are often mixed together and distinctions between them blurred.

The 72-year-old Cardinal Arinze’s conservative instincts may be seen as a strong point should he be promoted on the thinking that he could convey those values to Africa’s burgeoning Christian population, of which Nigeria accounts for the largest part - some 20m. His views are unlikely to set him against those who fear the Vatican could be hijacked by liberal thinkers.

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Published: April 15 2005 18:25 Copyright The Financial TImes

Signing up for a beginner’s Italian class is usually a simple enough task, but for Sebastian, a second-year student at Smith College in the US, it proved complicated. Smith has always been a school for women, which is what Sebastian was when he began a bachelor’s degree there in 2001. But since then, he has become a man. At least that is how she thinks of herself. Himself. That is how his friends think of him, too, but it isn’t necessarily how a new Italian teacher would see him. And since Italian is such a gender-specific language, Sebastian needed to let the teacher know before the semester began that there would be a new studente in class, not a studentessa. Feeling apprehensive, he asked an Italian-speaking friend, who was also “transgender”, to go with him to the teacher’s office. “Can you help us,” asked the friend. “This semester my friend needs to speak Italian like a boy.”

”Ma certo,” came the reply. No problem. And that was it. If accommodating Smith’s growing number of transgender students was always that easy, life would be a lot more straightforward, both for the students and the college itself. But it rarely is.

Established 134 years ago, Smith has educated some of America’s most influential women. Feminist pioneers Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan are graduates. So is the poet Sylvia Plath and former Republican first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush. Set on a slope overlooking the town of Northampton in western Massachusetts, Smith is one of the four surviving “seven sisters” network of elite all-female schools.

It has been resolutely dedicated to the advancement of women (and women only) ever since it was set up. Its founder, Sophia Smith, was a wealthy New Englander who made it clear in her will that she wanted Smith to be a liberal arts college for women, equal to the best available to men; a place where women could “develop as fully as may be the powers of womanhood”.

In its promotional literature, the college boasts that its all-female student body offers a superior academic environment where women are encouraged to be anything from chief executive to US president. “At Smith,” the slogan goes, “women come first and do best.” So what does such an institution do when some of its women decide to become men?

Of the 2,500 women who attend Smith, about two dozen describe themselves as “female-to-male transgender”, or women who have become men. The term “transgender” itself is a catch-all that includes a wide spectrum of people who don’t identify with their birth sex; from transsexuals, who use surgery to change their sex, to those who change their appearance cosmetically - cross-dressers, as they used to be known, though such a term is considered old-school today. The number of transgender students at Smith is small, but it has been enough to create significant divisions on the campus. On one hand are the students who take an orthodox view of their college’s mission. These are the “girls with pearls” - the more traditional women who are at the college because of its rigorous academic training and its venerable heritage.

”If they want to be boys, they should go to a co-ed school,” says one alumnus from the 1990s, who did not wish to be named for fear of being labelled intolerant. “Women go to Smith because they only want to learn with other women.”

For these students, who pay $37,000 a year in tuition fees, Smith is first and foremost for women. Women, they say, learn better without the distractions of male classmates, and if an all-women college accepts, teaches and graduates male students, it will go down the path of the other “seven sister” colleges and lose an invaluable part of its heritage. Women’s colleges are an endangered species - Sarah Lawrence and Vassar have gone co-ed and Radcliffe has been subsumed by its former brother school, Harvard.

At Smith, males from neighbouring colleges such as Amherst and Hampshire are permitted to attend selected courses, but since they aren’t full-time college residents they do not cause as much tension as their transgender classmates.

For those students from the progressive, feminist tradition of Steinem and Friedan, Smith’s transgender students fit naturally on a campus that has long been tolerant of sexual difference. Notably tolerant. When the widely read Princeton Review of US colleges is released each year, Smith is regularly rated one of the top 10 most “gay friendly” colleges in the country. Students joke that the college’s motto should be “Queer in a year or your money back”. The campus has long been home to organisations such as the Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Alliance’s Women of Colour Committee. The National Enquirer tabloid once dubbed Smith’s hometown of Northampton “Lesbianville USA” because of its visible population of gay women. (One Smith student told me it is the only place in the US where local 14-year-old boys are mistaken for university students.)

On such a campus, some students insist that not only do women who decide to become men belong there, but college administrators should do more to officially acknowledge them. Hana Meadwell, a first-year campus activist, is one such student. She has a “faux-hawk” hair style - cut short on the sides with a longer stripe of hair in the middle - and a badge on her blazer reads “Yes. I’m in the right bathroom.”

She says the college needs to do a lot more to help transgender students. “It really doesn’t want to deal with the trans issue right now.” As for those who do not think such students belong at the college, she believes they don’t have a deep enough understanding of the issue. “The negative side wonders why a man would want to go to a women’s college, or why he’d want to stay,” she says. “They’re uninformed.”

Smith wants to be an accepting environment, where every student can explore who she wants to be. For transgender students, the bathrooms have been a testing ground. After a group of transgender students and their allies tore down gender-specific plaques, Smith created some “gender-neutral” restrooms.

It is not the only college that is grappling with transgenderism and the campus activism it has provoked. More than 25 American institutions have taken steps to accommodate transgender students, according to the advocacy group, Transgender Law and Policy Institute. Nearly a dozen have created, or have promised to create, gender-neutral restrooms, including the University of Chicago, which has 15 on its campus. Four, including New York University and Cornell University, either require or strongly encourage their health and counselling staff to attend training courses on transgender issues. University health insurance plans seldom cover the hormone and surgical procedures now sought by transgender students who decide to “transition” at college, but the University of California is reportedly considering adding cover for such services to its plans. (The procedures don’t come cheap: a “top operation” or breast reduction costs up to $10,000.)

A number of schools have replaced “male” or “female” boxes on official university forms with a single blank line that lets students state their “gender”. And a few allow students to change their name and gender designation on their official records. But housing has been a trickier proposition About two years ago, Wesleyan, a respected liberal-arts university in Connecticut, created a gender-blind dormitory hall. For the 2003-04 academic year, it offered a space where transgender students could live either in single rooms or with roommates who did not mind living with a student who had changed sex. After a huge amount of media attention - and some hate mail - the school ended the experiment after a year. Wesleyan director of university communications, Justin Harmon, says the experiment failed because it stigmatised students who lived on the floor but were not transgender, and called too much attention to the transgender students themselves. “It turned out to be a bit of a ghetto,” he says. The university now assigns housing to transgender students on a case-by-case basis. But Harmon is well aware that the debate is not about to go away. “The truth is that a lot of universities and colleges are looking at trans issues emerging from the high school population,” he says. “There are people who specifically self-identify as trans on their college applications.”

The activism of transgender students and their supporters raises complicated questions about the way we think about gender. Is it what we’re born with or is it merely one of many roles we learn? Something one has or one does? Either transgender recognition is merely political correctness at its most extreme, or it represents the next crucial battle for civil rights.

”Just as Herbert Marcuse’s theories were important on campus in his day, gender theory is important now,” says Paisley Currah, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and a board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute.

The theory sometimes requires translating for the uninitiated, especially the use of pronouns. Deciding to call oneself “he” rather than “she” is considered a highly significant event, akin to coming out. A declaration of such a change to friends or family doesn’t necessarily mean a woman will always be a man, but shows that she wants to experiment with gender roles. In theory, reversing pronouns - or going back to calling oneself “she” - isn’t supposed to be as dramatic.

Yet when I mentioned to one transgender student at Smith that I was going to meet a transgender friend, and used the friend’s male pronoun, the student corrected me, somewhat cattily: “I heard he’s gone back to the old pronoun.”

The transgender movement has also come up with a series of gender-neutral terms such as “hir” (pronounced “here”) to represent the possessive “her” or “his”; and “ze” (”zee”) to represent the pronouns “she” and “he”. The expressions do not appear to have caught on. During my four days in Northampton, the words never crossed anyone’s lips - except to explain that they existed - and sometimes they were delivered with an ironic roll of the eyes.

Whatever its cultural significance, the transgender movement poses everyday logistical difficulties for institutions such as Smith, where admissions are open only to women whose gender at birth was female. In an exchange of e-mails with Smith, the college said that a female candidate who wanted to be called “male” would be eligible.

A female who was using hormones or surgery to become a male seems a trickier proposition: the college gave an ambiguous response. “We would never be privy to that information,” said media relations director Kristen Cole.

For those students who have decided to become men, the registrar’s office notifies professors of the name change. If a student wants to change her pronoun, most professors are likely to respect that decision. But for the most part, it is the students who are either puzzled or who are actively resisting.

And the question remains: why would a man attend an all-women college? Why not just go to a co-ed school?

Anne Bassett was a 16-year-old at New Hampshire’s exclusive prep school, Phillips Exeter Academy, when she announced that she was transgender. Bassett applied and was accepted to Smith and to Trinity, a co-ed college with a reputation for being “trans-friendly”. Bassett chose the women’s school.

”Another trans guy I know from Exeter recommended Smith, and Trinity has a huge frat culture,” Bassett says over dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. About five feet tall with oatmeal-coloured hair, the baby-faced Bassett brought his boyfriend, Jesse, an affable, deep-voiced man with long hair who sometimes dresses as a woman. They met at a local goth club.

Now a third-year student, Bassett echoes what many say about the college: it’s a safe place for those who have changed gender. But while the transgendered may not be as susceptible to loutish, random acts of hatred at Smith, they’re not entirely accepted either. A second-year transgender student, Ethan Helainen, has encountered varying kinds of resistance, ranging from sceptical curiosity to outright intolerance.

”I’ve had first-years ask me why I’d want to stay here,” Helainen says. The questions aren’t asked in a hostile way - usually they arise in the course of casual conversations about gender, either in workshops, seminars or around a table. Students simply ask him, as I did, why, if he identifies himself as a male, does he remain at Smith?

”I got in before I knew what I wanted to be,” he replies, adding that he’s not going to pick up and leave just because his identity shifted. “I love it here. It feels like home.”

Earlier this year, though, Helainen went to a house meeting to talk about its big sister/little sister mentoring program and suggested that “sib” replace “sis” - as in “big-sib/little sib”. The request provoked a woman on his floor to write about the excesses of political correctness in a school newspaper, singling out the incident without naming Helainen.

”Everyone on campus should have the right to feel comfortable,” wrote Virginia Phillips in The Sophian. “No one should trample the minority but, in the same respect, the minority shouldn’t be allowed to scare everyone else into silence.”

Helainen says that initially the newspaper article was hurtful. The subtext was that transgender students didn’t have a place at the college, and in the viral way gossip flies across a small campus, it was clear that the writer was aiming at Helainen. (Phillips did not return my calls.) Ultimately, Helainen says he understands Phillips’ point and has no wish to pursue the matter further with her.

This is just a microcosm of a debate that has been held on campus for almost two years. In the spring of 2003, “trans” students began campaigning for a referendum to purge the school constitution of all gender-specific language. They wanted to replace “she” with “the student” and “her” with “the student’s”. About 1,100 students took part in the plebiscite, and the proposal was passed narrowly, by 50 votes.

A year later, the School Government Association held elections in which SGA vice-president Shawn Basta, a transgender student, ran for president. During the campaign, a broad coalition called for another referendum to overturn the constitution’s pronoun change, claiming that there had not been enough information before the original vote. Many students saw this as an unpleasant move aimed at calling attention to Basta’s gender identity.

”The campus was very divided,” recalls Alexandra Keller, faculty liaison to the Gay Bisexual Lesbian Trans activist group. “There were buttons, stickers. People stopped talking to each other. But I don’t think people over-reacted,” says Keller. “We tend to think in a binary way about gender, when there is a broad continuum of desire. The referendum questions whether or not it should be represented.” The constitution remained unchanged, but Basta lost.

While life for Smith’s transgender students may occasionally be difficult, what happens when they emerge as young male graduates and apply for a job, holding a degree from a women-only school?

Sebastian, the Italian language student, is due to finish his fine arts degree next month but he doesn’t seem perturbed about life after Smith. Candid, articulate and slightly nervous, he looks more youthful than his 21 years and is undoubtedly male in appearance - in transgender parlance, he “passes”. His breasts have shrunk and his voice has deepened since he started taking testosterone more than a year ago. He sings bass in a choir and has long sideburns - you would think he had been born a boy.

He will not have any trouble graduating from the college, but what happens when a potential employer receives his college transcript with a female name on it? Or when a human resources staff member can’t figure out how this man graduated from a prestigious women-only college? Since Sebastian plans to take a job as a cabinet-maker, he is not so concerned.

Nor is Bassett. He says a transgender friend who graduated from Smith last year got a job without a hitch. “If someone interviewing me asked me how I graduated from Smith,” says Bassett, “I’d reply that every year the college graduates a few boys.”

And perhaps, once these people leave with their degrees, the hardest part will be over. Worries about toilets and dormitories will be moot; they can live with whomever they please. They have declared their pronoun change. Difficult questions about identity may never end, but they can start getting on with their lives.

The identity crisis at Smith College, however, is just beginning. There are males in the classrooms, in the dorm halls and applying for jobs. This may mean that the school’s original mission has been compromised, or that Smith has fallen victim to its own lofty ideals of tolerance. Either way, the transgender controversy underscores what many Smith students already know: boys are a huge distraction.

Craig Offman is a freelance writer based in New York.

Posted at 1:48 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright - The New York Times

When Turkey was massacring Armenians in 1915, the administration of Woodrow Wilson determinedly looked the other way. The U.S. ambassador in Constantinople sent furious cables to Washington, pleading for action against what he called “race murder,” but the White House shrugged.

It was, after all, a messy situation, and there was no easy way to stop the killing. The U.S. was desperate to stay out of World War I and reluctant to poison relations with Turkey.

A generation later, American officials said they were too busy fighting a war to worry about Nazi death camps. In May 1943, the U.S. government rejected suggestions that it bomb Auschwitz, saying that aircraft weren’t available.

In the 1970’s, the U.S. didn’t try to stop the Cambodian genocide. It was a murky situation in a hostile country, and there was no perfect solution. The U.S. was also negotiating the establishment of relations with China, the major backer of the Khmer Rouge, and didn’t want to upset that process.

Much the same happened in Bosnia and Rwanda. As Samantha Power chronicles in her superb book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” the pattern was repeated over and over: a slaughter unfolded in a distant part of the world, but we had other priorities and it was always simplest for the American government to look away.

Now President Bush is writing a new chapter in that history.

Sudan’s army and janjaweed militias have spent the last couple of years rampaging in the Darfur region, killing boys and men, gang-raping and then mutilating women, throwing bodies in wells to poison the water and heaving children onto bonfires. Just over a week ago, 350 assailants launched what the U.N. called a “savage” attack on the village of Khor Abeche, “killing, burning and destroying everything in their paths.” Once again, there’s no good solution. So we’ve looked away as 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur, with another 10,000 dying every month.

Since I’m of Armenian origin, I’ve been invited to participate in various 90th-anniversary memorials of the Armenian genocide. But we Armenian-Americans are completely missing the lesson of that genocide if we devote our energies to honoring the dead, instead of trying to save those being killed in Darfur.

Meanwhile, President Bush seems paralyzed in the face of the slaughter. He has done a fine job of providing humanitarian relief, but he has refused to confront Sudan forcefully or raise the issue himself before the world. Incredibly, Mr. Bush managed to get through recent meetings with Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair and the entire NATO leadership without any public mention of Darfur.

There’s no perfect solution, but there are steps we can take. Mr. Bush could impose a no-fly zone, provide logistical support to a larger African or U.N. force, send Condoleezza Rice to Darfur to show that it’s a priority, consult with Egypt and other allies - and above all speak out forcefully.

One lesson of history is that moral force counts. Sudan has curtailed the rapes and murders whenever international attention increased.

Mr. Bush hasn’t even taken a position on the Darfur Accountability Act and other bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senators Jon Corzine and Sam Brownback to put pressure on Sudan. Does Mr. Bush really want to preserve his neutrality on genocide?

Indeed, MTV is raising the issue more openly and powerfully than our White House. (Its mtvU channel is also covering Darfur more aggressively than most TV networks.) It should be a national embarrassment that MTV is more outspoken about genocide than our president.

If the Bush administration has been quiet on Darfur, other countries have been even more passive. Europe, aside from Britain, has been blind. Islamic Relief, the aid group, has done a wonderful job in Darfur, but in general the world’s Muslims should be mortified that they haven’t helped the Muslim victims in Darfur nearly as much as American Jews have. And China, while screaming about Japanese atrocities 70 years ago, is underwriting Sudan’s atrocities in 2005.

On each of my three visits to Darfur, the dispossessed victims showed me immense kindness, guiding me to safe places and offering me water when I was hot and exhausted. They had lost their homes and often their children, and they seemed to have nothing - yet in their compassion to me they showed that they had retained their humanity. So it appalls me that we who have everything can’t muster the simple humanity to try to save their lives.

Posted at 12:04 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Japan Times

No matter how alarming the day’s news is, you can always count on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to put a happy face on it. In the daily press conferences where he sidles up to journalists to field a few softballs he always has a way of making everything sound inconsequential.

“No, I don’t think you can say that at all,” he remarked with mild surprise when a reporter asked if he would describe Japan’s current diplomatic situation as being “happo fusagari (trapped on all sides).”

“Japan-Korea, Japan-China and Japan-Russia relations are all progressing smoothly.”

Of course, nothing at the moment is going smoothly between Japan and its neighbors — Chinese citizens throw eggs at the Japanese Embassy, South Koreans threaten to sever economic ties and Russian President Vladimir Putin grudgingly agrees to a summit where he will probably refuse to budge on the northern islands issue. And everybody, journalists and citizens alike, know it’s not going smoothly, but they accept the prime minister’s bland reassurances because they expect nothing else.

Japan’s position is to ask these countries to “respond sincerely” to its overtures for “meaningful dialogue,” which is another way of saying that if we just sit tight and don’t get excited it will all work itself out. But for the past few decades nothing has worked itself out. Regardless of the hyperbolic intransigence that characterizes China’s and South Korea’s anger regarding Japan’s refusal to fully acknowledge past crimes, Japan itself almost never “responds sincerely” to these countries’ complaints. The only country it responds to at all is the United States. You want “show troops” in Iraq? You got ‘em.

Years of putting off any real reckoning with their former enemies and colonies has inured the Japanese citizenry to Asian bitterness, thus resulting in an intractable apathy that the government counts on. The media gleefully reports the violent reaction in South Korea to Shimane Prefecture’s ordinance claiming that those rocks in the Japan Sea it calls Takeshima and which South Korea calls Tok-do belong to Shimane.

The reporting plays up Korean hysteria without providing much in the way of context. The Japanese reaction is more subdued and therefore presented as more civilized, but that’s because most Japanese don’t care while most Koreans do. Every single Korean, it seems, knows all about Tok-do and its history because they learned about it in school. They have an emotional stake in those rocks, while Japanese people can’t even locate them on the map.

The government doesn’t care much either, but it makes polite noises to the effect that Korea is mistaken and the islands are Japanese territory. It does so partly because it doesn’t want to upset nationalists, but mostly it does so out of habit. The media meanwhile sniffs around for appeasers. “Asahi Shimbun says why not just hand Takeshima over to Korea!” accuses a headline in Shukan Shincho.

The Asahi article in question was written by Yoshinobu Wakamiya, a reporter who studied in South Korea. In the 17th century a Japanese fisherman from the area now known as Shimane and Tottori prefectures got lost and landed on Ururun Island, which is near Tok-do. When he returned to Honshu, he asked the shogunate, which forbade Japanese from leaving the archipelago, for permission to return to the area to fish. Permission was granted. This story seems to be the source of Japan’s historical claim.

Wakamiya picks up the story in 1905, when the Meiji government unilaterally incorporated Takeshima (then called Matsushima) into Shimane Prefecture and later that year revoked Korea’s diplomatic rights. Five years later it annexed the Korean Peninsula, so Koreans view the 1905 declaration as the first step toward colonization. After the war, Japan avoided discussing the fate of Tok-do, and Korea took advantage of this reticence by occupying it. But no formal negotiations have ever been carried out.

There is no real advantage to Japan in its claim, except maybe some fish. Koreans obviously feel an attachment to Tok-do that very few Japanese feel toward Takeshima. It would be in Japan’s interest if, as a gesture, it gave up all claims to the island. In turn, the South Koreans might support them on territorial disputes with China and Russia that are more vital to Japan’s interests, as well help them with the North Korean abduction issue. Wakamiya points out that Japan will never fight a war over Takeshima, “and we’ll never get them otherwise.” So why not do the smart thing?

Because the smart thing takes imagination and courage, neither of which the prime minister shows evidence of possessing in abundance. If he did, he would have already called China’s bluff. Obviously, China has no real problem with students and other malcontents bashing Japanese companies, because without a target for their anger they’d probably be bashing their own government.

Japan’s reaction is to demand an apology and insist that the Chinese authorities crack down on these hooligans. It’s not an unreasonable demand given the circumstances, but all it does is fortify the stalemate. However, if Koizumi announced that he will no longer visit Yasukuni Shrine in his capacity as prime minister he would put the Chinese government on the spot. They would have to respond in kind.

As with holding on to Takeshima, continuing state visits to Yasukuni do nothing to advance Japan’s national interests. The majority of Japanese people care little about Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni and even less about Takeshima. The prime minister should listen to the people’s apathy.

The Japan Times: April 17, 2005
(C) All rights reserved

Posted at 11:09 AM · Comments (0)

Published: April 17, 2005 - Copyright The New York Times

SHANGHAI, April 16 - One day before a high-level Japanese visit aimed at defusing rising tensions between the countries, thousands of Chinese surrounded the Japanese Consulate here in an angry daylong demonstration.

After a three-hour march that began on the Shanghai riverfront, steadily gaining strength along a 10-mile route, well over 10,000 Chinese gathered at the consulate chanting anti-Japanese slogans and throwing a variety of missiles - from heavy chunks of pavement to paint balloons and bottles - at the consulate while several thousand law enforcement agents looked on passively.

Asked by a reporter whether anything could be done to rein in the violence, a Chinese officer answered, “By whom?” and then walked away as if annoyed. In several hours, there appeared to be only one arrest.

The Chinese tolerance of the violence drew immediate protests from Japan, whose foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, was to visit Beijing on Sunday. “Even though information was available beforehand to infer that there would be a demonstration, nothing was done to prevent it,” the Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Mass protests are rarely tolerated by the Chinese authorities. The lenience on Saturday provoked wry comments from many ordinary Chinese. “They say it is fine to denounce Japan, but the government must know that people have even more serious grievances against the state of affairs in our country,” said a man named Zhang, who declined to provide his full name.

Another man, a 23-year-old barber in central Shanghai, where several shops catering to Japanese were destroyed, said he had nothing against Japan or Japanese people. “People are taking part in this march because they aren’t allowed to protest anything else,” he said. “In your country, people are allowed to demonstrate freely, so something like this probably wouldn’t attract many people. Here we are never given a chance to protest, so everyone wants to see it for himself, to be there.”

The demonstrations, with their heavily nationalistic overtones, were the latest spike in tension between Japan and China. Whether consciously or not, protesters used slogans that echoed anti-Japanese campaigns of a century ago, denouncing “little Japan,” calling Japanese dogs, urging China to “stand up,” and calling for a boycott of Japanese products. Many protesters said they were angry about a new version of a history textbook that they said whitewashed the darkest chapters of Japan’s imperial conquest of China in the 1930’s and 40’s.

Others said they had been motivated by a recent dispute between the countries over tiny islands in the East China Sea thought to be rich in oil and gas deposits. Still others cited reports that Japan was seeking a seat on the United Nations Security Council, which they said was intolerable unless Japan apologized more forthrightly for atrocities committed in China more than 60 years ago.

Posted at 11:06 AM · Comments (0)

When Robert Kagan famously wrote that, in their approach to power and security, Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus, what might he have said about Japan? In most respects, post-modern Japan has been more like Europe than America in preferring diplomacy to force, persuasion to coercion and multilateralism to unilateralism. Indeed, it might be said that Japan is even further towards the Venusian end of the celestial spectrum in its aversion to the instruments ofmilitary power. No other country in the world explicitly renounces war as a sovereign right; or eschews the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes; or proscribes land, sea and air forces as well as other war potential. This deeply ingrained pacifism is all the more remarkable when one considers that Japan is not an Asian Costa Rica, but the world’s second-largest economy, a major financial power and a favored candidate for a permanent seat on an expanded United Nations Security Council.

But there is another Japan—one with a long martial tradition, embodied in the ancient samurai of legend, which in the first half of the 20th century destroyed Russia’s Baltic fleet, colonized Korea, invaded China and subjugated Southeast Asia before its eventual catastrophic defeat in 1945. Today, Japan is once again a leading military power, with the world’s third-largest defense budget (after the United States and China) and a quarter million men and women under arms. Its Self-Defense Force (SDF) is deployed on peacekeeping operations around the world, for tsunami relief in Southeast Asia and in support of U.S.-led coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. More and more politicians chafe at the self-imposed constitutional restrictions on the military and believe that Japan must be more resolute and assertive in defending its vital interests, including taking pre-emptive military action, when necessary. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has talked up constitutional reform and declared his desire to see Japan become a “normal country.” He has even dared to call the SDF what it really is—a modern army, navy and air force.

Is this a dangerous reawakening of Japan’s martial instincts and desire for hegemony, as critics maintain? Or are we seeing the emergence of a pragmatic new realism that is a natural and long-overdue readjustment to the nation’s much altered and more foreboding external environment? And if so, what will be the strategic consequences of a more assertive Japan? Japan is moving away from its pacifist past towards a more hard-headed and outward-looking security posture characterized by a greater willingness to use the SDF in support of Japan’s foreign policy and defense interests. This shift is evolutionary, not revolutionary. But it is gaining momentum and represents a watershed in Japan’s postwar security policy that will require some new thinking in Washington as well as Tokyo.

Pacifism’s Denouement

Pacifist sentiment has become so entrenched in modern Japan that the country’s capacity for change is apt to be discounted, or underestimated, even by long-time Japan watchers. Granted, Koizumi’s robust utterances on national security often run ahead of policy, and he is certainly not the first contemporary Japanese prime minister to seem like a hawk among doves, as Yasuhiro Nakasone’s tenure in the 1980s reminds us. But the shift away from pacifism is palpable, irreversible and more broadly based than Koizumi’s alone.

The most compelling evidence of the sea-change underway in Japanese attitudes towards security is the accelerating erosion under Koizumi’s stewardship of the constitutional and administrative restraints on the use of force and collective self-defense. The chief cause is that a once-apathetic public is becoming increasingly concerned about the deterioration in Japan’s security environment, mainly due to the spread of transnational terrorism, North Korean antipathy, and China’s burgeoning economic growth and military power. Recent polls, including one conducted by the authoritative Asahi Shimbun newspaper, show that a clear majority of Japanese people and parliamentarians are now in favor of constitutional revision (kaiken), and nearly half want to abandon the prohibition on collective self-defense. Significantly, younger people are more inclined to support revising the constitution than their parents.

A contributing factor is the weakening of the coalition of interests in the Diet that has long defended the constitutional status quo (goken), especially the precipitate decline in influence of the left-leaning and traditionally pacifist Social Democratic Party (SDP). The eclipse of the SDP and its allies on the political Left has increased the probability that the war-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution will be rewritten substantially to explicitly recognize the existence of the SDF. Other likely amendments will make it easier for the government to sanction the SDF’s deployment in a wide range of contingencies, although these international contributions are likely to be limited to non-combat roles for the time being. As a result, future Japanese governments will no longer be seriously encumbered by constitutional restrictions that have clearly outlived their usefulness. Any decision to dispatch the SDF will henceforth be made, as in all other countries, according to the political judgement of the government of the day and calculations of national interest.

However, revision of the constitution is not the only reason for supposing that Japan is shedding more than half a century of embedded pacifism. It is difficult for non-Japanese to appreciate the extraordinarily detailed administrative constraints on what would be considered normal defense activities in most countries. Some of these have bordered on the absurd. One senior Japanese defense official was heard to lament that tanks en route to counter an invasion would never get there in time because they were required to observe the speed limit and stop at red lights. The reason was the almost complete absence of mobilization legislation that would give the government authority to suspend civil law in the event of a military emergency.

These impediments have now been largely removed with the June 2004 passage of seven bills in the Diet. These bills augment contingency legislation enacted the previous year and designed to facilitate civil-defense cooperation between the national government and the prefectural and local authorities in the event of an emergency or an attack on Japan. The bills improve military preparedness and mobilization by allowing the Japanese and U.S. military to use seaports, airports, roads, radio frequencies and other public property in an emergency. They also permit the SDF to fire on commercial ships outside Japan’s territorial waters if they refuse inspection during a crisis.

Koizumi has also steadily whittled away the normative constraints on overseas deployments of the SDF. The U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom to destroy Al-Qaeda’s redoubt in the mountains of Afghanistan, supported by Japanese destroyers and supply ships, demonstrated conclusively that the era of checkbook diplomacy is finally over and that henceforth Japan intends to pull its weight militarily within the U.S. alliance. Iraq was an even greater break with tradition. In an unprecedented decision, Koizumi succeeded in gaining parliamentary approval to send some 600 troops to southern Iraq. The troops could only be used in non-combat roles. Samawah was selected because it was notionally free of conflict, but their very presence confirms that Japan has crossed a political Rubicon and that the government is determined to make the SDF a more usable and useful force.

Japan’s Strategic Intentions

What is less clear is how the SDF will be deployed in the future, and for what purposes. There are two diametrically opposed views about Japan’s strategic objectives. Those skeptical of its peaceful disposition and benign intentions contend that Tokyo is incrementally acquiring the military capabilities and strategic reach to complement its economic strength and give effect to long-suppressed regional power aspirations. Skeptics argue that Japan’s expanding peacekeeping activities, government pressure to revise the constitution, cooperation with the United States in missile defense, and procurement of military platforms and weapons systems that can be used offensively are  all evidence of Tokyo’s hegemonic intent.

Pragmatists, on the other hand, consider the changes in Japan’s security policy to be largely illusory and maintain that the government’s commitment to defense reform and greater burden-sharing within the alliance is rhetorical, rather than substantive. In their eyes, Koizumi’s promise of military support for the United States in Afghanistan fell far short of expectations. And despite the fanfare and flag-waving, Japanese forces dispatched to Iraq are serving in non-combat roles, forbidden to shoot other than in self-defense. Thus, there is very little prospect of Japan becoming more assertive globally or contributing much of real strategic value in East Asia, other than in the defense of Japan. A corollary is that Japan will continue to rely on the United States as a military shield while wielding the sword of mercantilism, cultivating a range of partners, including U.S. adversaries such as Iran, to hedge against economic dangers.

Curiously, neither side of this debate has grasped the real significance of the shift in public opinion or the reorientation of security policy that has been under way for more than a decade. A close examination of current Japanese attitudes towards security does not suggest the collective mindset of a resurgent hegemon. There is no political constituency for transforming the SDF into the kind of expeditionary force that would be necessary to sustain a new Japanese hegemony in Asia. With the possible exception of a small group of ultra-nationalists, who continue to harbor delusions of a return to some form of imperium, “normalizers” within the major political parties evince remarkably modest strategic aspirations.

Furthermore, the country’s aging population and the existence of a resilient, mature democracy works against a revival of militarism. Given its geostrategic vulnerabilities, energy dependence and declining birth rate, Japan is hardly in a position to embark on a policy of military adventurism or expansionism in East Asia, not least because it would be vehemently opposed by China, Japan’s principal competitor for regional influence, as well as its major ally, the United States.

Those who fear a return of militarism in Japan also fail to appreciate the domestic constraints on defense spending, which is legally capped at 1 percent of GDP, far lower than in most comparable countries. China, for example, spends 4.1 percent of GDP on defense, the United States 3.3 percent, South Korea 2.8 percent, France 2.5 percent, and Australia 1.9 percent. In East Asia, only Laos spends less as a percentage of GDP. Even a comparison by purchasing power parity shows Japan’s per capita defense expenditure as around one quarter that of the United States and half that of France.

Although this translates into an annual defense budget of $41 billion a year, the third largest in the world, more than 50 percent goes to salaries and personnel costs. So the money available for military hardware and support systems is less than might be expected for a budget this size. Moreover, Japan’s defense budget is being stretched by research and development related to the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Program (BMD), which will cost around $1 billion in financial year 2004/05 and an estimated $10 billion this decade, all of which will have to be absorbed within the existing budget. Thus, the scope for order-of-magnitude increases in combat power, particularly force-projection capabilities such as aircraft carriers and long-range bombers, is limited by fiscal as well as political realities.

However, eschewing the role of a regional hegemon does not mean that Japan should remain forever a strategically neutered superpower while others are free to configure the world according to their national interests and ideological proclivities. Japan’s foreign policy and defense elites envisage playing a more constructive role in regional and global affairs, free of constitutional shackles, by building and shaping institutions and norms according to Japanese values and interests. This is what Koizumi means when he talks about Japan becoming a “normal” state. It also implies a greater willingness to use force and dispatch the SDF on operations beyond Japan’s borders in coalitions of the willing, as well as UN-sanctioned peacekeeping operations.

These are developments that should be welcomed, rather than being a cause for alarm. What must be remembered is that unlike Europe, where war between states has become virtually unthinkable, Japan inhabits a region where interstate conflict is still a realistic prospect. It would be foolish in the extreme for Japan to emulate Europe’s security approach, which emphasizes confidence-building measures to resolve intramural disputes while reserving force for out-of-area operations. The strategic balance in northeast Asia is far less stable and predictable than in Europe, and Japan’s alliance obligations mandate the maintenance of a military capable of modern warfighting both at home and abroad. SDF personnel should not be seen as blue-helmeted NGOs.

Alliance Implications

But how durable is Japan’s alliance with the United States, the foundation stone of its security for the past half century? Could the alliance founder, or be fatally weakened, by rising Japanese nationalism or by a reassessment in Washington that Japan matters less? There are some disturbing portents. Fewer than 10 percent of Americans feel close to Japan as a country, and China’s emergence as a major trading nation has already eroded Tokyo’s influence in the halls of U.S. commerce and industry. The sense of shared strategic interests that once strongly united Japanese and Americans has dissipated. Although opinion surveys show that the Japanese public continues to express support in principle for the alliance, there is strong local opposition to the U.S. presence in areas like Okinawa and Atsugi, fueled by resentment over the sexual misconduct of U.S. servicemen and the occupation of valuable public land by the U.S. military.

Even so, it is difficult to envisage the circumstances that would lead to a breakdown or hollowing-out of the alliance. After a period of neglect during the Clinton Administration, President Bush moved decisively in his first term of office to rejuvenate ties with Tokyo, reflecting the administration’s assessment that a strong, regionally engaged Japan is crucial to three important U.S. strategic interests in East Asia: balancing China’s rising power, providing greater logistic and intelligence support for the U.S. military, and facilitating U.S. deployments to potential trouble spots. The Pentagon knows that for political and strategic reasons it would be virtually impossible to replicate the facilities it enjoys in Japan. Guam is too far away, and the Vietnamese are unlikely to permit the United States to reoccupy its former base at Cam Ranh Bay. Australia and Singapore are useful stopovers for deployments in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, but not the Taiwan Straits, where any conflict with China is most likely to be played out. Furthermore, the global realignment of U.S. military forces announced in August 2004 can only enhance Japan’s strategic value to the United States as its principal Asian ally and a key base for troop deployments to the Middle East and Central Asia.

A more likely scenario is that Japan will remain within the alliance but that over time it will seek greater autonomy and equality. By any calculation, the alliance is a net strategic benefit for Japan. The U.S. nuclear umbrella still provides an unmatchable level of extended deterrence against an attack from a nuclear-armed state. This is a crucial consideration for Tokyo, since China and Russia are able to strike Japan with nuclear-armed missiles and North Korea may well possess a handful of rudimentary nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Moreover, the United States will be an essential counterweight to China’s growing power as demographic, military and economic forces shift decisively in favor of Beijing. Fifty years ago, there was one Japanese for every six Chinese; by 2050 the ratio will be an unprecedented one to 16, based on current demographic trends. While the Japanese economy still dwarfs China’s and its military packs a powerful punch, Japan’s relative position isdeteriorating. If the alliance disintegrated, Japan would have to double and perhaps triple defense spending to compensate for the loss of the capabilities that the United States provides. Even then it could never replicate the unique military and intelligence assets that the United States brings to the table.

The real question for Tokyo is how to create more political and decision-making space for itself in a security partnership that can never truly be one of equals because of the disparities in size and strategic weight. Might the U.S. special relationship with the UK serve as a model, as former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and others have suggested? Despite superficial similarities—both the UK and Japan are maritime trading states anchored off the Eurasian landmass—Japan’s vastly different strategic circumstances and the absence of the unique historical, linguistic and cultural ties that underpin the Anglo-American relationship suggest otherwise.

More likely is an evolutionary process in which Japan gains a greater say on issues that are central to its security concerns in Asia and looks for opportunities to encourage more collaborative behavior in its American ally. There are increasing signs of independent thinking in Japan’s strategic engagement with the United States, which Washington must accept and encourage in the interests of a more mature and enduring partnership. Much of this is being driven by Japan’s involvement in BMD and the need to reach agreement with the United States on a complex range of associated political and operational issues.

Currently, Japan is not able to detect and intercept incoming ballistic missiles without U.S. assistance, a conspicuous deficiency given the established arsenals of China, Russia and North Korea. In the absence of a countervailing missile capability, which is forbidden under the current interpretation of the constitution, Tokyo has opted to participate in BMD research and development. The central aim of this ambitious and still controversial enterprise is to construct a missile shield able to protect Japan against a limited strike from North Korea (although it is unlikely to be an effective prophylactic against China’s or Russia’s more numerous and capable missile forces).

Joint tests are expected to commence in late 2005, and the proposed system, comprising land- and sea-based interceptors, will be activated in 2007. Aside from lingering doubts about whether the shield will actually work as hypothesized, participation in BMD with the United States poses some real policy conundrums for Tokyo. Neighboring states, particularly China, are concerned that the expertise acquired in sensitive areas of missile technology would be readily transferable should Japan decide to develop its own missiles and arm them with nuclear warheads. Japanese scientists are involved in research on four components of the SM-3 missile—the propulsion system, infrared sensors, lightweight nose-cone technology and the kinetic kill warhead. China worries that Japan might export missile technology to Taiwan, and extending the shield to cover the approaches to the island could negate China’s current missile advantage over Taiwan.

Over time, the future architecture and modalities of missile defense could significantly alter the power structure of the alliance and reshape Japan’s approach to national security planning. Successful collaboration on missile defense would be a powerful reaffirmation of shared U.S.-Japanese strategic interests, accelerating the trend towards greater equality within the alliance and stimulating reform of the SDF’s structure, organization and intelligence systems, as well as national security decision-making more generally. Already, Japanese officials have indicated their desire to have greater input into BMD planning and to share data obtained from the new FPS-XX radar system, which will improve the Pentagon’s ability to track ballistic missiles targeted against the United States. Prudent self-interest dictates that Washington should be generous in sharing sensitive missile technology with Japan and be prepared to cede a measure of operational control over the system itself, if it expects Japan to cooperate fully. Conversely, Tokyo must accept that any failure to deploy an effective missile defense system or shoot down missiles bound for the United States because of constitutional niceties could rupture or severely weaken the alliance.

More fundamentally, Washington and Tokyo both need to pay greater attention to alliance management, policy coordination and addressing the imbalances in their strategic partnership. The best metaphor to describe the way the alliance works in practice is the hub (the United States) and radiating spokes (Japan, Australia, South Korea and Thailand) of a wheel. The critical dialogue is between the hub and the spokes, seldom between the spokes themselves. If the alliance is to adapt and prosper in today’s vastly different strategic circumstances, the essentially uni-directional pattern of dialogue has to become more multi-directional and the alliance less dominated by U.S. interests and policy preoccupations. This will mean moving towards a more consultative, European style of alliance, which will provide Japan, Australia and the other allies with enhanced opportunities for ameliorating Washington’s unilateralist tendencies and sensitizing U.S. policymakers to Asian security perceptions and political realities. In exchange, the United States should expect greater burden-sharing and collegiality in dealing with common security problems.

Calming the Dragon

As the alliance is recast, Japanese and U.S. policymakers need to consider how best to reassure a nervous Beijing that a reinvigorated Japan, working in close cooperation with the United States in Asia, is not a threat to China. This will be no easy task because of the widespread view in Chinese policy and military circles that Tokyo’s strategic shift foreshadows a more assertive and possibly adversarial Japan. Of course, there is nothing new or surprising in this reaction, as Sino-Japanese rivalry has deep historical roots. It is manifest today in Chinese anxieties about Japan’s support for Taiwan and BMD and resentment over legacy issues, notably Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war dead but in Chinese eyes is a symbol of the country’s imperial past. Until recently, these anxieties have been moderated by Japan’s constitution and Beijing’s recognition that the U.S. alliance has prevented a revival of Japanese military power. But as Japan breaks free from its constitutional shackles and the Red Sun makes its reappearance across the globe on the uniforms and flags of a reconstituted military, Chinese strategists are drawing conclusions that are troubling for future Sino-Japanese relations.

Among them is the belief that Japan wants to be a military as well as an economic power; that it is moving from a preoccupation with self-defense to accepting the broader alliance objectives of collective self-defense; that it is developing the capability to intervene militarily in the region; that the Koizumi government is playing up the North Korean threat so that it can break the constitutional taboo on collective self-defense; and that it is concealing its real strategic intentions by using peacekeeping and the War on Terror to desensitize the region to an expanded military presence.

Mirroring their neighbor’s concerns, Japan is distinctly uneasy about recent double-digit increases in Chinese military spending, the acquisition of advanced fighter aircraft and naval vessels from Russia, the rapid pace of defense modernization, and the build-up of China’s missile inventory. Such apprehensions are understandable. China’s recently purchased advanced Kilo-class submarines can interdict the main maritime trade routes that are crucial to Japan’s economic survival. Since 2000, there has been a dramatic rise in the frequency of Chinese naval incursions into Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Tokyo is particularly concerned about Chinese hydrographic surveys and oil drilling near the EEZ, as well as what appear to be intelligence-gathering operations by Chinese submarines, dramatically illustrated in November 2004 by the highly publicized incursion of a Han-class nuclear-powered submarine into Japanese waters near Okinawa.

Tensions have already flared over a number of unresolved territorial disputes at sea, notably the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in Chinese), which are located near rich deposits of oil and natural gas in the underlying sea bed. So far, these have been confined to polemical exchanges between Tokyo and Beijing and symbolic protests by Chinese activists. But the potential for miscalculation will increase as an energy-hungry China steps up its oil-exploration activities in the seas around the Senkakus and Japan responds by augmenting its maritime patrols and surveillance of the region. Already there are signs that for the first time the Koizumi government will allow Japanese oil companies to drill in a disputed area of the East China Sea, which would inevitably inflame anti-Japanese sentiment in China.

A critical issue for Japan is how a conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan would play out. In the event of hostilities, there is little doubt that the United States would expect Japan to provide intelligence and rear-area support for the U.S. carrier groups that would be dispatched to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. This would expose the SDF to a Chinese counterstrike and risk drawing Japan into direct combat with China for the first time since World War II, the consequences of which would be incalculable for both countries.

Thus, paradoxically, mutual mistrust is growing in parallel with deepening economic interdependence. The challenge for Japan is managing relations with China so that bilateral tensions do not lead to open conflict or spill over and infect the wider region. This will require a much higher level of trust between the two Asian powers than has been evident to date and a willingness to consider new mechanisms for mediating and preventing disputes so that major crises can be averted.

Unfortunately, with the notable exception of the Six Party Talks on North Korea, neither Japan nor the United States has given sufficient priority to including China in strategies for mitigating existing conflicts and preventing new ones from arising. On the contrary, the impression has been created in Beijing that closer U.S.-Japanese security cooperation is premised on containing China and diluting its military power. Missile defense is illustrative, as is the developing trilateral security dialogue (TSD) between the United States, Japan and Australia, which was established in 2001 at the U.S.-Australian ministerial talks in Canberra. From Beijing’s perspective, the TSD looks suspiciously like the first step on the road to forming a new security bloc in Asia aimed at containing China. While Chinese fears that the TSD could evolve into an Asian-style NATO are misplaced and China should not be permitted to exercise a veto over U.S.-Japanese security cooperation, it makes no sense to antagonize Beijing by further institutionalizing the TSD and transforming it into a clubby, de facto trilateral alliance. A far better approach would be to create a security mechanism that allows China to  discuss northeast Asia’s many intractable security problems directly with Japan and the United States.

Such a mechanism already exists in the form of the Six Party Talks, which were established in 2003 to defuse and resolve the North Korean nuclear problem and which include all the northeast Asian states as well as the United States. China has rejected previous attempts to inaugurate a sub-regional security arrangement, fearing that it could be used as a vehicle for foreign intervention and meddling in China’s affairs, especially Taiwan. But Beijing is more comfortable with the format of the Six Party Talks and feels some ownership of the process. So there is every prospect that the Chinese would be favorably disposed to broadening the scope and agenda of the talks atsome future date. Enlarging the Six Party Talks would be an important confidence-building measure and would provide strategic reassurance to China that should help soften its opposition to extended U.S.-Japanese defense cooperation.

The Way Ahead

The principal conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that Tokyo’s desire to pursue a more proactive security policy is not an unreasonable response to the more threatening and volatile security environment it faces. After nearly six decades of quasi-pacifism, it is time for Japan to move beyond the ideals of the post-World War II peace constitution and participate more fully in building and sustaining regional order and combating the emerging threats to security. Although fears that Japan might revert to militarism are real, they are ill conceived. Democracy and the rule of law are firmly entrenched, some constitutional restrictions on the use of force will remain, and the U.S. alliance ensures that Japan has no need for the nuclear weapons or major force-projection capabilities that would be inherently destabilizing and set off alarm bells in the region.

While the alliance once had been likened to dosho imu—lovers sharing the same bed but dreaming different dreams—Tokyo and Washington are increasingly sharing the same dreams. However, the administration needs to recognize that for all Koizumi’s reforming zeal in foreign affairs and defense, domestic and regional realities will continue to circumscribe Japan’s capacity to support the United States militarily. For its part, Tokyo must accept that a regression to the lackluster economic performances of the previous decade and a perceived unwillingness to pull its weight militarily could one day force a hard-headed reassessment of Japan’s strategic and economic value in Washington and elsewhere. A weakened U.S.-Japanese alliance and the beginning of a long-term decline in Japanese power could foreshadow an extended period of uncertainty and destabilizing strategic change that would be detrimental to both countries’ interests. A diminished, less-influential Japan would weaken Washington’s voice in Asia’s affairs.

The best way to preclude this outcome is for the administration to keep relations with Japan at the top of its Asian policy agenda, in recognition of Japan’s centrality to the alliance and to East Asia’s stability. However, in his eagerness to enlist Japan in the War on Terror and in support of U.S. global security interests, President Bush must be careful not to be too prescriptive or to pressure Tokyo into decisions on military acquisitions and deployments that raise the specter of a resurgent Japanese hegemon. At the same time, Bush must make clear his opposition to Japan acquiring nuclear weapons or major power-projection capabilities such as long-range bombers or aircraft carriers. This would be inherently destabilizing and ultimately antithetical to Japan’s own security interests.

Finally, Chinese insecurities will have to be addressed. Although the old adage that two tigers cannot live together peacefully on the same mountain no longer holds true in today’s global village—where tigers of all kinds coexist to mutual benefit—amicable Sino-Japanese relations cannot be assumed. Some creative new security architecture is required to help manage and alleviate the inevitable tensions ahead. U.S. policy has to be mindful of China’s legitimate security concerns but strike an appropriate balance between kowtowing and needless hostility to Asia’s rising power.

Posted at 1:31 AM · Comments (0)

What if the Japanese government apologised profusely and unconditionally for all the terrible things Japan did to China during the war? What if all Japanese textbooks described those wartime atrocities - the Nanking massacre, comfort women and so on - in full? What if Japan were to build lots of museums and memorials about Japanese war crimes committed in China, Korea, and south-east Asia? And what if Japan renounced all claims to disputed islands in the China Sea? Would this stop the Chinese from throwing stones at the Japanese embassy, or molesting Japanese students, or demonstrating against Japan’s bid for United Nations Security Council membership? Probably not. These outbursts of emotional and sometimes violent nationalism in China take place partly because they are the only expression of public protest the government allows.

Similar things can happen in a democracy too, of course, as they do in South Korea. When they occur, more or less spontaneously, neither the South Korean nor the Chinese government can afford to ignore them or stop them too forcefully. Hence the odd passivity of Chinese policemen when demonstrators smashed Japanese property in Beijing.

Sometimes, however, the Chinese and, to a lesser extent, the South Korean authorities deliberately inflame anti-Japanese passions to deflect attention from their own shortcomings. Nationalism, along with capitalist development, has become the only justification for the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on power, and when capitalism falters nationalism must be cranked up. Ever since Deng Xiaoping opened China’s door to foreign, especially Japanese, investment, and Marxist ideology faded into insignificance, “patriotic museums” have sprouted all over China - most of them dedicated to past Japanese atrocities.

Japan’s record in the second world war is bad enough to stir up popular passions whenever they are needed. But the manipulation of xenophobia by Chinese rulers began long before the Nanking Massacre. When the Boxers, a revolutionary sect, went on a violent rampage against foreigners and westernised Chinese in 1900, they were encouraged by the Empress Dowager Zu Xi. She had to do this, because the discontent directed at foreigners was really about harsh economic conditions, for which the Chinese authorities were responsible. The Boxers hated all authority. So when foreign troops, including Japanese, put down the Boxer Rebellion, the Empress turned round and backed the foreigners.

That pattern has persisted to this day. And so has the explosive mixture in Chinese rebellions of xenophobia and anti-government protest. The Chinese resentment of Japan, too, stretches back at least as far as 1895, when the Japanese upstarts defeated the armies of the great Middle Kingdom. Even as Japan grew quickly into a world power, China lagged behind in economic development and saw its port cities come under foreign jurisdiction, while much of the country fell prey to violent warlords, and then to Japanese invaders.

One of the most famous and influential Chinese rebellions happened in May 1919, when students in Beijing demonstrated against the handover of German concessions in China to Japan. Ostensibly the so-called May 4 Movement started as an anti-Japanese demonstration. In fact, it was directed against the weak, backward and undemocratic Chinese government. The movement could have had many results. In the end, it turned out to be Mao Zedong’s revolution.

So the present government cannot but be aware of the potential dangers of allowing anti-Japanese protests to spiral out of control. It is often forgotten that student protests in China in the 1980s, culminating in Tiananmen Square in 1989, also began with riots against foreign students and “Japanese militarism”. Even as the latest anti-

Japanese demonstrations erupted in Beijing and Shanghai, tens of thousands of villagers began rioting in Zhejiang province, protesting against miserable economic and environmental conditions. Anti-Japanese demonstrations spilled over to Hong Kong this week and many more are being planned for this weekend in at least 10 Chinese cities. Chinese websites are buzzing with angry rhetoric. And the anniversary of the May 4 Movement is looming.

There is no evidence of a direct link between the rural Zhejiang protests and the anti-Japanese demonstrations elsewhere, but the very thought that such links might be possible would fill any Chinese government official who knows anything about history with dread. That is why the authorities will no doubt try to stop the demonstrations from going much further. But there is equally little doubt they will recur, no matter what the Japanese do.

The writer, professor at Bard College, New York, is author of Inventing Japan (Phoenix/Random House) and Bad Elements (Phoenix/Random House)

Posted at 12:14 PM · Comments (0)

The U.S. Must Act to Promote Peace in the Congo

Brussels/Nairobi, 14 April 2005: The International Crisis Group urges President George W. Bush in his meeting with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame on April 15 to press the Rwandan government to take concrete action to promote peace in the Congo.

In a letter (full text below) addressed to President Bush, the Crisis Group has recommended three steps to marginalise the hardliners among the Rwandan FDLR rebels operating in the eastern Congo and to encourage the return of the 8,000 to 10,000 FDLR combatants still based in the Congo.

The FDLR have been at the centre of the two Congo wars. The FDLR remain a serious threat to the Congolese population on which its fighters live off and prey. While they are no longer a serious strategic threat to Rwanda, they can still launch cross-border raids into Rwanda and provoke incursions by the Rwandan army into the Congo. On March 31, the FDLR announced in Rome that they will abandon the armed struggle and declared that they are willing to return to Rwanda peacefully. However, there are indications that the FDLR will not act on its promise and will tie their return to political conditions.

In the letter, Crisis Group President Gareth Evans calls for the Rwandan government to prevent a deadlock by separating the hard-line political figures from those willing to return. The letter urges the Rwandan government to meet with FDLR military commanders for technical discussions on the modalities of their return. The Rwandan government has refused to do so until now.

In addition, the letter asks for the Rwandan government to identify the FDLR commanders who are wanted by Rwandan courts or the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for crimes of genocide. It also recommends that the Rwandan government provide greater incentives for the FDLR commanders to return, such as the integration of those not guilty of atrocities into the Rwandan army.

If the Rwandan government does not act, the peaceful avenues for demobilisation are likely to fail and the only solution to the FDLR will be military. This will provoke the displacement and death of many more civilians in the region. President Bush’s meeting with President Kagame is a timely opportunity to further the peace process in both Rwanda and the Congo.

To find out more about the conflict in the Congo, visit our Congo advocacy page. This page has details of Crisis Group’s reports and opinion pieces on the conflict, details of our advocacy efforts to date, information on what you can do to support Crisis Group’s efforts, and links to other resources on the conflict.

Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) 32 (0) 485 555 946
Jennifer Leonard (Washington) 1 202 785 1601
To contact Crisis Group media please click here

Dear Mr President,

I write to urge you to utilise the visit of President Paul Kagame to Washington on April 15 to underline to him the importance of Rwanda taking several specific steps that would make a substantial contribution to peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Those steps are basically designed to marginalise the hardliners among the Rwandan FDLR rebels who have been such a destabilising presence in the eastern Congo over the last decade. Rwanda should be requested to:

accept a mechanism to meet with the FDLR military leadership for technical discussions (which would not touch on any political conditions) concerning its peaceful repatriation to Rwanda;

specifically identify those still in the Congo who are wanted by Rwandan courts or the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for crimes of genocide; and

be prepared to integrate some high-ranking FDLR commanders not responsible for atrocities into the Rwandan Defence Forces.

Background. The FDLR have been at the centre of the two Congo wars. In recent years, they have been significantly weakened as the Congolese government has cut off their supply line, and defections have caused some of the top leadership to return to Rwanda. The movement currently numbers 8,000 to 10,000 fighters, based in the North and South Kivu provinces of the eastern Congo. While these insurgents are no longer a serious strategic threat to Rwanda, they can still launch cross-border raids and provoke incursions by the Rwandan army into the Congo. One such incursion took place last November and triggered a crisis that pushed the fragile Congolese transition to the brink. The FDLR is also a serious threat to the Congolese population on which its fighters live off and prey.

In March, the FDLR and the Congolese government met in Rome for talks under the auspices of the Community of Sant’Egidio. At the end of the meeting, the FDLR condemned the genocide, renounced the armed struggle and declared its willingness to return to Rwanda peacefully. On any view, if the rebels can be made to follow through on this promise, it will make a large contribution toward peace in the Great Lakes region.

There are signs, however, that the FDLR might not act on its declaration. Its political leadership, based in Europe, is much weaker and more divided than other Rwandan opposition parties and does not want to lose its main asset, the armed wing in the Congo. According to numerous reliable sources, it will now seek to attach political conditions to any return to Rwanda, such as the demand that the FDLR be permitted to function there as a political party, which presently stand no chance of being accepted by the Rwandan Government.

While there is a real need, as Crisis Group has consistently insisted, for a liberalisation of Rwandan politics, the nature of the FDLR and its violent past make the Rwandan government’s position understandable. But there is still a way forward. Many FDLR military commanders seem willing to return to Rwanda without political conditions: according to Crisis Group interviews with commanders in the field and demobilised combatants, the military leadership is tired after eleven years of armed struggle that has decimated its troops. President Kagame should take advantage of this opportunity to separate the commanders from the hard-line political figures.

Proposed technical discussions. It is unrealistic to believe the FDLR will demobilise if the Rwandan government does not meet with its military commanders and discuss their return. Until now, Kigali has refused, as it is opposed to any negotiations with a group it reasonably regards as criminal. What is needed, however, is not political negotiations but technical discussion of the modalities of the return to Rwanda. This should be coordinated with the Congolese government, which has recently proven itself eager to be rid of the movement.

Proposed treatment of suspected genocidaires. During these talks, the Rwandan government should provide a list of FDLR officers who are suspected of genocide crimes by either Rwandan courts or the ICTR in Arusha. These individuals should fall under either category I or II genocidaires, in other words those believed to be the most serious offenders. The Rwandan government has said that 10 to 12 per cent of the leadership was involved in the genocide. Other sources believe the number of such persons still with the FDLR may be much smaller. Rwandan intelligence has detailed lists of both the FDLR commanders and those accused of genocide, and it should be relatively simple to establish who are the wanted individuals. Naming them will isolate the hardliners and encourage the other leaders to return home.

The FDLR, before the repatriation of the remainder of the movement, would have to hand over to the ICTR or Kigali the genocidaires in their ranks and enlist immediately in the voluntary disarmament and repatriation process run by the UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC.

Proposed integration of FDLR commanders into the RDF. The FDLR military leadership still needs a strong incentive to return to Rwanda. It is clear that the $200 package on offer to regular demobilised combatants will not suffice to bring the leaders back. Many of them have expressed the desire to continue a military career. In 2003, Kigali orchestrated the repatriation of the Force Commander of the FDLR, General Paul Rwarakabije, by offering him and three other FDLR officers ranks in the Rwandan army. A similar offer should be extended to those in the current FDLR leadership who are not guilty of atrocities.

The Rwandan government should be encouraged to be more proactive in closing the chapter on the FDLR and removing it as a spoiler to the Congo peace process. In neighbouring Uganda and Burundi, flexible approaches to enemy militias have contributed to stabilisation of the region and demobilisation of thousands of combatants.

If peaceful avenues for demobilisation are exhausted, the only solution to the FDLR will be military. This will provoke the displacement and deaths of many more innocent civilians in the region. President Kagame’s visit is a timely opportunity to further the peace process in both Rwanda and the Congo.

Yours sincerely,

GARETH EVANS
President

Posted at 1:06 AM · Comments (0)

Fallout
Reviewed by James Gleick
Sunday, April 10, 2005; Copyright The Washington Post

By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Knopf. 721 pp. $35

Six decades have now passed since the United States first launched the quintessential weapon of mass destruction against civilian targets, twice in one week, killing two cities in a blaze of nuclear fire. No one has done it since. J. Robert Oppenheimer would be surprised that we’ve gotten this far.

The atomic bomb would surely have come into existence without Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project, but the label “Father of the Bomb” could be attached to no one else. He felt his responsibility deeply. His self-lacerating conscience let him see with immediate and lasting clarity what his success meant for humanity. If he had done nothing else — if nothing else had happened to him — Oppenheimer would still be one of the 20th century’s great, complex, defining figures.

But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the end for him; he did not walk away from American science or the atomic era he had helped inaugurate. His achievement and his anguish, before the bomb and after, make him a man to whom historians and artists are continually drawn. Heinar Kipphardt’s drama “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer” transfixed international theater audiences in the 1960s, and a new opera by John Adams and Peter Sellars, “Doctor Atomic,” will debut this fall in San Francisco.

Martin J. Sherwin, a historian at Tufts University, began his Oppenheimer biography 25 years ago, exploring on horseback the high desert mesas of New Mexico that his subject first fell in love with as a boy visiting a dude ranch. Since Sherwin’s project lasted two decades longer than he intended — he was eventually joined by a second biographer and historian, Kai Bird — we can well believe him when he says it gave him “a new understanding of the complexities of biography.” It was worth the trouble. American Prometheus is comprehensive, finely judged where it most matters and sometimes revelatory. “Triumph and Tragedy” is a catchphrase much abused in biography subtitles; this subject earns it.

Oppenheimer was born in 1903, the first son of wealthy and cultured German Jews living in New York City, and was almost immediately understood to be bright and sensitive. Or as he said, “I was an unctuous, repulsively good little boy.” He was also lonely, prone to melancholy, fascinated by and confused about sex, and at once romantic and arrogant. He studied science at Harvard, read Dostoyevsky, Proust and T.S. Eliot’s new “The Waste Land,” wrote love poetry and painted landscapes in oil. These were the first, heady days of a new physics, quantum mechanics. He pursued this field to Europe, where it was gestating, sought out the pioneers of the new guard and strongly impressed all of them.

When he returned to become a professor at Berkeley, he was already known as America’s most brilliant young physicist. He became the first to predict the existence of antimatter, which he realized by dint of imagination and calculation should exist; and he did groundbreaking work on neutron stars decades before astronomers were actually able to observe any. Somehow, though, he always managed to fall short of solving the greatest problems. Bird and Sherwin aptly describe him as “a productive dilettante.” His near-contemporary, the physicist I.I. Rabi (whose strong, moral voice runs throughout this book), once said, “God knows I’m not the simplest person, but compared to Oppenheimer, I’m very, very simple.” Oppenheimer was the sort of person who studied the Bhagavad Gita in the original Sanskrit and gave clever names to his automobiles (Gamaliel, Garuda and later Bombsight). He had strong social and political convictions, identified himself with communists and communism, supported labor organizers and contributed money to Spanish republicans fighting the fascists.

He never did win a Nobel Prize. The authors suggest that his role as bomb-maker may have been weighed against him, but perhaps Rabi’s judgment — that the very greatest achievement in physics eluded him — is more to the point: “His interest in religion … resulted in a feeling for the mystery of the universe that surrounded him almost like a fog. He saw physics clearly … but at the border he tended to feel that there was much more of the mysterious and the novel than there actually was. He was insufficiently confident of the power of the intellectual tools he already possessed and did not drive his thought to the very end.” He finished other physicists’ papers when they were stuck. He possessed exquisite taste in selecting problems. With hindsight, we can see that he was meant to be an inspirer, organizer and perfecter of scientists — and a leader.

He was shortly to leave dilettantism behind.

News came in January 1939 from two German scientists that the nucleus of a uranium atom could be split when bombarded with neutrons. Oppenheimer was not the only physicist to see what that implied. “I think it really not too improbable,” he wrote a friend, “that a ten cm [centimeter] cube of uranium deuteride (one should have something to slow the neutrons without capturing them) might very well blow itself to hell.”

When the time came for the United States to try building an atomic bomb, Oppenheimer both was and was not a natural choice to be director of the most ambitious scientific and industrial project in human history. He was at the pinnacle of American physics. In 1942, he was put in charge of fast-neutron research at Berkeley with an imaginative government title, “coordinator of rapid rupture.” On the other hand, the government’s security apparatus was nursing an antipathy to people with communist associations, and Oppenheimer’s were well-known. The FBI had opened an investigation bordering on harassment (he was seldom unwatched or unwiretapped) that continued for most of his life, generating 10,000 pages of dossier. The War Department denied him a security clearance at a moment when most of the world’s knowledge pertaining to atomic fission resided in his brain.

And he was no engineer. At the age of 38, he seemed ethereal. He was frail and underweight and failed his Army physical.

Yet some people would follow him anywhere. We can gauge his charisma from its reflection in others’ extravagant romanticizing: “His porkpie hat, his pipe, and something about his eyes gave him a certain aura.” His eyes were not just blue, but “the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, very clear blue.” One physicist said simply, “When I was with him, I was a larger person.” Students imitated the way he spoke and the way he walked. “When he was impressed with something, he’d say ‘Gee,’ ” one recalled, “and it was lovely just to hear him say ‘Gee.’ “

The story of Oppenheimer’s success on that isolated New Mexico mesa, from the spring of 1943 to the summer of 1945, has been told many times. Bird and Sherwin capture all the drama and exhilaration and ironic glory. First there were 30 scientists in plywood barracks, surrounded by barbed-wire fencing; soon, 6,000 men and women were living and working in hundreds of buildings and trailers, creating an unruly, polyglot city. Oppenheimer got the job done. But for the people who spent those two years in his thrall, he also made it a golden time. “Here at Los Alamos,” an English physicist said, “I found a spirit of Athens, of Plato, of an ideal republic.” All in the service of mass death.

So were the scientists responsible for the consequences of the weapon they had made? Did moral duties follow from their technical ones? Edward Teller, who went on to lead the development of the hydrogen bomb, said no: “The accident that we worked out this dreadful thing should not give us the responsibility of having a voice in how it is to be used.” But Oppenheimer would not let himself off the hook that way. How the bomb was “to be used” was partly a scientific question, and Oppenheimer did that part of his job with ruthless efficiency. “Don’t let them bomb through clouds or through an overcast,” he told the officers preparing the attack on Hiroshima. “Don’t let them detonate it too high … or the target won’t get as much damage.” But at the same time, he was already trying to address moral and political issues. Looking ahead to the specter of a postwar arms race, he urged that the Soviet Union be fully informed about the bomb and its impending use; President Truman disregarded this advice.

Oppenheimer did not linger at Los Alamos. He left within months of the 1945 bombings and became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He did not leave public life, however. As the government began to form committees and commissions and agencies to manage the new nuclear age, Oppenheimer seemed to be everywhere.

Even as he was being lionized in the national press, he was sharing his darkest visions with small audiences of scientists and others. “We have made a thing, a most terrible weapon that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world … a thing that by all the standards of the world we grew up in is an evil thing,” he said. He confessed to Truman in a private meeting that he felt he had blood on his hands — a statement the president found offensive and presumptuous. Truman angrily told Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson that Oppenheimer was “a cry-baby scientist” who had “spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them.”

Indeed, Oppenheimer sometimes spoke to politicians as if he were addressing children. He tried to warn of the possibility of nuclear terrorism — a bomb smuggled into a city in a container or crate. There was no high-tech defense, he noted. “What instrument would you use to detect an atomic bomb hidden somewhere in a city?” a senator asked in one closed hearing. Oppenheimer responded dryly, “A screwdriver” — to open cartons and suitcases. Bird and Sherwin show how well he anticipated our own world, where nuclear materials and technologies percolate through shadowy networks and where, as each new country joins the nuclear club, we have no answer, only perpetual surprise and bluster.

“Our atomic monopoly,” Oppenheimer warned in 1948, “is like a cake of ice melting in the sun.” In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear weapon, surprising Truman, who at first didn’t want to believe it. For his part, Oppenheimer believed that nuclear proliferation was inevitable but that it need not lead to an arms race. He opposed the crucial turning point: the development of the hydrogen “Super,” using nuclear fusion to release an explosive force many thousands of times greater than the first fission bombs. He feared that such weapons, if made, would surely be used.

Truman sided instead with the hawkish elements of his administration, who argued that the Soviets would develop these weapons on their own and that unilateral restraint would be suicide. He moved forward with a vast industrial program to ramp up the nation’s nuclear capability. The decisions were made mostly in secret, with virtually no public debate, and the legacy is ours: a global stockpile of more than 100,000 nuclear weapons, a running cost to the American economy that has passed $5.5 trillion, and, in return, no realistic sense of nuclear security — even in a post-Soviet era in which we fear smaller and smaller nations and all the terrorist groups that might buy or steal their bombs.

When Oppenheimer fell, he fell hard. His chief antagonist was Lewis Strauss, a former financier whom Truman appointed to the AEC, where he found Oppenheimer an obstacle and an irritant. Strauss resented Oppenheimer’s opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb, and when President Eisenhower named Strauss chairman of the AEC, he immediately began trying to push Oppenheimer aside. In 1954, he drew up formal charges: accusations of disloyalty, ranging from having been “listed as a sponsor of the Friends of the Chinese People” to having “strongly opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb.”

“Red Ties Alleged,” the headlines blared. The rise of anticommunist hysteria served as a backdrop, but Oppenheimer was not a victim of McCarthyism. Strauss deliberately kept the Oppenheimer affair away from the volatile senator because Strauss wanted it handled carefully. It was personal. The proceedings were secret, outside any court or normal legal process. Strauss selected the prosecutor and the judges. He coached them with secret allegations from Oppenheimer’s FBI files that Oppenheimer and his lawyers were not allowed to see, much less rebut. All the while, Strauss and the FBI eavesdropped (with phone taps and hidden microphones) on Oppenheimer’s discussions with his lawyers. “Strauss and his allies were determined to silence the one man who they feared could credibly challenge their policies,” Bird and Sherwin write. This was no trial; it was, as the authors show in their harrowing chronicle, a “star chamber” and a “kangaroo court,” and the result was preordained. Oppenheimer’s security clearance was revoked and his government work severed.

Oppenheimer’s excommunication was not the end, of course. He lived another 13 years. One of President Kennedy’s last acts before he was assassinated was to prepare a rite of rehabilitation: giving Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award, a presidential prize then consisting of $50,000 and a medal of honor. But Oppenheimer’s public life was over; his wounds never healed. The best epitaph may still be George F. Kennan’s. The great diplomat eulogized Oppenheimer in 1967: “On no one did there ever rest with greater cruelty the dilemmas evoked by the recent conquest by human beings of a power over nature out of all proportion to their moral strength.” •

James Gleick is the author of several books, including “Isaac Newton,” “Chaos: Making a New Science” and “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman.”

Posted at 12:57 AM · Comments (0)

April 13, 2005; Copyright The Wall Street Journal

Japan and China have been at each others’ throats for centuries over who dominates the Western Pacific, and particularly Taiwan and Korea. Like the long-seated rivalry between France and Britain in Europe, China, as the continental power, and Japan, as the island power, have engaged in repeated pitched battles over the years. On sea, land and in the commercial arena, the two countries have used everything from piracy and intrigue to coups to advance their own ends.

Until the late 19th century, China was clearly the dominant player. But then a modernized Japan defeated a waning China, seized Korea and Taiwan, and occupied most of China. Even after Japan’s military defeat in 1945, China was initially handicapped by the domestic catastrophes inflicted by its new Communist rulers, while the Japanese economic behemoth dominated. Only after Deng Xiaoping adopted the open-door policy in the 1980s did that begin to change. After more than two decades of rapid economic growth, China is rapidly replacing Japan as the major economic force in East Asia. Already it is Japan and Taiwan’s largest trading partner, has increasing economic influence in Korea and a proposed free-trade agreement is likely to further enhance its economic clout at the expense of Japan.

Throughout history, the U.S. has played a key role in the power struggle between these two Asian giants. In the 19th century it favored Japan, then the U.S. allied itself with China against Japan in World War II. Today Washington has strong ties to both Asian countries and how the U.S. plays its hand could have a crucial impact on the outcome. Whether the two countries can put aside their differences to continue down the path toward a prosperous, stable, and successful East Asia, or whether the region is torn apart by destructive competition and tension due to military build-ups, will partly depend on how America handles the situation.

The current disagreements over a permanent seat for Japan on the United Nations Security Council, the territorial disputes between Japan and China over the Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands, and between Japan and South Korea over Tokdo or Takeshima Islands, as well as China and Korea’s fixation with Japan’s distorted version of its own imperialistic history in its textbooks are all manifestations of deep historic animosities and distrust. Japan has been bludgeoned unmercifully by China and Korea for its brutality during its invasions and occupations in the 20th century. Some of this reflects genuine emotion, but it also reflects an attempt to put Japan on the defensive while at the same time gobbling up its goods and superior technology.

In recent days a series of large anti-Japanese street protests in major Chinese cities has dramatically increased tensions. The Chinese want to block any political rise of Japan by keeping it out of the U.N. Security Council. China also wants to checkmate Japanese attempts at power projection by attacking its new role over the sensitive issue of Taiwan. China also plays on lingering anti-Japanese feelings among Asian states to hit Japan when its economy is still weak.

As China’s rapid military modernization, its improving power-projection capabilities and persistent sovereignty claims make Asians nervous, it is only natural that they should turn to the U.S. as the only military power that can protect them against China. The U.S. has naval facilities in Singapore, active security treaties with Thailand, the Philippines, Korea and Japan and security guarantees for Taiwan. This forms a ring of commitments and deployments around China which Beijing perceives as a containment policy engineered by Washington. The reality, of course, is that many in the U.S. policy establishment describe the relationship with China as the most important in the world, stressing common economic goals, cooperation on anti-terrorism, and the many other issues where the two countries can work together. America does not want to take sides in sovereignty claims involving a few uninhabited islands, nor does the U.S. need to join the bitter condemnations of Japan over its World War II behavior.

The Reagan and subsequent Bush administrations gave Japan top priority in their strategic calculations on Asia. Republican platforms in 2000 and 2004 placed Japan first in the listing of foreign-policy objectives in Asia. Reality, however, clearly has changed this as China has required more attention and the stakes with Beijing are demonstrably higher. China consumes much more time and is a media monster, both negative and positive.

That is amply demonstrated by the events of the past few years. For instance, the U.S. did not mistakenly bomb the Japanese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, or collide with a Japanese fighter aircraft over Hainan in 2001. Nor did Washington send carrier battle groups off Taiwan in 1996 to neutralize a Japanese threat to Taiwan. On all those occasions, the object of American concern was China rather than Japan.

China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization took years to negotiate and generated some dramatic publicity as did ill-conceived and abortive attempts in the U.S. to deprive China of most-favored nation trading status if it did not shape up on human rights. In contrast, our tortured negotiations with Japan over trade and security have so far been an endless slog through the thicket of Japanese protectionism and unfair trading practices. However, America’s rage toward Tokyo during the 1980s has subsided as Japan wallows in continuing recession and China looms as the bigger economic challenge.

Japan, together with India and Brazil, are major regional powers that deserve permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, although not necessarily with veto powers — at least initially. Increasing U.S.-Japanese security cooperation is, in part, a reaction to China’s expanding military power and Beijing’s inability or unwillingness to rein in North Korea’s nuclear-weapons ambitions.

Although the dynamism of economic cooperation and the growing role of the global supply chain have great potential to bring together former adversaries and reduce the chances of war, the road will be fraught with struggle and confrontation. The power of nationalism can be whipped up to undermine progress as is now in danger of happening, especially in China.

But the record of prosperity and stability, and a better life for the people of Asia should, in the long run, prevail over a cynical, but emotional preoccupation with territorial sovereignty and historic antagonisms.

Mr. Lilley is a former U.S. ambassador to China and South Korea and the author of “China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Diplomacy and Espionage in Asia” (PublicAffairs, 2004).

Posted at 11:39 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

WASHINGTON In recent weeks, high-profile advocates have appealed for more foreign aid for the developing world. The Commission for Africa established by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain recommends, in part, an additional $25 billion in aid per year by 2010. The United Nations Millennium Project’s recent report, “Investing in Development,” calls for more than doubling foreign aid from rich to poor countries over the next 10 years. These are certainly worthy goals, but what about the billions of dollars that stream illegally the other way, from poor countries to rich?

We’ve seen staggering examples of this phenomenon recently. A substantial portion of the billions of dollars skimmed from the UN oil-for-food program left Iraq with the assistance of overseas businesses and, some reports say, even UN officials. Riggs National Bank in Washington handled huge sums out of Chile and Equatorial Guinea. Research by the Center for International Policy and other organizations shows that the outflow of “dirty money” from poor countries far surpasses the inflow of aid. Preventing that money from leaving poor countries would give the West a way to help developing economies even without necessarily increasing foreign aid.

There are three sorts of cross-border dirty money: corrupt, criminal and commercial. Corrupt dirty money flows from government officials who abuse their authority and dip their hands in the till, then hide their stolen wealth offshore. This grabs the most headlines, but is actually the smallest part of the dirty-money problem, only about 5 percent of the total. Criminal dirty money encompasses proceeds from drug running, human trafficking, racketeering, securities fraud and more. Commercial dirty money is the most easily overlooked. Businesses try to hide revenue from their country’s tax inspectors by, say, directing buyers to deposit money in Western bank accounts. Private studies have estimated such practices in developing countries at 5 percent to 7 percent of their total trade, or more than $200 billion per year illicitly transferred abroad.

Even if foreign aid doubles, as the United Nations and Blair’s commission recommend, the outflow of dirty money is still vastly larger. Annual foreign aid totals $50 billion or so, while dirty money is upwards of $1 trillion per year, half of which passes from developing and transitional economies to the West. Once this money leaves a country, it rarely comes back.

What could such money accomplish if it stayed in poorer countries? It could be spent on consumption, releasing a multiplier effect through local economies. It could go into domestic capital investments, thus increasing employment. It could be deposited in local banks, forming the basis for matching loans.

Imagine hundreds of billions of dollars every year staying legally in poor countries, providing the funds for improvements in health, education, investment, employment - all the things that the UN Millennium Project report and its supporters espouse. Closing the West’s back door to dirty money would strengthen the most desperate countries, improving their ability to provide for their own needs, rather than depending on the largess of the rich and the powerful.

Even more than expanding their foreign aid packages, Western countries could deliver a bigger bang for their buck by reining in the financial abuses that they aid and abet. An elaborate structure of financial secrecy exists to shield dirty money from scrutiny: more than 60 tax havens, a million dummy corporations, $8 trillion or so parked offshore, porous anti-money-laundering laws in America and Europe, plus myriad banks and consulting firms ready to recommend intricate strategies that keep taxable profits out of the reach of struggling home governments.

The United States and its allies could begin to curb these abuses with a stroke of the legislative pen. A first step is to expand the number of crimes whose proceeds are subject to money-laundering charges. Incredibly, it is legal in the United States to handle money from crimes committed abroad, including racketeering, securities fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, human trafficking, slave trading, prostitution and tax evasion.

The impact of foreign aid is diluted when the back door remains open to illicit funds flowing out of developing and transitional economies into willing Western coffers. Giving generous assistance with one hand while taking in dirty money with the other hand undermines our best efforts to help the poor.

(Raymond Baker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, is the author of the forthcoming book “Capitalism’s Achilles’ Heel.’’ Jennifer Nordin is the center’s director of economic studies.)

Posted at 5:58 PM · Comments (0)

Mr. Ribadu Pursues Smugglers
Of Up to $3 Billion a Year;
A Drain on Investment
The African Pride Disappears

Copyright THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 13, 2005; Page A1

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria — Each night, armed gangs tap into the oil pipelines that crisscross the swamps of the petroleum-rich Niger Delta. By some estimates, the smugglers steal up to 10% of Nigeria’s annual oil output, which was valued at $30 billion last year.

“Bunkering,” as the racket is known here, is one of the world’s biggest black markets, but authorities turned a blind eye for years. Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria was ruled until recently by a succession of mostly military leaders, often eager to tap the nation’s oil riches for themselves and their cronies.

Then, in 2003, amid the country’s most recent drive to clean house, President Olusegun Obasanjo created a financial-crimes investigation unit. The new antifraud czar, Nuhu Ribadu, ordered clandestine tests of the oil used at some overseas refineries. The samples confirmed a long-held suspicion: Much of Nigeria’s stolen oil was being shipped by well-organized syndicates to destinations such as Ivory Coast and Cameroon and even as far away as Brazil. An informant turned in a list of suspected suppliers of the stolen oil.
[Nuhu Ribadu]

Next, Mr. Ribadu did a remarkable thing for Nigeria: He started going after the suspects.

Since taking charge of the new Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr. Ribadu has pursued oil mobsters, Internet fraudsters and corrupt politicians. The former street cop has 185 active fraud and corruption cases working their way through the courts, up from zero before the commission started its work two years ago. Working in the capital of Abuja from an office overlooking goats grazing in a vacant lot, the wiry 44-year-old has locked up 200 alleged smugglers and seized $700 million in property, including a collection of office buildings, from suspects in oil smuggling and other crimes. Royal Dutch/Shell Group, whose joint venture with the state petroleum company pumps about half of Nigeria’s oil, says the amount of crude stolen from its network has fallen by almost half since early last year.

In the past three weeks, Mr. Ribadu’s political-corruption investigations have shaken Nigeria, triggering the sacking of two government ministers and the resignation of a leading lawmaker. Yesterday, the country’s former education minister and six legislators pleaded not guilty to charges related to alleged bribe-taking. Mr. Ribadu also ordered the arrest of his own ex-boss, the nation’s former chief of police. Last week the disgraced chief appeared in handcuffs at his arraignment, where he pleaded not guilty to a 70-count charge, including money laundering and theft.

Nigeria’s crackdown on corruption could have broad implications for world oil markets and the Western companies that do business here. Global oil prices are simmering near record highs as the world’s largest petroleum producers, including Nigeria, strain to meet soaring demand. Nigeria pumps about 3% of the world’s oil, much of it prized low-sulfur grade. The theft robs oil companies of revenue — discouraging investment that could bring more oil to the market — and bleeds the Nigerian treasury, which depends on crude for as much as 95% of its export revenue.

Cleaning up the oil business is essential to transforming Nigeria, which has struggled to achieve a stable democracy since the British left in 1960. The country is emblematic of the “oil curse,” in which easy petrodollars help entrench corrupt elites and discourage long-term economic planning. Embezzled oil money has helped grease the wheels of Nigeria’s dysfunctional political system.

Larger than Texas, with a population of 137 million, Nigeria is already one of the top suppliers to U.S. refineries. Its output is expected to double this decade. The U.S. hopes West Africa will offer a hedge against the volatile Middle East. But ethnic clashes and criminal activity in the oil-rich Delta lead to about 1,000 killings a year, according to consultants hired by Shell to study the region. Tensions between the Muslim north and Christian south often flare into violence. Factions from many of the country’s major ethnic groups have threatened a breakup of the fragile Nigerian federation.

Mr. Ribadu thinks his efforts could become a model to rid Africa and the developing world of fraud and corruption. “Nigeria is the focal point — it will hold the key to a change in all of Africa,” he says.

But sustaining early success against oil smuggling is proving tough. Mr. Ribadu’s commission has a meager $10 million annual budget. Nigeria’s poorly run courts have thwarted prosecution of some of his biggest catches. His officers often find themselves outgunned by smugglers during sting operations in the vast Delta swamps.

“If you just go on patrol without knowing the place, you end up a dead man,” says Ibrahim Lamorde, in charge of the commission’s crumbling Lagos office, surrounded by rows of impounded cars baking in the sun. “It’s more or less like a guerrilla war.”

Death threats against commission staff are common. Mr. Ribadu drives a bullet-proof BMW. When someone knocks at his office door, he instinctively glances at the grainy closed-circuit television set on his desk, which monitors three hallways leading to his office.
[Mujahid Dokubo Asari]

President Obasanjo last year sent in the army to quell a violent clash between two Delta warlords, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and Ateke Tom. Mr. Asari declared “all-out war” on the government, sending crude markets soaring the day he spoke. Authorities say the two were fighting for control of lucrative smuggling routes. Smugglers typically pay protection money to such territorial bosses. That cash in turn has financed the creation of well-armed private militias in the region.

To get their oil to market, smugglers also “settle” with communities and traditional chiefs, often in the form of cash payments. Many law-enforcement officers and oil-company executives get a cut of the action, according to commission officials and outside analysts.

“We have every right to do whatever we want with our own oil,” Mr. Asari said in an interview in his walled compound in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s dilapidated oil capital on the edge of the country’s southern swamps. Last fall, he agreed to lay down his arms in a deal brokered by the president. He denies any personal involvement in the bunkering racket and says his aim is to win control of the Delta’s resources for the local people. But, he added, “If a bunkerer comes and wants to donate to our cause then, jolly well, we’ll accept it.”

President Obasanjo — a military ruler in the late 1970s turned elected leader in 1999 — declared he would clean up Nigeria after winning his second term in 2003. Among the reform-minded technocrats he brought into the government was Mr. Ribadu, a rising officer in the federal police.

Mr. Ribadu says his interest in fighting graft dates from law school in the early 1980s, as he watched a democratically elected government crumble amid rampant corruption. He probed corruption during his mandatory youth service after graduation, and later took a job as a beat cop walking the slums of Lagos, the crime-infested commercial capital. The move shocked his elite Muslim family. His father had served as a government minister, and police work was considered beneath the clan.

Cottage Industry of Fraud

By 1997, Mr. Ribadu was running the prosecution department of the federal police. He gained fame by building murder and financial-fraud cases against cronies of former dictator Sani Abacha. After taking over the fraud commission, he won international kudos for breaking up bank-fraud schemes spread via the Internet. In recent years, Nigeria has become home to a cottage industry of Internet scams that often lure victims with e-mail promises to share in a deposed dictator’s bank account. Last summer, the commission arrested a suspect who was impersonating Mr. Ribadu himself, in e-mails that began, “Re: Urgent Contract Payment Advice As Regards My Telephone Conversation With You Today.”

But the oil smugglers have proved elusive prey. According to authorities and people familiar with the trade, many of the smuggling rings are organized around so-called cults — violent gangs with names like the Icelanders, the Mafia Lords and Black Axe. The groups grew out of underground Nigerian college fraternities that date back to the 1970s.

Working mostly at night, they break into bits of pipe poking up from the swamps or buried lines on land. They siphon off crude to waiting trucks or flat-bottom barges. During a routine flight last month, the pilot of a Shell-chartered helicopter pointed out clusters of such barges tied up along the river banks.

Emeka Nwonyi, who took over the commission’s Port Harcourt office in December, meets with local military and police officers and Shell executives twice a month to share intelligence. He also relies on informants — often smugglers themselves — to identify targets. But acting on such information is risky.

A Tip Goes Sour

After a recent tip-off, Mr. Nwonyi says, his men and a detachment of army soldiers surrounded a village in the heart of the Delta. They watched as armed smugglers loaded a group of tanker trucks with crude. Outgunned, out of cellphone range and lacking a radio to communicate with nearby Navy patrols, Mr. Nwonyi withdrew his men. “It looked as if the place was hot,” he says. He planned to arrest the smugglers as they made their getaway, but they slipped away by a different route.

To break the stalemate, Mr. Ribadu has targeted the trade’s big financiers and buyers, who typically operate far from the marshes. The top rung of the trade is dominated by wealthy Nigerian businessmen, often teaming up with foreign buyers or middlemen, according to commission investigators. The Lagos office is investigating more than a dozen suspected Nigerian and foreign ringleaders and companies.

After filling barges in the Delta with oil, smugglers send the vessels down river and then load up larger tankers in open water headed for far-off markets. Two years ago, President Obasanjo prodded the navy to help. Armed with four World War II-era buoy tenders provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, the navy began stopping suspected smuggling ships.

In late 2003, the navy intercepted the Capbreton, a large tanker loaded with crude valued at $162,000. Authorities impounded the vessel. The Capbreton’s owner was listed as Okon Onyung, a retired army officer and local doctor, according to investigators. The commission arrested Dr. Onyung, froze his bank accounts and impounded his Lincoln Navigator.

But before the commission could press charges, a local magistrate granted Dr. Onyung bail. He disappeared and is now being sought by police. Dr. Onyung maintained his innocence during questioning by investigators. Attempts to reach Dr. Onyung for this article weren’t successful. His wife and a handful of foreign crewmembers were charged with unlawful conveyance of crude and are currently on trial. Ms. Onyung’s attorney has said she wasn’t involved in the alleged smuggling operation. Attempts to reach the attorney for comment weren’t successful.

In the same sweep that netted the Capbreton, the Navy brought in an even bigger catch: the 12,000-ton African Pride. About the length of a football field, the ship was bearing as much as 80,000 barrels of crude, valued at some $1.2 million. Navy officers seized the ship and tied it up at a Lagos wharf, jailing most of the crew.

Then, sometime between Aug. 6 and Aug. 8 last year, the tanker vanished. The lone guard posted to secure the ship later testified he left his post after having no contact from his superior officers for three weeks, according to Anthony Aziegbemi, chairman of a parliamentary committee on naval affairs that is investigating. Other testimony suggested there was a payoff to the navy to allow the ship to sail, but no conclusive proof ever emerged.

The navy eventually court-martialed three admirals in connection with the incident. The presiding officers ruled that two of the admirals be dismissed from the service for facilitating theft; the third was exonerated. The rulings are pending approval of navy headquarters.

Capt. Sinebi Hungiapuko, the navy’s director of information, denies that any bribe-taking took place. He adds that navy headquarters has no indication that any officers in the Delta are on the take. “But in an organization like this there can be bad apples,” he said.

Mr. Ribadu says he has made a big dent in spite of the setbacks. Shell executives say theft can fluctuate widely day to day, but currently stands at some 40,000 to 50,000 barrels a day, down from almost 100,000 barrels in early 2004.

Mr. Ribadu’s crackdown has prompted a number of high-level figures in the trade to flee the Delta, he adds. “We destabilized them,” he says.

Posted at 5:54 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

HONG KONG There could scarcely be a sharper contrast than between the bonhomie displayed by China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, on his current tour of South Asia and China’s behavior towards its North Asian neighbor, Japan. The anti-Japanese demonstrations during the weekend, and some only slightly less nationalistic outbursts in South Korea, are not just forewarnings of future tensions in the region. They have implications for global governance and the United Nations system - in which India, in particular, would like to play a larger role.

The demonstrations in China may have got out of hand, but there is no doubt that they were initiated with the connivance of the authorities. While the old issue of Japanese school textbook versions of Japan’s occupation of China was one pretext, the main trigger was Japan’s push to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

It is always a worrying sign when students vent their wrath against foreigners rather than campaigning against injustices at home - and when governments drum up nationalist sentiments to divert attention from their own failings. The demands for apologies for Japan’s past sins have been highly selective.

It is true that Japan has not been as contrite as one would wish and the visits by Japan’s prime minister to Yasukuni Shrine, where some war criminals are buried, are poor diplomacy. But plenty of British textbooks, for example, show scant regard for Chinese views of the Opium Wars or the destruction of the Summer Palace. Likewise many American ones gloss over the massacres that accompanied the “civilizing” U.S. occupation of the Philippines. Queen Elizabeth II has not apologized to Indians for the Amritsar massacre and statues commemorating the bloody exploits of British imperialists are two a penny in London. Beijing also likes to forget that for much of Asia beyond China and Korea, Japan’s imperialism was welcomed as hastening the end of Western imperialism.

As for the South Koreans, in their demands for more Japanese groveling they like to forget the fact that President Park Chung Hee, widely praised for masterminding their economic miracle, was himself an officer in the Japanese army of occupation in Manchuria.

If none of this historical mud-slinging got beyond the more sensational news media it could be dismissed as no more relevant than the childish anti-German antics of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid press in Britain. But official encouragement of xenophobic attitudes is worrying in a region where cooperation will be vital when the United States is no longer both buyer and peacekeeper of last resort. It casts a shadow on much-advertised hopes of bilateral and regional free trade agreements, and currency cooperation, particularly for Southeast Asia, which needs Chinese-Japanese accord.

China’s stance on Japan’s membership of the Security Council makes nonsense of its claims to represent the developing and upcoming world. It is a crude and blatant attempt to protect its privileged position as the only Asian and only developing country that is a permanent member of the council. If there is to be reform of the United Nations and expansion of the Security Council to reflect the world today, Japan’s membership, along with that of India, Germany and Brazil, is essential.

Proposals for UN reform are due to be debated in September. The most favored new model for the Security Council is for an additional six permanent and three nonpermanent members, none with veto power. Discussion may get nowhere, as the United States, as well as China, appears to oppose enlargement, and Britain and France seem unwilling to give any ground in return for Germany’s membership. A more limited enlargement might attract U.S. backing.

Any country that purports to want greater Asian representation deserves bitter criticism if in practice it thwarts the aspirations of Japan and India. Pakistan’s objection to India’s membership is just as petty as South Korea’s objection to Japan’s. They show governments driven by the most narrow and self-centered considerations.

Perhaps China’s outburst of jingoism toward Japan will persuade the United States to take a more favorable view of Security Council reform, recognizing that a larger permanent membership (without veto powers) would be in its longer-term interest. China, of course, could still veto such enlargement, but is unlikely to do so. Its leaders usually have a better understanding of its global interests than displayed by the current outburst in Beijing.

Posted at 11:55 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright YaleGlobal, 11 April 2005

Using the past to serve the present: Chinese oppose Japan’s membership of the UN Security Council for failing to atone for its past crimes against the Chinese people

TOKYO: Sino-Japanese relations sunk to a new low last weekend when an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese protestors surrounded the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, pelting it with missiles and shouting “Japanese pigs come out” and “Be ashamed of distorting history.”

The protests, demanding a boycott of Japanese goods, followed Tokyo’s authorization of high-school textbooks that many in China condemn for whitewashing Japan’s brutal fifteen-year invasion (1931-45), and have rocked the already shaky partnership between Asia’s declining economic leader and its rising star.

Demonstrations also took place in South Korea, where Gil Won Ok and her elderly comrades gathered at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to plead, pray and denounce the Tokyo government. “Who will take away my pain,” cried the frail 77-year-old who was barely a teenager when she was forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II. “Atone for the past and let me die in peace!”

The pensioners – among the few still alive from an estimated 100-200,000 “comfort women,” the sex slaves of the Imperial Japanese Army – have been coming here since 1992 to demand an apology. But neither time nor mortality has dulled the emotional heat of their campaign, which is regularly stoked by what many Chinese and Koreans consider fresh insults. The new textbooks, which Korean government spokesman Lee Kyu Hyung said “beautify and justify” Japan’s occupation of much of Asia until 1945, have added fuel to the fire.

The war over what Japan teaches its children has raged since the early 1980s, but the latest battle emerges as the tectonic plates of Asian politics shift to accommodate the growing economic bulk of China, which is brushing up against its increasingly anxious neighbor. Tokyo has paid China compensation of about 3 trillion yen in Overseas Development Assistance since capitalist reforms began there in the early 1980s, and in an increasingly right-wing domestic climate, believes this is apology enough for past sins.

The most contentious history text – one of eight passed for use by Japan’s Ministry of Education – removes all references to the comfort women and atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre, and suggests that Korea invited the Japanese occupation a century ago. An additional civics text claims jurisdiction over a clump of rocks called Takeshima (Korean: Tokdo) that Japan seized in 1905 but Korea has held since 1945. “What nonsense is this,” editorialized the normally mild Korea Herald.

Both texts were written by the Society for History Textbook Reform, a group of neo-nationalist academics that claims the current curriculum in Japanese schools leaves youngsters “confused and no longer proud of their nation.” As an Asahi editorial said last week, the Society wants to “emphasize the ‘high points’ of Japanese history and ignore the ‘darker’ aspects; historian Jeffrey Kingston calls them the ‘Dr. Feelgoods of Japanese history.’ “

In 2001, the Society first won Ministry of Education approval for the texts, but grassroots opposition led by teachers and local activists across Japan blocked adoption. Backed by the huge Fuji-Sankei media conglomerate, the Society has since sold nearly one million copies of its history and civics texts, however, bringing what many considered extremist theories into thousands of ordinary Japanese homes and pushing the content of other textbooks sharply to the right. This year, just one new history textbook out of eight mentions the comfort women, down from seven in the mid-1990s, while references to other infamous war crimes have been toned down or dropped.

Emboldened by its success and by political and media support, including Japan’s biggest newspaper the Daily Yomiuri, the Society believes it is moving with the tide. “We’re confident we can change the teaching of history in schools here,” says one of its leading intellectual lights, Nobukatsu Fujioka. “More and more people share our opposition to instilling self-hatred in our children.”

Whether the Society succeeds on its second attempt remains to be seen. In 2001, its opponents cobbled together a powerful grassroots coalition that included everyone from Communists to Christians, and this movement could spring back into life. But while there is miniscule support among ordinary Japanese for school textbooks that extol Japan’s colonial rule in Asia, the Society enjoys weighty political backing, including over 100 members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Tokyo’s powerful Governor Shintaro Ishihara. Revisionists already control the country’s largest educational council in Tokyo, which will decide this summer whether the textbooks will be used in thousands of schools across the megalopolis.

“The Japanese government is inflaming opinion across Asia with these textbooks,” says Hasegawa Takashi, a teacher and anti-textbook campaigner in Tokyo. “If they really think Chinese communists are to blame why play into their hands?”

If Tokyo can afford to ignore the anguished keening of Gil Won Ok and her dwindling fellow survivors, however, more troubling is the anger emanating from China, its biggest trading partner. There the textbooks inflamed already seething anger at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Tokyo war memorial Yasukuni Shrine and Japan’s handling of the territorial conflict over the Diaoyutai (Japanese: Senkaku) Islands claimed by both China and Japan. In recent weeks, a boycott targeting Japanese goods has grown, and attacks on Japanese businesses in Chengdu and Shenzhen, and now Beijing and Guangzhou, have spooked otherwise bullish investors.

The Chinese attacks come on the heels of a massive online citizens’ campaign that claims to have gathered over 25 million signatures opposing Japan’s campaign for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao last week stated that China will not endorse Tokyo’s UN ambitions until it “clarifies some historic issues” regarding its World War II aggression, while Seoul’s UN ambassador Kim Sam Hoon also made clear his country’s opposition to a permanent seat for Japan. In a year pregnant with political and business possibilities, Tokyo is again finding the way forward blocked by its undigested history.

Japan’s official response to the growing textbook controversy has been a series of bland government statements calling on Korea and China to prevent differences in historical interpretation from damaging ties. “It is important to control emotions,” Prime Minister Koizumi said. But behind diplomatic platitudes, sentiment has hardened among key elements of the prime minister’s fellow Liberal Democrats, who have successfully manipulated a rising tide of nationalism following Mr. Koizumi’s failed North Korean summit of 2002. In the past two years, hundreds of teachers, mainly in Tokyo, have been punished for refusing to stand for the national anthem and flag, symbols across Asia of Japan’s militarist past.

The hardliners in the government say that China is stoking patriotism and anti-Japanese sentiment, while Korea has failed to properly digest its own history of collaboration with Imperial Japan. But critics say Japan is doing little to help. Perhaps to counter such perception last week, Japan announced that it would sponsor a meeting of 60 NGOs from both Japan and China on April 12 to advance friendship and understanding between the two countries.

Tokyo hopes that red-hot trade with China, which grew by 17 percent last year, and growing cultural links with Korea, will trump the fallout from its provocative views on history. But a clash of nationalisms in the world’s most dynamic economic region cannot be good for business, as Japan’s corporations recognize. With Japan enmeshed in territorial disputes with four of its neighbors – China, South Korea, Russia, and Taiwan – all with roots in the colonial past, the tensions will not soon ease.

David McNeill and Mark Selden are coordinators of Japan Focus, an e-zine on Japan and the Asia-Pacific: http://japanfocus.org. McNeill, a Tokyo-based journalist, writes for The Independent of London. Selden, professorial associate, East Asia Program, Cornell, is the author of China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited.

Posted at 11:40 PM · Comments (0)

Letters

April 12, 2005 | [Read “Gwenihana,” by MiHi Ahn.]

Finally, someone has spoken up about the sartorial atrocities Gwen Stefani and her pseudo-harajuku girls have been perpetrating. I’ve been fuming about her to anyone who’ll listen!

I believe, in its most shallow form, that Asian culture is rather accepted in the United States. However, it is also grossly generalized. Those who do not have an intimate knowledge of any Asian country’s culture seem to think we (Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants alike) are pretty costumes and exotic dishes. For example, cheongsam dresses and kimono-esque shirts are worn because they are so “exotic.” As a Filipina, I cannot tell you how many times someone has said to me “Oh! I love adobo!” Yeah, that’s great. Can you name one of our national heroes? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not MacArthur.

But the misconceptions don’t stop there. Before a teacher of mine arrived for a poli-sci class, several students began to chatter on about the reading. One student had the audacity to say, “You know, we saved those Filipinos from the Japanese and the Spanish. MacArthur is like a hero over there! But do we hear any thanks from them!?” I’ve had a boyfriend say that my Filipina mother was just my white father’s trophy wife. Many a wanker has told me that they are looking specifically for “light-skinned Filipinas who can speak Tagalog” because we make such good wives. Co-workers have informed me that Filipino men are “dirty” and “womanizing.” The list goes on, and I’m sure many other readers can add their own stories.

Honestly, I don’t think it would be too much to ask for Americans (white, black, and brown) to educate themselves on a deeper level about Asian (all of Asia, not just East Asia) or Asian-American history. How hard would it be to read a book on the history or culture of any Asian country? Or even to know who José Rizal is?

— Aisha K. Ganzon

Finally! This is the first article I’ve seen on something that seems so obviously exploitative.

As a black woman I guess I’m accustomed to seeing racially and culturally insensitive images in the media, but I’m really surprised that there hasn’t been more outrage about how Gwen Stefani is using these women.

— Renee

Arrggh! I find it ultimately ironic that MiHi Ahn, in her effort to typify racial stereotyping, falls prey to her own form of prejudice and stereotyping, using the caricature of a “dumb cowboy” to make her point.

As a rancher’s wife, I was often spoken to as if I were deaf (an experience I have in common with my good friend who does not speak English), had things pointed out to me as if I had a third-grade education, and was asked, “When can I talk to your husband about this?” on many occasions. I usually waited until the person had both feet in it before I would explain that I was a lawyer, the mayor, an editor…

It makes me absolutely crazy that Salon continually allows the depiction of those of us who live in the rural West as hicks, hillbillies and know-nothings. Would you allow such a depiction of a black cotton picker (yes, there are still black cotton pickers)?

Ms. Ahn, should she wish to be free of stereotypes, should examine her own soul and find those that she holds dear.

— Peggy Carey

Ms. Ahn seems to be making the point that cultural appropriation is wrong if the original context is missing. Hello! What has Japan been doing with American culture for the past 40 years?

Somehow this teenage-girl fashion fad in Japan should be exempt from an American celebration/appropriation because it will rob it of its meaning. And yet, J-poppers insist on singing choruses in English, kids are wearing hip-hop fashion, and Kentucky Fried Chicken is fine, exotic gastronomique cooking.

I thought the “essentialist” argument, that it was essential for one to be part of something or believe fully in something to have a valid opinion about or right to that something, was killed in the ’90s.

And besides, harajuku style, like punk and goth now, are nothing but “kawaii.” What the hell is there to defend about cute?

— Schaughn Bellows

MiHi Ahn seems to be wishing for the days when Asian girls hid their curves and did so in the kitchen. Gwen Stefani’s only crime here is that she has done something nobody else has dared to do: let Asian girls onstage.

Black and white girls with “funk in the trunk” have been rap singers’ backstage eye candy for decades. I don’t hear Ahn drawing any connection between these Asian dancers and other backup dancers. Why is it so bad for Asian girls to show their butts but not for black girls? Ahn fails to bring this obvious comparison up for discussion.

And one of the lamest points of Ahn’s was that Stefani’s “harajuku girls” are acknowledged by Stefani only as a figment of her imagination. Doesn’t Ahn get the “Alice in Wonderland” motif?

— Michael

Although I’ve long enjoyed Gwen Stefani’s music, I find this description of her entourage to be highly dismaying. But sadly, I’ve discovered that this kind of stereotyping is not atypical (and it is sadly rife among many normally progressive Caucasian women).

I am engaged to a Japanese woman whom I love dearly. After bringing her to the United States half a year ago, I’ve learned the hard way that many self-described “strong” women here assume that my fiancée is subservient and weak (she isn’t) and that that is the primary reason I love her — when nothing could be further from the truth. The smug underlying attitude seems to be that I can’t handle an obviously advanced white woman; they frequently take the stance that my fiancée needs to graduate “up” to their level.

There was one woman with a Ph.D. who met my fiancée and acted genuinely surprised at how “independent” and “smart” she is. This kind of smiling stereotyping would be considered unacceptable if it were to be directed at any other interracial couple. I find it incredible that many otherwise anti-racist women get away with making assumptions like this and no one objects to it or notices. If white supremacism can get wrapped in a feminist package, then I guess it’s perfectly OK.

— Gabriel Bonnard

I would like to say that Gwen Stefani has inspired me to start collecting my own little ethnic pets.

I have already completed A.R.A.B., and as per their contract stipulation, these women are only allowed to say “Kill Americans” in response to all questions and can only glower from behind their burqas.

I’m still working on my M.A.I.D. group. There are so many ethnic women to choose from, I can’t decide. And think of the costume possibilities. Black women with head rags? Asian women with those blue maid uniforms? Latinas in the housekeeper uniforms?

As for Gwen Stefani, I think I’d put her in my D.U.M.B. group. She wouldn’t have to do anything different from what she’s doing now.

— Maloy Luakian

Thanks for printing MiHi Ahn’s article on Gwen Stefani’s embarrassing portrayal of “Harajuku Girls.” All this time I thought it was just a terrible song; I had no idea the level to which Gwenchan was bastardizing Tokyo’s coolest. That shit is bananas.

— Charles Kanuh

Someone should explain to the author that Gwen Stefani and her troupe of femme poseurs are not, in any way, intending to reflect real life as we regular folks know it. Nor are they out to make a social or political statement. Nor to cynically mock Asian women. Whether from Harajuku or Terre Haute, most people know not to take pop music and its attendant theatrical shenanigans very seriously. Look, these are just some girls trying to have fun. Call it satire or call it shtick, but don’t call it shocking…

— David Rush

Posted at 7:10 PM · Comments (1)

Much of this will seem familiar to anyone who reads a lot and remains current with the news. Tech-oriented folks will wonder at the wonderment that fills these page, the surprise being that Tom is so surprised at the “convergence” he notes all around him.
Most others, though, will benefit greatly from this big picture book, engagingly written in the mode of a great synthesizer and popularizer.

Posted at 4:06 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

OTTAWA Eleven years ago last week, genocide began in Rwanda: the greatest slaughter of human beings since the Holocaust. At the time, the event attracted little attention in the West, and vastly less than the story of the glove in the O.J. Simpson trial, which was topical at the time.

Even now, when the collective conscience does seem more engaged with the issue, we are in danger of learning the wrong lessons from that awful April. Above all, there is a tendency to be too abstract both in identifying causes and in assigning blame for the total lack of a serious international response.

This was the least abstract, and the most up-close-and-personal, of all modern horrors. The majority of the 800,000 or so who were killed died of machete wounds. Many would have known their killers. The survivors and the perpetrators continue to live next to one another.

Conventional wisdom in the West has it that tribal hatreds were the cause of the genocide, and that the United Nations failed to react. That’s all. But it cannot be like this. The genocide is an event that stares out at us from the historical record, silently, like the dead faces of the children that I saw staring out of the long grass, demanding a real explanation. For us in the West, that means addressing the nature of our response to the genocide, and putting aside convenient excuses.

I was the commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda at the time of the genocide. When 10 of my men - Belgian paratroopers - were killed at the beginning of the slaughter, there was an opportunity. There was attention and outrage in West. But the decisions taken were a travesty.

The countries with troops in the small UN monitoring force in Rwanda decided to pull them out. The Belgian government faced negative public opinion at home. Other Europeans remained totally uninterested. The United States was determined that nothing should be done through the United Nations. It was clear that a UN resolution that even mentioned the word genocide would never see the light of day.

There were plenty of excuses: The Belgians had lost men; the Europeans were heavily committed in Yugoslavia; the Americans were wary after the fiasco in Somalia. Everyone was focused on upcoming elections in South Africa. Rwanda just wasn’t on anyone’s agenda.

But these excuses rest on uncomfortable assumptions - in particular, that African lives are vastly less important than other lives, and that genocide does not mean, as it should, that business-as-usual is suspended. If there was any doubt about this, it was played out in front of me over the days that followed.

Special units from Western countries flew in, and out again, with the sole purpose of extracting their own nationals.

I was staying - even without combat forces. A few internationals volunteered to stay. Ghana also agreed to keep troops on the ground, as others ran for the door. Mostly African troops remained with me. Those of us who were left behind were left just as witnesses.

Could we have prevented or curtailed the genocide? The short answer is yes. If we had received the modest increase in troops and equipment that we had requested, we could have stopped the killings. Instead, for two months, the Western nations, who were the only ones with the capacity, refused to do so. In that time, hundreds of thousands died.

It is a story that, almost more than any other I can think of, shames us in the developed world. It was not “the United Nations” that failed, it was each of us in the West. Even our governments and news media only reflected our own lack of real interest in what was happening.

I include myself in this record of shame. I was commander of a force that failed completely. Not least, I failed to convince a single country to come and help save this small country.

If there is any useful lesson that can be drawn from the events of April 1994, it is surely one about just how personal genocide is: for those who are killed, of course, but also for those who kill, and for those, however far away, who just do nothing. Our governments are no better than we are. The United Nations is no better than its governments.

(General Roméo Dallaire is a member of the Canadian Senate. He was commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda at the time of the genocide.)

Posted at 4:03 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Slate
Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at 3:37 PM PT

My first evening in Beijing, I was lucky enough to secure a meeting with the head of China operations for one of the world’s largest media companies. He looked like a kid, and he practically is one. When you’re lucky enough to catch an economic wave—as I and thousands of others were with the Internet, for example—professional life happens quick. This executive had first encountered China in college only a decade ago, when he spent a semester in Nanjing. Seeking to bolster his business-school application, he had worked at a consulting firm in Hong Kong and then at a Chinese software company founded by two Americans. The company planned to dominate the mobile-phone infrastructure business, but, on a lark, it also launched an embryonic messaging application. This sideline took over, the company went public, and the executive no longer had any need for business school. So, he took his stock options and China expertise and joined the media conglomerate, and now, in his early 30s, he is a trusted adviser to the moguls at the top.

The executive took me to a Beijing roast-duck restaurant called Hua’s. In keeping with one theme of the evening, piracy, Hua’s used to be one of the only restaurants on the block. Now so many places in the neighborhood have copied its formula (lanterns, lights, open-air courtyard) that we had to cruise up and down the street to find it.

Like other multinationals, the media conglomerate is consumed with the awesome challenge of piracy. One way to control the flood of pirated DVDs, for example, might be to trumpet the superior experience of watching movies in a theater. But Chinese movie distribution is so tightly controlled that most movies never hit the big screen. Another solution might be to cut DVD prices by 90 percent, but, at this price—for legal vendors—all profit is then taxed away. One major movie company, TimeWarner, is supposedly going this route—selling movies for about $3 each—but the verdict is still out on whether this will succeed.

This media executive focuses primarily on interactive applications, such as online and cell-phone messaging, so our conversation soon veered in that direction. But at meetings and meals in Beijing over the next few days, the piracy issue came up again and again and again.

In China, piracy is so entrenched that even the pirates complain about it. According to an article by Anne Stevenson-Yang and Ken DeWoskin in the March issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Chinese storekeepers who sell fake DVDs for 10 yuan gripe about street vendors selling them for seven. And the street vendors complain about competitors offering two-for-one specials.

But it’s not just DVDs that are being ripped off, of course. It’s everything. According to some estimates, as much as a third of China’s GDP comes from piracy and counterfeiting, including more than 90 percent of the country’s software and 95 percent of its video games. In The Chinese Century, Oded Shenkar says that five of six of the “Yamaha” motorcycles in China are fake—in part, perhaps, because Yamaha’s parts suppliers sell real Yamaha parts to fake-Yamaha assemblers. The same goes for more than half of China’s razor blades, cell phones, drugs, chewing gum, and shampoo. Fast-food uniforms and business processes are copied. Electronic chips are reverse-engineered and modified to allow third parties to write add-ons, creating fake chip value chains. Fake car parts are unwittingly built into real cars—exposing the real manufacturers to liability—and real parts are built into fake products in other industries. Some fakes are crappy: movies with scratchy sound and heads visible at the bottom of the screen. Some are so good that even the manufacturers can’t tell the difference. (When “North Face” jackets appear in the Xiangyang Park market, they aren’t like North Face, they are North Face.) The new frontier, meanwhile, is export. Some estimate that 7 percent of global trade is now bogus stuff.

Piracy apologists, who occasionally include the Chinese government, often point out that developing countries have a long tradition of such behavior, starting with the U.S. (Charles Dickens was reportedly stiffed for royalties by U.S. publishers). In this view, the U.S. companies are hypocrites: Now that we’ve stolen IP, polluted the environment, and exploited workers to move up the value chain, we want to ban the practices in other countries (an argument that has some truth to it). The U.S. didn’t get really tough on intellectual-property rights, people note, until we had intellectual property to lose, and the common wisdom is that the same will hold true for China. In FEER, however, Stevenson-Yang and DeWoskin suggest that China’s situation might not follow this path to legitimacy, in part because the government has so much to gain from the status quo. Shenkar concurs: Whatever form the solution takes, it won’t come anytime soon.

So, what are multinationals to do? Here are some of Stevenson-Yang, DeWoskin, and Shenkar’s ideas. First, recognize that the value (or at least life span) of intellectual property may be less in the future than it has been in the past. Then, depending on the unique circumstances of each place and industry, fight like hell.

Crank up the litigators, making it painful to pirates to fake your products and thus encouraging them to rip off someone else. Redesign business processes to make it more difficult to steal stuff, and consider what you do lose a cost of doing business. Pay for your own enforcement raids. Don’t do China joint-ventures, which function as a siphon tube through which local entrepreneurs suck out ideas, technology, and products. Design your products to have shorter life cycles, thus leaving pirates stuck with warehouses full of outdated stuff. Cut prices, making piracy less profitable. Give away technology in hopes of establishing a standard that you can control. Offer local pricing: Don’t force people who make $1,000 a year to pay $250 for an office suite. Shift to a service/support model, and give your products away for free.

One of the most intractable elements of the problem, of course—one that all companies are eventually forced to acknowledge—is that products are not worth what the manufacturers say they are worth but what customers are willing to pay for them. The reason pirated products are so wildly popular is that customers love their value proposition. Even the greatest minds in the antipiracy business can’t wait to snag $1 copies of first-run movies and $10 copies of Windows XP—products that, they rightly observe, often play or run as well as versions that cost 20 times as much. With digital products, at least, China’s piracy epidemic may prove to be the great profit-margin equalizer. No longer, perhaps, will companies like Microsoft be able to earn 80 percent profit margins—because, sick of feeling gouged, customers are nothing less than thrilled to help rip the companies off.

Special thanks to Anne Stevenson-Yang, managing director of the U.S. Information Technology Office in Beijing.

Posted at 3:49 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

BANGALORE, India As India and China emerge as global megaforces and sidle diplomatically closer, it is becoming fashionable to recall a long history of trans-Himalayan contact, suspended by 20th-century geopolitical quirks.

“The richness and variety of early intellectual relations between China and India have long been obscured,” Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate, wrote in a recent essay.

Sen cited evidence of India and China connections stretching back two and half millennia. Indians bought, and devised Sanskrit words for, Chinese silk, camphor, vermilion and leather, as well as pears and peaches. India exported Buddhism to China.

But as a Chinese delegation, led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, visited India this week for a widely anticipated diplomatic summit meeting, a different story lurked behind the scenes.

Beneath high-flown pronouncements of dormant pan-Asian bonds waiting to be renewed was rampant, ground-level evidence that the devil of détente lies in the details.

The business of diplomacy consists not only of handshakes, agreements and ribbon-cutting; it is also an endless series of arrangements: providing security, fixing menus, staving off correspondents.

And as the two neighbors carried out these humdrum tasks, there were moments that evoked the foreign-policy equivalent of a first, awkward school dance.

Nothing more starkly divides India and China than their attitudes toward media. Last Saturday night, as Wen met privately with local government officials in Bangalore, it was Indian democratic frenzy versus Chinese Communist control.

A mob swelled outside the wooden doors: Indian television and print photographers vying for the first shots of the first handshakes.

The photographers were told no pictures were allowed. They began to howl. They jostled with the city’s khaki-clad, pot-bellied constables, while trading ribald jokes with them. They growled about “rights,” about “fairness.”

“We also have to do our duty,” said K. G. Vasuki, a television correspondent trapped behind a faux-velvet rope line.

An Indian Foreign Ministry official, red handkerchief in pocket, circulated, seeking to placate the aggrieved reporters.

Beefy Chinese bodyguards, wearing crisply tailored suits and plastic ear pieces à la the U.S. Secret Service, seemed incredulous. They rolled their eyes. They huddled. They conferred. They kept motioning to the constables - who were pulled from their beats and appeared not to be bodyguards in any strict sense - to do something, anything, about the din.

Every few minutes, the wooden doors would open and a Chinese handler would emerge to make that language-transcending gesture: an index finger to the lips attended by a punctuated “Shhhh.”

Then the Indian Foreign Ministry official said photographers would be admitted for a few seconds. The door cracked open, and the cameramen began a stampede, pressing up against the Chinese guards.

The looks on the guards’ faces suggested that being pushed, and then pushed aside, by journalists was a brand new addition to their professional repertoire.

Yang Shuying, a Chinese Embassy official, kept shrinking from journalists seeking information, walking away mid-sentence.

A young Indian reporter tried a fresh approach: woman to woman. “You have a cute smile,” she told Yang, who was not smiling. It worked. Yang smiled and cupped the reporter’s cheek in her hand, in a near-motherly gesture.

Then she said no, again. She turned and walked away, repeatedly uttering “I’m so sorry” until her voice trailed off.

Perhaps hoping to head off such cultural collisions, the Chinese planned meticulously and well in advance. Such was the extent of their preparations that it seemed every now and then that they were the hosts and Indians the guests.

Tata Consultancy Services, an Indian information-technology firm that was a pioneer in setting up Chinese operations, discovered that behaving like a Chinese company was a useful strategy, not just there, but back home in India as well.

In its presentation to Wen on Sunday, the company stressed its eagerness to bend to Chinese norms. V. Rajanna, who heads the business in China and has learned Chinese, said the company was “very well integrated with the local landscape.”

Learning to operate like a Chinese company thus came in handy back home. In preparing for Wen’s meeting, the Chinese laid down the law. Tata Consultancy Services had to fax in an exact seating chart. There would be no media. Having pledged access to a few reporters, the company asked to let in just a few.

That request prompted threats to cancel two or three times, organizers said. “If you don’t fall into line, there’s a risk that the whole thing will blow off,” said one person involved in the planning.

Reporters were notified the day before that they would be on a different floor in the building when the prime minister arrived. When he actually arrived, Chinese and Indian journalists exploited the flurry of activity to pack into the elevators and bury themselves in the crowd, hoping to become indistinguishable from the dozens of functionaries.

All flooded into the room - the one, in theory, that was off limits to the press. But while Indian journalists were quickly ejected, physically, by Indian handlers, reporters from China’s state-controlled media walked in breezily with the delegation.

To make the Chinese comfortable, the consultancy - whose parent company, the Tata Group, runs the Taj luxury hotel chain in India - even paid a rival hotel company, the Sheraton, to serve tea and biscuits at the presentation.

For dinner Saturday, flying in a chef from Beijing provided consistency. The buffet included Indian dishes, but the imported chef’s signature preparations were such treats as stir-fried prawns in black-bean sauce.

Posted at 2:08 AM · Comments (0)

April 11, 2005

The United States, ever quick to criticize China for human rights abuses, has of late been remarkably silent about Japan’s ethical lapses, current and historical.

Japanese politicians and publishers have made a cottage industry of denying the 1937 Nanking Massacre in which the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the old Chinese capital. This is an offense to Chinese sensibilities comparable with Holocaust denial in Europe. In recent months, major publishers and broadcasters have been bullied to conform and self-censor in accord with the rising tide of resurgent militarism. That tacit government approval is given to such xenophobic, right-wing thinking can be seen in the latest Ministry of Education-approved school texts that erase or evade critical lessons drawn from Japan’s bad behavior in its war of aggression.

In the “New History Textbook,” the Nanking Massacre is dismissed as a controversial “incident.” And the war of invasion is no longer termed an invasion. New textbooks drop references to “comfort women,” sex slaves of mostly Chinese and Korean origin who were forced to service Japanese fighting men in the field. To borrow a phrase from the late writer Iris Chang, the abused women are being raped a second time, this time by defenders of the Japanese army who attempt to erase them from memory.

China and the U.S. were allies in World War II, each contributing in its own way to the defeat of Japanese militarism. But the Cold War saw the U.S. turn away from China and embrace Japan, with the result that China’s vast suffering, estimated at 20 million dead, was never properly memorialized or recognized by its erstwhile ally. To add insult to injury, the U.S. found it expedient to work with Emperor Hirohito and other war criminals of that era in order to facilitate occupation and bolster its anti-communism crusade. Now that the Cold War is over, it is high time the U.S. lend support to China’s valid historical complaints.

But Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has linked his political fate with the unrepentant rightists at home and President Bush’s policy abroad, keeps the unholy alliance functioning, offering vocal support for U.S. aggression in Iraq while hailing Japan’s fallen military heroes of a bygone era. As if to secure U.S. complacency on controversial textbook changes, U.S. actions in Iraq have been sanitized by Japanese textbook committees that, for instance, whited out “unilateral” from a recent text.

The cozy Tokyo-Washington relationship makes it difficult for the U.S. to take a judicious stand on anti-China antics such as history textbook revision. Last October, while Koizumi was lending vocal support to Bush in the presidential race and the war in Iraq, Shueisha, one of Japan’s leading publishers, suspended publication of an acclaimed historical manga (comic book), “My Country is Burning,” for its unflinching portrayal of the Nanking Massacre.

In Beijing last week, Japanese Ambassador Koreshige Anami defended the publishing of right-wing textbooks as a testament to Japan’s “freedom of speech and publication.” Why then was veteran manga artist Motomiya Hiroshi forced to retract and apologize for “My Country is Burning”? Why then did the NHK TV network, after getting a high-level warning, preemptively cut short a program on comfort women that laid blame on the emperor? If a Chinese Internet cafe gets closed down, it’s front-page news. Why isn’t the U.S. equally concerned about setbacks to free speech in Japan?

The U.S. should not look the other way in the face of resurgent Japanese militarism, even though a Japan freed of the constraints of its own reprehensible past behavior might serve to keep China on edge or might add muscle to the U.S. policing of the world. The ultimate consequence of whitewashing the past could be the demise of Japan’s admirable Peace Constitution, allowing Japan to retool its formidable industrial base into a weapons industry threatening its neighbors and possibly triggering an unprecedented arms race and another world war.

Posted at 5:27 PM · Comments (0)

04/12/2005

Why didn’t the Chinese authorities do something?

Increasingly anti-Japan demonstrations in China have sent bilateral ties to their lowest ebb since diplomatic relations were normalized in 1972.

On Saturday, about 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets in Beijing. The protesters hurled stones and plastic water bottles at the Japanese Embassy and damaged Japanese restaurants. Demonstrations also spilled over to Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong province in the south and Chengdu in Sichuan province. In Shanghai, two Japanese students were beaten and injured by protesters.

Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura summoned Chinese Ambassador Wang Yi to formally protest the incidents and request that Beijing do its best to protect Japanese businesses and citizens in China.

About a week ago, demonstrations in Chengdu resulted in smashed windowpanes of a supermarket operated by a Japanese-affiliated company. That prompted Tokyo to press Beijing to take steps to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents and to secure the safety of its citizens. Groups that are hostile to Japan had actively spent the previous few days trying to get people to join Saturday’s demonstration in Beijing. Yet, the Chinese government did not take sufficient precautionary measures to deal with the demonstration. We cannot understand why it failed to do so. In Beijing, a heavy police presence was deployed in front of the Japanese Embassy. But the police did nothing when the crowd repeatedly threw stones. In fact, they looked the other way. The demonstrators went back to the university district in buses prepared after the dust had settled.

We wonder if the Chinese authorities didn’t care of the protests got out of hand? The matter is beyond our comprehension.

Maybe the authorities feared the mob would turn on them if the marchers were forcibly put under control. There is widespread discontent in today’s China: corruption and other forms of injustices, such as the wide disparity in people’s income, top the list of grievances. Perhaps, the authorities feared this general state of disgruntlement would be directed at the Communist Party or the government as and when the opportunity permits.

Or maybe they wanted to impress upon Japan and the world the extent of anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Whatever the reason, we believe the Chinese authorities need to demonstrate that it will not tolerate such violent demonstrations. If such acts are condoned in the capital, they easily can spread to provincial districts.

Anti-China and Sinophobic sentiment in general will likely grow in Japan if such violent anti-Japanese demonstrations continue. Similar turmoil erupted at the Asian Cup soccer games in China last year. As it happens, only a handful of demonstrators actually took part in throwing stones. Most of the participants, even if they do harbor anti-Japanese feelings, would not have thought of resorting to violence.

As for how Japanese perceive history, a major issue for the Chinese people, many Japanese think seriously about it and are trying to address opinions voiced by neighboring countries. Further acts of violence will serve only to dampen sensible opinion in both countries. In fact, it could become overwhelmed by antagonistic emotions.

We wish to address the governments of the two countries: even though nationalism of one country often clashes with that of another, it is the role of governments to devise ways to prevent emotions from getting out of control.

In recent days, all the two governments have done is to simply state their positions regarding the issues including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine or China’s development of oil resources in the East China Sea. Some even go so far as to say, “Let the issue take its own course.”

They may think a crisis in bilateral relations will somehow be averted at the last moment. But popular sentiment of the two countries, once hurt, cannot be repaired.

—The Asahi Shimbun, April 11(IHT/Asahi: April 12,2005)

Posted at 5:25 PM · Comments (0)

Saturday April 9 2005 - Copyright The South China Morning Post

People give to help the needy for highly personal reasons. They are motivated by peer pressure and by pictures of starving children or, in the case of larger gifts, they tend to be spurred by family experiences like the death of a loved one from an under-researched disease.

They also give according to custom. Hong Kong’s paternalistic, benevolent-king model is rooted in both Chinese tradition and colonial custom. Americans give more broadly because of relative affluence and to make up for the lack of both a social safety net and financially close family ties. The British give in smaller doses, and more to overseas aid, probably because they think that their tax-funded welfare state should help the needy at home. Maybe their focus on African children is linked to colonial guilt. This is ironic given that it takes quite a bit of neo-colonial gall to imagine that another continent’s problems can be solved by the very people who helped create them.

That brings us to the Africa Commission and its report. British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants it to heal the ‘scar on our consciences’. I am not sure exactly whose consciences he means, but his proposals sound like a pretty expensive way to clear them. Still, I suppose the unconscious truth in his statement (giving to Africa benefits the giver most) is better than a lie (this is a selfless action).

Not that this makes the recipient an innocent victim. That is the last role outsiders need to perpetuate in Africa. First, because it is not true - more money and genuine attempts at aid have been targeted there than anywhere else over the past few decades. But there has been very little positive effect on the lives of African children.

Second, it is partly this victimisation of Africa - and the soul-destroying beggaring that it helps elicit in Africans themselves - that is one of the most intransigent blocks to change.

Handouts do not work unless they come with such strictly controlled conditions and time limits that they cease to be perceived as such. The recipient has to pay a price: when something is free, less importance is attached to what comes out of it. Freud underlined this psychological truth when he pointed out that having a client pay was actually part of the therapy. Every time a country asks for any sort of freebie, it is making the statement that it is unable to make its own way. That is a crippling admission, especially when it is repeated over generations.

One bright idea has been to redirect money that once went to governments (and was quickly siphoned off) towards foreigner-run non-governmental organisations. This again taps into an unhealthy psychological phenomenon: Africa lies in a crumpled heap on the pavement, making an emotional plea of its terrible history of slavery and persecution, and its limited capacities. This is appealing to aid workers - to both their ethics and their snobbery. The trouble is, concluded former volunteer corps member and travel writer Paul Theroux, selfish, bleeding-heart aid workers only institutionalise the problems they come to help alleviate. And, indeed, after the state, the aid sector has now become the second employer in the bulk of sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa is a continent of ‘cultural mutants’, says Ivory Coast reggae singer Alpha Blondy in an interview in the French daily Liberation. Nobody can accomplish for them the unprecedented task they now face. It is not one of building afresh. It is one of reconciling the irreconcilable: tribal affiliations with colonist-drawn borders; the rain dance with the Kalashnikov; a distillation of all of humanity’s past with the mindset of a small group of western politicians and economists.

As someone once said, analyse with pessimism; act with optimism. In this case, is there any choice?

Jean Nicol is a psychologist specialising in issues of cultural identity and change in an era of globalisation

Posted at 4:04 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 11, 2005; Page A20

BOMBAY, India — Behind India’s new patent protections — which raised alarms in some quarters — is a quiet change in the country’s industry: India is becoming an intellectual-property powerhouse.

The amendments to India’s patent law have sparked worries that Indian companies will face chilling global competition, and that the cost of medicines would jump in poor countries now supplied by Indian generic drugs. The changes were made under outside pressure, as the World Trade Organization demanded that India observe international drug patents .

But many of India’s most innovative companies welcome the stronger patent protections, saying they will trigger further investment and innovation in India . As India’s economy opens up, its best companies are innovating to stay competitive. Indian companies applied for nearly 800 patents at the World Intellectual Property Organization last year — more than twice the number of patents it applied for four years ago.

“The winner used to be the guy who could copy faster,” says Shrikumar Suryanarayan, president for research and development at Bangalore biotechnology concern Biocon Ltd. “Now that has completely changed so that companies that don’t innovate will die, especially in the pharmaceutical industry.”

Last month, India’s Parliament approved patent regulations to stop local drug makers from copying new drugs developed by other, primarily Western companies. Previously, companies could copy drugs discovered by other companies by tweaking the process used to make them. The new patent system recognizes registered original drugs as products no matter how they are produced, thus making it illegal to copy drugs still under patent .

Some international medical-aid organizations protested the new patent regime, arguing it could crimp the supply of inexpensive generic drugs made in India . Many Indian analysts and executives say the stronger patent protection is a necessary step in the country’s economic development. “The rules are intended to make all sectors stronger,” says K. Subodh Kumar, an intellectual-property-rights expert at the CII Andhra Pradesh Technology Development and Promotion Center in Hyderabad. “It makes our intellectual-property-rights system better for pharmaceuticals, software and any other knowledge industry.”

The new patent protections also are expected to result in millions of dollars of new foreign investment in research outsourcing in India , Mr. Kumar says. With the stronger patent protection, more international companies will use India’s relatively inexpensive engineers, scientists and programmers for product design, drug development and clinical testing, he says.

Companies such as General Motors Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Nokia Corp. already have research facilities in India and more will follow. Some analysts expect the research-outsourcing industry — where all kinds of companies do part of their research and development in countries with lower labor costs — to grow to more than $10 billion globally in the next five years.

“You will see an increased interest in foreign companies to move outsourcing and research to India ,” says Gautam Kumra, a partner at McKinsey & Co. in Bombay.

India’s previous patent system, which allowed pharmaceutical companies to copy drugs patented abroad by just changing their manufacturing process, was aimed at keeping medicines inexpensive in India . It also allowed a local pharmaceuticals industry to thrive. By copying drugs other companies spent millions of dollars to develop, Indian pharmaceuticals companies could sell them at as little as one-tenth their original prices.

International aid organizations use inexpensive Indian generic drugs to save money as they save lives. India is a big supplier, for instance, of low-price generic versions of drugs for treating AIDS. Many aid groups agree the new law is less restrictive of current generic versions than they had feared, and that the supply of today’s generic AIDS drugs won’t dry up. Still, many worry that the need to pay royalties or get licenses may constrict supplies of new drugs, likely to be needed as viral resistance grows.

Some aid workers recently returned from New Delhi are encouraged by a new openness in the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh toward addressing AIDS here. The government designated AIDS a national emergency a couple of months ago, and Mr. Singh has agreed to head the country’s National Council on AIDS. This, they hope, would prompt it to administer the new patent laws with an eye to protecting public health.

The new patent laws will make it tougher for some Indian pharmaceuticals companies to turn a profit. Still, McKinsey’s Mr. Kumra predicts that overall, the industry will continue to grow. He sees India’s pharmaceuticals industry doubling in size in the next five years to more than $15 billion in revenue.

As India opens its markets and its companies venture abroad, companies are seeking to ensure that they profit from their own innovations. The list of top applicants in 2004 shows the importance of patents in global competition. Among the top applicants are Sony Corp., Procter & Gamble Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG — all with more than 300 applications each last year.

From India , the top applicants include such drug makers as Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. and Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. In the past three years, both have more than doubled their research-and-development spending to about 10% of revenue.

Posted at 3:58 PM · Comments (0)

By Cole Mallard - Voice of America
Washington
11 April 2005

China has been increasing its economic ties with Africa.  News reports say it’s because of the country’s growing need for natural resources, especially petroleum, which some African countries have in abundance.  The Wall Street Journal says China is also realigning itself politically and militarily, to help turn itself into a global superpower.  Howard W. French is the Shanghai Bureau Chief for the New York Times, and has extensively reported on the China-Africa connection.  He’s also the author of “A Continent for the Taking – the Tragedy and Hope of Africa.” 

Mr. French says China is very focused on its economic goals and is not interested in getting involved in the internal affairs of any African country.

He says, “The Chinese are absolutely unabashed in saying “business for us is business”; we’re not going to get wrapped up in a whole lot of other issues about how you govern your own society, that’s not their concern, and you have to take that into account in watching how they proceed to secure opportunities and to invest and how you’re going to compete against them, obviously.”  

Mr. French says the United States takes a value-oriented approach, which can lead to complications.

He says, “The United States has a more nuanced and conflictual position and one might say fraught with self-contradiction and maybe even hypocrisy.  We proclaim our attachment to values like democracy and human rights and certain rules of business, avoiding bribes and things like that, but the record is really a very mixed one in Africa on all of these scores.  Even in the last year or so, there have been allegations of major corruption, influence peddling, bribing to obtain contracts and things like that by American companies – I think Halliburton is one of them, in Nigeria.  So we have the virtue of proclaiming certain ideals, but we haven’t necessarily always lived up to them.”   

The New York Times Bureau Chief says if China can contribute to economic success in Africa, it will increase opportunities to expand its influence in other areas.

“I think the additional concern of liking to have political support at the United Nations, especially in its competition with Taiwan for allegiance in terms of votes at the U-N, so they will want to spread the money very widely in Africa,” he says. 

Mr. French says the United States has been increasingly inattentive to Africa since the cold war.  He says outside of economic interest in African oil and minerals, much of the continent’s affairs seem to be what he calls a “headache.”

He says, “This has enhanced a sense of opportunity in places like China, and I would say India is also headed down this road — big emerging countries that are seeking political friends, economic opportunities, and are seeking supplies of natural resources.”  

Mr. French says the past and present U. S. economic approach to Africa will have increasing consequences down the road.

He says, “China is moving with breathtaking speed across the globe to identify places, opportunities and to invest heavily and to really gain a foothold, and this is going to pose a particular challenge to the United States.  And in Africa, where the United States has in the last 15 or 20 years shown a declining interest, it’s going to be really difficult to quickly reverse gears.”

Whether or not the United States does “reverse gears,” there is evidence of awareness and concern.  Walter Kansteiner, a former U-S assistant secretary of state for African affairs, is quoted in a recent news report as saying, “China has simply exploded into Africa.”  And U-S representative Ed Royce, a California Republican and vice chairman of a House subcommittee dealing with Africa, says, “China’s increasing engagement in Africa is a concern and we need to focus on it before Beijing becomes fully established.”

Posted at 9:45 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Los Angeles Times

TIM RUTTEN
For better or worse, a significant number of people have come to regard the Pulitzer Prizes as the American news media’s annual report card.

Thus, more than a few brows were arched this week when not a single award in a print category went for journalism of any sort connected to the ongoing war in Iraq. (Both photo prizes — for breaking news and features — went to Iraq-related entries, but more on that in a moment.) With American servicemen and women still dying and Iraqi casualties mounting by the week, the nagging question hanging in the air is whether the U.S. media are somehow falling short on this story.

For the sake of convenience — or, more precisely, realism — we’ll put aside the question of whether the Pulitzer results ought to be read like tea leaves, let alone like a scorecard. The fact of the matter is that they are.

Three years into the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies, this most intensely covered of wars has produced just one Pulitzer Prize for print reporting, three for photojournalism and none for commentary or editorial writing. Is that really too few, and if so, what does the insufficiency signify?

In searching for a benchmark against which this performance can validly be measured, one place to start is with the war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

The first Pulitzer for journalism concerning that story was awarded in 1964, when David Halberstam of the New York Times and Associated Press’ Malcolm W. Browne shared the prize for their reporting on the war and the fall of the Diem regime. The last Vietnam Pulitzer was handed out 40 years later, when the Toledo Blade won a prize for investigating atrocities committed by an elite and secretive U.S. Army platoon. Over those four decades, print reportage about the war in Southeast Asia earned nine Pulitzers, and photojournalism five. Along the way, three Vietnam-related books also won the prize for nonfiction.

Obviously the U.S. had been deeply involved in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia before the Pulitzer board chose to recognize any of the journalism concerning that intervention. As Halberstam said this week, “There was a generational fault line that had to be bridged before the Pulitzer juries or board felt comfortable in honoring any of the work being done in Vietnam. I know that when I won mine, there was a strong sentiment among some people that the board was taking sides against the Johnson administration. I know Scotty [Reston, then the New York Times’ associate editor] did some pretty good arm-twisting on my behalf.”

BUT even allowing for a bit of a time lag, there are those who suspect that reporting from Iraq has been compromised from the beginning by the fact that more than 600 journalists took accreditation as so-called “embedded” reporters, accepting the training and restrictions that are part of that novel arrangement. Certainly Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded allied forces in the invasion of Iraq, thought embedding had created a new kind of war correspondent.

In his memoir, “American Soldier,” he recalled that as the embedding “process unfolded, it became clear that the traditional distrust and animosity between the military and the media was breaking down. I heard reports that journalists who had moved to Camp Pendleton, Fort Stewart and Fort Bragg were already talking fondly of ‘my outfit.’ This same spirit was spreading on the ships and air bases where reporters were embedded. There was a certain Ernie Pyle spirit developing — reporters bonding with the soldiers and Marines.”

Later, when President Bush asked Franks, “How are the troops, Tommy? What’s their morale?” Franks replied, “Sir, the embedded media provide a pretty good indication.”

Similarly, Sir John Keegan, the distinguished military historian who analyzed the Iraq invasion for Britain’s Observer newspaper, has argued on more than one occasion that the embedding process eliminated what he sees as the corrosive skepticism that has characterized relations between the U.S. press and the military since Vietnam.

In Keegan’s and Franks’ minds, that’s all to the good. But even analysts who regard skepticism as a healthy rather than corrosive quality in a journalist tend — on balance — to discount the notion that embedding somehow housebroke the press corps.

If reportage out of Iraq is somehow inhibited, they point out, it has far more to do with the security situation than with the journalists’ mind-set.

Peter Osnos, a leading publisher of contemporary nonfiction books as founder and head of PublicAffairs Press, covered Vietnam from 1970 to 1973 for the Washington Post and believes “if there was an absence of prizewinning reporting out of Iraq last year it was because everybody’s ability to do the kind of journalism they normally would do was substantially reduced by the deteriorating security situation. In all my long experience with war correspondents, I’ve never heard as much frustration as I did from people in Iraq this year about not being able to do the work they wanted to do.”

Halberstam agrees. “I don’t think embedding damaged any of the correspondents,” he says. “In modern mobile warfare, there simply isn’t any alternative to embedding if you are going to have this many reporters this close to the front. Our guys thought that once they got to Baghdad, they would become normal correspondents again. But this place is dangerous in a way Vietnam never was, and they haven’t been able to do that.”

Some of the consequent gap has been filled by the new prominence American newspapers across the board now accord distinguished photojournalism. As pointed out earlier, while 40 years of coverage of Vietnam produced four Pulitzer Prizes, the war in Iraq already has produced three, and this year, both photography awards were Iraq-related. So, too, were the other two finalists in the feature photo category.

The absence of a prize for Iraq-related commentary or editorials may be more of a comment on the inherent conservatism of the Pulitzer jurors and board members than it is on the work offered for their consideration.

It is striking — and not a little disturbing — to realize that in all the years of contention over the American intervention in Southeast Asia, not a single columnist or editorial writer was singled out for recognition.

A good report card grades you in every subject.

Posted at 12:51 AM · Comments (0)

Japanese women throw their blonde wigs in the air during a promotional event in Tokyo April 10, 2005. About 300 Japanese women in identical blonde wigs took part in the event on Sunday before throwing the wigs in the air to debunk the stereotypical western concept of beauty and being urged to develop their own beauty ideal. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

Click the link for pictures.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050410/ids_photos_wl/r2808116585.jpg

Posted at 12:34 AM · Comments (0)

04/08/2005

Anti-Japanese demonstrations accompanied by movements to boycott
Japanese products have flared across China. Television footage showed
scenes of enraged Chinese youths breaking windows of a Japanese
supermarket. Demonstrators carried banners with anti-Japanese slogans.

The demonstrations come on the heels of violent protests in South
Korea over the Takeshima island issue. The situation is dismal.

The demonstrations in China appear to be, however, a product of a
misunderstanding. Convenience stores in northeastern China removed
Japanese products, including beer made by Asahi Breweries, because of a controversy over Japanese textbooks for junior high school students
that some say justify Japan’s past military aggression. Reports began
circulating on the Internet that eight Japanese companies, including
Asahi Breweries Ltd., are providing financial support to the Japanese
Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai).

According to the brewery, a former employee who left the company
years ago is involved with the society. The company itself has nothing to do with it. Asahi Breweries issued a statement in China denying the reports but the situation shows no signs of subsiding. This no doubt is because of the strong enmity among residents over the history and civics textbooks edited by the society.

Chinese activists meantime are campaigning to collect 30 million
signatures for a petition to oppose Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In Shenzhen, Guangdong province, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets. The demonstration was organized by a number of anti-Japanese groups, including some that claim the Senkaku Islands are Chinese territory.

These groups contend that the Japanese government and the Diet have
not acknowledged this country’s military aggression in China nor
offered an official apology. Thus, they argue, Japan is not fit to
become a permanent member of the Security Council.

These anti-Japanese campaigns are feeding off each other through
television and the Internet and spreading across the nation. One
Chinese scholar said the unrest was provoked by the demonstrations held in South Korea.

Why does animosity toward Japan flare so easily in China?

One reason may lie in its sense of rivalry toward Japan for Asian
leadership. Japan’s ambassador to China, Koreshige Anami, noted in a
meeting with China’s Foreign Ministry that “as a result of patriotic
education, anti-Japanese sentiments may be instilled in young people.”

But the heart of the matter lies in deep-seated mutual distrust which Japan and China have yet to reconcile even though six decades have passed since the end of World War II. Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine on four occasions served only to
aggravate the situation. It is as though the atmosphere is filled with a dangerous gas that could instantly explode with the tiniest spark.

Around 20,000 Japanese companies now operate in China and about
78,000 Japanese residents are registered there. We call on the Chinese government to ensure that they are not exposed to danger just because they are Japanese.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a news conference in March:
“China-Japan relations are the most important of all bilateral
relations. We wish to strengthen strategic studies to advance
friendship.” It was his way of prodding Japan to do something to
improve relations. In China, where anti-Japanese sentiment is strong,
it was a risky statement that could have ignited domestic criticism.

Koizumi should respond to this overture as soon as possible. How does he plan to break the deadlock in Japan-China relations? We urge him to send a clear message to the Chinese people.

—The Asahi Shimbun, April 7(IHT/Asahi: April 8,2005)

Posted at 6:31 PM · Comments (1)

April 10, 2005 - Copyright The New York Times

EDITORIAL OBSERVER

The 1998 DNA study that linked Thomas Jefferson to the final child of his lover Sally Hemings has settled one argument and fired up another. Most historians who had argued that Jefferson was too pure of heart to bed a slave have re-evaluated 200 years of evidence and embraced the emerging consensus: that Jefferson had a long relationship with Hemings and probably fathered most, if not all of her children.

Having acknowledged the relationship, these historians are now trying to explain it. This has sent them scrambling back to the 19th-century accounts of life at Monticello by two former slaves: Jefferson’s former servant, Israel Jefferson, and the founder’s son, Madison Hemings. This represents the rehabilitation of Madison, who was being vilified as a liar even 10 years ago.

Madison’s memoir, based partly on family history conveyed to him by his mother, is as close to the voice of Sally Hemings as we will ever come. But neither of these brief accounts, published in an Ohio newspaper in 1873, reveals anything about the intimate texture of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. They tell us a great deal, however, about the circumstances that created the black intelligentsia that sprang to life during Reconstruction and that dominated African-American cultural, intellectual and political life through the first half of the 20th century.

This black intelligentsia did not spring fully formed from the cotton fields. It had its roots in the families of mixed-race slaves like the Hemingses, who served as house servants for generations, often in the homes of white families to whom they were related. Employed in “the big house,” these slaves often learned to read, at a time when few slaves were literate. They also absorbed patterns of speech, dress and deportment that served them well after emancipation.

Many of them were set free by their guilt-ridden slave owner fathers long before the official end of slavery. The Hemings children were all free by 1829 - or more than a third of a century before slavery was finally abolished. Not surprisingly, mixed-race offspring who were well educated became teachers, writers, newspaper editors. They formed the bedrock of an emerging black elite and were disproportionately represented in the African-American leadership during Reconstruction and well into the 20th century.

Not all of these mixed-race children fared so well, however. Many were sold or passed on as chattel to relatives in their fathers’ wills. This was in fact the case with Sally Hemings, one of several children born to a mixed-race slave named Betty Hemings and a white lawyer and businessman named John Wayles - the father of Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha. When Wayles died, Martha inherited some of her enslaved half siblings, including Sally Hemings.

Sally Hemings was just a child when she accompanied Jefferson and his daughter to France for more than two years. Madison tells us in his memoir that his mother became pregnant by Jefferson in France, where she was considered free. She refused to return to America, he said, until Jefferson agreed to free all of the children born of their relationship.

Madison recalls that he and his siblings were favored at Monticello, and allowed to spend their time in the “great house,” where they could be close to their mother. Madison further asserts that they knew of Jefferson’s plans to emancipate them. “We were free from the dread of having to be slaves all our lives long, and were measurably happy,” he says.

Jefferson’s favoritism, however, did not include affection. Jefferson’s black children, who seem never to have received so much as an embrace or a peck on the cheek, watched in what must have been painful silence as the great man doted on his white grandchildren. Madison says, “We were the only children of his by a slave woman.”

The “great house” at Monticello offered abundant opportunities for encounters with the great minds of the day. Israel Jefferson, for example, recalls being present when Jefferson and Lafayette debated the question of slavery.

Raised in such a context, the Hemings children - and others like them - were probably better prepared for middle-class life than most people, either black or white. Indeed, historians who have followed the Hemings descendants through time have found that the cultural capital acquired by Hemings children at Monticello translated into upward mobility.

Historians who are now searching for ways to understand the Jefferson-Hemings relationship have several models from which to choose. Some masters developed caring, de facto marriages with enslaved women and tried to leave their children money and property in their wills. Other masters were serial rapists or plantation potentates who made harems in their slave quarters and were profoundly indifferent to their offspring.

For the time being, however, the last word on this issue should go to Madison Hemings, who flatly and dispassionately describes the relationship as a bargain, in which his mother consented to share Jefferson’s bed in exchange for the emancipation of her children. That she had the courage to articulate this deal - and stand firm on its terms - makes her more than a mere concubine. It makes her the architect of her family’s freedom.

Posted at 3:08 PM · Comments (0)

Sat 02 Apr 2005, Page 040

One theme has run through John Howard’s approach to foreign policy since 1996 — the attempt to align it with what he sees as the political values and the character of the Australian people.

That does not mean he makes policy by opinion poll nor that he won’t from time to time take a temporarily unpopular stand, as in dispatching troops to Iraq — in political terms a rough analogue in foreign policy to tax reform in domestic policy. But he doesn’t want foreign policy to change or shape our character, he wants it to reflect that character.

That also does not mean that foreign policy is static. Perhaps

Howard’s single most impressive feature has been his ability to keep growing in his job. His foreign policy has certainly evolved and matured.
This week, in the inaugural Lowy lecture, Howard gave perhaps the most comprehensive guide yet to his approach to the world. Because it contains several distinct components, commentators have tended to present it very differently, each, perhaps understandably, focusing on the part that appealed to them most.

Several commentators saw it as Howard converting to regionalism. I was struck by its bold globalist outlook.

But the truth is Howard is simultaneously a globalist, a regionalist and a localist. In a nation with limited resources, inevitably there must be choices and trade-offs, but Howard believes Australia is big enough and strong enough to make a contribution at all three levels.

Iraq is a global commitment, Japan, China and Indonesia embody regional priorities, the South Pacific is local. They all bear heavily on our national interest. What we do in one sphere affects what we can do in the others.

Howard is driven to this conclusion both by Australian interests, and Australian values. It is a marriage, if you like, of neo-conservatism and realism.
Commentators have ignored the strong strain of democratic idealism in Howard’s speech. Paul Wolfowitz would have been proud to utter these words of Howard’s: ”The forces of barbarism have set themselves a mission — to break the will of those who seek peace and freedom. This test is nowhere more important at this hour than Iraq … We can choose to turn inward or we can lend a hand for freedom at a moment when the voices of democratic hope are being heard right across the Middle East — from Iraq to Saudi Arabia; from Lebanon to Egypt.”

It is quite wrong to think that these are tokenistic comments from Howard. In fact Howard is much more in touch with Australian history and public sentiment than most commentators. A vein of what one might call muscular idealism runs very deep below the habitually ironic and sceptical Australian surface. East Timor had a profound influence on Howard in this respect.

Howard repeated core judgments he has made about the geo-strategic fundamentals. He strongly reasserted his belief that the US will not retreat from Asia, that the US will become more powerful globally and within Asia, that while we will have occasional disagreements with the US and our regional friends, being close to the US makes us stronger in Asia. And he asserted again that it was his Government’s policy to intensify relations with the US.
But yes, of course, there was also fascinating regional material. Howard has not just discovered Asia. He has been doing serious business there at least since the 1997 East Asian economic crisis and again in East Timor in 1999, more recently with the free-trade deals with Thailand and Singapore, and throughout the record trade deals with China.

A lot of the media focused on China in Howard’s speech, and indeed this is important. But it was the treatment of Japan that was novel. Japan came before China in the speech. Japan was hailed, with the US and Australia, as ”the three great Pacific democracies”.

Howard praised Japan’s new-found self-confidence in foreign policy and specifically security matters, saying: ”This quiet revolution in Japan’s external policy — one which Australia has long encouraged — is a welcome sign of a more confident Japan assuming its rightful place in the world and our region.”

Howard specifically talked up the developing security co-operation between Australia and Japan, which he labelled a ”strategic partner”, and went on to extol the Trilateral Security Dialogue involving Tokyo, Canberra and Washington.

He also declared: ”Australia has no better friend in Asia than Japan.”

None of this was remotely anti-Chinese, but the context is that Japan and China have been squabbling pretty vigorously, not least over Taiwan, for several months. In such a carefully reviewed speech, that context is certainly factored in.

Howard rightly said that there was no inevitability about escalating security competition between the US and China.

On Taiwan, he said: ”In the context of our one-China policy, we continue to urge restraint and a peaceful resolution of issues across the Taiwan Straits.”

That is exactly the US formula on this issue and the bottom line is that China will be opposed if it uses force.

Part of the China lobby in Australia claims, falsely, that Canberra has told the US it would not get involved in any conflict between the US and China over Taiwan.

The best expression of this analysis came from former senior Defence department official Hugh White, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last week: ”The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, made it clear that if the US and China went to war over Taiwan, Australia would prefer to stay on the sidelines.”

In a conversation with The Australian, Downer said flatly that White was dead wrong, that he had never said anything like that or anything that could remotely be construed as that.

What Downer and Howard have said is that they won’t speculate about what Australia might do in entirely hypothetical circumstances. This column has occasionally criticised Downer for making too much of that refusal to speculate, but that is a million miles away from saying that the Government has decided it is neutral between the US and China.

It seems to be a case of White projecting his own foreign policy on to the Government. It certainly doesn’t sit well with Howard’s stirring pro-democracy rhetoric or, for that matter, with Australian history.

Posted at 7:32 PM · Comments (0)

The over 2,000-year-old Sino-Japan relations, after going through the
process of “strong China and weak Japan” and “strong Japan and weak China”,
are now developing toward a relationship between the strong.

At least for the moment, neither side of the two is the “weak”, this
situation, when entangled with historical issues, would possibly lead to a
situation in which none of the two sides would show its weakness. Because
compromise made in the course of representation by any government of the two
sides might be seen as a sign of “weakness” by some people, which
constitutes quite a big pressure.

Future Sino-Japanese relationship as one between two strong countries would
take the following three forms: First, both governments would take a steady
and cooperative stand in handling bilateral relations; second, both
governments would adopt a tough and confrontation-inclined stance in dealing
with bilateral ties; third, one government would take a relatively steady
and cooperative stand, while the other government would adopt a tough or
relatively tough stand in handling relations between the two countries.

In recent years, Sino-Japan relationship has tended to take the third form:
The Japanese government’s attitude toward China, the Republic of Korea (ROK)
and other neighboring countries has become increasingly intransigent.
Particularly since the beginning of 2005, Japan has sent out a strong
diplomatic signal on the issues such as Chinese Diaoyu Islands, ROK’s Dokdo
as well as Russia’s northern territory, this cannot but make people look at
Japan’s acts with new eyes.

A sensible diplomatic policy, of course, should not make each other enemies,
nor push the other side to one’s opposite. However, currently China is no
long a weak nation that can be oppressed and exploited by anyone. When
facing Japan’s tough foreign policies, China can never budge an inch. It can
be said that Japan’s hard-line policies are misleading the Japanese and
agitating the feeling of Chinese, and are thus guiding the two countries to
confrontation. If the relations between the two countries further
deteriorate, the two sides may face the historic choice between “no more
fighting” and “renewal of fighting”. Uncertain factors between China and
Japan are increasing, then, how big is the possibility for a confrontation
between China and Japan as one between two strong countries?

Viewed from Japanese political circles of today, the government, whichever
it is, will put Japan’s national interest in the first place.

As a country exceedingly short of natural resources, industrialized Japan
depends heavily on foreign resources and shipping lines. Meanwhile, as Japan
is engaged in extensive trade and investment activities across the world, it
is highly dependent on foreign markets, due to the long-term activities
mentioned above, Japan has accumulated phenomenal overseas economic benefits
worldwide. In brief, the procurement of foreign resources, shipping lines,
as well as foreign markets and overseas economic benefits can be called
Japan’s lifeblood or the source of life, and here lie Japan’s national
interests.

China may have dealings with Japan mainly in the following aspects relating
to the aforementioned Japanese “national interests”:

I. China and Japan are likely to involve themselves in competition for
foreign resources, especially crude oil and natural gas.

II. China and Japan may engage in competition when exploiting seabed
resources in the East China Sea. The competition is entangled with disputes
between China and Japan on sovereignty over certain islands and the
demarcation of sea areas.

III. Japan worries that the Taiwan issue might affect the safety of its
shipping lines in the region. To be specific, on the one hand Japan fears
that some important section of its shipping lines would be placed under
China’s control if Beijing realized national reunification; on the other
hand, Japan worries that if “something” happens across the Taiwan Straits,
it will for a while also affect Japan’s marine transportation, and even
affect its southwest islands and waters.

IV. In terms of foreign markets, although competition exists between China
and Japan, however, with the development of bilateral trade and economic
relations and the integration of industrialization of the two countries (the
deepening of division of labor within the industry), the complementarity of
the two countries’ economies has been enhanced instead of weakened,
particularly when Japanese industry is increasingly dependent on the vast
Chinese market.

V. With regard to overseas economic benefits, along with the deepening of
the two countries’ economic interdependence and the integration of their
industrialization, Japan’s overseas economic benefits accumulated on the
vast land of China are on the increase.

The above analysis shows that the national interest and strategic interest
of China and Japan are not completely opposite. It can be said that along
with the deepening of the two countries’ economic interdependence, the
connective part of the two countries’ interests will increase and not
decrease. A solution of contradiction by the method of confrontation can
only lead to the loss and suffering of both sides. For instance, in regard
to the exploitation of seabed resources in the East China Sea and the
security of marine transportation lines, confrontation between the two sides
will possibly cause a disastrous consequence to both sides.

Based on the above-mentioned situation, the tough foreign policies adopted
by the Koizumi administration toward neighboring countries, China in
particular, carry, to a great extent, a subjective color and emotional
factor. But this practice has met with ever-louder voice of opposition in
Japan, and the above-mentioned foreign policies have been landed in a
serious predicament. From various perspectives, “the Koizumi administration
has entered a blind alley,” commented a representative of the Democratic
Party, the largest opposition party in Japan. Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi has met with ever-stronger opposition even from within the Liberal
Democratic Party. Criticism of Koizumi’s domestic and foreign policies has
prompted a “movement to bring down the cabinet” which is brewing within the
Liberal Democratic Party, thereby putting unprecedented pressure on Koizumi
since he took office.

It can thus be predicted that with the development of China and change in
the international environment, there is little possibility for Sino-Japanese
relationship to move toward such a state of confrontation as one between two
strong countries. Furthermore, a basic task of diplomacy is, through
tenacious diplomatic efforts, to make the policy of the other country
develop in the direction favorable to one’s own country. As Japan’s
neighbor, China, of course, will not give up such efforts, especially
efforts to win over the majority of Japan; to be exact, to win over Japanese
nationals, which will play a role through Japan’s internal cause, so that
Tokyo will not deviate from the road of peaceful development which it has
followed since WWII.

The author is a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Carried on Page 15 of the Global Times April 6, 2005, the above article is
translated by People’s Daily Online

Posted at 2:34 PM · Comments (0)

President Bush and other world leaders are honoring John Paul II in a way that completely misunderstands his message. We pay him no tribute if we lower our flags to half-staff and send a grand presidential delegation to his funeral, when at the same time we avert our eyes as villagers are slaughtered and mutilated in the genocide unfolding in Darfur.

The message of the pope’s ministry was about standing up to evil, not about holding grand funerals.

“Throughout the West, John Paul’s witness reminded us of our obligation to build a culture of life in which the strong protect the weak,” Mr. Bush said. Well, what about that reminder? What kind of a “culture of life” is it that allows us to shrug as Sudanese soldiers heave children onto bonfires?

The latest estimates, from the British government and others, are that 300,000 or more have perished so far in Darfur. Mr. Bush has forthrightly called this slaughter “genocide,” but he has used that label not to spur action, but to substitute for it.

These days the Sudanese authorities are adding a new twist to their crimes against humanity: they are arresting girls and women who have become pregnant because of the mass rapes by Sudanese soldiers and militia members. If the victims are not yet married, or if their husbands have been killed, then they are imprisoned for adultery.

Doctors Without Borders issued a report last month about Darfur that quoted one 16-year-old girl as saying:

“I was collecting firewood for my family when three armed men on camels came and surrounded me. They held me down, tied my hands and raped me, one after the other. When I arrived home, I told my family what had happened.

“They threw me out of home, and I had to build my own hut away from them. I was engaged to a man, and I was so much looking forward to getting married. After I got raped, he did not want to marry me and broke off the engagement because he said I was now disgraced and spoilt. …

“When I was eight months pregnant from the rape, the police came to my hut and forced me with their guns to go to the police station. They asked me questions, so I told them that I had been raped. They told me that as I was not married, I will deliver this baby illegally.

“They beat me with a whip on the chest and back and put me in jail.”

The report quoted another girl, 17, who was gang-raped and then locked inside her hut, which was set on fire. She escaped through the wall of the hut but suffered extensive burns.

John Paul wanted world leaders to show compassion for suffering people like these girls, not for dead popes. Mr. Bush and other world leaders flocking to Rome could truly honor the pope by meeting there to establish a protection force in Darfur.

In the meantime, these attacks are continuing daily. And what are we doing about it? When girls are mutilated after their rapes, we provide free Band-Aids.

Mr. Bush has supported a humanitarian relief effort. But even the aid agencies emphasize that what is needed most is a security force to stop the slaughter.

“We’re proud of what we do,” said Kenny Gluck, the operations director based in the Netherlands for Doctors Without Borders. “But people’s villages have been burned, their crops have been destroyed, their wells spiked, their family members raped, tortured and killed - and they come to us, and we give them 2,100 kilocalories a day.” In effect, Mr. Gluck said, the aid effort is sustaining victims so they can be killed with a full belly.

I’m not proposing that we send American ground troops. But an expanded United Nations and African force, with logistical support from the U.S., is urgently needed. And Condoleezza Rice should immediately visit Darfur to show that it is a U.S. priority.

Mr. Bush should promptly back the Darfur Accountability Act, a bipartisan bill that would pressure Sudan to stop the killing (so far, the White House hasn’t even taken a position on the act). Ordinary citizens can also urge their members of Congress to pass the act.

If there is a lesson from the papacy of John Paul II, it is the power of moral force. The pope didn’t command troops, but he deployed principles. And it’s hypocritical of us to pretend to honor him by lowering our flags while simultaneously displaying an amoral indifference to genocide.

Posted at 2:10 PM · Comments (0)

Published: April 8 2005 09:01 Copyright The Financial Times
The fried pigs livers with yellow wine were my idea - but the inspiration was really down to Yu Hua. In his masterpiece, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, the downtrodden hero, Xu Sanguan, eats the dish in the belief it will restore his strength. So it seemed fitting to give it a try, even if we were rather more fortunate than Xu, sitting in one of Hong Kong’s most venerable restaurants discussing the books that have taken Yu Hua from an enfant terrible of China’s literary scene to one of its leading lights.

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Blood, violence and hardship run through this body of work as they course through modern China, from the civil war to the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the other trials that bedevil the lives of Yu Hua’s characters, typically ordinary people who both suffer and express their country’s upheavals.

In truth, Yu Hua’s bleak tragedies are leavened by uplifting themes of fortitude and family bonds. But they are still hard to square with the affable 44-year-old, who looks nearer his thirties, as he pauses for thought, dipping his chopsticks into the grey yolk of a “1,000-year-old egg”.

The traumas, like much of his writing, are drawn from experience. The son of a doctor and a nurse, he grew up in a hospital in the eastern Chinese town of Haiyan, against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution. “When my father finished a surgery we would see his coat stained with blood,” he recalls. “My mother would carry tins of organs out and pour them into a pond behind the hospital. In summer, the pond would be covered with so many flies it looked like a thick blanket.”

If home was where the blood was, the street outside was a stage for the brutality that features in many of his works. “There was a lot of violence then - even in our small town. I saw with my own eyes people beaten to death on the street.”

Yu Hua started his own working life as a barefoot dentist. Given the macabre detail of his early works, it prompted Mo Yan, author of Red Sorghum (made into a film by Zhang Yimou), to comment: “I’ve heard he was a dentist for five years. I can’t imagine what kind of tortures patients endured under his cruel pliers.”

In the event, the patients were spared. Hating the job and jealous of the artists and writers he saw walking around town, Yu Hua determined to enter the local cultural council. With most novels and virtually all foreign books banned at the time, he drew inspiration from the “Big Character Posters” that were plastered across the walls of Chinese towns denouncing “capitalist roaders” and other traitors to Mao Zedong’s causes. Many of these victims were known to Yu Hua before they were swept into public and, generally, tragic local dramas, and later into his bestselling books.

His lack of formal training led to a sparse writing style - prompting some critics to cite Ernest Hemingway as an influence. But Yu Hua has an alternative explanation. “I went to primary school in the year when the Cultural Revolution started and graduated from high school the year it ended. That meant I never studied properly, and knew only 4,000 characters,” he says. “That is why my style is sparse. Maybe Hemingway’s vocabulary was quite small too.”

As the style of Yu Hua’s books has evolved from experimental avant-garde towards more conventional narratives and commercial success, it is tempting to see a parallel with China’s recent evolution. The suggestion is reinforced by the fact that this former tyro of the Tiananmen Square era, who was involved in the student-led protests of 1989, is now comfortable with China’s recent development and his own move towards the cultural mainstream.

”There must be some connection between my writing style and the general situation of society at that time,” he acknowledges. “When I started writing, my style was rather radical and the characters in my books were completely under my control. I wrote like a dictator. In the 1990s, when I wrote the longer novels, I found characters had their own voices. This was an amazing experience and fundamentally changed my attitude to writing. Maybe this is a coincidence, but it is in some way consistent with the evolution of Chinese society, from highly authoritarian to more democratic.”

It is, of course, a relative progression. Yu Hua is tolerated rather than endorsed by Chinese officialdom and sails close to the lingering winds of censorship. While he denies he is a political writer, he sees the “truth of history” as his driving force and the messages of his books have strong political symbolism. An unfortunate character in the novel To Live, for instance, is bled to death during a transfusion to supply a party official, a literal expression of the extreme sacrifices demanded by the state. Arbitrary and ruthless decrees frequently dictate the fortunes of his characters.

”I don’t think they see me as a model writer,” he jokes.

His books have never been banned - but neither does he expect official recognition or awards. “I am comfortable with this position. A writer should not have a cosy relationship with the government.”

The tacit toleration of Yu Hua’s books probably reflects his “rear view” perspective and his focus on the monstrosities of Maoism. China’s current regime acknowledges mistakes from that period, although it has so far rejected a “reassessment” of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Yu Hua believes those chapters have closed, drawing a curtain on all-consuming ideology. “It is a good change. People may no longer believe in high missions and they are thinking of money all the time,” he says. “These indeed may cause many problems in society. But no matter how problematic, it is better than using one ideology. Trying to make one billion people think the same, as in the Cultural Revolution, is the most dreadful thing.”

While the era of choreographed campaigns has passed, Yu Hua sees risks to stability in the localised protests that are now bursting through the fissures of China’s widening social gaps. “Almost all the political movements in China were started by Mao Zedong alone, and he alone could then regain control of everything; whereas today’s small-scale upheavals are everywhere and they are not initiated by the government. When they come together to become a tide, nobody can control it.”

On a personal and professional level, this evolution removes the ideological targets that Yu Hua hit so unerringly in his previous works, challenging him to capture the more complex currents of contemporary China. “Writing about the past is much easier than writing about the present. The present in China is constantly changing, and increasingly quickly,” he says. “A European would need to live 400 years to experience such a sea change.”

Yu Hua has sought to chart this sea change in a new book due out in the summer. The two-part novel, still awaiting a title, records what he sees as the defining social shift in China - from the “self-denial” of the past to the “self-indulgence” and sensationalism of the present. “Today’s China is full of sensations. If you open the paper you will read about the most peculiar stories that could ever happen,” he says. He cites a story about a rich Chinese man taking his dog to a sauna and then placing the dog on a separate bed for a massage. Such a scene is a long way from the struggles of his earlier works. In those times, a dog would have been a bizarre luxury, or lunch.

The tone of the new novel will be dark. “It is full of sarcasm and even more cynical than my previous novels, because I think that tone suits our age.” Despite this, or possibly because of it, he sees no problems getting it published. He has yet to show it to publishers, but has already received an offer for an initial print run of 300,000 copies - a reflection of the following he has built as a writer and as a narrator of China’s unfolding history.

Amid the tumult of that history, it is a struggle to keep roots and memories intact. That is something that Yu Hua feels strongly about, personally. And as we move to the next dish - the head and legs of a lobster, with rice - it transpires that food is one way he seeks to preserve his own past.

”When I was a kid I was crazy about a local dish - rice cake with shredded pork. It is something you rarely had the chance to eat then. It no longer tastes that delicious to me today, but even so, I have to eat it at least once a month. Otherwise I would feel uncomfortable,” he says. “I eat this to make up for the past, because I ate too little at the time. I was constantly hungry as a kid.”

His experience of hunger rumbles through many of the most moving scenes in his books. When, in Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, Xu Sanguan is reunited with his first-born son, banished because of doubts over his legitimacy, their reconciliation is sealed over a bowl of noodles. In To Live, the mute and starving daughter is unable to protest in a desperate struggle over a single sweet potato.

Those days created demons as well as dramas. Shuffling his chopsticks, Yu Hua reveals that he writes for self-restoration as well as for his readers. “I don’t write to cure other people’s souls. I write to cure my own soul. There are problems with my own soul, and I need to work on them.”

As the dim sum dessert arrives, and the warm and surprisingly potent Shaoxing Chiew wine takes effect, this soul is in good spirits. “Sometimes I eat for the past. But today’s meal is fantastic,” he exclaims. “I feel I am eating for my present life.”

John Ridding is editor of the FT’s Asia edition.

Yung Kee Restaurant, Central, Hong Kong

1 x fish maw with mushroom soup

1 x pigs livers with yellow wine

1 x beef brisket in superior soup

1 x lobster ball in black bean sauce

1 x garoupa with bean curd

1 x lobster with rice in soup

1 x dim sum dessert

1 x Shaoxing Chiew wine

HK$2,480 (£170)

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Saturday, April 9, 2005

DHAKA, Bangladesh The current 10-day, four-nation tour of South Asia by China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, is at one level a triumphal affair. Here is the outwardly modest Wen basking in China’s success, spreading the gospel of good will to these neighbors whose combined populations equals that of China. Here is a China that will give aid, help them escape from poverty, make Asians proud and speak up for multilateralism and the United Nations system - articles of faith throughout the subcontinent.

But Wen’s tour is also a reminder that China’s global economic influence is now a factor in relations between the states of South Asia in a way that China’s ideology never was. It thus presents India, anxious both to develop its strategic relationship with the United States and be the leader of South Asian economic integration, with awkward balancing acts.

Wen will visit India last but longest, flattering Indian egos with a trip to high-tech Bangalore and hearing eloquent Indian rhetoric about a new era of Asian cooperation driven by mutual economic interests. Trade has indeed been increasing rapidly as China sells manufactured goods and buys iron ore from India. Commerce may keep border disputes and Beijing’s ambiguous attitude to enlargement of the UN Security Council - which India hopes to join - in the background.

But Wen’s visits to Pakistan and Bangladesh may be at least as significant in suggesting to India that a new attitude to its immediate neighbors is needed if the subcontinent is to get back on a par with China. Wen reaffirmed the strength of relations with Pakistan despite its improved relationship with Washington and past support for the Taliban. He was keen, too, to emphasize that South Asian countries should “treat each other as equals,” a jab at India that went down well in Pakistan and in Bangladesh - which feels that it is treated by India as the United States used to treat Mexico.

Bangladesh is particularly in need of China’s moral support. There is an impression among diplomats here that India’s recent rapprochement with Pakistan has caused New Delhi’s propaganda and intelligence machines to turn more attention to the alleged misdeeds of its eastern neighbor. On scant evidence, Bangladesh is accused of harboring insurgents in India’s long-troubled northeastern states and of flooding these states with illegal migrants.

India has endeavored - without success - to persuade the United States that Bangladesh is on the way to becoming a failed state of Muslim fundamentalists and assorted gunmen. There is a belief here, not confined to nationalist Bangladeshis, that India does not want Bangladesh to be successful as it would demonstrate the potential for relatively small homogenous states on the subcontinent and would show up the failures of Bihar and other adjoining Indian states.

Bangladesh cannot escape dependence on India, which almost entirely surrounds it. It needs more Indian investment and cross-border trade to integrate markets. Links to Myanmar, Thailand and China will grow but are no substitute. Many Indo-Bangladeshi disputes are petty or over matters that neither government fully controls, such as smuggling of goods and people. But one big issue could drive Bangladesh to seek much closer links with China - the rivers that are its lifeblood.

India’s plans to link river systems include diverting water from the Brahmaputra, Bangladesh’s single largest water source, into the Ganges. Although India is being urged - most recently in a World Bank report - to cooperate with its neighbors in sharing waters and developing hydroelectric potential, it has a tendency to treat Bangladesh as at best a little brother and at worst a vassal state. That’s where the Chinese come in. The headwaters of the Brahmaputra are in Tibet. Should China thus not also be party to water-sharing talks? That is not on New Delhi’s cooperation agenda.

It is clearly not in China’s interest to be drawn deeply into South Asian disputes. But its prestige and its appearance of benevolence, magnanimity and success suggest that the newly confident, outward-looking India needs new approaches to its neighbors. Can India learn from Wen’s triumphant progress through the region that it claims to lead?

Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

Posted at 11:21 PM · Comments (0)

April 9, 2005  |  Back when I worked for a political magazine, a big cowboy-hat-wearing Texan who was some sort of DNC muck-a-muck would occasionally come by the office. While most good liberals take pains to say my name correctly, sometimes overly exoticizing the pronunciation with bizarre emphasis and guttural stops that my own mother couldn’t replicate, this particular fellow would just fill in the blank with any name that sounded vaguely Asian-y. Never tentative, he would bellow across the room, “Hey there, Michiko” or “How you doing, Ming Na?” I braced for the day I would hear “How’s it hanging, Mulan?” or “What’s going down, Madame Butterfly?” “Can I get a whoop-whoop, Kikkoman?” Or maybe simply: “Hello, Kitty.”

These days, names like Hayao Miyazaki, animation grand-daddy, or Takashi Murakami, the man whose colorful rendition of the Louis Vuitton print sold purses like crazy and who just appeared on a recent cover of New York Times Magazine, roll off the tongues of urban hipsters and the fashion forward. The Cartoon Network’s programming is anime heavy, movies like “The Ring” and “The Grudge” demonstrate that Hollywood increasingly looks East for inspiration, and along the way, the public is becoming enlightened. Even Norelle, last season’s resident bird brain on “America’s Next Top Model,” seemed appropriately embarrassed that Panda Express is, like, Chinese and not Japanese.

Stefani, the platinum-blond No Doubt front woman with the undulating midriff, recently released her first solo album, “Love, Angel, Music, Baby,” a riotous jumble of everything from ’80s bubble-gum pop to hip-hop to “Fiddler on the Roof” gone mad on a pirate ship. And tying all these influences together in one baffling mélange of semiotic ambiguity is her ever-present entourage: Four harajuku girls, or rather, Stefani’s interpretation of Tokyo street fashion in the Harajuku district.

They shadow her wherever she goes. They’re on the cover of the album, they appear behind her on the red carpet, she even dedicates a track, “Harajuku Girls,” to them. In interviews, they silently vogue in the background like living props; she, meanwhile, likes to pretend that they’re not real but only a figment of her imagination. They’re ever present in her videos and performances — swabbing the deck aboard the pirate ship, squatting gangsta style in a high school gym while pumping their butts up and down, simpering behind fluttering hands or bowing to Stefani. That’s right, bowing. Not even from the waist, but on the ground in a “we’re not worthy, we’re not worthy” pose. She’s taken Tokyo hipsters, sucked them dry of all their street cred, and turned them into China dolls.

Real harajuku girls are just the funky dressers who hang out in the Japanese shopping district of Harajuku. To the uninitiated, harajuku style can look like what might happen if a 5-year-old girl jacked up on liquor and goofballs decided to become a stylist. Layering is important, as is the mix of seemingly disparate styles and colors. Vintage couture can be mixed with traditional Japanese costumes, thrift-store classics, Lolita-esque flourishes and cyber-punk accessories. In a culture where the dreaded “salary man/woman” office worker is a fate to be avoided for this never-wanna-grow-up generation, harajuku style can look as radical as punk rockers first looked on London’s King Road or how pale-faced Goths silently sweating in their widows weeds look in cheerful sunny suburbs.

Stefani has taken the idea of Japanese street fashion and turned these women into modern-day geisha, contractually obligated to speak only Japanese in public, even though it’s rumored they’re just plain old Americans and their English is just fine. She’s even named them “Love,” “Angel,” “Music” and “Baby” after her album and new clothing line l.a.m.b. (perhaps a mutton-themed restaurant will follow). The renaming of four adults led one poster on a message board to muse, “I didn’t think it was legal to own human pets. But I guess so if you have the money for it.”

Stefani fawns over harajuku style in her lyrics, but her appropriation of this subculture makes about as much sense as the Gap selling Anarchy T-shirts; she’s swallowed a subversive youth culture in Japan and barfed up another image of submissive giggling Asian women. While aping a style that’s suppose to be about individuality and personal expression, Stefani ends up being the only one who stands out.

It’s not only Stefani whose big kiss to the East ends up feeling more like a big Pacific Rim job. Author Peter Carey’s own recent foray into Japanophila, the book “Wrong About Japan,” was a semi-autobiographical account of one clueless father’s attempt to bond with his son over manga on a trip to Japan, and his futile attempts to understand Japanese culture through a Western filter. Why devote an entire book to being “Wrong About Japan,” when you can just send out a one-page fax that reads, “They Are Inscrutable.” Even some of the movies that consciously play with Japanese stereotypes can seem puerile no matter how fast the postmodern hipster spin, whether it’s Lucy Liu’s blood-lusting geisha in “Kill Bill,” or Devon Aoki’s killer Miho in the new “Sin City,” who slays a multitude but is never allowed to utter a single word.

In the same New York Times magazine story that featured Murakami on the cover, the Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene was commissioned to photograph portraits of prepubescent girls and teens. The girls all look limp and innocent. Big, fat, unsmiling red lips like two slabs of raw ahi positioned on baby faces. It has that creepy porn feeling that I suppose is meant to reflect the Japanese predilection for “kawaii,” or cute, and the sexualized image of schoolgirls. But this is not the way these girls really are. The accompanying text says that “while [van Meene] does not exactly ‘stage’ her subjects, neither does she try to capture their true, underlying personality or state of mind. Instead, she chooses to see her subjects as the raw material of her own fictions.” Van Meene elaborates, “This is not just you now. This is a sense of you, created by me.” Well, at least she’s honest.

salon.com

Posted at 11:15 PM · Comments (1)

Copyright Slate - Posted Friday, April 8, 2005,

When I grow up, I’m going to be an investment banker
After a few days in Shanghai, it is easy to think that China has already become the world’s leading economic superpower. This illusion is not dispelled in Beijing. When I lug my bags from the train station to the Grand Hyatt, I walk right by the Lamborghini dealer.

Of course, as many observers have noted, China is two countries, urban and rural, and they are as different as Los Angeles and Appalachia. The Appalachian part would have remained theoretical for me, but one morning I was invited to ride shotgun in a dusty Jeep Cherokee with Tim Clissold, the author of Mr. China, for a drive to the north.

Statistics in China are easy to come by and hard to have faith in. But here goes: About 750 million Chinese are farmers, and about 85 million make less than $75 a year. The average rural per-capita income in Sichuan province in 2002 was $253, less than the fees required to attend a local middle school. Rural incomes have almost doubled since the mid-1990s, but taxes have jumped four to five times. (To register to get married, for example, you have to pay 14 taxes.)

Of course, poverty alone doesn’t lead to social unrest, which many people cite as one of the biggest threats to the Chinese economic miracle (the others being overinvestment and a fistfight with Taiwan). To trigger the class riots that frequently occur in China these days, you also need a sense of unfairness. There is plenty of that, stemming from corruption, limited opportunities, and income inequality. Experts disagree about exactly how China’s rural/urban income gap compares with that of other countries, but the dispute is confined to whether it is the most extreme in the world or merely extreme. In an extraordinary series in the New York Times, Joseph Kahn told the story of Zheng Qingming, a brilliant farmer boy who aced his high-school admission test but couldn’t scratch together the $80 necessary to take the college entrance exam—and solved the problem by stepping in front of an express train. In China, Inc., Ted Fishman described a villager, who, after demanding that the spending of local authorities be publicly audited, was taken into custody and beaten to death.

Clissold and I drove until the city’s superhighways narrowed to single-lane strips and brown mountains appeared. Then, after winding through a dusty town near the Ming Tombs, we parked near a cluster of stuccoed brick buildings and walked. Compared to the poorer parts of China, of course, the village was well-off. Beijing money flows out of the city into the surrounding towns, and many of the brick buildings here had been recently rebuilt. The village’s inhabitants, meanwhile, flow the other way, so the town was deserted except for old people, dogs, and kids. The town’s dirt lanes were strewn with burned coal ash and garbage, the air smelled of brush smoke, and an ancient farmer pedaled by occasionally on a bicycle overloaded with sticks. We hiked through a field into a walled, unkempt area—the grave of an emperor’s concubine—then up the side of a hill. From there, we could see across the valley to an incongruous, nearly flat, snow-covered field, which was apparently a ski area. Now that they have some money, Clissold explained, the Chinese want to do things people with money do, such as skiing and golf. Unfortunately, equipment and skills have yet to catch up with desire, so the broken-leg-repair industry is burgeoning, too.

Later, we drove northeast, past an abandoned reservoir project and a military base inside a hollowed-out mountain, and stopped at an empty roadside restaurant for lunch. The menu promised a veritable banquet of foods, but after a long exchange with the excited waitress (Customers! Laowai!), Clissold reported that the only ingredients in the larder were potatoes, chicken, and celery. Then it was another 45 minutes in the Jeep up and down steep hillsides and through tunnels until a familiar ribbon of stone appeared on a distant ridgeline, snaking away as far as we could see. Richard Nixon will forever be ridiculed for his assessment of this architectural wonder, but he got it right: “It sure is a great wall.” In fact, when one imagines the labor required merely to haul the massive rocks up to the ridge, let alone carve and fit them into place, it’s no wonder people have such respect for the awesome power of the Chinese workforce.

Fearful that social unrest will weaken its power—and also because it is the right thing to do—the Chinese government is aggressively addressing the income gap. The answer, for now, is not more-efficient farming but easier migration to cities and the establishment of ever more factories. Like other governments, however, the party is not a single unified entity, and intelligent reforms in Beijing can often be negated by local officials in the countryside. Creating jobs for a billion people, moreover, does not happen overnight. Even with China’s frantic rate of growth, the lack of rural opportunities and the death of many state-run enterprises have resulted in mass unemployment. Fishman suggests that China may have more unemployed industrial workers than the rest of the world combined.

Which is why, when one has seen the other side of the coin, it is even harder to wave the pompoms in support of U.S. protectionist rhetoric aimed at whipping up fear of the “China threat” and saving “our” jobs. It’s easy to have sympathy for those whose jobs disappear across the Pacific, but hard not to also feel excited about the opportunities created for millions of Chinese so desperate to have them. As Thomas Friedman observes unapologetically in a recent New York Times piece, like it or not, the world has changed, and globalization is here to stay. If we fail to react, or resort to whining instead of innovating, China will indeed prove a massive threat (and might regardless). But ultimately, the answer is not tariffs, quotas, or safeguards, but figuring out what we can do better than the Chinese—or with their cooperation. And then helping our companies and workers get on with it.

Henry Blodget, a former securities analyst, lives in New York City.

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By Howard W. French Copyright The New York Times
Saturday, April 9, 2005

NEW DELHI When China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, arrives here on Saturday, his four-day visit will be filled with the usual handshakes and protocols that would ordinarily go little noticed beyond this region. This diplomatic mission, though, will have an altogether different feeling.

Perhaps for the first time, there is an expectation that both India and China, together representing a third of humanity, are coming into their own at the same moment, with the potential for a dynamic shift in the world’s politics and economy.

The impact on the global balance of power, the competition for resources and the health of the planet is causing many analysts and political leaders to sit up and take notice.

For the rest of the world, this shift could be profound. For industrialized nations in the years ahead, it may well mean more downward pressure on wages, the outsourcing of still more jobs and greater competition for investment. In most countries it will likely lead to higher prices for scarce resources.

The rise of China has already been felt far and wide, from the export of often unbeatably cheap manufactures to the thick plumes of its industrial pollution that spread eastward across the Pacific and the effect of its fast-growing economy on rising oil prices.

The addition of India, already a major force in services, could pull the globe’s economic and political center of gravity decidedly toward Asia, and away from an aging Europe and a United States already stretched by security threats and swelling deficits.

Indeed, Beijing’s overtures toward India are being contemplated with a keen awareness of China’s rivalry with the United States, which has also jealously courted New Delhi, lately promising to help make it a “major world power in the 21st century.

For that reason, Wen will come with a package of initiatives.

They are aimed at drawing India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, closer than they have been at any time since the 1950s.

Both sides say they will push hard to resolve a decades-old border dispute. There is talk of a free-trade agreement as well as joint oil exploration and purchases of commercial airliners.

China may even endorse India’s bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, or at least strongly hint at its support.

“If the measure is whether you consult them or take them into account, both countries will be major powers,” said Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research institute in Washington.

Still, he noted, relations are not completely carefree. “As long as their relationship remains trade, economic ties, cultural, even kibitzing with the U.S., that is fine,” Cohen said, “but as soon as you get some confrontation, on the border, Chinese goods flooding into India, or an incident at sea, or in Tibet or Nepal, then things quickly become much more nationalistic and complicated.”

Indeed, competition is a byword as much as cooperation. The day after Wen arrives, work is set to begin on India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier. The construction is clearly being undertaken with China’s rising power in mind.

“Nonetheless,” Cohen added, “I see them collaborating in a lot of areas: high technology, the auto industry and others.”

China, already an economic powerhouse, is increasingly on people’s minds in India, both as a model to be learned from and a cautionary tale. From boardrooms to research institutions and opinion pages, Indians speak often nowadays of matching their neighbor’s success and power or, as some now dare suggest, surpassing it.

As long ago as 1959, John F. Kennedy spoke of the importance of what he saw as a contest between these two giants, casting their rivalry as one “for the leadership of the East, for the respect of all Asia, for the opportunity to demonstrate whose way of life is better.”

Not least, the two nations pursued divergent paths: India, democracy and belated economic reforms since the 1990s; China, a Communist system that began reforms in 1979, unleashing rapid economic growth.

But for much of the last half-century that contest was a dud. China nearly self-destructed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, and India wasted decades on policies that left its economy closed and stagnant while hundreds of millions of its people were mired in poverty.

Today, their simultaneous emergence has few comparisons in modern history, economists say.

According to the World Bank, their combined growth can be credited with cutting the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty to 20 percent in 2001 from 40 percent two decades earlier.

By the reckoning of most experts, China’s development enjoys a good 15-year head start on India. Today India has more illiterates - 480 million, by some estimates - than the country’s entire population at independence in 1949, dire poverty on a much larger scale than in China and even persistent hunger.

“India still faces problems that China addressed 50 years ago, rural reforms that would allow us to create a minimally capitalist environment,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at Delhi University. “It is obscene that we haven’t provided education, but we also have 250 million educated people we can’t employ.”

Despite India’s rapid growth, that gap shows no signs of narrowing, and Indians worry openly whether a consensus for growth can be sustained with the kind of single-mindedness that has helped propel China.

There is constant talk these days of turning Mumbai, the coastal commercial metropolis formerly known as Bombay, into a new Shanghai, mainland China’s most glittering modern city. For now, that is little more than a pipe dream.

More to the point may be Bangalore, India’s booming capital of telephone call centers and high-tech software. Even there, growth has been menaced by political delays that have stalled construction of a new airport for seven years. Shanghai, on the other hand, built one of the world’s most spectacular airports in just three years.

Such contrasts have left some Indians to remark, sometimes despairingly, about a “democracy price” that slows their development. At the same time, almost invariably Indians say they would have it no other way.

“I’m often approached by friends returning impressed from China, saying how our airports in Bombay and Delhi can’t compare,” said G.P. Deshpande, a longtime China scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. “When I tell them that these things come in a package, that you don’t just get the new airports, and I describe the package, though, they say ‘no, thank you.”’

The package Deshpande alludes to is strict authoritarianism, which allows the local and central governments in China to rezone entire districts without so much as a hearing, to pollute city and countryside without having to face public objections and to conduct large-scale social engineering, often disastrously, but with similarly little question.

Indians who follow events in China say proudly that no government of theirs could survive the kind of major mining disasters that are a regular occurrence in China.

“Both countries have waited 3,000 years for this moment of economic liberation, of solving age-old problems of want, and being 15 years behind doesn’t matter to us,” said Gurcharan Das, a former corporate executive and author of “India Unbound,” a best-selling account of his country’s recent revival. “Indians will wait if that is the price of being able to talk, which Indians hold dear.”

Despite the sharp limits on free speech in their country, Chinese intellectuals talk, too, often enviously, of India’s advantages in democratic governance. For all of China’s apparent strengths today, they say, future success may depend on democratic reform.

“If China learns its lessons from India, it can succeed in democratizing in the future,” said Pang Zhongying, a professor of international relations at Nankai University in Tianjin.

“India is a far more diverse country,” he said, “a place with the second largest Muslim population in the world, and lots of ethnic minorities, and yet it organizes regular elections without conflict. China is 90 percent Han, so if India can conduct elections, so can China.”

The Chinese have also begun openly to question the kind of growth their authoritarianism has spawned.

“We are using too many raw materials to sustain this growth,” said Pan Yue, China’s environment minister, in a recent interview with the German magazine, Der Spiegel. “To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps most embarrassing, nearly three times more than India. Things can’t, nor should they, be allowed to go on like that.”

Pan predicted bluntly that China’s miracle “will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace.” Others worry about China’s seeming addiction to massive investment, which leads to huge waste and steep cyclical downturns, a shaky financial system imperiled by a massive burden of non-performing loans, and rampant official corruption.

Posted at 11:05 AM · Comments (0)

April 8, 2005 Copyright The Asian Wall Street Journal

Deng Xiaoping must be spinning in his grave. China’s former supreme leader understood the folly of poking Japan in the eye. Alas, his successors are showing little of his wisdom, and are driving Japan more deeply into the arms of the U.S.

The growing diplomatic conflict between China and Japan has, if anything, taken on new momentum this week. The latest irritants are Tokyo’s approval of textbooks which Beijing says glorify Japan’s militarist past, and the Chinese government’s apparent decision to oppose allowing Japan to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Expansion of the council is central to Secretary General Kofi Annan’s plan to reform the U.N., but China says it will veto the package if it’s brought up now.

Deng had left his successors a very different environment. Knowing that Mao Zedong’s mad policies had set back China’s economic development for two generations, Deng wanted to build up wealth and power gradually by seeking the benefits of immersion in the global economy. Of course, Deng was a Leninist and had no intention of giving up party control.

But Deng wanted to boil the frog slowly and manage China’s rise without causing others to resist. That way, China’s neighbors would one day wake up and find they had no choice but to accommodate a dominant Middle Kingdom newly emerging from its “century of humiliation.” Deng also insisted that territorial dispute between China and Japan — over the uninhabited Senkaku-Diaoyutai islands in the East China Sea, for example — be left on the back burner.

Deng’s successors appear to lack the skill to follow his lead, and the result is that Japan is now resisting China’s constant provocations.

An example of a needless irritant is the debate over the far-flung island of Okinotori. China says it is a mere rock, not an island, and so Japan is not entitled to draw a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone around it. This has led Tokyo’s Governor Shintaro Ishihara to make a high-profile visit to the island and to envision establishing a permanent presence there.

When the Cold War ended, China had a Japan that was all that it could have dreamed of. Pacifist, willing to apologize for its wartime atrocities, and prepared to believe that economic interdependence and large dollops of Japanese aid money would create a kind of Pan-Asian harmony. Many mainstream Japanese leaders were also starting to think that with the Cold War over, they needed neither the alliance with the United States nor the irritating presence of American bases in Japan.

But how different things look now. China’s bizarre carpings over picayune matters has made Japan become much more assertive. Many influential Japanese no longer bother to hide their conviction that China would not treat them with disrespect if Japan had nuclear weapons.

In the process, Japan is also becoming a more reliable ally of the United States. Indeed, co-operation in missile defense is rapidly solidifying the alliance in ways that have never happened before. In its latest national security outline, Japan for the first time named China (as well as China’s quasi ally North Korea) as a threat.

In their Feb. 19 security statement, the two allies also said in effect that the continued de facto independence of Taiwan was of a vital security interest of both countries. But even without this document, the Chinese politburo could not safely assume that Japan would sit on its hands if China sought to take Taiwan by force. To the contrary, given the fact that Taiwan occupies a vital position on the westward approaches to Japan from the Gulf, Japan would be most unlikely to stay out of the fray.

And with oil prices at record highs, Japan has become much more assertive about China’s drilling for gas in disputed areas of the East China Sea, claiming that Beijing will be sucking up resources owned by Japan. China has also added insult to injury by using Japanese aid money in the construction of its gas pipeline to Shanghai. No wonder Japan is planning to “graduate” China from its aid program and take it off the dole.

The turning point came with Jiang Zemin’s disastrous 1998 visit to Japan. Lacking Deng Xiaoping’s authority with the Peoples’ Liberation Army, Mr. Jiang needed to play to the PLA gallery at home. That was because he wanted to stay on as Chairman of the Central Military Commission after stepping down from his party and government posts. So Mr. Jiang behaved boorishly, gave no thanks for Japanese aid money, and kept harping on the theme of Japan’s war guilt — “remember Nanjing.” As a result, many Japanese previously well disposed towards the Chinese came to think that nothing would ever satisfy them. Since then, the constant probing of Chinese warships and survey ships in Japanese waters has continued to raise tensions with Japan.

Of course, it suits those sympathetic to China’s interests to claim that rising Sino-Japanese tensions are caused by growing Japanese “militarism.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The central problem of East Asian security is the nature of the regime in Beijing, not Tokyo. China has strategic ambition, while Japan has strategic anxieties.

Moreover, China has done much to arm its quasi-ally in Pyongyang with missiles. There is also reason to suspect that China has helped arm Pyongyang with nuclear technology, as it did with Pakistan. Arming Pakistan was meant to keep India tied down in its subcontinent, while arming North Korea was meant to help keep Japan down. Of course, that policy has backfired in relation to North Korea — because China has been unable to control North Korea, or prevent it from acting in ways that injure China’s own interests. In August 1998, the testing of a long-range North Korean missile over Japan awoke the Japanese from their long-running delusion that security problems could be ignored, or left to Uncle Sam to resolve.

Unable or unwilling to follow Deng’s sage advice, his successors are beginning to provoke the formation of a balancing coalition, with a strengthened U.S.-Japan alliance as its core. It’s all beginning to look like what happened early last century, when a “rising” Germany wanted too much too soon, and provoked others to combine against it.

Ms. Lim is professor of international relations at Nanzan University, Nagoya, and author of “The Geopolitics of East Asia.”

Posted at 2:41 AM · Comments (0)

“They say the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill…”
Mr. IPod has been serving this up repeatedly in the last few days, and it is a welcome, exuberant blast from the past, from the inventive funk and funny lyrics of a tune like Dr. Funkenstein (“we are dedicated to the preservation of the motion of the hips..”) to the older, acid funk stuff like Maggot Brain, steeped in Hendrix, but fully digested and remade original.
These guys were tight.

Posted at 2:24 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune

When in 1964 China first tested a nuclear weapon, the West had every reason to be worried. Here was a country that had recently fought the United States in Korea, had threatened countries as far afield as India and Indonesia and had supported revolutionary movements all over the third world.

But today, the threat of Chinese military domination should worry the West very little. Its nuclear arsenal is rather small: a mere 24 intercontinental nuclear missiles that are able to reach the United States; no aircraft carrier battle groups for projecting its power; and very few destroyers. China is constructing no long-range bombers and has no military bases abroad. Its 70 submarines rarely venture outside Chinese territorial waters. Even vis-a-vis Taiwan, against which it has deployed 600 short-range missiles, China does not have the makings of an invasion force that could overwhelm Taiwan’s defenses.

Nevertheless, both the White House and a majority in the U.S. Congress continue to act as if the United States must contain China militarily, even while professing engagement.

In Tokyo recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, when asked to defend the presence of such a large number of U.S. troops in Okinawa, replied that they were there to balance the rise of China. John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, argues, “China cannot rise peacefully,” and there is “considerable potential for war.”

The assumption seems to be that the economic juggernaut will in the long run turn into a military threat. But it does not follow that an increase in China’s regional power and influence will translate into a reciprocal decrease in American power and influence. Neither power nor wealth is baked only in one size. The cake can grow for both. It is not a zero-sum game.

Why Washington feels that the United States’ longtime presence in East Asia is threatened by China owes more to paranoia than good sense.

Often overlooked is what Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of China told former Secretary of State Colin Powell, that China “welcomes the America’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region as a stabilizing factor.”

China’s success has been grossly over-hyped. China still accounts for only a small proportion of world trade, and even in its region the latest figures show that China is a long way from dominating East Asian trade. Total regional imports from China are about 9 percent compared with Japan’s 17 percent and America’s 18 percent. Although Germany is Europe’s biggest exporter to China, its exports there are only 7 percent of its total.

The apparent high flow of foreign investment into China is used to trumpet China as the wave of the future. But most of that flow comes from ethnic Chinese. And much of the so-called investment from East Asia originates in China and makes a trip via places like Hong Kong only to come back as foreign investment to attract tax concessions.

China, unlike India, still does not yet have enough ingredients for long-term success. It does not have any world-class companies of its own. Its legal framework is rickety, and there is no guarantee that a dictatorial political system will have the flexibility to contain the stresses and strains of economic expansion pursued at the current rate.

In terms of literature, films or the arts in general, China is overshadowed by much smaller Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

It is probably only a matter of time before the faddish fascination with China switches to booming India. Once it does, it is unlikely ever to switch back, as investors realize what it is like to have a haven where the law works, albeit too slowly, and democratically elected politicians are not just accountable, but persuadable and approachable.

When it comes to China, time is on Washington’s side, and the time should be used to engage China further, not to fear it or aggressively seek to counter it.

That said, it will always be important to stand up for Taiwan’s democracy and not to brush under the carpet the memories of Tiananmen Square.

Maintaining the arms embargo on China and pushing Europe to do the same sends the message that the United States is not setting aside any important principles. All the more strange, then, is the inexplicable contradiction to its otherwise too tough China policy: The United States has recently given notice that, unlike in recent years, it is dropping its policy of voting to criticize China at the UN Human Rights Commission.

Posted at 1:48 AM · Comments (0)

I’m just back to Shanghai after a grueling around the world trip.
A couple of correspondents have asked for info on China books, and I’ll try to be more helpful once I’ve caught my breath.
In the meantime, this is an excellent place to start: Princeton’s Contemporary China Reading List.

http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~lynn/chinabib.pdf

Posted at 11:50 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Salon

April 7, 2005 | If Hong Kong film has entered its decadent period, then Stephen Chow is its poet of delicious excess, devouring overripe figs and deflowering virgins while the city burns around him. Oh, I don’t mean he’s actually doing those things, although he could if he wanted; Chow is probably the biggest star in Asia, and since the mid-1990s he’s morphed into an auteur as well (his new “Kung Fu Hustle” is billed as “written and directed by Stephen Chow,” although the credits actually list three co-writers).

His 2001 movie “Shaolin Soccer” — a brilliant, and blindingly stupid, combination of the world’s most popular action-movie genre and the world’s most popular sport — became the biggest hit in Hong Kong history, although Miramax botched its American release so thoroughly that few Westerners ended up seeing it. With “Kung Fu Hustle,” a weightless live-action cartoon that vacillates between thrills and silliness, Chow should begin to attract some attention in the United States.

Is he worth it? I guess that depends on what the question means. The first 10 minutes of “Kung Fu Hustle,” a violent extravaganza culminating with a Broadway-style dance number performed by the top-hatted, waistcoat-wearing villains of the notorious Axe Gang, might be the most exciting sequence I’ve seen in a movie in two or three years. Then there’s the rest of the movie, which, while perfectly enjoyable, is basically a long litany of fight scenes staged in homage to martial-arts movies of the past. If you’re sufficiently in the know about these things, you’ll be able to tell the Bruce Lee tribute apart from the Jackie Chan tribute and the “Matrix” tribute; if you’re not, it might be like watching your neighbor’s kid playing “Mortal Kombat XVII” or whatever on a big-screen TV.

Maybe I’m being a little hard on Chow, who is a pleasant comic actor and a handsome if unmemorable screen presence. I haven’t seen all his movies by a long shot (he’s appeared in almost 60), but he generally plays minor variations on the same character, a scruffy outsider who turns out to have a heroic disposition and a heart of gold. (Unlike Lee, Chan, Jet Li, Sammo Hung, etc., he isn’t a trained martial artist.) But a lot has changed in Hong Kong movies since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997, and for better or worse Chow seems to epitomize that process.

Remember that when the film industry whose delirious pop aesthetic had captivated the globe in the ’80s and ’90s came under the control of the “market socialists” in Beijing, nobody really knew what was going to happen. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, John Woo and other Hong Kong luminaries decamped to Hollywood, or at least tried to. The results haven’t all been dreadful — Woo’s “Broken Arrow” and “Face Off” have their fans, Li has become an icon of the hip-hop generation and I suppose somebody must be enjoying Chan’s recent movies — but the general narrative has been one of diminishing returns, of talent sinking slowly in the swamp of prepackaged mediocrity that mainstream American moviemaking has become. I guess if Lubitsch and Billy Wilder had arrived in Hollywood circa 2000, they’d be making Sandra Bullock comeback vehicles or directing Ted Danson, Snoop Dogg and that Pepsi-commercial girl in “Three Men and a Li’l Bitch.”

Back home, the Chinese film industry has inevitably become more global in focus, striving not just to bridge the gap between Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong and the mostly Mandarin-speaking mainland, but also to dominate screens all over Asia and export its movies everywhere else. The results of that have included humongous international productions like Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and Zhang Yimou’s “Hero,” and the ascent of a homegrown star like Chow, who seems (at least to this ignorant Westerner’s eyes) to embody the goofiest, most sentimental and most nostalgic strains in Hong Kong cinema. Meanwhile, once-prominent directors like Tsui Hark, Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam and Ching Siu Tung have been not-so-subtly overshadowed. (It’s been reported that Hung will direct David Hasselhoff in a movie version of “Knight Rider,” and it’s too gruesome a rumor not to be true.)

“Kung Fu Hustle” is vaguely set in pre-revolutionary China, maybe in the 1920s. The epic battle that pits the bad guys of the Axe Gang against the plucky inhabitants of a poor apartment complex called Pig Sty Alley could be happening in Shanghai or Hong Kong or some other city. But it’s really set in a movieland noplace that evokes the so-called classics of the kung-fu-crazed ’70s, in which some gesture was made toward costume drama before the whole thing degenerated into an endless round of ass-kicking and the quasi-historical set was totally destroyed.

Hey, that’s a great genre, as far as it goes. But any time a filmmaker resorts to reminding viewers of the good old days — when we were young, when the movies were fun and the streets were safe and life wasn’t so darn complicated with cellphones and the Internet and all — you’re seeing signals of an art form in reactionary decline. When Hong Kong cinema was at its zenith, when Chan was making “Project A Part II” and Woo was directing the “Better Tomorrow” series and Tsui Hark was cranking out the “Chinese Ghost Story” epics, they sure weren’t trying to convince us that the movies were better Way Back When.

As Chinese viewers and other old-school martial-arts fans will note with excitement, Chow’s cast here is crowded with stars of another day. Pig Sty Alley, it turns out, is full of high-end Shaolin masters, living among the modest folk for reasons of their own. The henpecked Landlord who turns into the complex’s leading defender is played by Yuen Wah, one of the great kung-fu villains of the ’70s and ’80s (he gets his clock cleaned by Bruce Lee in “The Chinese Connection”), while his domineering, cigarette-chomping wife is Yuen Qiu, one of the only female martial-arts stars of those years, who retired from screen acting in 1975. Their principal opponent, an imprisoned assassin called the Beast, is played by Leung Siu Lung, a ’70s leading man with a legendary high kick who was almost as popular in his heyday as Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan.

We could go still deeper into the press notes: Minor roles are filled by kung-fu vets like Chiu Chi Ling (playing an offensive queeny gay stereotype) and Fung Hak On; the fight scenes are choreographed by the ubiquitous Yuen Wo Ping (of “Crouching Tiger,” the “Matrix” movies and endless numbers of Hong Kong films); the cinematographer is Poon Hang Sang, who shot some of Tsui Hark, Ching Siu Tung and John Woo’s best movies. If the question is what we get out of all this affectionate mining of history, well, it’s a mixed bag. A large dose of Chow’s trademark broad comedy, a romantic subplot that won’t be too sexy or icky for 8-year-old boys, and a bunch of high-flying fight sequences that will make you nudge your companion (if you’re that sort of person) and whisper: “Cool. It’s like that scene in ‘Eastern Wu-Tang Drunken Eagles’ where that dude with a tentpole and a dinner plate fights, like, those 40 other dudes with flaming machetes. Remember?”

Listen, it’s a fun movie. I should probably shut up and let you enjoy it. Yuen Wah and Yuen Qiu are priceless as the Landlord and Landlady, and Chow is generous enough to get out of their way for large chunks of the movie. You’ll never see another kung-fu film with so many stars pushing 60 (if not 70). But that restless feeling you may experience partway through? That comes from noticing that Chow depends way too much on jokey computer graphics that make the whole thing feel like a superhero comic, instead of athleticism or charisma or good storytelling, and that “Kung Fu Hustle” wears itself out long before it’s over. Maybe he’s right; the movies really were better in the old days.

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Posted at 5:08 PM · Comments (0)

BODY:
ABSOLUTE FRIENDS by John le Carre Little, Brown

A short and straightforward tale of espionage: today it is hard to imagine such a novel securing critical recognition for an obscure writer. Luckily for John le Carre, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963) appeared at a time when people still wandered freely between the literary and genre sectors, sometimes even forgetting where they were; it felt more like occupied Vienna than Cold War Berlin. Both J. B. Priestley and Graham Greene praised the book in the strongest terms, hardly minding that they were agreeing with people who had enjoyed Ian Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me a year earlier. It wasn’t long before the postmodernists arrived on the scene, vowing to obscure the line between elite and popular culture altogether, and in the sense that a towering wall was erected in its place, they certainly kept their word. But by then le Carre’s good name had already been established, and both sides still respect it forty years on.

Looking back, the much vaunted break with the 007 tradition doesn’t seem quite so clean as all that. Though highly literate, and endowed with greater gifts of observation and imagery than most of today’s prizewinners, le Carre is hardly an intellectual writer. Like Fleming, he fawns over his good guys, displays a fierce pride in a conventionally imagined Englishness, and scripts foreign characters according to national type. Also like Fleming, he deals in male fantasy: Alec Leamas, the hero of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, may have been a snappish fifty-year-old operative, but he was just as interesting to flight attendants as Bond was, and his girlfriend was barely out of her teens. How strange that critics consider it escapist tripe when a dashing young man wins a pretty young woman, and unflinching realism when the young woman invites a nondescript middle-aged man home for no apparent reason at all-though to be honest, I now prefer the latter kind of book myself.

The James Bond novels abound in embarrassments, from gobbets of nonsense presented as hard-won expertise (“the smell of danger … something like the mixture of sweat and electricity you get in an amusement arcade”) to absurdly connoisseurish leering at women. Le Carre put a stop to most of these things while finding new ways to make the reader squirm. The occasional burst of iron-manliness is bad enough in itself: “And Jack—dear Jack—you have your marvellous old attache case, as faithful as the dog you had to shoot.” But it is even harder to take when expressed in the primly mournful tone of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, a novel of which le Carre is an avowed admirer: “And Magnus goes. Magnus always goes. Even when a sharp smack across Mary’s chops would be the wiser course, Magnus goes.”

There are also passages that make one realize how liberated the Bond girls were by comparison:

Then she felt ashamed, because she

knew she should have cleaned and

tidied. Jumping up, she fetched the

carpet sweeper and a duster from

the kitchen, and set to work with

feverish energy. She found a clean

teacloth and spread it neatly on the

bedside table and she washed up

the odd cups and saucers … “Alec,

don’t be cross, please don’t,” she said.

“I’ll go, I promise I will, but let me

make you a proper meal. You’re ill,

you can’t go on like this, you’re … oh

Alec,” and she broke down and wept,

holding both hands over her face,

the tears running between her fingers

like the tears of a child.

The smart reader forgives these little things, because le Carre’s best novels are some of the most exciting stories ever written. They are exciting because he wrote them with this goal uppermost in mind. “I would wish that all my books were entertainments,” he has said, and to his credit he never uses that word in the shamefaced way that Graham Greene did. So why do “serious” types consider his work to be something else entirely? (An American interviewer sought to compliment him by saying that “entertainment” is “not a word usually associated with le Carre.”) The answer seems to be that the very stratagems he uses to make his work exciting have always made it seem quite highbrow as well. Take The Spy Who Came In From the Cold: the gloomy tone lends plausibility to a story in desperate need of it, as gloom has done since Conan Doyle and continues to do in Hollywood. (Fleming knew the principle, and although he couldn’t keep his writing joyless enough, one of his choices to play 007 on film was the long-faced Richard Burton—who ended up playing Alec Leamas instead.) But the fact that le Carre’s England feels as bleak as his East Germany was interpreted by some as a repudiation of the Cold War mindset and thus of the entire spy genre. Meteorological relativism was taken for the moral kind, and the hero’s grumbling about dirty methods pored over as if it betokened a Scobie-like inner struggle. Ever since then le Carre has been the “moral ambiguity” man, though his hero was really just fretting, as the best good guys often do, about sinking to the bad guys’ level. Fretting needlessly, I might add: if the author really thought it wrong to trick a totalitarian enemy into executing one of its own intelligence officials (and it sounds like a great idea to me), he would have done a better job of making us agree with him.

In the famous trilogy of the 1970s—Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), and Smiley’s People (1979)—the gloom was augmented by an element of willful difficulty that made everything seem even more authentic for the reader, and even more serious for the critic. The battle between spymaster Smiley and his Soviet nemesis, Karla, was so complex that it all but required a foldout chart to follow, and the prose often lapsed into a dense combination of Britishisms and spy jargon: juju men were sent spare and graded Persil; they felt like Gordon at Khartoum. At times le Carre seemed not to care whether the average American reader understood him at all, an attitude that never fails to make the average American critic sit up and take notice. The books are still remembered on both sides of the Atlantic for their “sophisticated analysis of moral questions,” as a British newspaper recently put it, though one would need to have been raised on a very strict diet of Don DeLillo to find this sort of thing profound:

[Smiley] thought about treason and

wondered whether there was mindless

treason in the same way, supposedly,

as there was mindless violence.

It worried him that he felt so bankrupt;

that whatever intellectual or

philosophical precepts he clung to

broke down entirely now that he was

faced with the human situation.

Of course, moral issues do not have to be articulated in order to be explored, but at the very least a writer must make readers doubt the hero a bit themselves. Le Carre, however, will not even allow us the critical distance we feel in the presence of Bond, who is described on the cover of a new edition of Casino Royale as “chillingly ruthless’ Someone is always reminding us that Smiley is the perfect clear if not the perfect spy, and the cordiality with which his idiosyncrasies are detailed can be downright cloying. His self-doubt—if that’s not too grandiose a term for what seems largely a matter of reading German poetry and having the occasional “weep”—is there mainly to recommend him to us, like a metaphysical version of a white hat.

Sixty years ago the British writer William Sansom wrote a short story about a man climbing a very high ladder and becoming more and more afraid. “The Vertical Ladder” is a masterpiece, at once pure thought and pure action, though like most of the best short stories of the twentieth century, it is hopelessly out of print. To track it down and read it is to realize how absurd the current “serious”-versus-“genre” divide is—to realize that a tale of suspense can be as intellectually rewarding as any other. Film critics already know this; hence the esteem in which Hitchcock has always been held. But book reviewers confer honorary “serious” status only on storytellers who, like Elmore Leonard, have a sufficiently showy prose style, or who, like le Carre, are thought to have some moral or philosophical message. As with Sansom’s story, however, the true value of the Smiley trilogy is inseparable from the tension created by the plot. Because the frightened characters are all spying on one another, their awareness of every sight and sound, every nuance in their counterparts’ speech, is heightened to a level that is often poetic. Nothing is “analyzed,” thank God, but the stories bring our own lives of deception into sharper focus. Anyone who has ever worked in a competitive organization will recognize the poisonous atmosphere of the mole-riven spy agency in Tinker, as well as the paranoia evoked in its classic scene of an office meeting: Have they been talking behind my back—or do they know I’ve been talking behind theirs? Unlike the American tough guy, the English man’s man is allowed to be literate and thoughtful, so le Carre is able to assume the perspective of his spies without imposing limits on his own sensibility. In Tinker a man snooping in another’s office hears what is probably a car braking outside, and it sounds “like a single note played on a flute”—a perfect comparison that would seem wrong in, say, a Jack Ryan novel.

But if thriller writers must write well enough to keep us from skimming to the action, they must also keep our attention on the story and not the prose. Few have the combination of talent and self-effacement needed to strike this balance, and no one maintains it with le Carre’s consistency. This is an example of the standard reached on almost every page:

Last night there had been a storm,

he remembered … He had watched

it from the mattress while the girl

lay snoring along his leg. First the

smell of vegetation, then the wind

rustling guiltily in the palm trees, dry

hands rubbed together. Then the

hiss of rain like tons of molten shot

being shaken into the sea. Finally the

sheet lightning rocking the harbour

in long slow breaths while salvos of

thunder cracked over the dancing

roof-tops. I killed him, he thought.

Any of today’s up-and-coming mediocrities would know what to do with a description like that: set it off from the rest of the text, pad it out with tautology and outright repetition, link everything into one breathless sentence—and wait for someone at The New York Times Book Review to hoist it reverently into an excerpt box. But le Carre pulls back from an obtrusive display of virtuosity. He keeps things short, sets them down in a summary tone (First … then … Then … Finally …), and moves right along, the story being paramount. No wonder the merits of his prose are so often overlooked. Praise tends to focus on his uncannily authentic-sounding dialogue, which manages to bring even marginal characters to life.

His hands still in his pockets, his head

high against his shoulders, Brotherhood

turned stiffly to Nigel. “I’m

going to tell her,” he said. “You want

to throw a fit?”

“Are you asking me formally?”

Nigel asked.

“Not particularly”

“If you are, I’ll have to pass it to

Bo,” said Nigel and looked respectfully

at his gold watch as if he took

orders from it.

“Lederer knows and we know. If

Pym knows too, who’s left?” Brotherhood

insisted.

Nigel thought about this. “Up to

you. Your man, your decision, your

tail-end. Frankly.” …

…Much as a beautiful woman will rush out and change her hairstyle if complimented on it often enough, so do artists hate being told that they have found the ideal outlet for their talent. It’s likely, then, that few people in the West were as glad to see the Berlin Wall go as the man who for so long had been touted as a kind of novelist laureate of the Cold War. Since then le Carre has written a succession of thrillers on subjects from the Panama Canal to the pharmaceutical industry, and his readership is still largely intact. Most fans of a fast and literate story can be counted on to give his latest a chance, and even those who end up reviling it on Amazon.com make a point of saying they can hardly wait for his next. His more serious readers, being serious readers, prefer to regard themselves as humble sponsors of his creative development; no matter what he writes, they try to find something in it, if only a scene or a character, to hold up as a worthwhile addition to an impressive body of work. The Smiley books, however, were the last ones everyone was able to agree on. Although each side still claims the author as its own, each routinely feels let down by him, and there is hardly a novel among his last nine that hasn’t been criticized for being either too artsy or too Clancy.

Absolute Friends (2003) stands to reunite the fan base at last, but not in a way anyone could have wanted. This is le Carre’s first truly bad novel, one that seems almost calculated to give the lie to each building-blurb of his reputation. A gift for plotting? No sooner are we introduced to a florid middle-aged tour guide called Ted Mundy, a man with a vaguely and unpleasantly familiar name and no claim on our curiosity, than we are treated to well over two hundred pages about his youth and how he became a spy. The more we hear about him, the less we care, because everything is set down in the revoltingly roguish tone of a writer twirling a moustache with his free hand.

And if [Ted] hadn’t signed up for

Wulfila, he would never have found

himself, on the third day of his first

term at university, sitting buttock-to-buttock

on a chintz sofa in North

Oxford with a diminutive polyglot

Hungarian spitfire called Ilse … he

will hang up his musket for her any

day, just as long as her impatient little

heels keep hammering his rump

on the coconut matting of her anchorite’s

horse trailer …

As for that legendary ear for human speech, le Carre has in the past shown a readiness to put his hand over it when he needs to impart some hard information. The protagonists of The Little Drummer Girl(1983) and The Constant Gardener (2001) are both lectured by characters who are obviously speaking for the author. But nothing was ever like this:

“I have in mind such thinkers as the

Canadian Naomi Klein, India’s Arundhati

Roi, who pleads for a different way

of seeing, your British George Monbiot

and Mark Curtis, Australia’s John

Pilger, America’s Noam Chomsky, the

American Nobel Prize winner, Joseph

Stiglitz, and the Franco-American

Susan George of World Social Forum

at Porto Alegre. You have read all

these fine writers, Mr Mundy?”

“Nearly all” And nearly all Adorno,

nearly all Horkheimer and nearly all

Marcuse, Mundy thinks …

“From their varying perspectives,

each of these eminent writers tells

me the same story. The corporate

octopus is stiffing the natural growth

of humanity.”

…

There can be no excuse for Absolute Friends, but there is an explanation. The third or so of the text that most people will consider the actual story was clearly inspired by the invasion of Iraq, which was only a few months old when the manuscript was finished, in June of 2003. Either the author foresaw the war with enough certainty to start writing about it back in 2001 or 2002, or he wrote the novel in a fraction of the two years he usually needs. Or—and this is the only way to make sense of that interminable flashback—he wrote Ted Mundy’s life story with a different book in mind, and then called it up at the last moment to do service in an anti-imperialist rant. I’m all for anti-imperialist rants, but an anti-imperialist novel would have gotten the message out to more people, and done a more subtle landscaping job on le Carre’s moral high ground. A president sells his country a war under false pretexts, and a writer allows the corporate octopus to market his shoddiest book as the one that “fans have been waiting for.” Only betrayal, to quote the man himself, is timeless.

B. R. Myers is a contributing editor of The Atlantic.

Posted at 4:23 PM · Comments (0)

By President Roh Moo Hyun | Thursday, April 07, 2005

Throughout Asia, there is quite a bit of upheaval about Japan’s failure to own up to its legacy of World War II — as yet another controversy brews over a new Japanese history schoolbook. As South Korea’s President Roh Moo-Hyun argues in this Globalist Document, it is high time that Japan do what Germany did to mend its troubled relations with France decades ago — and apologize.

South Korea and Japan share the same destiny in working together to open the age of Northeast Asia. Unless we pursue the path toward the consolidation of peace and common prosperity through mutual cooperation, our two countries cannot guarantee the safety and happiness of our citizens.
Reconciliation and cooperation

Progress in legal and political terms alone will not guarantee the future of the two countries. With only that, we cannot say that we did all we ought to.

More than that, it is necessary to exert efforts for substantial reconciliation and cooperation.

We should be born again as a genuine neighbor by bringing down, with truth and sincerity, the mental wall blocking the two peoples.

France handed down stern judgment against its citizens involved in anti-state activities [collaborators; The Editors], but joined with Germany in a magnanimous manner to create the European Union.
European parallels to Asian feud

Last year, French President Chirac extended the first invitation ever to the German Chancellor to the ceremony celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landing and said that the French people welcomed him as a friend.

Like the French, our people aspire to be a magnanimous neighbor with Japan. Thus far, our Government has been restrained not to incite wrath and hatred among the people and has been making a positive effort to promote reconciliation and cooperation. In fact, I think that our people have been acting discreetly with restraint and reason.
Righting wrongs

However, the problem cannot be solved by our efforts alone.

To further develop relations between Japan and South Korea, sincere efforts are needed on the part of the government and people of Japan.

They need to discover the truth about their past, reflect on it and make a genuine apology as well as reparations if need be — and then reconcile. This is the universal process for settling historic problems in all other parts of the world.

I fully understand the indignation of Japan stemming from its citizens being kidnapped by North Koreans. But at the same time, I would like to ask Japan to reflect on itself as well.
A bitter past

I hope that Japan understands the indignation of the Korean people who suffered pain countless times because of Japan exploiting Korean draftees and “comfort women” during the 36 years of its imperial rule.

Once again, I appeal to the conscience of Japan. I hope that Japan, based on its genuine self-reflection, will take the initiative in removing the deep-seated emotional hurdle between the two neighbors — and heal the scar.
The need for a genuine apology

The Japan that prides itself as an advanced nation can further project itself as a conscientious nation as well. Otherwise, it will not be able to get out of the yoke of the past.

In the same light, however strong it may become in the economy and military preparedness, it will be difficult for Japan to earn the trust of its neighbors and become a leading nation in the international community.

Germany did all it could do. As a result, it is treated very well. The Germans delved into the past on their own, made an apology and reparations — and through their decisive moral action, they were able to emerge as the leader of integrated Europe.

This Globalist Document is excerpted from President Roh Moo-hyun’s address on March 1, 2005, at the Ceremony for the 86th March First Independence Movement Day.

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Copyright The Financial Times

April 6, 2005 Wednesday

Long before the recent wave of media scandals raised questions about media ethics in western countries, imperial Japan pioneered the model of consolidated ownership and cozy government-media ties that shaped the dissemination of information. In the 1930s, more than 3,000 independent Japanese media outlets were closed, leaving just six - staunchly pro-war - companies.

This pre-war media system remains largely unreformed in Japan today. Perhaps the worst aspect is the system of so-called “press clubs” - roughly 1,300 press pools housed inside the government and corporate entities they cover. Press-club reporters work closely with public relations officers, regurgitating press releases and quoting official sources, often without cross-checking. They enjoy exclusive access to official sources and usually free rent and telephones, meals, entertainment, even small gifts, all regularly provided by sources. In exchange, they “police” themselves. Any journalist straying from the approved line is punished by the club.

The large-circulation weekly news magazines, shukanshi, are outside the clubs looking in. But their journalistic standards are even lower, somewhere between supermarket tabloids and soft pornography. Few of Japan’s 20,000 reporters have a university training in journalism and most get just two weeks of corporate “training”. Journalists typically view their job as company work, with their obligation to the employer. The result is one of the least independent news media in the democratic world. For example NHK, Japan’s and the world’s largest broadcast company, was recently exposed for censoring a programme about “comfort women”, Japan’s second world war sex slaves. Two days before the programme was broadcast, top brass of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party expressed displeasure. According to a producer-turned-whistleblower, NHK scrambled to cut the survivors’ wrenching testimony, splicing in a preposterous academic describing the victims as prostitutes. Media denials of war atrocities, the use of “comfort women”, the Nanjing massacre, and sometimes even the Holocaust are politically useful because key LDP founders were in the imperial government. The party inherited its mantle and has almost continuously held power for five decades. Media whitewashing of the war legacy thus helps bolster LDP legitimacy, while friendly reporting on current issues furthers LDP policy objectives. These include a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and rewriting Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Abroad, the propaganda tactics can backfire. In China, the Japanese media’s nationalistic tone and denials of war crimes helped incite massive protests, with 22m Chinese petitioning against Japan’s Security Council bid and mobs attacking Japanese-owned businesses. At home, the tactics are effective at chilling public debate and defusing opposition. If a broad segment of Japanese oppose the deployment of Japanese soldiers in Iraq, the overwhelming majority of media outlets reiterate dubious official assertions that the military, known as the Self-Defense Force, is constitutionally deployed in a “non-combat zone”. Amid last year’s escalating violence in Iraq, however, mainstream Japanese outlets withdrew their reporters and now simply take news from official military sources. If public sympathy for Japanese taken hostage in Iraq risks embarrassing the government, the media keep repeating the official line condemning them as unpatriotic for being there against the government’s will.

In short, Japan’s fourth estate has a giant pro-government sign on the lawn. Its lack of independence weakens democracy in the world’s second largest economy and the impunity with which Japan’s government manipulates it undermines press freedom globally. Indeed, the west’s recent reporting scandals suggest its media are drifting more towards the Japanese model than the other way round. While the European Union protests against Japan’s press club system and Asian countries decry Japan’s nationalist propaganda and historical amnesia, the Bush administration lauds Japan as a success story of democratic nation building. But Japanese propagandizing will continue and spread unless the US demonstrates its commitment to promoting democracy, and press freedom applies not just in Lebanon, Iraq or Russia but everywhere else, including Japan.

The writers are co-authors of A Public Betrayed: An Inside Look at Japanese Media Atrocities and their Warnings to the West (Regnery); Mr Watanabe is professor of media ethics at Doshisha University in Kyoto; Mr Gamble is a US-based writer and researcher

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Posted Friday, April 1, 2005, at 4:25 AM PT

Chilling me softly
Never Let Me Go is the sixth novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Booker Prize in 1989 for his chilling rendition of a bootlickingly devoted but morally blank English butler, The Remains of the Day. It’s a thoughtful, crafty, and finally very disquieting look at the effects of dehumanization on any group that’s subject to it. In Ishiguro’s subtle hands, these effects are far from obvious. There’s no Them-Bad, Us-Good preaching; rather there’s the feeling that as the expectations of such a group are diminished, so is its ability to think outside the box it has been shut up in. The reader reaches the end of the book wondering exactly where the walls of his or her own invisible box begin and end.

Ishiguro likes to experiment with literary hybrids, to hijack popular forms for his own ends, and to set his novels against tenebrous historical backdrops; thus When We Were Orphans mixes the Boys’ Own Adventure with the ’30s detective story while taking a whole new slice out of World War II. An Ishiguro novel is never about what it pretends to pretend to be about, and Never Let Me Go is true to form. You might think of it as the Enid Blyton schoolgirl story crossed with Blade Runner, and perhaps also with John Wyndham’s shunned-children classic, The Chrysalids: The children in it, like those in Never Let Me Go, give other people the creeps.

The narrator, Kathy H., is looking back on her school days at a superficially idyllic establishment called Hailsham. (As in “sham”; as in Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham, exploiter of uncomprehending children.) At first you think the “H” in “Kathy H.” is the initial of a surname, but none of the students at Hailsham has a real surname. Soon you understand that there’s something very peculiar about this school. Tommy, for instance, who is the best boy at football, is picked on because he’s no good at art: In a conventional school it would be the other way around.

In fact, Hailsham exists to raise cloned children who have been brought into the world for the sole purpose of providing organs to other, “normal” people. They don’t have parents. They can’t have children. Once they graduate, they will go through a period of being “carers” to others of their kind who are already being deprived of their organs; then they will undergo up to four “donations” themselves, until they “complete.” (None of these terms has originated with Ishiguro; he just gives them an extra twist.) The whole enterprise, like most human enterprises of dubious morality, is wrapped in euphemism and shadow: The outer world wants these children to exist because it’s greedy for the benefits they can confer, but it doesn’t wish to look head-on at what is happening. We assume—though it’s never stated—that whatever objections might have been raised to such a scheme have already been overcome: By now the rules are in place and the situation is taken for granted—as slavery was once—by beneficiaries and victims alike.

All this is background. Ishiguro isn’t much interested in the practicalities of cloning and organ donation. (Which four organs, you may wonder? A liver, two kidneys, then the heart? But wouldn’t you be dead after the second kidney, anyway? Or are we throwing in the pancreas?) Nor is this a novel about future horrors: It’s set, not in a Britain-yet-to-come, but in a Britain-off-to-the-side, in which cloning has been introduced before the 1970s. Kathy H. is 31 in the late 1990s, which places her childhood and adolescence in the ’70s and early ’80s—close to those of Ishiguro, who was born in 1955 in Nagasaki and moved to England when he was 5. (Surely there’s a connection: As a child, Ishiguro must have seen many young people dying far too soon, through no fault of their own.) And so the observed detail is realistic—the landscapes, the kind of sports pavilion at Hailsham, the assortment of teachers and “guardians,” even the fact that Kathy listens to her music via tape, not CD.

Kathy H. has nothing to say about the unfairness of her fate. Indeed, she considers herself lucky to have grown up in a superior establishment like Hailsham rather than on the standard organ farm. Like most people, she’s interested in personal relationships: in her case, the connection between her “best friend,” the bossy and manipulative Ruth, and the boy she loves—Tommy, the amiable football-playing bad artist. Ishiguro’s tone is perfect: Kathy is intelligent but nothing extraordinary, and she prattles on in the obsessive manner touchy girls have, going back over past conversations and registering every comment and twitch and crush and put-down and cold shoulder and gang-up and spat. It’s all hideously familiar and gruesomely compelling to anyone who ever kept a teenage diary.

In the course of her story, Kathy H. solves a few of the mysteries that have been bothering her. Why is it so important that these children make art, and why is their art collected and taken away? Why does it matter to anyone that they be educated, if they’re only going to die young anyway? Are they human or not? There’s a chilling echo of the art-making children in Theresienstadt* and of the Japanese children dying of radiation who nevertheless made paper cranes.

What is art for? the characters ask. They connect the question to their own circumstances, but surely they speak for anyone with a connection with the arts: What is art for? The notion that it ought to be for something, that it must serve some clear social purpose—extolling the gods, cheering people up, illustrating moral lessons—has been around at least since Plato and was tyrannical in the 19th century. It lingers with us still, especially when parents and teachers start squabbling over the school curricula. Art does turn out to have a purpose in Never Let Me Go, but it isn’t quite the purpose the characters have been hoping for.

One motif at the very core of Never Let Me Go is the treatment of out-groups, and the way out-groups form in-groups, even among themselves. The marginalized are not exempt from doing their own marginalization: Even as they die, Ruth and Tommy and the other donors form a proud, cruel little clique, excluding Kathy H. because, not being a donor yet, she can’t really understand.

The book is also about our tendency to cannibalize others to make sure we ourselves get a soft ride. Ursula Le Guin has a short story called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, in which the happiness of the many depends absolutely on the arranged unhappiness of the few, and Never Let Me Go could be read as a sister text: The children of Hailsham are human sacrifices, offered up on the altar of improved health for the population at large. With babies already being created with a view to their organs—help for an afflicted sibling, for instance—the dilemma of the Hailsham “students” is bound to become more general. Who owns your body? Who therefore is entitled to offer it up? The reluctance of Kathy H. and her pals to really confront what awaits them—pain, mutilation, death—may account for the curious lack of physicality of Kathy’s descriptions of their life. Nobody eats anything much in this book, nobody smells anything. We don’t know much about what the main characters look like. Even the sex is oddly bloodless. But landscapes, buildings, and the weather are intensely present. It’s as if Kathy has invested a lot of her sense of self in things quite far away from her own body, and thus less likely to be injured.

Finally, the book is also about our wish to do well, to attract approval. The children’s poignant desire to be patted on the head—to be a “good carer,” keeping those from whom organs are being taken from becoming too distressed; to be a “good donor,” someone who makes it through all four “donations”—is heartbreaking. This is what traps them in their cage: None of them thinks about running away or revenging themselves upon the “normal” members of society. Ruth takes refuge in grandiose lies about herself and in daydreams—maybe she’ll be allowed to get an office job. Tommy reacts with occasional rage to the unconscionable things being done to him, but then apologizes for his loss of control. In Ishiguro’s world, as in our own, most people do what they’re told.

Tellingly, two words recur again and again. One, as you might expect, is “normal.” The other is “supposed,” as in the last words of the book: “wherever it was that I was supposed to be going.” Who defines “normal”? Who tells us what we are supposed to be doing? These questions always become more pressing in times of stress; unless I’m much mistaken, they’ll loom ever larger in the next few years.

Never Let Me Go is unlikely to be everybody’s cup of tea. The people in it aren’t heroic. The ending is not comforting. Nevertheless, this is a brilliantly executed book by a master craftsman who has chosen a difficult subject: ourselves, seen through a glass, darkly.

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New America Foundation

April 06, 2005
The Tide Turns: Chafee Makes Political Space to Oppose John Bolton

Senator Chafee is sending signals that he is considering opposing John Bolton. This is amazinig and important news.

Just in from the Boston Globe:

GOP senator may oppose UN choice By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | April 6, 2005

WASHINGTON — Senator Lincoln Chafee’s office said yesterday that his constituency is “overwhelmingly” opposed to the nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations, signaling that Chafee is leaning against supporting Bolton in a move that could derail the nomination.

If Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joins with Democrats who are expected to unanimously oppose the nomination, Republicans will not have enough votes to send the confirmation to the Senate floor.

This does not mean that Chafee has completely abandoned Bolton’s nomination.

I have heard that Chafee’s staff is taking a much more careful look, as all of the Senators — Republican and Democrat — should, at John Bolton’s performance on national security matters in his current job and opening for consideration “matters” that may have been pushed under the rug during the Congressional investigations into John Bolton’s role at the National Policy Forum.

There is much yet to do — but thank you to those of you in Rhode Island and elsewhere who have created this “political space” for Lincoln Chafee to possibly oppose John Bolton.

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By Henry Blodget
Posted Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at 3:56 PM PT Copyright Slate

The quickest way to see Shanghai
My last day in Shanghai, it rained. This put a damper on my plan to study the Xiangyang Park market, Shanghai’s Mecca for those hellbent on buying knockoffs. Two days earlier, en route to the French Concession, I’d gotten within a few blocks of the place and had nearly been tackled by frontmen shouting “looka, looka, looka!” and brandishing watches (Rolex), pens (Mont Blanc), and bags (Louis Vuitton). Why these three brands occupied so much of the fake-stuff mindshare was a mystery, but, thinking I had another day to devote to this thriving China industry, I had resisted the men’s attempts to drag me—literally, in one case—into alleyways. Then the monsoon arrived, and I defaulted to Plan B.

Plan B was the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, which reportedly features the largest urban-planning model in the world. It’s about the size of a swimming pool, and as you traverse it on a metal catwalk, you can spot present and future Shanghai landmarks, including, perhaps, your hotel. Those staying in the highest hotel in the world, the Grand Hyatt, in Pudong’s Jinmao Building, will immediately note that this 88-story tower will soon be sandwiched between two even taller monsters, one of which, presumably, will allow patrons to gaze down condescendingly at Jinmao’s pedestrian 87th-story Cloud 9 bar.

As suggested by the dozens of as-yet-unbuilt towers in the model, China’s construction industry is still going full-blast. In fact, when you gaze out at the city skyline, you can’t help but observe that today’s most iconic Shanghai feature is the roof-mounted crane. From the Bund, for example, looking across the Huangpu at Pudong, you will count at least a dozen of these, each capping an unfinished riverfront building at least 40 stories high. From my hotel near Zhongshan Park, I could see at least a dozen more.

When reading economic statistics in a Manhattan office, it is often difficult to make the leap from the macro trends—soaring oil, steel, and cement prices—to the micro actions and decisions that cause them. In Shanghai, however, it’s easy: China’s mammoth rate of construction is hoovering up resources at maglev-like speed, so fast that the real mystery is why there is any oil, steel, and cement left. According to the “assistant to Chinese rock stars” who escorted me and the cell-phone entrepreneur to the Peace Hotel, the Chinese saying is that you see big changes every three years and small changes every three days. Indeed, one real-estate-related business, the China Construction Bank, is doing well enough that it is planning an enormous $5 billion IPO later this year, never mind that two presidents in three years have been fired for corruption.

Direct from Roswell, N.M.: The Shanghai Museum
We may not be able to join throngs of Shanghainese making a killing in real estate these days, but we can console ourselves by knowing (as many of them do) how the building boom will probably end. Analysts argue about where China real estate is in the supply-demand cycle. At some point, however, the number of buildings under construction will exceed the number of tenants and residents looking for places to work and live. At that point, the real-estate market will crash, and the dozens of unfinished towers will stay unfinished for a decade or more.

Across the street from the Exhibition Hall, towering above the occasional legless and/or handless beggar, is a building emblazoned with a Times-Square-sized television (playing Shania Twain videos) and the logo, “CapitaLand.” As you pass beneath both, headed for the eight-level mall inside, you can be forgiven for forgetting this is still an ostensibly socialist nation. Inside the mall, at Starbucks, I discover that a grande mocha Frappuccino costs almost as much in Shanghai as it does in Greenwich Village, which doesn’t stop the place from being jammed.

Later, the rain still pouring, I ran a few blocks to complete one of my remaining Shanghai correspondent obligations—food-gawking. The restaurant I chose was Xing Hua Lou, where one can’t miss the ominous sea-water aquarium tanks in the lobby. Upstairs, in a smoky banquet hall adorned with gold pillars, they had an English menu. And sure enough, we were invited to choose from, among other entrees, cold jellyfish, tea-flavored pigeon, oxtail parfait, spiced goose’s web, bird’s nest in coconut water, sea cucumber in abalone sauce, spotted deer’s tendon in earthen pot, stewed duck with Chinese caterpillar fungus, snakehead mullet, tortoise soup, stir-fried ginkgo, and “Buddha jumps over the wall,” a Fujian specialty so exotic that it cost more than almost everything else on the menu combined ($300, if memory serves). The story behind the latter is that the stew is so delicious that when the Buddha caught a whiff of it, he abandoned vegetarianism and scaled a wall to get at the stuff. (I would like to say I tried this and everything else on the menu, but I didn’t: Instead, I wussed out by pointing at pictures that looked something like Kung Pao chicken and a crockpot full of eggplants.)

That evening, following the suggestion of several Slate readers, I took the overnight train to Beijing. As you may recall, prior to my leaving for China, there was a dust-up about whether I might have to share my berth on this train with chickens. Well, I didn’t. I did share it with two Chinese men, one a businessman, the other in a quasi-military uniform.

When I finally arrived at the compartment door, damp from an hour’s slog through the rain and rush-hour subway and train stations, it was rocking with high-volume Muzak. It was a no-smoking berth but reeked of cigarette smoke. The uniformed man had pitched camp on one of the top bunks and was changing into slippers. I claimed a lower bunk and changed into my own slippers, swaying to a synthesized glockenspiel. Exhausted, I had just settled into my bunk when the businessman arrived and indicated (politely) that it is was actually his.

When one will be spending 14 hours with strangers in a 7-foot cube, one wants to make a good first impression. Having blown mine, I was relieved when the businessman blew his, too. After I had finished transferring bunks, while he was stuffing his belongings into an upper rack, the man dislodged a quart of beer, which ricocheted off the compartment light switch and then exploded on the floor. Amid a frantic crescendo of synthesized drums, we were plunged into darkness, save some light reflecting off the foam wave surging across the rug. The uniformed fellow, watching from the upper bunk, was so disgusted that he smoked all night long.

Henry Blodget, a former securities analyst, lives in New York City.

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By JOE STUDWELL
822 words
4 April 2005
Financial Times
London Ed1
Page 19
English
(c) 2005 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved

As China’s economy shows signs of a modest slowdown from annual growth officially reported at more than 9 per cent in 2003 and 2004 - but which physical indicators suggest probably exceeded 10 per cent - it is time to ask whether this latest “China boom” has been qualitatively different from previous ones.

Those who believe China is continuing its march away from a state-driven economy cite hard evidence. The efficiencies of the export economy are a given. China will ship about Dollars 750bn (Pounds 400bn) of goods in 2005 (though much less on a value-added basis, as so many components are imported) and there is no structural reason why this headline figure cannot continue growing at 15 to 20 per cent a year. Imports, meanwhile, increased between 2000 and 2004 by almost four times as much as in the entire 1990s, an increment of Dollars 395bn versus Dollars 107bn. In recent years, Chinese imports have fuelled a global commodities bonanza and set world prices for everything from steel to palm oil.

Then there is the rapid expansion of private enterprise. A recent survey suggests that, for the first time since 1949, most registered companies in China are privately owned. On average, the businesses are tiny with mean registered capital of Dollars 145,000 and 14 employees. Fewer than 1,200 private companies have registered capital of more than Dollars 12m. Nonetheless, the growth of private enterprise is heartening.

The case for “changing China” is considerable, but cannot be separated from the financial story of a state that exercises a vice-like grip on banks, stock markets and bond issuance. Unfortunately, the most extreme statistical series in this latest period is not about trade or ownership but loans outstanding in the financial system. In just three years from 2002 to 2004, loans increased by 58 per cent, or Dollars 785bn. In 2003, new lending equalled almost one quarter of gross domestic product. This latest boom was driven by a credit binge. It was not supposed to happen.

Responding to the massive non-performing loans accumulated by Chinese banks in the 1990s, the government ordered they reduce their NPL ratios - bad loans as a proportion of total loans. The move was universally applauded. With hindsight, however, the focus on NPL ratios was a terrible mistake. That is because China’s banks are technically insolvent but enjoy high liquidity. To cut NPL ratios, they merely increased the denominator of the ratios: their loans. Lending rose rapidly, driving growth as a side-effect as NPL ratios fell from 28 per cent in 2002 to 13.2 per cent at the end of 2004.

Assisting the process were transfers of old NPLs, made before the recent credit drive, to newly-minted asset management companies. The largest banks shifted an initial Dollars 169bn worth in 1999-2000 and another Dollars 50bn last year. Critically, provisioning for NPLs from the past five years has been almost zero. The result is voodoo accounting. If, for example, one restores the Dollars 50bn transferred to AMCs in 2004, aggregate NPLs in the system went up, not down. A falling NPL ratio was purely a function of loan growth and the refusal to provision since 2000. Yet even the most prudentially savvy bank could not expand its new loan book by 50 per cent a year, as seen in China in 2002-2003, without incurring bad debts.

As an indicator, a 10 per cent non-performance rate on new loans by the 16 biggest banks in 2002-2004 bounces the NPL ratio back up to 20 per cent. There is reason to expect worse. Last October, the China Banking Regulatory Commission conceded that the default rate on Dollars 22bn of car loans extended since 2002 already exceeded 50 per cent. The AMCs have become dumping grounds not just for commercial bank NPLs but also for the “assets” of failed investment conglomerates, securities businesses and government infrastructure projects. The state makes the AMCs issue interest-bearing bonds for which it refuses to accept explicit liability. Separately, Beijing has raided tens of billions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves to shore up banks’ capital.

The endgame in these financial shenanigans is supposed to be the international listing of “cleaned up” state banks, something that has been promised to the markets since 2002 but never quite happens. The chairman of the first institution to be listed, China Construction Bank, is currently detained on corruption charges.

A new paradigm? The big picture in 2005 is that China’s economy has been incrementally, but not fundamentally, altered by this latest cycle. In China it is, in sum, business as usual.

The writer is editor-in-chief of the China Economic Quarterly and author of The China Dream (Profile Books/ Grove Press); for previous CEQ columns:

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NEW YORK - The Japanese-American who waited 40 years for justice is dead.

Fred Korematsu, hailed by many as the Rosa Parks (a heroine of the African American civil rights movement) of World War II, passed away Wednesday in the northern California community of Larkspur. He was 86.

The beginning of Korematsu’s battle began in a jail cell in Oakland, California. It passed through defeat after defeat in US courts all the way to the Supreme Court, and ended with his total exoneration - and the award of the Presidential Medal of Honor.

In between was one of the most egregious chapters in the history of US civil rights.

In February 1942, following Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, then president Franklin D Roosevelt authorized the internment of 120,000 US residents of Japanese ancestry. Citizens and non-citizens alike were shipped off to camps.

But Korematsu refused to surrender. While his parents were sent off to internment, he was arrested, tried, convicted and jailed. In 1944, Roosevelt’s order was upheld by the US Supreme Court.

Enter Ernest Besig, a lawyer and executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Besig wanted to find a case that would test the constitutionality of internment. He came up with Korematsu’s US$5,000 bail, but the military police refused to release him.

Instead, he was taken to a racetrack, which was serving as a staging area for Japanese-Americans. He slept in a horse stall and later was sent to a camp in Topaz, Utah.

Meanwhile, his case was wending its way through the courts, and eventually all legal avenues had been exhausted. Internment ended in 1944, and Korematsu returned to San Francisco. He raised a family and worked as a draftsman. But his felony conviction kept him from getting a job at a large firm or with the government.

Then in 1981 a legal historian, Peter H Irons, asked the Justice Department to provide the original documents in the case. There he discovered that the lawyer who had argued the Korematsu case for the government had lied to the Supreme Court.

Two years later, the case was reopened. Korematsu was offered a pardon, which he refused. He wanted a new trial. Soon afterward, a federal court ruled that Korematsu had been tried based on flawed evidence and his conviction was overturned.

Thus, Korematsu provided the coda for a dark chapter in US legal history.

Five years later, president Gerald R Ford decried the internment as a “national mistake”. In 1983, a unanimous federal commission found that the internment policies were not a matter of military necessity, and were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership”.

Five years later, president Ronald Reagan called the internment a “grave injustice” and authorized reparations of $20,000 each to thousands of surviving internees, including Korematsu. In 1999, president Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“In the long history of our country’s constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls - Plessy, Brown, Parks,” Clinton said, citing famous civil rights cases. “To that distinguished list today we add the name of Fred Korematsu.”

The “Plessy” Clinton referred to was Homer Plessy, a 30-year old shoemaker, who was jailed in 1890 for sitting in the “whites only” car of the East Louisiana Railroad.

In a sign of the racial obsessions of the time, Plessy was described as a mix of “seven-eighths white” and “one-eighths black”. This made him officially “black” under Louisiana law and, therefore, required him to sit in the “colored” car.

He took his case all the way to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the law was unconstitutional. The court found against him, and it would not be until 1954 that the court would rule that “separate but equal” would no longer be the law of the land.

That decision, known as Brown v Board of Education, involved a third-grader named Linda Brown, who had to walk one mile in Topeka, Kansas, through a railroad switchyard to get to her all-black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away.

Linda’s father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. With the help of Topeka’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in 1951 little Linda Brown sued the Topeka Board of Education.

At the trial, the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which said in a unanimous 1954 ruling, “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Leading Linda Brown’s legal team was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black justice of the US Supreme Court.

Rosa Parks, who has been called the “mother of the civil rights movement”, was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger.

The bus driver had her arrested, and she was tried and convicted of violating a local ordinance. Her act sparked a citywide boycott of the bus system by blacks that lasted more than a year. The boycott raised an unknown clergyman named Martin Luther King, Jr, to national prominence and resulted in the US Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on city buses.

For Korematsu, however, it was deja vu all over again in April 2004, when the question before the Supreme Court was whether US courts could review challenges to the imprisonment of “enemy combatants” held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Korematsu, then 84, filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying, “The extreme nature of the government’s position is all too familiar.”

In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration’s policy of detaining foreign nationals without legal process at Guantanamo Bay was unconstitutional.

“There are Arab Americans today who are going through what Japanese-Americans experienced years ago, and we can’t let that happen again,” said Korematsu.

Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, told IPS, “If it had not been for Fred Korematsu, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II - this most shameful chapter in America’s history - would have been just a footnote in our history books.”

“His actions have served to open the hearts and minds of an entire generation. In the aftermath of September 11, our ability to protect civil liberties has been strengthened immeasurably by the courageous actions of this one man, who some 60 years ago, quietly stood up for his constitutional rights.”

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YaleGlobal, 4 April 2005

Shadow on a shrine: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visit to Yasukuni Shrine to honor the war dead, roils relations with China and other neighbors

At the dawn of the Internet Age, many visionaries predicted that the rising tide of global interconnectedness would gradually eliminate sovereign borders and nationalism. The experience of China, which today is more open than in anytime in the past, however, belies that expectation. Highly connected and internet-savvy Chinese youth today have emerged as virulent nationalists, hampering the government’s attempt at better relations with Japan. Meanwhile, rising Japanese nationalism is adding fuel to the fire.

Anti-Japanese sentiment among younger people here is unprecedented – and increasing significantly. Ironically, China’s opening up and the internet are playing a key role in this trend.

The best illustration is the ongoing cyber-roots campaign against Japan’s bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Organizers of a petition, which started among Chinese in the US, originally hoped for one million signatories. However, due to internet popularity in China, the figure, the organizers claim, has already surpassed 22 million. Petitioners hope their pressure will force Beijing to keep Japan out of the Security Council – a move that would seriously damage already worsening relations.

Chinese nationalists have taken advantage of the limited free space on the internet to express their anger toward Japan. They have advocated boycotts of Japanese goods, denounced Japan in chat rooms, and sought to alter the government’s policies toward Japan.

The Western media has been quick to point an accusing finger at the Chinese government for failing to rein in anti-Japanese sentiments, accusing it of fanning the flames of nationalism in an attempt to shore up its own legitimacy. Experts on Sino-Japanese relations insist that the government is, indeed, worried about the current trend, but fears that appearing weak-kneed vis-à-vis Japan will damage Party legitimacy. The web is closely monitored by the government, which has shut down sites for going beyond permissible limits. But curbing anger against Japanese poses a new challenge.

While the government routinely deals harshly with dissident behavior, the Japan question appears to be its major vulnerability. Last year, anti-Japanese outbursts on the country’s fiercely nationalist web sites led Beijing to reluctantly take a tough stance when Japan arrested seven Chinese activists for illegally sailing to one of the contested Senakaku Islands. Angry postings flooded the internet, calling for a hard-line approach against Japan. Though the government had hoped that the case would fade quickly, it allowed protesters to demonstrate in front of the Japanese consulate for several days. And when a nationalist web site actively protested a hefty purchase order for high-speed trains from Japan, the web site was shut down – and the deal seems to be in trouble.

Jiang Wenran, professor of political science at the University of Alberta, Canada, says that while Beijing has not made an effort to shut down the online petition drive, the government is not encouraging it. “The order is out to lead it in a moderate way,” he says.
 

Chinese observers say there’s no real incentive for the government – or Japan, for that matter – to allow relations to further deteriorate. Furthermore, the Communist Party is well aware that nationalism can be a double-edged sword: Should petitioners force Beijing to veto Japan’s Security Council membership, this energy could then be easily turned inward, to sensitive domestic issues.

Several signs suggest that Hu Jintao has actually tried to create a constructive environment for improving Sino-Japanese relations. For one, he put moderates in charge of the country’s Japan policy, and appointed one, Wang Yi, as the new ambassador to Tokyo.

Two years ago, the government also quietly looked the other way when Ma Licheng, a well-known commentator for the People’s Daily, published an article in Strategy and Management magazine, criticizing ultra-nationalist views of Japan and calling for “new thinking” in China’s Japan policy. He urged Chinese to forget about history and to focus on normalizing ties with Japan. (A source close to Ma says he may have indirectly been nudged to write the article by people with close ties to the top leadership, an attempt to break the ice with Japan.) The daring article was followed by a rare and lively public debate among academics, researchers, and journalists about the direction of China’s Japan policy.

Unfortunately, the Japanese government failed to respond to China’s gestures. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi continued to ignore Chinese sensitivities by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to fallen Japanese soldiers – including a handful declared by the allied powers to have been war criminals during World War II. Rather than making some kind of goodwill gesture to China or ceasing visits to the shrine, Japan cut the floor out from under Chinese advocates of new thinking, who were already under fierce pressure from nationalists at home.

Shi Yinhong, professor of political science at Renmin University, says that it is now much more difficult for anyone to advocate a more balanced view of relations between the two countries. Unfortunately, thinking is changing drastically among some sectors of the public in both countries, making it increasingly difficult to put relations back on track.

There was a time when Tokyo, still feeling guilty over World War II, reflexively deferred to Beijing – but no longer. Japan’s new leaders say it’s time for to leave history behind and become a “normal” country. And it seems to have a good degree of public support.

Chinese attribute this partially to China’s growing economic and political influence in the region. “Japanese feel that China is developing quickly and getting stronger,” says Ma Ling, a well known news commentator who studied in Japan, “and they’re worried about this.”

In recent months Japan has taken a number of steps that have enraged China’s leaders. These include a new security agreement with the United States, wherein the two pronounced Taiwan a “common strategic concern.” Also, Tokyo announced its intent to cancel soft loans to China beginning in 2008 and published a white paper naming China as a threat.

On the positive side, a Chinese scholar who closely follows Sino-Japanese relations says that Koizumi has reached an implicit agreement with China’s top leaders that this year will be too sensitive for bilateral relations to make a visit to Yasukuni. If true, this could pave the way for the resumption of visits between the leaders of both countries.

Meanwhile, a new generation of Chinese is taking pride in China’s growing international status, and they’re itching to stand up against Japan. “Younger Chinese have a different sense of power than past generations,” says Shi. “They see China getting stronger and Japan relatively weaker.”

The government’s worst fears came true over the weekend as news reports said 10,000 Chinese demonstrated in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Saturday, with some attacking a Japanese-owned supermarket. On Sunday, an estimated 3,000 protesters damaged two Japanese department stores in Shenzhen, in the south. Meanwhile, local businesses in Northeast China began pulling Japanese products off their shelves.

What began as hyperventilating in cyberspace has now spread to the streets. It’s still not clear whether the government condoned the increasing online anti-Japanese sentiment out of fear of domestic criticism or to pressure Japan. But as the recent dilemma with Japan shows, riding the internet can be like riding a tiger: Once you get on, it can be very hard to get off.

Paul Mooney, a freelance journalist, has been reporting on China for 15 years.

© 2005 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

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Tuesday, April 5, 2005

STAFF REPORTER and in Taipei

The Vatican is prepared to sever its ties with Taiwan in exchange for the resumption of diplomatic relations with Beijing, the head of the Hong Kong diocese said last night.

But Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun said there was no way the Vatican would commit itself to this position without first having talks with Beijing on the subject.

Speaking after a Requiem Mass in Hong Kong to mourn the late Pope John Paul II, Bishop Zen’s dropped a clear hint to Taiwan that another diplomatic blow was looming on the horizon. The Vatican is the island’s only ally in Europe.

“The Holy See has been thinking of giving up Taiwan. This is a difficult [decision], but it has decided to do it,” he said. “There is, however, no way that [it would] do so before negotiations. We have got to start the negotiation before talking about what we can give.”

Bishop Zen said the Vatican had never in history unilaterally cut diplomatic ties with any of its allies.

“It is a difficult [decision]. But certainly the Holy See has decided to do so,” he said.

“But the bishop in Taiwan understands this. If the Holy See does not establish [diplomatic] ties with [mainland] China, Catholics there will not have real freedom.”

Beijing says Vatican must sever ties with Taiwan and promise not to interfere in the mainland’s internal affairs, including religious affairs, before the two sides can normalise diplomatic ties, broken since 1951.

On the second condition, Bishop Zen said the Vatican’s wish to appoint bishops in the future mainland diocese would not constitute interference in China’s affairs, noting that the practice occurred with other sovereign states.

Taiwan said relations with the Vatican would continue.

“Relations between the Holy See and Taiwan will remain unchanged and the Foreign Ministry will continue to push for mutual visits by the Vatican and Taiwanese leaders to strengthen bilateral understanding and consolidate relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Michel Lu Ching-lung said yesterday.

He was responding to warnings by opposition legislators that the Vatican may switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing after the death of the anti-communist Pope.

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Copyright The Washington Post
Monday, April 4, 2005; Page A21

Thursday’s election in Zimbabwe was not merely stolen. It was stolen with the complicity — no, practically the encouragement — of Africa’s most influential democrat. If you think too long about this democrat, moreover, you reach a bleak conclusion. For all the recent democratic strides in Africa, the continental leadership that was supposed to reinforce this progress is not up to the challenge.

The bankrupt democrat in question is Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president. For the past few years, he’s been promising a pan-African Renaissance, a new era in which Africans would take charge of their own problems. Mbeki led the creation of the grandly titled New Partnership for Africa’s Development, which commits members to the rule of law and other principles of good government; he’s the driving force behind the peer-review mechanism that’s supposed to police compliance with those pledges. The New Partnership’s principles are quoted frequently by Africa sympathizers who advocate more foreign assistance, and they’ve boosted Mbeki’s profile marvelously. Mbeki has become a fixture at the rich countries’ annual Group of Eight summits. He has been treated by George Bush and Tony Blair as a player. He has felt emboldened to advance South Africa as a candidate for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

But do Mbeki’s New Partnership principles mean anything? In the run-up to Zimbabwe’s election, when the regime’s thugs were denying food to suspected opposition sympathizers, Mbeki actually undercut the international pressure for a fair contest. He expressed a serene confidence that the election would be free and fair. He allowed his labor minister, who was serving as the head of the South African observer mission in Zimbabwe, to dismiss the regime’s critics as “a problem and a nuisance.” He quarreled with the Bush administration’s description of Zimbabwe as an outpost of repression. He did everything, in other words, to signal that mass fraud would be acceptable.

And so Zimbabwe’s thugs obliged him. Before the election, they arranged for ballot boxes made out of see-through plastic and a voter’s roll stuffed with fictitious names. When polling day came, about a tenth of the voters were turned away from election stations for mysterious reasons. One constituency, in which 14,812 people voted according to election officials, was announced the next day to have awarded more than 15,000 votes to the president’s nephew. In this way, the regime won a famous victory — and with it the power to change whatever’s left of Zimbabwe’s constitution.

If South Africa, which could strangle its smaller neighbor’s economy by switching off its electricity, had been tougher beforehand, this fraud might have been forestalled. If Mbeki had protested after the election, events also might have been different. Some brave Zimbabweans called for an African version of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. But as one opposition politician said wistfully, regional conditions provided no encouragement. Ukraine benefited from proxi- mity to pro-democratic Europe. But Zimbabwe’s democratic neighbor sent the opposite signal. After the election was stolen, the head of the South African observer mission heaped praise on the process, declaring that the outcome reflected “the free will of the people of Zimbabwe” and that “the political climate was conducive for elections to take place.”

Zimbabwe isn’t the only place where Mbeki has been disappointing. On New Year’s Day he visited Sudan and addressed that country’s government. If ever there was an opportunity for some peer-to-peer truth-telling, surely this was it: Sudan’s Arab leaders are engaged in the systematic killing of ethnic Africans in the western province of Darfur. But Mbeki spoke understandingly of “the challenges facing the government,” and reserved his toughest comments for the easy scapegoat of imperialism. “When these eminent representatives of British colonialism were not in Sudan, they were in South Africa, and vice versa, doing terrible things wherever they went,” he lectured.

Mbeki is undoubtedly an able man — thoughtful in conversation, workaholic in habit, a wizard in the dark arts of backroom politics. But he is a tragic figure: He personifies the flaw that his own New Partnership is intended to inhibit. Open and accountable government is desirable because it exposes leaders to criticism, obliges them to listen and so reduces the risk of blatantly bad policy. But Mbeki, who leads a democratic government but one without electable opponents, is no more willing to accept criticism than to dish it out. He surrounds himself with yes men and spits viciously at critics. He lacks the humility to admit errors, even when the consequences are plain for all to see.

Mbeki’s error on Zimbabwe is almost as terrible as his earlier one on AIDS, when he opposed anti-retroviral treatment. Zimbabwe is the poster child for the emphasis on governance in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development; it shows how bad government can take a promising society and ruin it. A country that was once a breadbasket for the region now depends on food aid; a country that once took in migrants now exports desperate people by the million. And yet Mbeki, the mastermind and guiding light of the New Partnership, will not speak out against this tragedy.

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No sooner does it seem that the traditional novel is, at last, safely dead than someone comes along and flogs the poor old horse into life again. The French writer Michel Houellebecq wields a vigorous whip. In form, his novels are entirely straightforward and very readable; they would have done a brisk turnover in a Victorian lending library, after a few editorial suppressions. They tell of “ordinary” people going about their “ordinary” lives. True, they are lives of noisy desperation, hindered by psychoses, prey to boredom and acedia, and permeated from top to bottom with sex—but what could be more ordinary than that?

Houellebecq’s tone varies between jaded bitterness and disgusted denunciation; the narrative voice in all his work, as in the work of Samuel Beckett, seems furious at itself for having begun to speak at all and, having begun, for being compelled to go on to the end. Yet Houellebecq is darker even than Beckett, and would never allow himself, or us, those lyric transports that flickeringly illuminate the Beckettian night. As Houellebecq says of his hero, the fantasist H. P. Lovecraft, “There is something not really literary about [his] work.”

The reception accorded Houellebecq’s books in some influential quarters is both disturbing and puzzling. The French literary world, still dominated by the surviving would-be Jacobins of May 1968, has largely dismissed them. A number of Anglophone reviewers have been no more kind—the New York Times found The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq’s masterpiece so far, “a deeply repugnant read”; the London Sunday Times described it as “pretentious, banal, badly written and boring”; and the London Times said that Houellebecq was no more a novelist of ideas than the British comedian Benny Hill. Such passionate vituperation is hard to understand. Have these people not read de Sade, or Céline, or Bataille—have they not read Swift?

Although Houellebecq insists, as any artist will, that it is not he but his work that is of consequence, a little biographical background is necessary in his case, given its highly public and controversial nature. Houellebecq was born Michel Thomas, on the French-ruled island of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, in 1958. His father was a mountain guide, his mother an anesthesiologist. They seem to have been less than ideal parents. When Michel was still a young child, his mother left his father for a Muslim man and converted to Islam (of course, many critics see here the seeds of the adult Houellebecq’s animosity toward the religion). Then, at the age of six, Michel was abandoned to the care of his grandmother, whose name, Houellebecq, he adopted when he first began to publish. Granny Houellebecq was a Stalinist, and the same critics cited above detect in this a cause for Houellebecq’s animosity toward ideologues of the Left. (How simple and determined it must be, the life of the critic!)

Having moved to France, Houellebecq trained as an agricultural engineer, but he eventually found a job as an administrator in the computer department of the French National Assembly. He suffered from depression and spent some time in psychiatric clinics. He was married, divorced, and married again. In 1999, he moved with his new wife to Ireland and settled down on Bere Island in Bantry Bay. His writings include a manifesto-cum-biography of the fantasist H. P. Lovecraft—titled, suggestively, Against the World, Against Life (Contre le monde, contre la vie, 1991)—and several volumes of poetry. His novels to date are Whatever (Extension du domaine de la lutte, 1994), translated by Paul Hammond; The Elementary Particles (Les Particules élémentaires, 1998), titled Atomised in the United Kingdom; Lanzarote (Lanzarote, 2000); and Platform (Plateforme, 2001), the last three all translated by Frank Wynne.

In recent times, few writers have made so loud a noise in the world as Houellebecq. The inevitable comparison is with Salman Rushdie, for Houellebecq too has provoked the wrath of the Muslim world. In 2002 he was brought to court in France by a group of powerful Muslim institutions, including the National Federation of French Muslims and the World Islamic League, who accused him, under an obscure protocol of French law, of racial insults and incitement to religious hatred, after an interview was published in the magazine Lire in which Houellebecq declared Islam to be a dangerous and “stupid” religion.

Houellebecq’s court appearance provoked shock, outrage, and laughter, in equal proportions. He dismissed the charges brought against him by pointing out that he had not criticized Muslims, only their religion, which he had a right to do in a free society. Asked if he realized that his remarks could have contravened the French penal code, he replied that he did not, since he had never read the code. “It is excessively long,” he remarked, “and I suspect that there are many boring passages.” All this would seem mere comedy, another lively entry in the annals of France’s excitable literary life, if we had not the example of Rushdie and the fatwa, and if the French media and many French intellectuals had not at best kept silent and at worst sided with Houellebecq’s accusers.

The French, as we know, have peculiar tastes. One is thinking not only of frogs’ legs and andouillettes; these people also consider Poe a great writer, Hitchcock a major
artist. Can they be serious, or is it just a Gallic joke at the expense of the rest of us? Houellebecq seems entirely sincere in his deep admiration for the work of Lovecraft, but his enthusiasm is a little hard to credit. Still, his long essay on “HPL,” as he calls his hero, was the first substantial work he published, and in his preface to the American edition, he describes Against the World, Against Life as “a sort of first novel.” More to the point, it is the lightly disguised manifesto of a wildly ambitious, wildly iconoclastic, and just plain wild young writer, for whom the traditional novel “may be usefully compared to an old air chamber deflating after being placed in an ocean. A generalized and rather weak flow of air, like a trickle of pus, ends in arbitrary and indistinct nothingness.” This, it should be noted, is a relatively mild statement of Houellebecq’s position.

Who is Howard Phillips Lovecraft—whom Stephen King, in a lively introduction to Houellebecq’s essay, describes as the “Dark Prince of Providence” (Providence, Rhode Island, that is; not the Lord who rules over us all)—and what has he to tell us about the work of Houellebecq?

Lovecraft was born in Providence in 1890 into the WASP middle class. In 1893
his father had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to an asylum; five years later he died there, from a very un-Waspish case of tertiary syphilis. The young Lovecraft and his mother moved in with his maternal grandfather; he in turn died in 1904, leaving his daughter and her son in genteel penury. Lovecraft lived all his life under the care of women: First there was his mother; after her death, when he was thirty-one, he was taken over by a pair of aunts (shades of Arsenic and Old Lace), and then, disastrously, by Sonia Greene, a divorcée seven years his senior, whom he married in 1924.

Immediately after their marriage, Lovecraft and Greene moved to New York. Lovecraft, who up to this point had hardly ventured beyond his native territory, found the city a great and, despite an initial period of uncharacteristic cheeriness, terrible shock; the baroque metropolises of his fiction, infested with monstrous beings, are his response to the spectacle of New York in the early years of the Roaring Twenties. Houellebecq quotes with relish passages from Lovecraft’s stories that display their author’s revulsion and ingrained racism. Here is a typical example, from the short story “He” (1939): “Garish daylight shewed [sic] only squalor and alienage [sic] and the noxious elephantiasis of climbing, spreading
stone … the throngs of people that seethed through the flume-like streets were squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes.” After two years, Lovecraft and his venerable bride parted company (three years later they were divorced), and he scuttled back to the safety of Providence, where he moved in with his one surviving aunt.

On his return to Providence, Lovecraft settled down to produce what Houellebecq calls the “great texts,” a wealth of stories and novellas, including “Call of Cthulhu” (1928), “The Dunwich Horror” (1928), “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1929)—for which the magazine Weird Tales paid Lovecraft $350, probably the largest single fee he ever received—and The Colour Out of Space (1927), Lovecraft’s own personal favorite. He was markedly unassuming in regard to his work—”I have concluded that Literature is no proper pursuit for a gentleman”—and submitted it for publication to magazines such as Weird Tales and Amazing Stories with an almost maidenly reluctance. How surprised he would be to find himself monumentalized in the recent Library of America edition of his Tales, edited by Peter Straub.

The imagination that produced these fictions—”ritual literature,” Houellebecq calls them—is at once diseased and fastidious, puritanical and malign, dandyish and uncouth. Houellebecq defines Lovecraft’s general attitude with approving succinctness: “Absolute hatred of the world in general, aggravated by an aversion for the modern world in particular.” The same definition might be applied to Houellebecq’s own literary, or antiliterary, stance. In describing Lovecraft, the young Houellebecq draws a strikingly prescient portrait of the writer he was himself to become:

Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles [particules élémentaires]. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. The skies will be glacial and empty, traversed by the feeble light of half-dead stars. These too will disappear. Everything will disappear. All human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movement of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure “Victorian fictions.” All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact and radiant.

There are areas in which Houellebecq’s and Lovecraft’s writing are utterly dissimilar: “In [Lovecraft’s] entire body of work,” Houellebecq writes, “there is not a single allusion to two of the realities to which we generally ascribe great importance: sex and money.” Sex in particular—”the only game left to adults”—is a commodity (one chooses the word deliberately) in which all but the first of Houellebecq’s novels are soaked. In The Elementary Particles, Bruno, the main character, devotes his life to the pursuit of women, or at least of what women can provide (in fact, Houellebecq and Benny Hill would probably see eye to ogling eye in this matter); while at the heart of Platform is a detailed and, it must be said, numbingly tedious account of the setting up and running of a sex-tourism venture in Thailand. Lanzarote, a brief, fictionalized account of a package holiday on the isle of the book’s title, interspersed with gnomic photographs of the island’s rock formations taken by Houellebecq himself, is little more than the tale of a young man getting lucky with two lesbians on a beach (“Barbara’s excitement continued to mount … I myself found myself close to coming in Pam’s mouth”).

It is hard to know how seriously Houellebecq intends us to take all this. Certainly he expends a great deal of writerly energy on his erotic scenes, yet for all the unblinking explicitness of the descriptions, the sex itself is curiously old-fashioned. Women are treasured, but mainly as receptacles for men and their desires. Rivers of semen gush through these pages (“small clouds floated like spatters of sperm between the pines”), a great deal of it disappearing down the throats of women. Houellebecq’s females seem never to menstruate, or go to the lavatory, and they are ready at all times, day or night, in private or in public, to perform such acts as may be required of them by men; nor do they evince any fear of or interest in getting pregnant—of which, in any case, in Houellebecq’s world, there is not the faintest danger. True, the women enjoy the sex as much as the men do, but in a free, undemanding, and uncomplicated way that few women, or men, would recognize from their own experience. Sometimes Michel, Platform’s protagonist, has a thought for aids, but his partners merrily brush aside any such qualms. And yet all these couplings, all these threesomes and foursomes, take place in a curiously innocent, almost Edenic glow. In a horrible world, these melancholy concumbences are the only reliable source of authenticity and affectless delight:

Our genitals exist as a source of permanent, accessible pleasure. The god who created all our unhappinesses, who made us short-lived, vain, and cruel, has also provided this form of meager compensation. If we couldn’t have sex from time to time, what would life be?

* * *

It would be interesting to know how Houellebecq’s first novel, Whatever, gained its English title. Irresistibly, one imagines a telephone exchange between English publisher and French author as to how the rather grand and revolutionary-sounding Extension du domaine de la lutte might be translated, terminating in an electronic shrug and a murmured “Whatever.” For all the iconoclastic belligerence of his persona, Houellebecq presents himself as firmly within the tradition of Gallic désenchantement (if one may speak of disenchantment in someone who shows so little sign of having been enchanted in the first place), with baleful Sartrean stare and negligently dangling Camusian cigarette permanently in place.

Yet Houellebecq possesses one quality in which the Left Bank existentialists of the ’40s and ’50s were notably lacking, namely, humor. Houellebecq’s fiction is horribly funny. Often the joke is achieved by a po-faced conjunction of the grandiloquent and the thumpingly mundane. The first page of Whatever is headed by a tag from Romans 13—”The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light”—the radiant promise of which is immediately extinguished by the opening paragraph:

Friday evening I was invited to a party at a colleague from work’s house. There were thirty-odd of us, all middle management aged between twenty-five and forty. At a certain moment some stupid bitch started removing her clothes. She took off her T-shirt, then her bra, then her skirt, and as she did she pulled the most incredible faces. She twirled around in her skimpy panties for a few seconds more and then, not knowing what else to do, began getting dressed again. She’s a girl, what’s more, who doesn’t sleep with anyone. Which only underlines the absurdity of her behaviour.

This is a remarkably representative statement of Houellebecq’s themes and effects, culled from the drab world of office drudges, with its weary salaciousness, its misogyny, its surly awareness of the futility of all its stratagems of transcendence and escape. Indeed, Whatever is Houellebecq in nuce. It states repeatedly, in baldest terms, the essentials of his dour aesthetic:

There are some authors who employ their talent in the delicate description of varying states of soul, character traits, etc. I shall not be counted among these. All that accumulation of realistic detail, with clearly differentiated characters hogging the limelight, has always seemed pure bullshit to me, I’m sorry to say.

The pages that follow constitute a novel; I mean, a succession of anecdotes in which I am the hero. This autobiographical choice isn’t one, really: in any case I have no other way out. If I don’t write about what I’ve seen I will suffer just the same—and perhaps a bit more so. But only a bit, I insist on this. Writing brings scant relief. It retraces, it delimits. It lends a touch of coherence, the idea of a kind of realism. One stumbles around in a cruel fog, but there is the odd pointer. Chaos is no more than a few feet away.

The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse and dreary discourse would need to be invented.

But I don’t understand, basically, how people manage to go on living. I get the impression everybody must be unhappy; we live in such a simple world, you understand. There’s a system based on domination, money and fear—a somewhat masculine system, let’s call it Mars; there’s a feminine system based on seduction and sex, Venus let’s say. And that’s it. Is it really possible to live and to believe that there’s nothing else?

Despite the disclaimers as to the deliberate absence of “realistic detail” and “clearly differentiated characters,” the novel’s protagonist—hero is really too large a word—is a convincing and compelling, even appealing, creation, in all his shambling incompetence and emotional disarray. The unnamed narrator is a Meursault without the energy or interest to commit a murder, even a pointless one—”It’s not that I feel tremendously low; it’s rather that the world around me appears high.” He is a computer technician who in his spare time writes peculiar little stories about animals, such as Dialogues Between a Cow and a Filly, “a meditation on ethics, you might say,” a couple of paragraphs of which are quoted. “The God presented in this short story was not, one observes, a merciful God.”

Whatever pays its sly and sardonic tributes to the great French tradition. In the opening pages, the nameless protagonist has forgotten where he parked his car and finds himself wandering in search of it through the Rue Marcel-Sembat, then the Rue Marcel-Dassault (“there were a lot of Marcels about”); while in the book’s central section he falls seriously ill in Rouen, Flaubert’s detested birthplace. Indeed, though it could hardly be described as Proustian, the book, all dreamy drift and sour recollection, does have something of the minutely observed inconsequentiality of Flaubert’s masterpiece, Sentimental Education.

The writer Houellebecq most resembles, however, is not Proust or Flaubert, or even Lovecraft, but Georges Simenon—not the Maigret Simenon, but the Simenon of the romans durs, as he called them, such as Dirty Snow or Monsieur Monde Vanishes, masterpieces of tight-lipped existential desperation.

* * *

The central premise of Elementary Particles is best expressed in a passage from the book that followed it, Platform:

It is wrong to pretend that human beings are unique, that they carry within them an irreplaceable individuality. As far as I was concerned, at any rate, I could not distinguish any trace of such an individuality. As often as not, it is futile to wear yourself out trying to distinguish individual destinies and personalities. When all’s said and done, the idea of the uniqueness of the individual is nothing more than pompous absurdity. We remember our own lives, Schopenhauer wrote somewhere, a little better than we do a novel we once read. That’s about right: a little, no more.

The hero of Elementary Particles—in this case the word is not too large—is Michel Djerzinski, a molecular biologist who, at the end of the book, having given up his position at the Galway Center for Genetic Research in Ireland, retires to a cottage on the Sky Road near Clifden—”There’s something very special about this country”—to complete, between the years 2000 and 2009, his magnum opus, an eighty-page distillation of a life’s work devoted to the proposition “that mankind must disappear and give way to a new species which was asexual and immortal, a species which had outgrown individuality, separation and evolution.” After Djerzinski has gone “into the sea,” his successor, Hubczejak (a private play, one suspects, on another hard-to-pronounce name beginning with h), makes a synthesis of his work and presents it to an at first disbelieving world. Djerzinski’s conviction is that

any genetic code, however complex, can be noted in a standard, structurally stable form, isolated from disturbances or mutations. This meant that every cell contained within it the possibility of being infinitely copied. Every animal species, however highly evolved, could be transformed into a similar species, reproduced by cloning, and immortal.

At the close of the book, the twenty-first century is half-done and humanity as we know it has all but disappeared, its place taken by a new species of Djerzinskian immortals. “There remain some humans of the old species, particularly in areas long dominated by religious doctrine. Their reproductive levels fall year by year, however, and at present their extinction seems inevitable.” It is a strangely compelling, strangely moving conceit, this peaceful making way by the old order for a new. The book’s reigning spirit is Auguste Comte (1798–1857), follower of Saint-Simon and founder of the movement of positivism, the rules of which Comte laid down in his Système de politique positive. Supremely silly as Comte’s philosophy of altruism was—the positivist religionist was obliged, among other duties, to pray three times a day to his mother, wife, and daughter, and to wear a waistcoat buttoned down the back so that it could be put on and taken off only with the help of others—it had influence worldwide, and especially in France.

What are we to make of the Comtean aspects of Houellebecq’s work? For all the darkness of his vision, gleams of light now and then break through—”In the absence of love, nothing can be sanctified”—but what a peculiar light it is, seeking to illuminate those arid landscapes where the only solace for us dying humans is the sad game of sex. Djerzinski’s “great leap,” according to Hubczejak, is “the fact that he was able … to restore the conditions which make love possible,” while Djerzinski himself—in one of his final works, Meditations on Interweaving (inspired, not incidentally, by the medieval Celtic masterpiece the Book of Kells)—ponders the central motive force of our lives in rhapsodic tones worthy of D. H. Lawrence at his most ecstatic, or, indeed, of The Sound of Music at its most saccharine:

The lover hears his beloved’s voice over mountains and oceans; over mountains and oceans a mother hears the cry of her child. Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds, while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal.

Yet Elementary Particles is genuinely affecting in its vision of the end of the “brave and unfortunate species” that we as human beings have been, and of our replacement by the brave-new-worlders, made possible by Djerzinski’s “risky interpretations of the postulates of quantum mechanics.” For all the ferocity of his vision, Houellebecq does have a heart, and although he would probably not care to be told so, it is the palpable beating of that organ which lifts his work to heights that the dementedly fastidious Lovecraft could not have scaled in his wildest and weirdest dreams.

Houellebecq, if we are to take him at his word and not think ourselves mocked by his fanciful flights, achieves a profound insight into the nature of our collective death wish, as well as our wistful hope for something to survive, even if that something is not ourselves. The omniscient narrator of The Elementary Particles, dedicating his book “to mankind,” meditates on what is past and passing and to come:

History exists; it is elemental, it dominates, its rule is inexorable. Yet outside the strict confines of history, the ultimate ambition of this book is to salute the brave and unfortunate species which created us. This vile, unhappy race, barely different from the apes, which nevertheless carried within it such noble aspirations. Tortured, contradictory, individualistic, quarrelsome … it was sometimes capable of extraordinary explosions of violence, but never quite abandoned its belief in love. This species which, for the first time in history, was able to envision the possibility of its succession and, some years later, proved capable of bringing it about. As the last members of this race are extinguished, we think it just to render this last tribute to humanity, an homage which itself will one day disappear, buried beneath the sands of time.

John Banville’s new novel, The Sea, will be published next year by Knopf.
A portion of this article appeared in different form in the Dublin Review (Winter 2004–2005)

Posted at 1:40 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Independent
05 April 2005

Executions around the world are nearing record levels,
and the Unites States is among the four countries
which account for 97 per cent of the total, a report
has found.

At least 3,797 people were executed in 25 countries in
2004, according to a report released today by Amnesty
International.

The report says China easily operates the most
stringent capital punishment regime, with an estimated
3,400 executions last year. In second place, Iran
executed at least 159, Vietnam at least 64, and 59
prisoners were put to death in the US.

The number of executions worldwide last year was the
highest since 1996, when 4,272 were carried out.

No official figures are available for China’s
execution rate, and Amnesty has changed the method it
uses to calculate the number of executions there.
According to Amnesty’s report for 2003 China carried
out at least 726 executions. The much higher figure of
3,400 executed last yearis an estimate based on
internet reports of trials, although it is still
described as the “tip of the iceberg”.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director, said
China’s record was “genuinely frightening”. Amnesty
quoted a delegate at the National People’s Congress in
March last year, who said that “nearly 10,000” people
were executed every year in China. Corruption is among
the crimes which carries the death penalty.

Ms Allen said: “It is deeply disturbing that the vast
majority of those executed in the world last year did
not even have fair trials, and many were convicted on
the basis of ‘evidence’ extracted under torture.

“The death penalty is cruel and unnecessary, does not
deter crime, and runs the risk of killing the wrongly
convicted. It is time to consign the death penalty to
the dustbin of history.” Yet the figures conceal a
trend that shows a general move towards abolition.
“The world continued to move closer to the universal
abolition of capital punishment during 2004,” the
report says.

Five countries abolished the death penalty for all
crimes last year - Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal and
Turkey. This means that 120 countries have abolished
the death penalty in law or practice.

Although the US has become accustomed to being named
in the grim league table alongside states such as
Iran, which it has branded an “outpost of tyranny,”
there were fewer executions compared with 2003, when
65 were held. Two prisoners with long histories of
mental illness were put to death in the US, but the
Supreme Court ruled that imposing death sentences
against child offenders contravened the US
constitution.

In several of the 38 American states where the death
penalty is still legal, the lawfulness of lethal
injection has been challenged on the grounds that one
of the chemicals used may mask a prisoner’s suffering.

Amnesty says that six prisoners on death row in the US
were released last year after they were found
innocent.

Kenny Richey, a Scotsman, whose conviction for murder
and arson was overturned on appeal earlier this year,
is still at risk of execution because Ohio prosecutors
are trying to have the decision overturned.

Ms Allen said: “Last year I visited Scotsman Kenny
Richey on death row in Ohio and saw the true
wretchedness of a system that can condemn someone to
years of calculated cruelty as they await death at the
hands of the state.

“Even now Kenny is effectively suspended between life
and death. We want to see Ohio prosecutors accept the
senior state court’s decision and release Kenny
immediately,” Ms Allen said.

In some countries, such as Vietnam, it remains a state
secret to reveal the number of executions carried out.
Video evidence of North Korea’s execution of defectors
was produced last week in a video released by a
Japanese non-governmental organisation.

MOST EXECUTIONS

Total in 2004

1 China 3,400*
2 Iran 159*
3 Vietnam 64*
4 United States 59*
5 Saudi Arabia 33*
6 Pakistan 15*
7 Kuwait 9*
8 Bangladesh 7*
9= Egypt 6*
= Singapore 6*
= Yemen 6*

Posted at 12:03 PM · Comments (0)

By Linzi Sheldon, The Dartmouth Staff

Published on Monday, April 4, 2005

New York Times senior writer Howard French questioned American apathy toward Africa, a continent with a history of ignored tragedy, during a weekend visit to the College. As well as informing his audience of Africa’s history, French challenged attendees — black or white — to see themselves as African-Americans with a historic obligation to the continent.

French also addressed the ingrained American apathy toward Africa, despite Africa’s contributions to the formation of the United States, at a Friday speech in Rockefeller Hall and at a discussion session Saturday afternoon.

“There is a generalized disregard for people of African descent,” French said, pointing out the absence of a national holiday to celebrate Africa and the millions who died crossing the Atlantic Ocean in slave ships.

If Americans have forgotten the continent, French said the public has been aided by the media’s lack of African coverage. He used the example of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country that has been ravaged by civil war and suffered over three million deaths. But French said American media coverage on the Congo has been inadequate at best, and the United States has failed to involve itself in the country.

“We have blocked large portions of humanity simply out of our minds,” French said.

French was not afraid to highlight Western racism against Africa as one of the reasons the U.S. has done little to aid development in the country.

“Americans flatter themselves,” he said, urging his audience to question whether they are as caring citizens as they believe. “We have played a part in Africa’s misery.”

French encouraged the audience to question the Bush administration and its often-grandiose rhetoric. U.S. policy has become centered on the virtues of spreading democracy, but French said American policy has become burdened with hypocrisy.

“Africa represents the lowest of the low in terms of our consideration,” he explained, talking about the U.S. government’s view of the forgotten continent. “[To the U.S. government], no amount of African lives is worth the loss of an American life.”

This phenomenon of disregarding Africa is unique, French said, and he contrasted it with the United States’ long-term interests in the oil-rich Middle East. Despite oil resources in Africa, including oil fields in Sudan, America has failed to assert a strong interest in the continent.

China, however, has not exhibited the same fear of involvement in war-ravaged Sudan, French said. Whereas the United States has delayed involvement in Sudan, where ethnic cleansing has brought about 300,000 deaths since 2003, China has signed oil contracts with the country and is attempting to secure more oil supplies in the region. China also recently joined with Russia to abstain on a U.N. vote seeking to impose sanctions on the leaders of Darfur killing gangs.

“Without competition, both economic and ideological, I think Africa will pay a steep price,” French said, accusing America of a blasé attitude towards the region and a tendency to remain uninvolved until other nations show interest. “I would like to see the United States integrate Africa into the world economy.”

Author of “A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa,” French began his journalism career freelance reporting in Africa. He covered the fall of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and the conflict in the Congo, and earned Pulitzer Prize nomination for his coverage.

French pushed Americans to demand more from themselves. “Never forget Africa,” he said. “I really mean it when I say you’re an African-American too.”

Posted at 12:06 AM · Comments (0)

I have often been told by Japanese people that theirs is the most difficult language in the world. Virtually all the Japanese people who have said this to me, I might add, have spoken no other language than their own.

The most conspicuous instance of this came my way in the mid-1980s when, one rainy night, I took a cab home from the station at Seijo Gakuenmae in Tokyo. No sooner had I closed my umbrella and entered the cab than the driver peered at me in the rearview mirror and said, in Japanese: “You’re not a Japanese are you.”

“No, I’m not,” I replied.

“Oh. Japanese is the most difficult language to speak in the world, you know. Isn’t it?”

Well, for the 15-minute ride home I strove to persuade my driver that this, in fact, did not seem to be the case. I pointed out the fiendish difficulties of the languages that I had studied in my life, Russian and, particularly, Polish being much more complicated in grammar and pronunciation, at least for a native speaker of English, than Japanese. I finished my discourse as we rounded the corner by my house.

“I mean, Polish, for instance, has elaborate case endings for adjectives, and even has a special one for the nominative plural of male animate nouns!”

Having listened attentively to my passionate, if pedantic, foray into the esoterica of comparative linguistics, the driver stopped the cab by my front gate, turned his head around to me and smiled broadly.

“Well, anyway,” he said, “Japanese is still the most difficult language in the world!”

Now, for a non-native speaker, acquiring the ability to read and write Japanese takes tremendous effort. But my driver and I were discussing the spoken language, the medium by which most Japanese explain themselves to their compatriots and the outside world.

Japanese, of the languages that I know, is actually the easiest spoken language to master.

For one thing, the number of words used in daily life is small compared to, say, English. Nuances in English are added by expressing an emotion with the use of any number of different words, incorporating layer upon layer of subtle meaning by dipping into what is an enormous chest of verbal riches. In Japanese, subtleties are added with the use of a variety of endings. When you get to the end of a sentence you can vary the tone, register and emphasis of what you say by using one or more of a number of word and sentence endings. These endings are not hard to master. The result is that a non-native can be very expressive and articulate in Japanese without having to learn thousands of words — in the case of English, words that came from Anglo-Saxon, Latin and the many other languages that have enriched its vocabulary.

And, you can pause, mumble, leave out core elements of sentences, even punctuate dialogue with long silences and still speak excellent Japanese! The other languages that I am familiar with do not allow for the huge pregnant pauses and embarrassing elipses that allow valuable thinking time for non-native beginners. What is considered an acceptable pause in Japanese, often giving the impression of profundity, would be taken for pure prevarication in English.

Verbs are generally the horror element of language learning. In English they are irregular, with auxiliary verbs and the conditional to make matters worse. Slavic languages have the perfective and the imperfective, not to mention so-called verbs of motion. (You need a different verb for “to go” depending on whether you are walking or riding in something.) Japanese verbs are a cinch. Just change the ending of the verb’s stem to get everything from “I eat” to “I ate,” “I didn’t eat,” “I wouldn’t have eaten,” “I didn’t want to eat,” “even if I didn’t want to eat” and “Sorry but I went and ate it,” which is tabechatta. Easy as pie.

Why did my taxi driver at Seijo Gakuenmae persist in perpetrating the myth of difficulty? Is it just a benign ignorance of the workings of language, or is there something else at work here?

Is his quaint obstinacy an indication of a wished-for ethnic “exclusivity”?

I believe that this irrational belief in the difficulty of their language bestows upon Japanese people, willy nilly, a false mystique, as if through their language they were able to harbor secrets to which the outside world could never be privy. This false mystique allows them to entertain a feeling of national sharing without having to prove it explicitly. “We all think and feel the same way,” it tells them, “and we can express this in a way that is only open to Japanese. The fact that non-Japanese cannot decipher this is proof of our ethnic cohesion.” If they admit that the Japanese language is no harder than any other, and maybe even easier in some ways, their self-styled aura of exclusivity loses much of its shine.

Over the years, a number of Japanese politicians have dropped what are essentially racist clangers, the most famous perhaps being Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s unseemly remark about the “low intellectual level” of certain American minorities. These politicians, speaking in Japanese of course, put their foot in their mouth and yet are taken aback when foreign journalists vividly describe the heel protruding from their lips. Do they really think that their language is a code that cannot be deciphered by non-Japanese?

In former times it may have served the Japanese national cause for this country’s people to be seen as shuffling in a foggy aura of inscrutability. By striving to be “not understood” and holding their cards close to their chest, so to speak, they bolstered their position. “We Japanese have a depth that you cannot fathom, and this is the source of our power.” But in our explain-yourself-or-pay-the-price era, where the very survival of a nation’s culture may depend on its ability to express its people’s aspirations in a clear and unequivocal manner, the myth of difficulty is no more than an artificial obstacle, a high wall that locks Japanese people in more than it deters the rest of the world from entering.

It is time that Japanese people rejoiced in the fact that people around the world can and, despite Japanese provincial biases and nostalgic predilections, will understand them.

The Japan Times: April 3, 2005

Posted at 2:19 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
April 3, 2005

At the Mori Arts Center, which is perched atop a skyscraper in the glittering Roppongi Hills development in Tokyo, I recently visited a museum show, ”Universal Symbol of the Brand,” that displayed (to quote its catalog) ”the fascinating development of the history and endeavors of Louis Vuitton, the brand that is not only incredibly popular in Japan but also beloved throughout the world.” A sequence of galleries exhibiting luggage and handbags proceeded to a large advertising photograph of the actress Uma Thurman and smaller shots of runway models, all wearing Vuitton fashions. What drew me to the show, however, were two bags in the variation of the Vuitton pattern that the Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami developed with the company in 2003. The brightly colored Murakami line has been phenomenally successful, with sales reported to be in the vicinity of $300 million. Murakami’s handbags were presented along with two small paneled screens painted in the same patterns that appear on the bags.

The handbags in the museum exhibition were hardly Murakami’s only contribution to the Roppongi Hills complex of glass-and-steel towers. Cute cartoonlike characters that he had created as branding elements for the center — Barney-like brontosaurs, droopy-eared rabbits and smiling aliens — grinned down on me from pennants and from express buses to Roppongi Hills. In the same development, at a large Vuitton store, new handbags in a cherry design by Murakami would soon be introduced, along with a couple of the artist’s sculptures of a red, smiling cherry. Last year at another Vuitton shop in Tokyo, Murakami displayed a large fiberglass sculpture and a four-panel screen painted in his LV monogram design.

So, in Tokyo, an art museum was displaying luggage, a luggage shop was exhibiting art, an artist had developed a branding campaign — and nobody thought anything out of the ordinary. If you want to understand why Murakami’s art feels so dizzyingly up to date, this leveling of status grades among art, advertising and merchandise at Roppongi Hills is a good place to start. When I asked Tomio Koyama, Murakami’s dealer in Tokyo, why he hadn’t shown the monogram work in his gallery, he explained, ”In Japan, a gallery has no meaning, and a Louis Vuitton shop is a more powerful place to see something.” The Tokyo art critic Noi Sawaragi, who was a crucial early supporter of Murakami and a peer, told me that I was imposing distinctions that no Japanese would make. ”This back and forth doesn’t seem unnatural to us,” he said. ”We have had a long history of museums with department stores as a venue. It was thanks to the Seibu Museum, which no longer exists on the 12th floor of the Seibu department store, that I developed my knowledge of contemporary art. I saw Marcel Duchamp, Malevich and Man Ray in depth for the first time in that museum. I think it is the same for everyone of my generation. Downstairs you find dresses, bags and shoes, but on the 12th floor you find art.” Indeed, it is one of Murakami’s dearly held tenets that demarcations between fine art and popular merchandise are completely un-Japanese. The Japanese language didn’t even have a word for ”fine art” in 1868, when Japan embraced the West in the Meiji Restoration; only afterward did the country import this foreign ”art” notion and create a vocabulary for it. The blurring of high and low remains characteristic of Japanese society.

In his own career, Murakami has moved frictionlessly among his multiple roles as artist, curator, theorist, product designer, businessman and celebrity. Ever since a Chicago collector paid $567,500 at auction in 2003 for his fiberglass sculpture of a long-legged waitress, Murakami, now 43, has held the price record for a work by a contemporary Japanese artist. Meanwhile, his monumental sculptures and silk-screened balloons of original cartoon characters, displayed in 2001 at Grand Central Terminal and in 2003 at Rockefeller Center, have made him conspicuous in New York. More than anyone else, he has put modern Japan on the map of the contemporary art world. ”He’s a phenomenon, that’s for sure,” said Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. ”I think that his work embodies some interests that extend far beyond Japan. It’s a blend of fantasy and apocalypse and innocence. It’s all the disparate elements combined that speak to the moment. And it’s the way that he’s worked as much as the work itself — in the public realm with public sculpture, huge editions of objects, merchandising, working collaboratively. It’s a very ambitious and far-ranging project.”

While best known as an artist, Murakami may be even more interesting as a thinker. Five years ago he elaborated a theory under the clever rubric ”Superflat,” linking the flat picture planes of traditional Japanese paintings to the lack of any distinction between high and low in Japanese culture. On stylistic grounds he grouped together some traditional artists of the Edo period (1603-1868) with the creators of modern-day animated films, arguing that there were important formal similarities in the flatness of their work. Now, having analyzed Japanese pop culture aesthetically, he is turning his scrutiny to the function that superflatness might be serving in contemporary Japanese society. As the curator of an exhibition, ”Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture,” which opens this week at the Japan Society in New York, he surveys the geeky movement, known as otaku, that revolves around animated movies (anime), comic books (manga) and sexually suggestive figure models — and arrives at a provocative conclusion. Murakami maintains that respectable Japanese artists largely ignored the horrors of World War II and the humiliations of the postwar occupation, relinquishing the subjects to the otaku, who transported these tough realities into the realm of cartoon fantasy. In childlike animated forms, anguished truths were stripped of their historical context // a flattening process that conveniently released both the artist and the viewer from grappling with the contradictions of Japan’s wartime experience as predator and victim and postwar status as economic rival of, and political subordinate to, the United States.

Flat, colorful and rootless, the images of this popular subculture - the blank-faced Hello Kitty, the mutant monster Godzilla, the giant alien Ultraman, the cat-shaped guardian robot Doraemon — line up in no particular order, like icons on a computer screen. This cavalcade of weightless images in turn reverberates with contemporary viewers worldwide: anime and manga have become global signifiers of cool. Historically, to be sure, Japan is unique. Until a century and a half ago it was a society shut off from most of the world, and then, with gigantic gulps, it absorbed and adapted whatever it wanted, mostly from Europe, in an accelerated binge. The orgy ended with the catastrophe of World War II, after which Japan once again slammed the door on the past and started fresh with new, mostly American models. The grab-bag appropriation, inexact simulation and accelerated speed that characterize this process no longer appear peculiarly Japanese. They feel now. We live in an age when distinctions are arbitrary, originality is devalued, hierarchies are discredited and authenticity seems meaningless. Barely 40 years ago, Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein caused a transgressive stir by adopting commercial imagery from newspaper advertisements and comic strips as the subjects of paintings to hang in art galleries. How daring that was, and how dated it is. We are surrounded today by too many images to source or rank. While it would be fatuous to say that we are all Japanese now, we are surely all living in Murakami’s world.

At 8:50 every weekday morning, unless he is not in Tokyo, Murakami leads the staff of his art studio, Kaikai Kiki Company Ltd., in a round of calisthenics. Then the employees go off to their various jobs: refining sketches on the computer, daubing paint meticulously onto paintings and sculptures, fielding requests for commercial tie-ins or press interviews with their boss, negotiating licenses and other business contracts or coordinating with the branch office in Brooklyn. Warhol famously called his studio in Manhattan ”the Factory,” but that was a joke; although silk-screened images of flowers and Brillo boxes did flow out of it, the silver-walled, amphetamine-pumped clubhouse — with its entertainments, intrigues and exquisite costumes — resembled an 18th-century court in Versailles more than it did an auto plant. Yet it’s no joke to call Kaikai Kiki a factory. Murakami’s 60 employees punch in with computerized timecards, and the company has training manuals for new hires. The hours are regular — and long. One daily ritual is the question-and-answer period, in which staff members book a slot of specified duration to ask the chief a question; when I attended, 14 had requested interviews, typically of two minutes each.

The Kaikai Kiki factory complex is situated in a drab suburban district an hour from central Tokyo. One of the little buildings, without toilet or bath, is Murakami’s home, in which a sleeping bag serves as a bed. Next to the shed that houses Murakami is an even smaller one that houses potted cactuses. Hybridizing cactus from seed is Murakami’s hobby, one for which he has little time. Apparently he has no time for romantic or family attachments, either. ”He makes art and sleeps,” said Dana Friis-Hansen, executive director of the Austin Museum of Art in Texas and co-curator of a 1998 Murakami exhibition at Bard College in New York. ”Some curators are really frustrated, because he’ll ask for and usually get the right to sleep in the gallery while he is setting up. He’ll bring assistants and sleeping bags, and they’ll cook noodles there.”

The son of a taxi driver and a housewife, Murakami grew up in Tokyo, then attended Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, the country’s most prestigious arts institution. He holds a Ph.D. in nihonga — the refined hybrid of European and traditional Japanese painting that was invented in the late 19th century. Nihonga, in which traditional resins and pigments are employed to render likenesses of bouquets and landscapes, is a rarefied branch of present-day Japanese art. All the time he was practicing it, Murakami said, he wished instead that he had the talent to draw the manga and anime of otaku culture.

The word ”otaku” is usually translated as ”geek” or ”nerd,” but its more precise meaning is steeped in the particularities of Japanese society and language. Literally, the word means ”your household.” It is a way to refer to another person in conversation without implying either superior or lesser social status. Employed by postwar Japanese housewives, the usage was adopted by the fans — all right, call them geeks — who became obsessed with the minutiae of a particular bit of popular culture. Isolated in their individual homes, these youths shared a passion for the television programming — ”Astro Boy,” ”Ultraman” and so forth — that expanded rapidly in the 1960’s. They organized around their fetishistic fascinations to form otaku subcultures, whose members come together periodically in large conventions to discuss, exhibit and trade the objects of their highly focused affections.

The typical otaku is a young male, and some of the manga and the plastic figures are explicitly sexual, often blatantly pedophiliac; even when they aren’t, the otaku tends to relate to his collection, with caresses and ministrations, as to a girlfriend — if he had a girlfriend. (A Web-site message board heavily frequented by otaku was known as ”The number of years I have not had a girlfriend is the same as my age.”) In its defiance of the mores of proper Japanese society, otaku culture was disreputable from the outset. It became much more so following a notorious criminal case in 1989, when an otaku named Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of four preadolescent girls. ”When Miyazaki’s room was revealed to the public, the mass media announced that it was otaku space,” Murakami once told an interviewer. ”However, it was just like my room. Actually, my mother was very surprised to see his room and said: ‘His room is like yours. Are you O.K.?’ Of course, I was O.K. In fact, all of my friends’ rooms were similar to his, too.” Murakami added that Miyazaki was only ”different from us” because he ”videotaped dead bodies of little girls he killed.”

When the administrators of the Japan Society in New York asked Murakami if he would like to curate an exhibition in their gallery, he resolved to undertake an exploration of the origins of otaku culture, a subject that, he said, is sketchily understood even in Japan. In many of the classic manga and anime stories, the plot revolves around a bomb or radiation device that devastates Tokyo. ”I thought, Why does otaku culture so many times have an explosion that looks like an atomic bomb?” he told me, as we sat at the counter of an elegant sushi bar in Tokyo. ”I was trying to find out why otaku people are always repeating the same scene and why I was so interested in it myself.” And there was a related question that intrigued him: ”Why do Japanese people hate otaku culture?” He concluded that otaku raised ”a mirror” to a reality that the larger culture preferred to ignore. Like many other Japanese intellectuals of his generation, he deplores both his country’s militarist past and what he sees as its acquiescent present. ”Otaku culture is handicapped reality,” Murakami said. ”We have to realize we are handicapped, and we don’t want to realize it. We know the U.S. is our father. We thought we were children, but we are handicapped people. We need help.”

The crystallizing moment for Murakami arrived when he came up with a name for the show. In October, Alexandra Munroe, director of the Japan Society Gallery, was pressing him for an exhibition title and offered a suggestion. ”She gave us ‘Japanese Pop Culture Explosion,’ a really long title,” he recalled. ”I hate that.” Many Americans know that the atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nicknamed, respectively, ”Little Boy” and ”Fat Man.” But few remember the testimony that Gen. Douglas MacArthur gave to a Senate committee in 1951 upon completing a tour of more than five years as Supreme Commander of the Allied powers in Japan. MacArthur stated that at the time of the war, when ”measured by the standards of modern civilization,” the Japanese people were ”like a boy of 12.” The remark ignited headlines across Japan, with furious resentment superseding the tributes that had hailed MacArthur’s departure. For a show on otaku culture that would demonstrate how Japanese artists responded to their nation’s wartime suffering and postwar subordination, Murakami realized that the title ”Little Boy” was perfect. As he told me this story, he sugarcoated the underlying anger and bitterness, as he does so often both in his conversation and his art, with a joke. ”Little Boy and Fat Man — now both things are true exactly of the Japanese people,” he said, patting his potbelly and ordering an extra helping of sushi.

At the beginning of his career, Murakami appeared to be content with the lot of most successful contemporary artists: to create work that is admired by critics and desired by wealthy collectors but leaves the general public baffled or hostile. He was constructing conceptual pieces similar to the art being made in the West. Among those early works, which began attracting attention in the early 90’s, was ”Polyrhythm,” a seven-foot-high slab of yellow resin, minimalist in form, on which many toy United States infantry soldiers climb. Another colossal piece, which he titled ”Sea Breeze” after a men’s fragrance, was fabricated of steel plates that open automatically to reveal, like figures in a shrine, a ring of high-intensity floodlights. Probably his most talked-about youthful work was the 1991 ”Randoseru Project.” For it, he collected hides of endangered or exotic species — whale, hippopotamus, cobra and so on — and had them brightly dyed and fabricated into the distinctive book bags, called randoseru, that Japanese schoolchildren have carried on their backs over the last century. Koyama, his Tokyo dealer, who has known Murakami since their university days, recalls that the project began with Murakami’s desire to construct an object out of whale skin at a time when Japan, controversially, refused to join an international ban on commercial whaling. Someone suggested the shape of the randoseru. Behind its cuteness, the bag has bellicose overtones: it was adopted by the Japanese in the late 19th century on a Western military model. Murakami has kept an impish distance from the elaborate commentary the work inspired from critics. ”’Randoseru,’ my early work, got a really good reaction from the art scene,” he told me. ”But I hate that reaction. It looks like political art, but I am just joking.”

In 1994, with a fellowship from the Manhattan-based Asian Cultural Council, Murakami came to live in New York. During that year he started to re-emphasize his Japaneseness. Upon returning home he began to create objects that looked as if they were applying for admittance to the otaku world even as he also tried to cast an unfamiliar critical spotlight on this insular subculture.

For two years, Murakami researched the concept and execution of ”Miss Ko2” (pronounced ”ko-ko”), the sculpture that would eventually fascinate Western collectors and set a record at Christie’s New York. Collaborating with the designers at Kaiyodo, the pre-eminent manufacturer of figures in Japan, he designed a high-breasted, stiletto-heeled, vapidly smiling blonde in a skimpy waitress uniform. Made of fiberglass, ”Miss Ko2” is six feet tall, commanding attention in an art gallery but arousing anxious displeasure among otaku, who like their figures small and submissive.

Murakami provoked the otaku again in 1997 with his next figure, which he titled ”Hiropon,” after a popular recreational drug in postwar Japan. His idea was that the erotic pretty-girl figures known as bishojo were addictive for the otaku who collected them. Once again he made his figure big (seven feet high), but this time she was anything but vapid. Inspired by a magazine cover he had seen while attending a comic-book otaku gathering, of a bare-breasted woman with a nipple shaped like a penis, he designed a nude (although, in keeping with otaku preferences, one lacking genitalia or pubic hair) who is squeezing from her gargantuan breasts and oversize nipples a stream of milk that swirls behind her like a jump rope. The following year he created a male companion piece, ”My Lonesome Cowboy,” of a masturbating naked man whose ejaculation floats lasso-style in front of him. Both ”Hiropon” and ”My Lonesome Cowboy” have the big eyes and grins that are found on popular children’s anime and manga characters like Astro Boy (the Japanese name is Mighty Atom) and Sailor Moon. While otaku people generally ignored the ”Cowboy” figure, they loathed ”Hiropon.” ”’Hiropon’ is like a satire, and these figures are the object of affection for otaku people,” said Masahiko Asano, an otaku expert whom Murakami has enlisted as a consultant. ”Once Mr. Murakami asked me why his characters cannot be the object of affection. I said: ‘When you see Miss Ko2, can you masturbate to her? If not, it can’t be.’ He said, ‘No, I couldn’t do that.”’

In 1999, at an otaku festival, Murakami released ”Second Mission Project Ko2,” a three-piece sculptural installation that depicts a favorite otaku theme — a young woman morphing into an airplane. Triumphantly, it was praised by both art critics and otaku. In hindsight, however, this work was a coda. Murakami’s sculptures of sexually charged figures, difficult for viewers and expensive for fabricators, form a discrete chapter in his artistic career and his infatuation with otaku. Although this work may be the most interesting he has yet produced, he was dissatisfied. He wanted his characters to be objects of affection. He was a pop artist who longed to be popular.

If you were to draw a map of Japanese popular culture (a map like one from the Magellan era, grossly oversimplified but still useful), you might say that male-oriented otaku culture lies at one pole and that the female domain of kawaii (cuteness) is situated at the other. In the mid-90’s, Murakami set sail from otaku toward kawaii. Even while he was investigating otaku model figures, he was already researching cute cartoon characters. Such characters, of course, had been a mainstay of Pop Art in the United States since the early 60’s. Warhol used images of Mickey Mouse. Lichtenstein raided the funny pages. Murakami, however, did something else. He created his own characters.

His first, Mr. DOB, got his name from an abbreviation of a nonsensical phrase that alluded to many things — a popular television entertainer, a sexual innuendo, the indigenous Ainu people and who knows what else. The phrase also translates, more or less, as ”Why? Why?” Since this could serve as Murakami’s motto, it was a good choice for a character who became his alter ego. Initially, the DOB character resembled Mickey, but over time he evolved, first turning toothy and fierce, then becoming terribly cute — kawaii. ”In 1994, Mr. DOB had an ironic content,” said the critic Midori Matsui. ”It became something different later on — almost like Murakami’s own house brand. He was always interested in competing with popular art on a real popular level. The things he did up to ‘S.M.P. Ko2’ were way too intellectual for his purpose. He wanted to become his own industry.”

With his customary devotion to research, Murakami analyzed the principles of kawaii. ”I found a system for what is a cute character,” he said. On a whiteboard at Kaikai Kiki, he drew me a circle with the top half blank and the bottom half containing two dots for eyes and a smiling mouth. ”In the kawaii system, this scale is very important,” he said. Over the last decade, Murakami has released numerous cute characters: among them, Mr. Pointy, smiling flowers, colorful mushrooms and the good and bad toddlers Kaikai and Kiki. Emblematic of his reorientation from confrontation to cuteness, he changed the name of his studio in 2001 from the Hiropon Factory to Kaikai Kiki. He said he hopes to expand his audience by making animated films with his characters, and he has already opened a six-person animation facility in Tokyo and leased space in Los Angeles. (He plans to include an animated film in a midcareer retrospective of his work, to be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2007.)

The apotheosis of kawaii culture is Hello Kitty, the big-eyed, beribboned, expressionless pussycat character that stokes a billion-dollar-a-year business for the Sanrio company. Created in 1974, the Kitty character took off in 1985, first in Japan and then internationally. When I asked Matsui how she accounted for Kitty’s popularity, she practically shrieked in response: ”Because I think humanism is dead! Because people are weak and scared.” In a more measured tone, she added: ”It’s easy to accept Kitty because it’s so dumb and expressionless. It doesn’t demand that you make any reference.”

For an authoritative view, I paid a call at Sanrio on Yuko Yamaguchi, who has been the chief designer of Hello Kitty for 25 years. With long hennaed hair and wearing brown artificial-leather pants, she didn’t look the least bit kawaii herself. When she discussed the enduring popularity of Kitty, she was all business. Hoping to gauge how far Murakami has gone in his quest for wide popularity, I asked her to rate Kaikai, the sweeter, rabbit-costumed half of the Kaikai Kiki toddlers, on the kawaii meter. She was troubled by Kaikai’s smiling mouth. ”In most Sanrio characters, we don’t express an emotion through the mouth,” she said. ”With Kitty, you don’t even see a mouth.” She credited this mouthlessness for much of Kitty’s popularity. ”When someone feels blue or depressed, they may want the character to sympathize with their feeling or to get angry with them or to offer encouragement,” she said. ”Without a clear expression of the mouth, this is possible. It can be interpreted in different ways.”

Murakami understands the infantilism that underlies the Hello Kitty phenomenon. Like otaku culture, kawaii culture for him is an expression of Japan’s postwar impotence. (In a photograph with the strapping General MacArthur, the diminutive, once divine Emperor Hirohito looked very kawaii.) However, Murakami is also designing characters that for those unacquainted with his analysis seem simply — and irresistibly — kawaii. It’s a delicate balancing act, reaching a mass audience while maintaining a critical distance. ”I created Mr. DOB for a really serious reason, but girls would say, ‘Oh, cute,”’ he told me. ”Japanese don’t like serious art. But if I can transform cute characters into serious art, they will love my piece.” The early DOB’s were often distorted and belligerent or combined with jagged lines and distressed surfaces that alluded to traditional Japanese painting. More recently, they seem simply cute…

Please see the link for the entire article.

Posted at 1:34 PM · Comments (0)

4 April 2005

Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

More than 2,000 people took to the streets Sunday in
Shengzhen, Guangdong Province, China, where many
Japanese firms operate, to protest Japan’s bid for a
seat on the United Nations Security Council.

The protesters called for a boycott of Japanese
products and collected signatures for their anti-Japan
campaign.

The rally, organized by the Guangdong Patriotic
Volunteers Network and other groups of local youths,
was one of the largest anti-Japan protests ever
organized in China by private organizations.

Banners bearing anti-Japan slogans, such as “Get out
of Diaoyutai” (the Chinese name for the Senkaku
Islands) and “Return resources to China,” were hung in
the square in central Shengzhen where the rally was
held.

The protesters, most of who were in their early 20s,
said Japan should not become a member of the Security
Council because it had not adequately reflected on its
past.

They also said the Chinese should not forget the
invasion of their country by Japan, and called for a
boycott of Japanese products and for Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi to be toppled.

As some onlookers joined in, excited demonstrators
destroyed ads for Japanese products at stores around
the square.

The Chinese government usually imposes restrictions on
rallies and demonstration, but the more than 200
police officers deployed to the scene kept a low
profile, indicating tacit approval for the rally.

When the rally ended after about an hour, the
participants divided into two groups and marched in
demonstration.

One group marched to a Jusco supermarket, which is run
by a Japanese company, where those who tried to enter
were blocked by armed police officers, resulting in a
tussle in which some demonstrators threw objects at
the officers.

According to an organization official, six cities in
the province, including Guangzhou and Dongwan,
launched campaigns to collect signatures against
Japan’s bid for a Security Council membership.

They also started boycotts of Japanese products, such
as beer and cell phones, he said.

Kyodo News
3 April 2005
Japanese store in China attacked during demo against
Japan

SHENZHEN, April 3, Kyodo -

A demonstration Saturday in central China against
Japan’s bid to obtain a permanent seat on the U.N.
Security Council turned violent as protestors
vandalized a Japanese-owned supermarket there, it was
learned Sunday.

According to the Japanese Consulate General in
Chongqing, following the three-hour demonstration in
Chengdu, Sichuan Province, around 30 people smashed
windows of the Ito-Yokado outlet.

There were unconfirmed reports of some people being
detained. Including onlookers, several hundred people
had gathered in front of the store during the
incident.

While many protests have been staged in China against
Japan’s attempt to become a permanent member of the
U.N. Security Council, Saturday’s demonstration was
apparently the first to result in actual damage to
Japanese property.

The consulate general proposed to the Sichuan
provincial government beefing up security to prevent a
recurrence of such an incident.

Posted at 1:32 PM · Comments (0)

Death sells, otherwise it would not be on television. Death has always
been news, obviously. But the death of Diana, queen-apparent of Britain, turned
death into a brand-builder. Diana was dead when television picked up
the reaction, but her funeral became the template. Greatness is now
measured by television footage. There is nothing wrong or unethical about this, for
television is the mass medium of the moment, in a way print could never
be, since television news has all the elements that the masses want: it is
audio-visual rather than intellectual, it is specific rather than
elaborate, and it is free. The length of the camera’s vigil is proof that John
Paul II is on the short list of great Popes. Add the fact that he is the only
Pope to feature in a comic book, and you need no more evidence that he has
the popular vote Karol Jozef Wojtyla, who took the name of John Paul upon his election
as Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of St Peter, Prince of
Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate
Italy and Sovereign of Vatican City, became convinced of his destiny
not when he became Pope on 16 October 1978 after the sudden death of John
Paul I but after an assassin’s bullet failed to kill him on 13 May 1981.
The strange story goes back to another 13 May, during the First World
War.

On 13 May 1917, the Virgin Mary, in a size no larger than a doll,
appeared
in a vision to three peasant children in a Portuguese village called
Fatimah, and told them three things about the future. The first was
that the
Great War would end soon. The second was that a second world war would
begin
if Christians did not pray to her. The third revelation was considered
so
volatile that it was kept secret in the archives of the Vatican. There
would
be an attempt on the life of a Pope by an atheist, after which the
atheist
empire would be brought down.
It was not as if a Pope had never been assassinated. By far the larger
number of Popes has been more political than ecclesiastical, playing a
vigorous role in the politics of Europe and sometimes paying the price
of
politics. The first Pope to be assassinated was John VIII – the
slightly
inadequate poison took so long to take effect that the assassins
decided to
speed things up by clubbing him. Other inventive methods to get rid of
Popes
included placing crushed glass in figs or lemons offered to the Holy
Father.
But the gradual separation of Church and State in Europe changed the
nature
of a Pope’s power and reduced his vulnerability. Popes now expect to
die a
normal death.
On 13 May 1981, a Turk called Mehmet Ali Agca, in the pay of the Soviet
bloc, fired twice at the Pope in Rome. A bullet lodged in his body, but
he
survived. Later, the Pope visited Agca in his prison to forgive him,
and
heard Agca say, in astonishment, “How is it that I did not kill you?”
Pope
John Paul II offered the bullet extracted from his body at the shrine
of
Virgin Mary in Fatimah. He knew who had saved him. He also knew that it
was
his destiny to make the revelation come true. He had in fact started
such a
mission much before 1981.
When Karol Wojtyla became Pope, Yuri Andropov, the celebrated chief of
the
KGB and later head of the Soviet Union, apparently warned the Politburo
that
there would be trouble ahead. They did not have to wait long. Within a
year
of his election he visited Poland, then still a member of the Communist
bloc, and told a million-strong crowd, “You are men. You have dignity.
Don’t
crawl on your bellies.” Now that much more than a decade has passed
since
the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we have the virtue of hindsight,
those
three sentences sound very much like the beginning of the end. He made
history, and therefore has a right to be considered historic.
He was a believer in the classic mould, without private doubt or
cynicism.
His crusades were against atheism, rather than another faith. He made
no
secret of his antipathy to Godless communism, and once angered
Buddhists by
describing their religion as a largely “atheistic system”. Buddhist
priests
boycotted his visit to Sri Lanka. In contrast, he repaired relations
with
Jews. He was the first Pope to visit a synagogue and the memorial top
the
Holocaust at Auschwitz. Very correctly, he described Jews as “our elder
brothers”: Judaism, Christianity and Islam believe in the same line of
Prophets from Adam through Abraham, differing only who they consider
the
last messenger of their God. Jesus, the savior of Christians, is
venerated
in the Quran as a “Ruhollah”, or a prophet blessed with the spirit of
Allah;
and the virginity of Mary is also a Quranic belief, although the Quran
rejects any attribution of divinity to Jesus, considering the one God
to be
indivisible. He reached out to Islam as well, condemning the Crusades.
This
might seem a trifle irrelevant, until you examine some of the rhetoric
used
in contemporary political debate. He may have cooperated with the White
House and the CIA in bringing down the Soviet Empire, but he was
resolute in
his condemnation of the American war in Iraq. He had deep contempt for
materialism, often suggesting that little good could come out of an
addictive consumerism that defined the modern economy.
Faith is such a rarity now even among the faithful, that John Paul’s
conviction in the fundamentals of traditional Vatican doctrine could
hardly
be popular among liberals. His position on birth control is well-known;
he
refused to give permission to wear condoms even if the risk was to
life.
Mother Teresa, who he adored, had similar views. The Catholic Church
under
him thereby finessed itself out of the debate on AIDS. He hesitated to
criticize misconduct of his priests, even when the misconduct was
sexual.
Men of power are not immune to contradictions; they must be judged on
the
tilt of the balance. Personally speaking, and without meaning to hurt
any
sentiment, Pope John Paul’s contribution to the edifice of the
international
Church that was his parish is less important than his contribution to
the
idea of faith. The battle between faiths has been superseded by the
battle
for faith against the spreading triumph of rationalism. Faith is
reasonable,
but it is not rational. Faith is moral, ethical, doctrinaire and
inspirational. Faith believes that there are limits to man’s knowledge:
he
can, for instance, understand how he is born, but not why. He must
leave the
why to God. As the verse from the Quran that is recited during a
funeral
(“Inna li-llahi wa inna ilay-hi raji’un”) puts it, we belong to God,
and we
return to God. In an age that raises intellect to the power of prophecy
and
science to the status of a religion, John Paul believed in a faith
that
could move mountains. He did move one whole range of mountains, when he
took
on the Soviet empire. He was never ashamed of the tears shed in prayer.
A
sufi would have understood this. You do not have to agree with Pope
John
Paul in order to respect him.
For a believer the strange tale of the prophecy of the Holy Mother in
the
village of Fatimah would not have been strange at all. His sense of
history
would be deeply imbued with the doctrine of predetermination, the
belief
that nothing happens except by God’s will. Does that make him
“backward” and
“pre-modern”, a dinosaur from some “pre-enlightenment” age? There are
doubtless people who think so. Strangely the one quality that unbelief
does
not possess is humility. It needs must condemn the other to contempt.
Three
centuries ago the Church sent the heretic to the stake; today, the
heretic
sends the believer into the bear’s pit of ridicule. The behaviour of
reason
has not been as reasonable as you might expect.
Pope John Paul II believed in miracles. He lived beyond the age of
reason.

Posted at 8:48 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Japan Times

The media didn’t quite know what to make of that bizarre story last month about the elderly Sapporo man who allegedly killed his wife following a dinnertime spat. One might expect a husband to become angry over not getting enough food, TV commentators implied, but in this case the situation was the opposite. He killed her because she gave him too much.

When the husband complained, the wife reportedly told him that he didn’t have to eat it all, a remark that threw him into a rage. As best-selling author Takashi Yoro commented on TV Asahi’s “Hodo Station,” the 80-year-old suspect is old enough to have clear memories of World War II and its aftermath, when food was precious and people were constantly hungry.

What Yoro wanted to say was that the husband probably couldn’t tolerate the idea that his wife would throw food away, but in fact Japan leaves more food on its plate than any country in the world.

Last week, a letter appeared in the Asahi Shimbun penned by a 14-year-old girl who wrote about seeing Aichi Expo employees on TV confiscating visitors’ home-packed lunches for security reasons and throwing them away, a policy that has since been stopped as a result of public protest. The girl couldn’t believe this was happening “while people are starving in Sudan.”

The Agriculture Ministry estimates that, on average, 25 percent of the calories that are served to Japanese people is not eaten. In monetary terms, 11 trillion yen’s worth of food is thrown away annually. These figures becomes more alarming when food production is taken into consideration. Among developed countries, Japan has the lowest self-sufficiency rate in terms of food production: 40 percent.

A recent Asahi Shimbun series titled “Goodbye Wasteful Society” reported that Japan also has the highest “food mileage” index in the world. Food mileage, a term devised by a consumer group in England, is a number that implies the amount of extra energy expended for the production of food due to transportation from the primary producer to the end consumer. Japan’s index in 2001 was 900 billion ton-kilometers, more than three times that of the United States, which has more than twice Japan’s population.

Japan’s wasteful food situation is informed by more than just economics. In the Asahi article, an Agriculture Ministry spokesman said that Japanese people not only eat more “extravagantly” now than at any time in their history, but that they eat more extravagantly than any people in world history, including kings and tyrants.

Part of the reason for this waste is that the media has convinced people that access to great food is their right, and that no one has to put up with sub-standard cuisine. This is the precept behind the whale-hunting controversy, which says that Japan’s “unique culture” gives it the right to consume whale meat regardless of the ecological effects and the fact that there are other sources of protein available. It is this same precept that is currently decimating tuna populations in the world’s oceans and which is behind the American-instigated obsession with cheap beef, of which the Japanese were once the biggest importers.

The precept has been reinforced by decades of television that obsesses over food in the form of either cooking programs or travelogues that center on local cuisines and famous eateries, and which all boil down to the money shot of some celebrity eating and enthusing over taste and texture. The upshot is a consumer culture that demands only the best, and while many people say this attitude leads to better quality food, it also encourages waste.

The nadir of this cultural phenomenon is “Ai no Apron” (The Apron of Love)” (TV Asahi, 7 p.m.), a cooking show that not only deems food-waste acceptable, but attempts to make it entertaining.

Though the program has angered people — mainly for its embrace of gender stereotypes — the fact that it was moved more than a year ago from a late-night slot to prime time indicates that a lot of people watch it. The premise is simple: Several female tarento each charged with making a certain dish in the studio. They then serve it to male celebrities who pass judgment on it.

The original show had less to do with food than with showcasing cleavage, which is one of the missions of late-night TV. The prime-time version still features ditsy nubile girls, but most of the female guests are older and famous for other things. The idea is to see whether or not they are truly “feminine”; in other words, can they cook well enough to please a man.

One can never overstate Japanese TV’s penchant for simple-minded sexism, but the entertainment of “Apron” is predicated on something else, namely the expectation that awful dishes will be produced sometime during the show. The purpose, however, is not instructional. No attempt is made to teach viewers how to cook. The only aim is to show people writhing in agony after downing badly prepared food.

These interludes climax in what is euphemistically called “etiquette time.” As the judge, unable to swallow the horrible concoction in his mouth, runs offstage to discharge it, an insert showing that particular dish in its ideally prepared form is flashed on the screen. On last week’s two-hour special, comedian Ken Shimura passed judgment on a Taiwanese idol’s attempt at cooked squid. “It tastes like sewage,” he said. Everybody laughed.

“Ai no Apron” has attracted criticism for such antics, but at least it’s upfront about the food it wastes. It’s impossible to watch other, ostensibly more respectable cooking and travel shows and not wonder what happens to all the food that’s so lovingly prepared for celebrities, who usually only eat a mouthful or two. If the crew doesn’t finish it off, then it too probably ends up in the garbage. Since food is treated as nothing more than a prop, in the final analysis it doesn’t make any difference if it’s good or bad. It’s food for the eye, not the stomach.

The Japan Times: April 3, 2005

Posted at 9:50 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
Saturday, April 2, 2005

TOKYO Chung Hyang Gyun’s news conference was a sight seldom seen in Japan, the raw anger written across her face, the fury in her voice and words, the palpable feeling that these last words would somehow redeem the futility of her actions.

“I want to tell people all over the world that they shouldn’t come to Japan to work,” Chung said in perfect Japanese, befitting someone who has lived only in Japan. “Being a worker in Japan is no different from being a robot.”

After a decade-long battle, the Supreme Court ruled recently that Chung, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a South Korean man, who was born in Japan and has lived all her life here, could not take the test to become a supervisor at a public health center because she was a foreigner.

“I have no tears to shed,” said Chung, a 55-year-old nurse. “I can only laugh.”

Chung is what the Japanese call a “Zainichi,” a term that literally means “to stay in Japan,” but that is usually shorthand for Koreans who came here during Japan’s colonial rule, and their descendants. Considered outsiders both in Japan and on the Korean peninsula, they have, over the years, adopted different ways of living in Japan.

Japan has softened its attitudes toward the Zainichi, and many have become citizens and taken Japanese names. Others have taken citizenship, but kept their Korean names. Others, like Chung, have taken neither citizenship nor name. Disagreements exist, even within families.

Reaction to the court’s ruling - that local governments can bar “foreigners” from holding official positions where they exercise “government power” - was split along political lines. Liberals said an aging Japan with a shrinking work force would lose by shutting out people like Chung, who could hardly be considered a “foreigner.” Conservatives said foreigners like Chung should simply become Japanese citizens.

The morning after Chung’s news conference, her boss asked whether she regretted her words, she recalled in an interview. “No way,” was her answer. “I didn’t say enough.”

Chung’s father, Chung Yeon Gyu, a Korean nationalist who opposed Japanese colonial rule, arrived in Japan in the 1920s. According to Toshio Takayanagi, a historian at Hosei University in Tokyo, Chung Yeon Gyu published novels and essays critical of the Japanese government; his writings were often censored and in 1944 he was put on a watch list by a special police unit.

During Japan’s colonial rule, some Koreans went to Japan looking for economic opportunities, while others were taken there as forced laborers. By 1944, nearly two million Koreans lived in Japan, though most were repatriated after Japan’s defeat in World War II, and the number fell to fewer than 600,000 by 1947. In 1952, the Zainichi were made to choose between South or North Korean citizenship, and were recognized as permanent residents of Japan.

Chung’s parents settled in Iwate prefecture in northern Japan. While she was growing up there, Chung remembers, most of her classmates were told by their parents not to associate with her.

“Once when some kids threw dirt on my dress, my father said, ‘Who did that? You should fight against them.’ But my mother said, ‘Don’t blame them. It’s the parents who didn’t teach them.”’

When she entered junior high school, a teacher ordered her to adopt a Japanese name. Other Zainichi in her class, who used Japanese names and hid their real ethnic backgrounds, faced anguish at graduation ceremonies when certificates were handed out in their Korean names.

Unwanted in Japan, she dreamed of finding acceptance in South Korea, where she went to study after graduating from college in Japan. “But what I faced was terrible discrimination,” she said.

South Korea, then headed by the military ruler, Park Chung Hee, was fiercely suspicious of Zainichi, many of whom were pro-North Korea. (A Zainichi would, in fact, later try to assassinate Park in Seoul, killing his wife instead.) What’s more, Zainichi like Chung, who barely spoke Korean, were not considered Korean at all.

Eventually, Chung became a public health nurse and in 1988 she was hired by the Tokyo Metropolitan government. Given the traditional Japanese respect for civil servants, her daily life became easier. For once, she faced no discrimination and she even considered getting Japanese citizenship.

But everything changed in 1994 when she applied to take a test for a managerial post. After she was told that managers had to be Japanese, she filed the lawsuit that was recently rejected by the Supreme Court.

Recently, civil service positions have been opened to non-Japanese in 11 out of 47 prefectures and most big cities. But only a few municipalities, like Kawasaki City near Tokyo, have opened management-level positions to non-Japanese. The Supreme Court ruling makes it less likely that other municipalities would follow suit.

The easiest route toward the managerial posts is to acquire Japanese citizenship, a choice that more Zainichi have been making. In 2003, there were only 470,000 officially recognized Zainichi, a drop of about 100,000 since 1993. Naturalized Japanese are no longer counted as Zainichi.

One of them is Chung’s older brother, Tei Taikin, a professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University specializing in Japan-Korean relations and Zainichi issues. He became a naturalized Japanese in 2004, changed his name and urged his sister to make the same choice.

A Zainichi is confined to an uncertain existence, he wrote in Chuo Koron, a conservative monthly. “In order to remove such uncertainty, you need to get your nationality closer to your identity - that is, acquire Japanese nationality and, hopefully, you can live as a Korean-Japanese.” Chung said she had not read her brother’s essays.

“Zainichi who get Japanese nationality do so feeling, ‘What else can I do?”’ she said. “They do so because they do not want to be discriminated against.”

“For the Japanese government, there is no greater eyesore than the Zainichi who refuse to be naturalized, because the Zainichi are a reminder of unresolved postwar issues,” she said. “Zainichi people’s existence is significant because we are witnesses to history.”

Posted at 9:42 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
Saturday, April 2, 2005

TOKYO Chung Hyang Gyun’s news conference was a sight seldom seen in Japan, the raw anger written across her face, the fury in her voice and words, the palpable feeling that these last words would somehow redeem the futility of her actions.

“I want to tell people all over the world that they shouldn’t come to Japan to work,” Chung said in perfect Japanese, befitting someone who has lived only in Japan. “Being a worker in Japan is no different from being a robot.”

After a decade-long battle, the Supreme Court ruled recently that Chung, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a South Korean man, who was born in Japan and has lived all her life here, could not take the test to become a supervisor at a public health center because she was a foreigner.

“I have no tears to shed,” said Chung, a 55-year-old nurse. “I can only laugh.”

Chung is what the Japanese call a “Zainichi,” a term that literally means “to stay in Japan,” but that is usually shorthand for Koreans who came here during Japan’s colonial rule, and their descendants. Considered outsiders both in Japan and on the Korean peninsula, they have, over the years, adopted different ways of living in Japan.

Japan has softened its attitudes toward the Zainichi, and many have become citizens and taken Japanese names. Others have taken citizenship, but kept their Korean names. Others, like Chung, have taken neither citizenship nor name. Disagreements exist, even within families.

Reaction to the court’s ruling - that local governments can bar “foreigners” from holding official positions where they exercise “government power” - was split along political lines. Liberals said an aging Japan with a shrinking work force would lose by shutting out people like Chung, who could hardly be considered a “foreigner.” Conservatives said foreigners like Chung should simply become Japanese citizens.

The morning after Chung’s news conference, her boss asked whether she regretted her words, she recalled in an interview. “No way,” was her answer. “I didn’t say enough.”

Chung’s father, Chung Yeon Gyu, a Korean nationalist who opposed Japanese colonial rule, arrived in Japan in the 1920s. According to Toshio Takayanagi, a historian at Hosei University in Tokyo, Chung Yeon Gyu published novels and essays critical of the Japanese government; his writings were often censored and in 1944 he was put on a watch list by a special police unit.

During Japan’s colonial rule, some Koreans went to Japan looking for economic opportunities, while others were taken there as forced laborers. By 1944, nearly two million Koreans lived in Japan, though most were repatriated after Japan’s defeat in World War II, and the number fell to fewer than 600,000 by 1947. In 1952, the Zainichi were made to choose between South or North Korean citizenship, and were recognized as permanent residents of Japan.

Chung’s parents settled in Iwate prefecture in northern Japan. While she was growing up there, Chung remembers, most of her classmates were told by their parents not to associate with her.

“Once when some kids threw dirt on my dress, my father said, ‘Who did that? You should fight against them.’ But my mother said, ‘Don’t blame them. It’s the parents who didn’t teach them.”’

When she entered junior high school, a teacher ordered her to adopt a Japanese name. Other Zainichi in her class, who used Japanese names and hid their real ethnic backgrounds, faced anguish at graduation ceremonies when certificates were handed out in their Korean names.

Unwanted in Japan, she dreamed of finding acceptance in South Korea, where she went to study after graduating from college in Japan. “But what I faced was terrible discrimination,” she said.

South Korea, then headed by the military ruler, Park Chung Hee, was fiercely suspicious of Zainichi, many of whom were pro-North Korea. (A Zainichi would, in fact, later try to assassinate Park in Seoul, killing his wife instead.) What’s more, Zainichi like Chung, who barely spoke Korean, were not considered Korean at all.

Eventually, Chung became a public health nurse and in 1988 she was hired by the Tokyo Metropolitan government. Given the traditional Japanese respect for civil servants, her daily life became easier. For once, she faced no discrimination and she even considered getting Japanese citizenship.

But everything changed in 1994 when she applied to take a test for a managerial post. After she was told that managers had to be Japanese, she filed the lawsuit that was recently rejected by the Supreme Court.

Recently, civil service positions have been opened to non-Japanese in 11 out of 47 prefectures and most big cities. But only a few municipalities, like Kawasaki City near Tokyo, have opened management-level positions to non-Japanese. The Supreme Court ruling makes it less likely that other municipalities would follow suit.

The easiest route toward the managerial posts is to acquire Japanese citizenship, a choice that more Zainichi have been making. In 2003, there were only 470,000 officially recognized Zainichi, a drop of about 100,000 since 1993. Naturalized Japanese are no longer counted as Zainichi.

One of them is Chung’s older brother, Tei Taikin, a professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University specializing in Japan-Korean relations and Zainichi issues. He became a naturalized Japanese in 2004, changed his name and urged his sister to make the same choice.

A Zainichi is confined to an uncertain existence, he wrote in Chuo Koron, a conservative monthly. “In order to remove such uncertainty, you need to get your nationality closer to your identity - that is, acquire Japanese nationality and, hopefully, you can live as a Korean-Japanese.” Chung said she had not read her brother’s essays.

“Zainichi who get Japanese nationality do so feeling, ‘What else can I do?”’ she said. “They do so because they do not want to be discriminated against.”

“For the Japanese government, there is no greater eyesore than the Zainichi who refuse to be naturalized, because the Zainichi are a reminder of unresolved postwar issues,” she said. “Zainichi people’s existence is significant because we are witnesses to history.”

Posted at 9:42 AM · Comments (0)

1 April 2005 Copyright The Financial Times

Go back two or three years and the issue that most occupied the best foreign policy brains was how America would (or should) deploy its unrivalled power in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. More recently, brows have furrowed over the strategic implications of President George W. Bush’s determination to overturn the authoritarian status quo in the Middle East. Like much else, though, foreign policy is a slave to fashion. So the issue of the moment is no longer how the global system adjusts to the American imperium but rather how the US accommodates the world’s rising powers, above all China.

The prosaic reality is that all three of these things will remake the geostrategic landscape in the coming decades. The huge uncertainties inherent in each of them - and in the interactions between them - do much to explain why that terrain is still wrapped in a dense fog. Logic says that a world free of cold war nuclear confrontation should be a safer place. But we have learnt that dangerous certainties can seem more reassuring than unpredictable upheavals.

In this context, it is fair to say that the implications of China’s rapid emergence as a global power have been neglected. The war in Iraq, the hunt for al-Qaeda, the promised US drive to democratise the Middle East and the splintering of the transatlantic alliance have all grabbed more headlines. China, and for that matter India, have been there in the background. But only recently have the geostrategic implications of China’s economic power gained serious attention beyond the think-tanks.

The transatlantic dispute over whether the European Union should lift its embargo on arms sales to Beijing illustrates the point. The ill-considered decision to end the ban did not speak to any serious judgment about how Europe should build a constructive relationship with China. Rather, it reflected an instinctive desire to grab a slice of a lucrative market.

Equally, the Bush administration’s angry response to the European proposal was as much about political reflexes as considered judgment. The US administration cannot avoid taking positions towards China, not least because of the security threats posed by tension in the Taiwan Strait and by North Korea’s nuclear programme. But Washington’s present approach - encouraging China’s integration into the global economy while containing its military power and strengthening America’s bilateral alliances - scarcely amounts to a strategic map.

A shrewd observer of these things told me recently that historians would look back on November 2004 as the moment when China’s economic power translated into a decisive shift in the global political balance. That month, Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, toured Latin America buying up as much iron ore, copper, tin, bauxite and soyabeans as he could find.

This was more, though, than a shopping trip to sate China’s voracious appetite for raw materials. As Washington’s gaze remained fixed on the Middle East, China was building alliances in America’s backyard and making friends of Mr Bush’s enemies. In December, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president and Washington’s bête noire, visited Beijing to clinch a long-term oil supply agreement. All this, of course, followed other, equally unwelcome, Chinese energy deals with countries such as Sudan and Iran.

I am not sure historians will be as diligent in their research as my friend suggests. What is true is that Chinese power has become ever more apparent even as the Bush administration has hesitated over whether to see it as a strategic partner or rival. During her recent tour of the region, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, contrived to do both. “We want China as a global partner,” she said at one point. Beijing had shown itself an ally in the war on terror and had a critical role in persuading Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons programme. In the next breath, though, she warned that the European decision (now seemingly suspended) to lift the arms embargo, would “upset the balance of power in the region”. Beijing, meanwhile, had heightened tensions with Taiwan by passing a new anti-secession law. US efforts to bolster its relationships with Japan, South Korea and India, Ms Rice continued, were calculated to “create an environment in which China will play a positive role”. That sounds an awful lot like a policy of containment.

Some of the apparent contradictions are explicable. In any event, geopolitics is rarely neat. But the equivocal US stance also obscures the underlying forces. As a matter of definition, China is a rival to the US. China’s thirst for oil and other natural resources apart, for the past 60 years the US has been east Asia’s leading power and the sole security guarantor. Beijing’s growing influence, political and military as well as economic, promises to end that hegemony. Put simply, China’s rise will unavoidably be at the expense of US power. Washington can seek to slow the process with military embargoes and countervailing alliances but it cannot stop it.

The question, then, becomes whether the transition is relatively smooth and co-operative and what, if any, security structure replaces the present Pax America; or whether menace or miscalculation draw the US and China into conflict somewhere along the way.

The dangers are clear enough. The risk of unintended war in Taiwan or the Korean peninsula aside, east Asia has yet to throw off history’s grudges and territorial disputes. Renascent Japanese and Chinese nationalism are a reminder of how past rivalries weigh on the region. Alongside these lies the big “known unknown” as to whether China’s rising economic power will translate into political change. Will the communist leadership bow to or seek to rein back pressures for greater pluralism? To what extent will it remain in charge of events?

So Washington’s instinct is to seek to contain China by acting as the region’s balancing force. It may work for a while. The vital missing ingredient for long-term stability, though, is a multilateral security framework in which, albeit with US encouragement, the region’s other leading powers can work out their own accommodations. Europe needed the EU and the Atlantic alliance in order to exorcise the demons of its history. Both depended on enlightened self-interest in Washington. But in those days, of course, multilateralism was understood in the White House as a source of strength rather than weakness.

Posted at 12:37 PM · Comments (0)

1 April 2005

Wanna hold your hand: Lenovo Chairman Liu Chuanzhi (Left) with John Joyce, Senior Vice-President of IBM Global Services, at a ceremony in Beijing December 8, 2004, cementing the new relationship

NEW DELHI: The recent acquisition of a part of America’s iconic IBM by a Chinese company, Lenovo, has been seen by many as a turning point – a symbol of China’s rise and America’s decline. The significance of the event, however, lies elsewhere. The Chinese acquisition of IBM’s faltering PC division represents a fundamental in shift the global IT industry, a new division of labor in which the successful players – the United States, China, and India – adopt a more complementary than confrontational approach. The rise of Lenovo in the international scene also helps to underline Japan and Europe’s diminished role.

From an historical perspective, this shift arose from a second major globalization push that began in the closing decades of last century. The first revolution occurred in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Concentrated around transport and its associated technologies and resources (steel, oil, chemicals, ship-building, rolling stock, telegraph, etc), it witnessed the emergence of three new economic powers: the United States, Germany, and Japan. These countries challenged the global economic leadership hitherto dominated by Great Britain.

Of course, the driving technology of the globalization revolution in this century is IT. Most economic forecasts see the world economy in the next quarter-century being dominated by the US, China, and India, while Germany (and other European economies) and Japan decline. Microsoft and Dell of the US, Wipro and Infosys of India, and Lenovo and Huawei of China are the likely 21st century industrial giants comparable to 20th century global companies such as Rockefeller, Benz, and Mitsubishi. There is clearly a correlation between national economic power status and competitiveness at firm level in leading technological sectors.

The United States, home to half the world’s R&D in information technology, retains the position of global IT business dynamo. In the knowledge economy, where intellectual power is of crucial importance, the US not only benefits, but indeed also glows, as the magnet of the global brain drain. This distinguishes the United States from Europe, where immigration has been more at the brawn than at the brain level, and especially stands in starkest contrast with Japan, where neither foreign brain nor foreign brawn has been welcome. The US also has the most formidable corporate players across the IT spectrum, including Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Intel, and Motorola. Their American origins notwithstanding, all of these companies are highly globalized and engaged in strategic alliances with Asian partners both in hardware production and software development.

In the global IT business, India definitely supplies the brains (the soft), having eschewed the brawn (the hard). Indian IT companies are investing in China to acquire production capabilities; Chinese companies are investing in India to acquire software. India is improving its hardware production, and China is attracting more investment in research. American companies are outsourcing much of their development work to India, while still focusing on manufacturing in China.

Thus, Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s PC division can be seen in the light of the evolving corporate strategies. As American IT companies focus on systems, the more prosaic production business is being divested. The PC division lacked in profits, luster, and prospects – thus the incentive for IBM to sell. For Lenovo, meanwhile, the deal culminates a 20-year history of honing its manufacturing prowess. With the acquisition of IBM PC, Lenovo aims to establish itself as a global computer company both by learning from IBM and by utilizing (over a fixed time period) its brand name.

As the global IT revolution changes the world’s landscape, Europe has virtually withdrawn, albeit with some robust presence still in communications – notably the Finnish firm Nokia in mobile telephony. Japan has also suffered considerable decline, as the apparently dominant players of not that long ago, such as Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, and even Sony, have increasingly appeared as rather hobbled giants. As Europe and Japan sink to the status of “old economic powers” in the 21st century, the US retains its lead among the “new economic powers.”

There are two key contrasting features that distinguish the US from Europe and Japan. One is the US adherence to the principles of creative destruction: Companies are constantly in the process of re-inventing themselves and casting off the old to embrace the new, as well as of jettisoning costly operations in order to embark on profitable new opportunities and moving up the technology value-added ladder. Of course there are failures, but the “entrepreneurial” spirit that foreigners so much admire and envy in the US derives not just from the myriad start-ups, but also from the frequent metamorphoses occurring in large American companies that leave their stuffy old German and Japanese counterparts in the dust. Operating in environments of stifling regulations and rigidities, they seem to be gasping for breath.

Secondly, the United States derives tremendous benefits from the constant massive influx of immigrant brawn and immigrant brains. This offers obvious advantages in demographics and creativity: The US, unlike Europe and Japan, is not becoming a geriatric state. The tremendous role of foreigners, especially Asians, in the IT industry in America, in contrast to the much more national make-up of European and Japanese companies, is a great testimony to this fact.

Japan’s precipitate decline emerged due to the same two forces that have propelled the United States. The first factor is encapsulated in remarks made by then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone: When Japan was at the height of economic power and glory, he attributed its success in good part to Japan’s racial homogeneity. The second factor is that the Japanese do not embrace the notion of creative destruction. There are virtually no start-ups in Japan, and oftentimes large Japanese companies become immovable bureaucracies. In the days of “hard-power,” Japan’s racial homogeneity and strict hierarchy were, arguably, advantages. Famed Japanese management techniques such as kanban benefit from strict discipline and from workers’ ability to communicate easily. In this globalized, interdependent IT-revolutionary era, however, Japan’s racial exclusivity and corporate bureaucratic hierarchic immobility are major obstacles.

There is no God-or-man-written law that says that as new powers emerge, others must eclipse. Economics is not a zero-sum game. The rise of China and India – and other countries – should ideally revivify the older economic powers by providing new horizons, new challenges and new inspirations. Not only opening up to foreign talent, but indeed competing for it, is one prescription that Japan and Europe could fruitfully apply. Understanding the principles and implementing the practices of creative destruction is another constructive prescription.

The recent announcement that Sony, beset by poor results, rigidities, and strategic drift, has turned to its first non-Japanese CEO a Welshman, Sir Howard Stringer, and that he will be running the company from New York, may in time also symbolize a seismic shift in Japan’s corporate culture needed to revitalize its economy. With the much heralded Lisbon Strategy – EU reforms created to inject new dynamism and growth into the regional economy – European leaders might reflect on their past: During the age of exploration, success was driven by creativity, an enterprising global outlook, and ambitious leadership in boldly setting out for the unknown.

Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Lehmann@imd.ch, is Professor of International Political Economy at IMD, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Founding Director of The Evian Group.

Posted at 12:35 PM · Comments (0)

South Korea has rolled up its sleeve to thwart Japan’s bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Kim Sam-hoon, ambassador to the U.N., Thursday heralded a clear shift in Seoul’s position from the previous “indirect opposition” to an active diplomatic drive to keep Japan from obtaining a seat in the top U.N. security body.

“There are difficulties for a country, which does not have the trust of its regional neighbors because of its lack of reflection on its past, to play the role of a world leader,” Kim said at a meeting with Korean correspondents in New York.

“We do not think Japan has the qualifications to become a U.N. Security Council member, and we will try to make sure it does not become one,” he added.

Japan has put itself on a collision course with both China and South Korea, as well as North Korea, in recent years as its leaders from time to time provoked its neighboring countries with improper statements and actions, triggering historical and territorial disputes.

In particular, Japan has recently created diplomatic friction with South Korea because of a series of attempts by Tokyo to lay claim to Tokto (Dokdo) in the East Sea. A new middle school textbook in Japan further exacerbated tensions as it glorifies the atrocities Japan committed during World War II.

Millions of men and women from countries in Asia and the Pacific were killed by the Japanese military, forced to provide labor or pressed into sexual slavery. Many believe Japan has yet to make a full apology for the wartime atrocities and pay adequate reparations to the victims.

South Korea will hold a meeting with other member countries of the so-called Coffee Club next month to discuss reform measures of the U.N., including the reform of the Security Council, according to Seoul’s mission at the U.N.

The UNSC is composed of five veto-wielding permanent members _ the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China _ and 10 non-permanent members elected for two-year terms. South Korea once served as a non-permanent member in 1996-1997.

U.N. member nations have been discussing ways to reform the 15-member Security Council, with one of the two concrete options _ both increasing the total number of seats to 24 _ most likely being adopted.

Germany, India, Brazil and Japan, which openly declared their bids for permanent membership in an expanded Security Council, favor Plan A, which will increase the number of permanent members from five to 11 and non-permanent members from 10 to 13.

Instead of creating more permanent members, South Korea and other countries want to raise the number of non-permanent members in the UNSC.

“Our first goal will be thwarting Plan A,” Kim said. “Though we’re not opposed any particular country’s bid, we simply believe that a country not trusted by its regional neighbors cannot be a world leader.”

Any UNSC reform plan, which requires revision of the U.N. Charter, cannot be approved if any of the current five permanent members wields its veto rights.

A strong ally of Japan, the United States gave public support for Tokyo. China, though it has not so far made its position clear, has a similar stance with South Korea, according to sources.

Posted at 12:13 PM · Comments (0)

Published March 31, 2005 - Copyright The Daily Hampshire Gazette (Massachusetts)
By TOM MARSHALL Staff Writer

Bemoaning a neglected continent - Times journalist talks of needs and gaines in Africa

NORTHAMPTON - There was a moment in the early 1990s when the world didn’t avert its eyes from the continent of Africa.

The Cold War had just ended, recalled veteran New York Times journalist Howard W. French, and there was talk in America and Western Europe of a ”peace dividend.” The competition with the Soviet Union for military dominance was over, and perhaps all of those defense dollars could be spent to alleviate poverty and spur economic development, he said.

But that moment of attention was the rare exception for a continent that has been ”chronically and perpetually ignored and disregarded,” French said Wednesday in a well-attended lecture at Smith College.

The 1979 UMass graduate served as West Africa bureau chief for the Times from 1994 to 1998, after stints for the paper in Central America and the Caribbean and an early freelancing career in West Africa. His first book, ”A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa” was published last year.

French said American policy makers have found plenty of reasons to neglect a continent beset by brutal wars, disease, and famine. ”We throw up our hands and ask ourselves, ‘What good does it do to help those people?”’ he said.

But a little bit of attention and aid could go a long way in many African countries that rank among the world’s poorest, French said, suggesting that assistance might even prove beneficial to the U.S. economy in the long run.

”I don’t actually think we need to pour a lot of money into Africa,” he said. ”There’s a dirty little secret about aid. Most of what we call aid is business contracts for our own companies. It’s creating business opportunities for American companies.”

French said relatively small investments in potable water and health care could help reduce deaths and illnesses from water-borne diseases, increasing life expectancy and worker productivity.

Literacy instruction can also provide broad benefits in many areas, from commerce and governance to health care and gender equity, he said. ”Teaching kids how to read is something we understand and can make happen quickly.”

International trade agreements are ”blatantly rigged” in favor of industrialized nations, French said, citing U.S. and European protectionism in basic commodities like sugar and cotton that are mainstays to many African economies.

He cited a 2003 commentary in the Times entitled ”Your Farm Subsidies Are Strangling Us,” in which the presidents of Mali and Burkina Faso called for an end to price supports for around 2,500 U.S. farmers that have the ”unintended but nevertheless real effect of impoverishing some 10 million rural poor people in West and Central Africa.”

And the U.S. can make a crucial difference in supporting fragile democracies that have already taken root in countries like Mali, Botswana, and Ghana, he said. Training lawyers, judges, bankers, and government officials to run efficient and transparent institutions is far easier than pressuring undemocratic regimes to change, he added.

Forcing African nations to pay off mountains of accumulated debt was both unrealistic and immoral, he said.

”Most of that debt is Cold War debt, contracted with absolute goons,” French said, referring to U.S.-supported dictators who often sent the money to their own offshore accounts. ”It’s simply an injustice to expect the world’s poorest people to pay debts that never served their intended purpose.”

French, who now covers China for the Times, said there were already plenty of success stories in Africa, including the end of apartheid in South Africa, dramatic reductions in AIDS transmission in Uganda, and the potential for peace in the Darfur region of Sudan.

If Western nations can help to build strong institutions and clear away barriers to trade, including arcane legal systems that make business risky, then investors could flock to Africa as they once flocked to undeveloped countries in Asia, he said. ”So let’s help create the conditions.”

Tom Marshall can be reached at

tmarshall@gazettenet.com.

Posted at 1:00 AM · Comments (0)

Posted Friday, April 1, 2005 Copyright Slate

Fake restaurant coming soon?
The twentysomething American who offered to show me around Shanghai Monday evening was battling a cold, so, at a banquette table at Sasha’s, a converted 1920s mansion near Sun Yat Sen’s house, he stuck to tea. After my blurry night with the Cleveland cell-phone entrepreneur, this sounded soothing, so it was tea for two.

According to my host, an ex-Wall Street analyst turned novelist and Mandarin student, and his friends (a TV producer, an English-language magazine columnist, and the recipient of a technology fellowship), there are two types of expatriates in Shanghai: Those who work for multinational corporations and those who don’t. The former enjoy plush “expat packages,” which include humongous salaries, chauffeurs, maids, and villas in Pudong. The latter pursue creative or “deadbeat” jobs while nurturing entrepreneurial fantasies. What everyone seems to have in common—expats and natives alike—is a penchant for collecting pirated DVDs.

One of the expats at our table had amassed 200. Another, 400. All looked at me funny when I asked whether anyone had any moral or legal qualms about this. Later, in Beijing, when I asked the same question of a business-school professor, the head of a trade organization, and two CEOs—the sorts of serious people, who, in the U.S., might become apoplectic about, say, file-sharing—I saw the same quizzical look, with one of the CEOs adding that having to spend more than $2 for a DVD or $10 for Windows XP was an outrage. At Sasha’s, the expats explained that buying real DVDs wasn’t an option, especially for the Chinese, because real DVDs cost 10 times more and weren’t even available. (The TV producer claimed she knew of a store that carried them, but the others disputed this.) Fake DVDs, moreover, often were real DVDs: The same factories that produced and shipped real ones during the day produced and shipped fake ones at night.

Fake DVDs could be found almost anywhere, my host said, but, for a wide selection, I should check out the Jade Garden (name changed at his request, because of worries that he would be ostracized if I inadvertently got the place shut down). After tea, he led me down a street in the French Concession where he pointed out other forms of Shanghai entertainment, including massage parlors disguised as hair salons and smoky Internet cafes packed with people playing computer games. (Online gaming has spawned such amazing stock-market moonshots as Shanda Interactive.) Then we flagged a cab and headed for the Jade Garden.

Trafficking in pirated DVDs is technically illegal in China, but given the prevailing attitudes, you could be forgiven for missing this. Still, the need to keep up appearances explained, in part, why the Jade Garden bothered to engage in a comically lame charade. Ostensibly, the place was a restaurant. The opened door revealed a small, fluorescent dining room, with empty tables and chairs and bottles of booze on the bar. The only person in the room, however, was the proprietress, who was watching television and reading a newspaper. She jumped up as we entered, but then didn’t bat an eye as we strode past her into a dark corridor. We walked deep into the gloom, past a kitchen filled with dirty dishes, and then stopped at a closed door that might have been a linen closet.

Behind the door was a bustling, bright retail operation that, rumor has it, rakes in about $1 million a year. It was the size of a large newsstand in Grand Central Station and just as busy. The shelves on the walls made it look like, well, a video store, and the merchandise was organized by genre. As least 20 shoppers, laowai and Chinese alike, were combing through the place, with the sounds of discussions, negotiations, and/or transactions filling the air. On tables in the center were piles of loose DVDs. I picked up Shark Tale, an authentic-looking box emblazoned with an odd blurb from the Chicago Tribune: “Dated … and only intermittently funny.” Shark Tale was a movie I would not have paid to see and would not have bought for full-price. At $1, however, why not?

This, of course, reveals one of the two fallacies in the media industry’s assertion that file-sharing and DVD piracy are the same as “stealing”: Some of the supposed damages from “lost sales” would never have been sales in the first place. The other fallacy is that the “theft” of digital property is the same as the theft of physical property—which it isn’t. When someone steals a physical product—a car, say, or a DVD from the shelves of Blockbuster—the owner has lost more than a potential sale; he or she has lost inventory. When someone buys a copy of a digital product, however, for which the owner of the copyright has paid nothing, the owner has lost only a potential sale. This doesn’t make file-sharing or DVD piracy OK—there must be some way for producers and packagers to get paid—but it does explain, in part, why millions of people who would never shoplift are so eager to collect pirated DVDs.

At the Jade Garden, my host asked a roving cashier with a fistful of renminbi where the DVDs came from. “The middle of China,” she said, reflexively, and then clammed up. Most people I spoke to later agreed that, if one followed the money-and-production trail all the way back, one would eventually arrive at the government—although which government, local, regional, or national, was a question. This, combined with the fact that the fake DVD industry creates thousands of jobs and pumps millions of dollars into the economy, explains why law enforcement is, shall we say, spotty.

But spotty doesn’t mean nonexistent. Last summer, for example, a joint strike force composed of the Motion Picture Association of America, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security culminated a three-year investigation by storming into the Shanghai penthouse apartment of one Randolph Hobson Guthrie III, the 37-year-old son of a rich Manhattan family. Guthrie, according to a Wall Street Journal article and other sources, had moved to Shanghai in 1995, MBA in hand, and after trying and failing to find satisfying work at a multinational, founded a highly profitable business with a great product and ecstatic customers. Alas, the MGM attorney who clicked on Guthrie’s ad (on eBay) for an otherwise-unavailable boxed set of James Bond movies was not awed by his entrepreneurial genius, and, when the authorities raided his apartment, they reportedly found 210,000 pirated DVDs, seven computers, and mountains of cash.

The bust gave the Chinese government the opportunity to look tough (and blame the problem on Americans) and gave U.S. authorities an opportunity to pacify griping media companies (and blame the problem on China). Earlier this year, Guthrie was convicted of “operating an illegal business” and now faces up to 15 years in a Chinese jail.

Posted at 11:11 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 31, 2005

TOKYO — Lights flashed wildly as young fans crowded a department-store entrance in this city’s neon-lit Shibuya district to see Thai singing sensation Tata Young perform. “What’s up, Japan?” Ms. Young shouted, in English, to the Japanese crowd.

Then, the long-haired diva, crammed into a shiny purple dress, let loose with “Sexy, Naughty, Bitchy,” the lead track of her new English-language album, belting out: “Can’t change the way I am, sexy, naughty, bitchy me.”

Moriya Wataru, a stylish 23-year-old hairdresser, was in the crowd, sporting white loafers, two belts and sunglasses. Clutching a copy of Ms. Young’s new CD, he pronounced the music “cool,” saying that he’d already seen her in TV commercials. “I thought she could make it here in Japan.”

Record companies are grooming a growing number of multilingual Asian pop artists for global stardom. The 24-year-old Ms. Young has been signed by Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. Other acts vying for the spotlight include an Asian-styled version of the Spice Girls called Baby Vox, Japanese star Hikaru Utada and the Britney Spears-esque BoA of South Korea.

Tata Young, one of Thailand’s leading pop singers, is hoping to find success beyond Asian countries.

Some are trying to build a following across Asia, and especially in China. But the dream for most is to break into the U.S. and other Western markets.

Yet conquering the U.S. pop charts won’t be easy. British and Canadian acts have crossed over by the dozen, but few if any Asians have made their mark with Western audiences. One reason: There often hasn’t been much to differentiate Asian artists from their non-Asian pop competitors, aside from ethnicity.

Hong Kong-born diva CoCo Lee’s first effort to bust onto the American scene with the English-language album “Just No Other Way,” for example, fizzled in 2000, despite a serious marketing push by Sony BMG. “Maybe the songs weren’t strong enough,” says Richard Denekamp, president of Sony BMG’s Asia operations.

In 2003, Asia’s music market was valued at $5.8 billion, behind Europe at $11.8 billion and North America at $12.5 billion, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry world-wide. The vast majority of Asia’s music sales are in Japan. Excluding that country, Asian sales totaled just $900 million (many CDs are pirated in Asia, particularly in China). As a result, artists like Baby Vox hedge their cross-cultural bets. The five Korean performers are studying Mandarin and Japanese in addition to English.

But music promoters insist it is only a matter of time before an Asian artist or band will break big in the West. For one thing, their music is getting better and the stars more sophisticated, as the international producers, video directors and others who help create pop acts in the West direct their talents to the East. Asian culture also is gaining more influence globally. And marketers are getting savvier about cutting unusual cross-cultural deals.

The South Korean promoter of Baby Vox, for instance, says it is close to signing a deal with California-based Bungalo Records to help push the group’s new album, which comes in both Korean- and English-language versions.

Under the plan, Bungalo, which is distributed by Vivendi Universal SA, would agree to promote Baby Vox in the U.S. DR International, Baby Vox’s label, in turn would push Bungalo’s Western artists in Asian markets such as China, where it has more experience.

Real success, of course, first relies on having the right beats. To give her music more of a Western style, Ms. Young, Thailand’s reigning queen of pop, has spent the past two years working with producers in Sweden — long a hotbed of pop music production. After arriving in the country with just one song, producers there experimented with drums, synthesizers and guitars to create a new style for her.

She released her first English-language album, “I Believe,” in Southeast Asia in February 2004. Since then, in addition to Japan, she has toured Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and China, where she recently wrapped shooting on a soft-drink commercial for PepsiCo Inc. In India, Ms. Young’s music is featured in the soundtrack of a Bollywood action movie.

Now, Ms. Young is looking beyond Asia. Mr. Denekamp of Sony BMG Asia says his company’s Australian and German units expressed interest in “I Believe” when he pitched it around the company’s global operations. Ms. Young’s international manager, Doug Banker of McGhee Entertainment in Los Angeles, says Australia would be a “big win” for the pop diva, since it would mark her entry to the Western market. But even he admits it is a tentative first step.

Mr. Denekamp has given the U.S. market a go, too. “I have to convince my bosses and my colleagues in the U.S. that she is worth giving a try,” he says. But after his pitch — he showed off the artist’s music, videos and photos — the American executives are still “wavering,” he says. “Getting a chance and breaking in the U.S. is everybody’s dream. It is probably at the same time the most difficult thing to achieve, because the competition is enormous,” Mr. Denekamp says.

And the challenges are growing, in part because more and more music sales are coming from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other middle-of-the-road mass retailers whose customers tend to prefer music that is made in the U.S.A. “It’s been very rare that anything that isn’t American, Canadian or from the U.K. sells a lot of records, or has any sort of lasting career,” says Ron Shapiro, president of Ron Shapiro Management & Consulting LLC and a former co-president of Atlantic Records.

On top of that, Asian stars lack something that has helped a growing number of Latin acts cross over: a large and supportive ethnic fan base. The U.S. Asian-American community, while large and growing, still isn’t big enough to propel Asian artists to mass appeal.

One Asian record label is trying to buck the conventional wisdom that cracking the U.S. market is essential to achieving global fame. Lee Soo Man, president of South Korea’s S.M. Entertainment, says his goal is to see his superstar teen idol BoA compete with U.S. music stars. But the music executive says he can achieve that goal if BoA conquers Japan and China. BoA has already scored a chart-topping hit in Japan, a first for any Korean pop star.

“Eventually the Asian market will get bigger than the world-dominating Hollywood market,” Mr. Lee says. He predicts that following the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese music market will grow to be one of the top-five markets.

But data from the IFPI indicate that China has a long way to go. The Chinese music market ranked seventh in volume at 115.7 million units in 2003 and 19th in value at $198 million. By comparison, the United States ranked first, selling 789.5 million units for a total value of $11.85 billion.

Even Mr. Denekamp is skeptical. “I hope it is going to happen, but 2008 seems a little early,” he says.

Posted at 11:37 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Guardian
31 March 2005

Michael Tsai points to a large map on the wall of his
office in Taiwan’s national defence ministry. It is
dotted with red symbols representing dozens of Chinese
missile, air and naval bases within easy shooting
range of the capital, Taipei, and other major
Taiwanese cities.

Whatever Beijing may say about its peaceful
intentions, Mr Tsai suggests, this map illustrates the
reality - and the daunting scale - of the military
threat that lurks 100 miles to the west, across the
treacherous waters of the Taiwan Strait.

As deputy defence minister, it is Mr Tsai’s job, and
that of the 300,000 members of the Taiwanese armed
forces, to monitor China’s 2.1 million-strong People’s
Liberation Army “every day, every hour”.
But with China’s military spending increasing by
double digits each year, the task of deterrence is
growing harder.

“If Beijing keeps building up its strength, our
analysis is that by 2008 to 2012, the balance of power
will tip towards China,” Mr Tsai said.

While Taiwan’s air force pilots and “counter-forces”
are better trained and technically equipped than their
Chinese equivalents, according to Mr Tsai, this
advantage is threatened by China’s investment in new
forms of electronic warfare.

“More than 700 ballistic missiles are deployed across
the coastal province of China. We expect that to
increase to 800 by 2006, including about 100
long-range missiles capable of delivering a warhead
more than 12,000km (7,500 miles) - capable of hitting
California or any part of the Pacific region,
including Taiwan, Korea, Japan.”

China also has about 80 submarines, nuclear and diesel
powered, many obtained from Russia, and is expanding
its military horizons. Last December, a Chinese
submarine penetrated the so-called “first island
chain” - a notional maritime defence line running
south from Japan to the Philippines - and sailed close
to the US naval base on Guam in the Pacific.

“This is one of the reasons why their leaders’ claim
that China would emerge as a peaceful power is not
matched by deeds,” Mr Tsai says. Within five to 10
years, China could overhaul Russia as the second
largest military power after the US, he adds.

Another reason is China’s new “anti-secession law”
that has empowered the PLA to use non-peaceful means
to prevent any definitive Taiwanese move towards
outright independence.

Beijing maintains it wants a negotiated settlement
with Taiwan, albeit on the basis of the “one China”
principle accepted by Britain in Hong Kong in 1997,
but which most Taiwanese reject.

The new Chinese law was denounced by up to 1 million
Taiwanese in a street protest last Saturday, and
condemned by the US and Japan, on whose deliberately
ambiguous support Taiwan’s policy of military
deterrence relies.

Like other Taiwanese politicians, Mr Tsai stresses the
possibly doleful international repercussions should
China attempt to subdue by force what it regards as a
renegade province.

“Every day 600 to 900 vessels pass through the Taiwan
Strait,” Mr Tsai says. “Most are Japanese and foreign
ships, mostly carrying oil. There are also more than
1,000 commercial flights in the zone every day.” And
Taiwan, despite its relatively small population of 24
million people, is a major global exporter, with an
economy ranked 16th in the world.

If the cold war turns hot, or if China mounts a
blockade of the island, Mr Tsai predicts, the result
could be a big international crisis, potentially
drawing in the US Pacific fleet’s carrier groups, as
happened briefly in 1996.

“We say we are all citizens of a global village. Every
citizen would be affected one way or another,
economically or politically.”

The EU’s proposal to replace its arms embargo on China
with a restrictive code of conduct is officially seen
in Taipei as sending the wrong signal to Beijing.
Privately, officials are scathing about what they
believe is the reckless pursuit of economic
self-interest by some states, notably France.

A visit this week to Tokyo by the French president,
Jacques Chirac, appears to have done little to allay
Japan’s concerns about the embargo, amid rising
Sino-Japanese tensions.

For his part, Mr Tsai says, Mr Chirac is acting
“immorally” in pushing for an end to the ban,
particularly given the continuing human rights
problems in an undemocratic China.

He hopes that Britain’s EU presidency later this year
will adhere more closely to Europe’s “traditional
values”.

Given Taiwan’s predicament, it has no option but to
arm itself as best it can, Mr Tsai says. China’s
recent actions mean that a long-delayed multi-billion
dollar arms purchase from the US is now more likely to
be approved by the Taiwanese parliament.

“The US arms sale is for self-defence. We’re not going
to attack them [China]! It’s just like your neighbour
is a big robber with a knife or a gun and they point
the gun at your head. What would you do?”

Posted at 8:19 AM · Comments (0)

>REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial) —

The fact that millions of Chinese have gathered online to protest Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes on the mainland.Anti-Japanese sentiment permeates all levels of society.

The wild card in this equation is the Chinese Communist Party, which has condoned this activity. If the party now tries to shove the genie back into the bottle, it would be acting too late to suppress the
image of rabid nationalism that has been put on display.
The online petition originated from several overseas Web sites, but has spread throughout the mainland, where major Web portals such as such as Sina, Sohu and Netease were reported as having surpassed 10 million signatures. Another Chinese Web site, China918.net, boasted over 16
million signatures as of earlier this week, leading to estimates that this could be the largest Internet mobilization in China’s history.

Anti-Japanese activist Lu Yunfei has said that he intends to present a petition with 20 million signatures to the United Nations this summer. These staggering numbers don’t necessarily represent the growth of anti-Japanese sentiment — though that could indeed be taking place. Another explanation is that the spread of the Internet in China has
given the people a freedom of virtual assembly and mobilization they
didn’t previously have at their disposal, for better or for worse.

Much of the anti-Japanese sentiment in China is a product of Communist education that relied on stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment as a way to legitimize the party’s rule. The party, of course, had at its disposal resentment of Japan’s World War II behavior, and perhaps more importantly, the fact that many Chinese see Japan as refusing to acknowledge its wartime treatment of China. But now the rage has taken on a life of its own. In a further twist, public resentment now even threatens to be aimed at the government — for not being tough enough on the Japanese.

With Sino-Japanese economic relations thriving, well-mobilized anti-Japanese vitriol, especially of the type that cannot be controlled, may prove to be a thorn in the side of relatively pragmatic leaders
Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. This appeared to be the case last fall, when another nationalistic mainland Web site hosted a petition opposing the railway ministry’s decision to grant a bullet-train contract to
Japanese companies without a public hearing. The government responded to the site’s growing popularity and ability to mobilize opinion by shutting it down. Before it was shut down, the petition had obtained over 68,000 signatures.

It is an open question whether the government will decide, as it has in the past, to shut down the current petition when it seems to be getting “out of control.” But thus far, the mainstream media appears to be condoning the petition. An article by the state-run China Daily gave directions to Web sites where people can sign their names, and an editorial cartoon yesterday featured a Hitler-mustached samurai trying to use a huge bag of yen to buy a seat in the UNSC.

An editorial posted on the Chinese-language People’s Daily Web site concluded that even though all this online activity wasn’t necessarily going to prevent Japan from joining the UNSC, it would be a victory if it could at least bring Japan’s “shameless behavior” as well as the Chinese people’s “request for justice” to the world’s attention. The editorial ended with the line, “this obviously is only a beginning.”

Perhaps Beijing views this particular online campaign as in its own interest, but it could regret this attitude when the same political resentment bleeds into the economic sphere. This is what happened
with the bullet-train protests, and this time around there are Chinese voices on the Internet calling for the boycott of Japanese products. If the current online activity appears to be getting out of control then it is likely the government will respond the way it has in the past: by shutting down Web sites.

This, of course, would be completely missing the point. If Beijing does aspire to finally soothe the public’s anti-Japanese antagonism, then it will require more proactive measures to both educate the people as well as create good will between the two neighbors. Tokyo’s “ignore it and
it will go away” attitude toward China’s anti-Japanese sentiment has only exacerbated the problem. But it bears repeating that Japan’s excesses took place 60 years ago, and since then Japan has been a model citizen to its neighbors and its people. Would that the same could be said for
some other Asian nations.

It would be in Beijing’s interest to recognize that whatever role it has played in stirring up anti-Japanese rage not only threatens to damage an important economic relationship, but also that continuing to play the “national humiliation” card will do little to help China become
recognized as a constructive member of the world community.

Copyright (c) 2005 Dow Jones and Company, Inc.

Posted at 8:11 AM · Comments (0)

Published: March 30 2005

Once upon a time there was the west, winner of history’s race to modernity, and there were the rest, trying to catch up. Every society was thought to make the same journey, at greater or lesser speed, from hidebound tradition to the bright promise of industrial modernity and unrestricted economic growth. If it did not, something had gone wrong: it might be excessive attachment to (non-Christian) religions and creeds, or to pre-modern sources of loyalty such as the family and the tribe. Women were a litmus test: where their feet were bound or heads covered, there was little hope for their communities without radical change delivered by western-oriented saviours. Secularism, urbanisation and market forces would propel them forward.

During the cold war, fleshing out this self-congratulatory model kept academics busy. According to the historians, the west owed its ascent not just to anything as recent or crudely violent as 19th-century colonial expansion or the preceding industrial revolution but to other, more venerable institutions and values. For some, the west’s ascent was thanks to a 17th-century “scientific revolution” - the moment at which humanity supposedly asserted its claim to knowledge over the censorious power of religious authorities; for others, it was the rise of capitalist banking, perhaps even the emergence of a church-state balance of powers centuries before.

All this reflected the realities of the time. Europe’s dreams of world domination, shattered in the bloodletting of war, had passed to the US: extolling the west’s virtues served to assert the depth of shared transatlantic values, and simultaneously defined them against the cold war barbarians to the east. So it should not surprise us now, as US power approaches its military and economic zenith and confronts the rapid emergence of India and China, that the shifting global balance is altering our understanding of the past once again. According to some east Asia experts in the US, the west’s ascent was reasonably recent and fortuitous: in 1800, China’s gross national product was probably still higher than Europe’s. For them the Pacific, not the Atlantic, is key to understanding the long run of world development. Their findings give western policymakers reason to pause before seeking to spread their own values around the globe. For if the west’s rise is no more than two centuries old, its success may owe more to contingency and less to values than its cheerleaders believe. For states as for stock markets, what goes up may also come down.

From the Enlightenment onwards, the ascendancy of the west was contrasted with the moribund east. Its origins were traced back to Greece and Rome rather than, say, Egypt and Mesopotamia. India was ignored, at least until the British marched in. The Chinese were credited, thanks to Marco Polo, with pasta and ice cream and occasionally, paper. Yet we now know that in terms of per capita income or density of trading networks there was little to choose between the most advanced parts of Europe and sophisticated Asian economies before the late 18th century. It was not lack of curiosity or weakness that explains why the Ottomans, the Moghuls, the Russians and the Chinese did not join the European mania for exploration and colonisation; they did not need to. Their expansion took place mostly by land and they left costly maritime ventures to the profligate but technologically inventive Europeans.

Conversely, it was not brilliant success but rather imminent impoverishment that forced a resource-bare, crowded island off Europe’s north-west coast to move to a labour-intensive, coal-based economy. Britain’s embrace of new technologies was fostered by its rulers’ ruthless priorities. Whereas the older empires placed a premium on social stability, successive British governments focused on developing military technologies, state-licensed trading companies and market-driven systems of credit. The outcomes were often internally destabilising but in small countries, this mattered less than in large ones. Britain’s European rivals could hardly afford not to follow.

Only in the 19th century did Europe, a conflict-torn region of small, belligerent states, leap decisively ahead of the great Eurasian land empires, spreading capitalism and colonialism across the globe, before being overtaken in turn by its child-rival, the US. Today, barely 200 years since the west’s ascendancy, its end may be in sight. Yet many western policymakers continue to see their own values as universally desirable, the key not only to their past but to everyone else’s future. A precarious argument. If Chinese historians, from a resurgent Beijing in two centuries’ time, point to those western values as the source of America’s 23rd-century decline, will we say they are wrong?

States that believe promotion of their interests depends on export of their culture and values are doomed to fail. Better to realise that religious politics is not necessarily a sign of medievalism, and that privatised democracies are not a one-size cure for the world’s ills. Of course China’s rise does not portend the downfall of the US or Europe but it does challenge the west’s self-perception as the civilisational hegemon in global affairs. In this context revitalising the United Nations becomes more vital than ever, for ideas translate precariously across the boundaries of language and belief, and life will not be easier in the absence of the international forums that make mutual comprehension possible. The world before 1800 was one of multiple power-centres and value systems: let us adjust to the fact that it is starting to look like that again.

Posted at 8:08 AM · Comments (0)

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