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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

Nov 30, 2005

By Rui Xia

With much publicity and drum-beating in local media, China announced last month the completion of one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in its history: the Qinghai-Tibet (or Qingzang) Railway (see map below), which connects enclosed, remote Tibet with the rest of China via the city of Golmud, in Qinghai province.

The actual tracks have all been laid, officials said, although there will be another 15 months of experiments and checks before the line opens to commercial traffic in 2007.

A rail line linking Tibet with lowland China has long been an ambition of the Chinese Communist Party, but the project faced many hurdles, including technical, financial and political obstacles, and has been delayed again and again over the past 30 years. Railway engineers from Switzerland checked the terrain during the 1990s and declared the line “mission impossible”, but in 2001, Beijing embarked on the project again, with the assistance of Russian scientists, and began laying the tracks, which are expected to dramatically change the face of Tibet.

A few statistics show the staggering scale of the project: The new line runs 1,142 kilometers, mostly through almost uninhabitable wilderness at more than 4,000 meters above sea level, with 30 kilometers of tunnels and 286 bridges. The highest mountain pass en-route is over 5,000 meters above sea level. Over 70,000 workers, mainly Han Chinese from inland areas, were recruited for the project, laying rail through some of the world’s highest, most difficult terrain - encompassing mountain ranges afflicted by dust and thunderstorms, heavy snowfalls, earthquakes and landslides, and covered in a thick layer of permafrost. It’s little wonder, then, that Beijing depicts the US$3.1 billion railway as one of the country’s greatest-ever engineering achievements.

The thick ice
But all is not quiet on the western front. This jaw-dropping accomplishment raises many questions about the economic, political and environmental future of Tibet, as well as doubts about the long-term feasibility of operating a railway on such inhospitable terrain. The main technical challenge for China’s railway engineers was permafrost (earth which remains frozen year round). About half the length of the railway was built over permafrost zones, in which the uppermost layer (called seasonal frost) thaws in summer. The many bridges with foundations sunk deep into the ice are meant to overcome this problem by keeping the rail line stable throughout the seasons and changes in ground level.

Another technique, invented specifically for the Qingzang project, is the “slab-stone ventilation system” developed by Chinese scientist Zhang Luxin, in which parts of the line are built on large slabs intended to allow cool air to circulate and thus prevent the upper layer of permafrost from thawing. “The technique sounds like a logical way to deal with permafrost,” says Norwegian Railway museum researcher Hans Schaefer, who’s been taking repeated trips to China to research the Chinese rail system, “but it [has] never [been] done before and we’ll just have to wait and see whether it works”.

Other railways were built on ice in Siberia and Scandinavia, Schaefer explains, but due to the southern location and high altitude of Tibet, the scorching summer sun causes a much greater amount of the seasonal frost to thaw than is the case in these northern areas, which can bring changes of up to 2 meters in ground level. Even with all the technological efforts, it has been reported that the railway is already unstable, and will require a continuous and enormously costly maintenance effort to remain open.

Environmentalists have expressed unease with the railway and its manner of dealing with permafrost. Tibet is one of the regions most affected by global warming. With or without a railway, the plateau is melting away, as a recent Greenpeace report put it, which will make the railway even harder to maintain by exacerbating the seasonal melting problem.

Admittedly, the Chinese government has been paying much attention to the environmental issues, for example, by planting vegetation on the barren land to cool the ground and prevent the permafrost receding, and also taking care to build underpasses under the railroad to allow animals to migrate across the track. The main fear of environmentalists, however, is the influx of people and goods the railway is expecting to bring into Tibet, a tide that may place heavy socioeconomic pressure on the roof of the world.

Taming the wild
The rail link between China and Tibet will bring with it many economic and cultural changes: welcomed by some, and feared by others. Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet and once the sacred seat of the Dalai Lamas, now contains more shops, high-rises, roads, and Han people - the ethnic Chinese who, despite Beijing’s denials, are now estimated to constitute an absolute majority in the city. There is no denying that Lhasa’s economic situation has improved greatly during the past few years: more businesses are being opened, greater numbers of tourists pass through and more money is flowing in, especially in government subsidies.

The question is, to whom is all the money going? Government statistics from 2003 show Tibet to be the second-ranking province in China when it comes to wages of state workers. This includes cadres in the local government, and also the railway workers, both skilled and unskilled.

These workers are mainly Han Chinese. Despite government efforts to qualify more Tibetans, about 80% of ethnic Tibetans still live in the countryside, and an additional quarter are still nomads. For these people, argue Tibetan human rights activists, the rail link simply means further marginalization, and less job opportunities.

“On the surface, it looks like Tibet is going to benefit from the railway,” said one Tibetan intellectual who asked to remain anonymous, “but in fact, I believe it’ll hurt the Tibetan people. Already, fluency in Chinese is almost essential for getting a job in Lhasa and other towns in Tibet. Chinese immigrants are taking over jobs traditionally done by Tibetans, so the economic situation for many Tibetans not only hasn’t improved, it has worsened, and is expected to worsen further with the great wave of Han immigration that will start with the completion of the railway.”

She is a frail, soft-spoken woman, a graduate from one of China’s finest universities who speaks passionately for the Tibetan people. “The few cities in Tibet appear to be prosperous, but go only fifty kilometers out of Lhasa, and living conditions are appalling by any standard. Not enough money is allocated for education; Tibetan youths are being marginalized and discriminated against in their own country. They face a grimmer future than ever.”

The key problem, she says, is that of participation. “Just as they’re building underpasses for animal migration under the railway, the government is trying to make us Tibetans walk down a certain, narrow path. Ever since the Chinese occupation [began] in 1950, Tibetans were never asked whether, or in what way, they want to see their country developing. Even now, with more economic freedom and more money coming in, the human rights situation in Tibet is still very bad. This year, some people in Lhasa were detained for the sole ‘crime’ of watching a Dalai Lama lecture on DVD. Tibet needs real autonomy, not just economic benefits,” she concludes.

This view, however, is hardly shared by all in Lhasa. Small business owners, Han and Tibetans alike, are looking at the railway with mixed feelings of anticipation and suspicion. The railway is expected to bring many tourists and business people to Lhasa, helping local small enterprises and providing more job opportunities. Prices of goods will probably go down with easier, cheaper shipment.

“Many people believe the railway will accelerate the current opening-up and globalization trends in Tibet,” said Arthur Holcombe, president of the US-based Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund. “This will mean an increasing flow of lower cost consumer and durable goods to Tibet, making them available to broader segments of the Tibetan population living in urban and rural areas. The railway is also likely to stimulate increased growth and job opportunities along its route in such places as Amdo, Nakchu and Damshung Township areas, as well as in Lhasa,” Holcombe added.

The big winner, it seems, will be the growing middle class in Lhasa, although many Lhasa residents worry about the modern ailments the rail link may bring in along with its benefits. Crime and prostitution, already mushrooming at the other end of the rail track, in Qinghai province, are winding their way into the once pristine plateau. Air pollution, so far unheard of, is expected to rise with the coming of more factories and cars. Whilst even the Dalai Lama’s administration in India acknowledges the need for infrastructure development in Tibet, many feel the rights and wishes of common people are not being fully addressed.

Is the economic miracle going west?
In spite of all the efforts, it is debatable whether truly large-scale investments will ever reach Tibet. Many analysts argue the area is simply too remote, too backward and distant from major industrial centers to attract investors. The only industry universally expected to leap forward is tourism. The “roof of the world”, with its stunningly beautiful landscape and unique Buddhist culture, has certainly got a lot to offer to both foreign and Chinese sightseers, and the railway, once operational, will definitely make the trip much easier.

The ride, China railway’s brochures promise, will be a luxurious one with private toilets and showers in each car, and windows offering panoramic views of the Kunlun mountain range. The cars, to be built by Bombardier Transportation of Canada (which has attracted criticism for its participation in the project), will even be pressurized to protect lowland passengers from altitude sickness, and outfitted with UV-protection systems to prevent sunburn. No doubt, many middle-class Chinese, who are enthusiastic travelers inside their own country, and have more money than ever to spend on vacations, are looking forward to the trip.

Another benefit, almost certainly more important from the government’s point of view, is easier access for military troops to secure both Tibet itself and the borders with India and Nepal. Tighter military control, alongside Chinese immigration prompted as the Chinese version of “go west, young man”, might finally integrate Tibet, for decades a thorn in China’s side, into the fast modernizing mainland.

Of course, many foreign journalists, as well as “free Tibet” activists, see this, rather than economic development, to be the main objective behind the mammoth rail project. Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya, author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows, said in a 2002 interview: “Tibet’s natural economy faces westwards towards south Asia; Beijing wants to tie it firmly eastwards with China and to encourage more migration from the interior”.

But this is not the whole story, either. As in other areas of western China, one of the main objectives of the Qingzang rail link is improving access to some of the natural resources buried under the frozen land. Tibetan uranium, especially, is important for China’s future nuclear programs. Oil, gold, and other minerals will be loaded on the rail cars to be shipped east to the booming coastal economy. It seems that, yet again, investments in the west mainly contribute to the already flourishing east, leaving millions of local residents in wretched poverty with an ever-slimmer chance of improvement.

The Chinese-educated Tibetan woman feels the pain of her people, but sees little chance for any change. “The Tibetans have been weakening ever since the Fifties. They’re losing their culture and traditional way of life, and are offered little in return. I’d like to see China adopting the Dalai Lama’s ‘Middle Path’ philosophy, and moving towards real dialogue and real autonomy for Tibet, but I don’t see this happening under the current regime.”

To judge by her words - and the sad look in her eyes - it seems like the thud of the coming trains is also an announcement of a new era for the Himalayan region, and possibly the beating of funeral drums for traditional Tibet.

Rui Xia is a Western teacher and freelance writer living in China. Rui Xia is her unofficial Chinese name.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

Posted at 10:38 PM · Comments (0)

SLOW LANE - Copyright The Financial Times

BYLINE: By HARRY EYRES

BODY:

My first proper camera is still sitting in a drawer somewhere in the old family home. I can’t bring myself to throw it away, maybe because it was so obviously built to last. This virtually indestructible, far from lightweight apparatus is a Zenit single lens reflex made in Russia in the early 1970s. Everything about it is solid, slow and manual: you need a separate light meter, and then you have to set the aperture and the shutter speed and focus, all by hand.

This wouldn’t be the camera of choice if you wanted to capture a leaping gazelle or the fleeting expression on a face. I used to take mainly landscape photographs, in black and white (certain people commented rather sharply on the absence of human interest in my prints). But the whole process, of hunting or just stumbling on the right combinations of light and scenery, then of developing and printing, again slowly and by hand, using a prewar Leica enlarger, gave me, as a teenager, hours of the most intense pleasure.

I was lucky to have a father who was an excellent amateur photographer and could induct me in the various skills and pleasures of the craft. We had a darkroom at home, a secret, hidden-away place off a back passage, with its distinctive smell of photographic chemicals and leather golfclub covers. That special moment when the image starts to appear on the white paper, as it floats in the developing tray, was as magical to me as witnessing the lights going down in a theatre or finding that the notes and my fingers had finally gelled in a passage of Mozart or Schubert.

There was a time in my life (late teens) when I thought of myself as a photographer. I now see it as part of the process of becoming an artist - and by that term I don’t mean a demigod with special privileges, but merely a person for whom inspiration, the contact with the muses or what Plato called the musical element, is an essential part of what it means to be a human being. With the Zenit, or its replacement, an Olympus OM10, in hand, I felt inspired in the most unlikely places - a school playing field or a London bus. Photography was exhilaration.

In time (perhaps because I realised that I was not that good a photographer, nothing like as good as my talented, over-modest father) I transferred that feeling to writing poetry. But I have never forgotten or ceased to be grateful for what photography, one of the great democratic arts of the 20th century, gave me: the permission to live life, aesthetically, to the full.

If I felt that permission had been granted, I certainly never took it to the extremes pushed by the amazing Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki is probably best known for his erotica, including the truly strange images of kimono-clad (or unclad) women trussed with ropes, in the tradition called Kinbaku. To call these images pornographic, it struck me as I went round the huge and wonderful Araki exhibition at the Barbican in London, is somehow to miss the point. Western pornography has developed, on the whole, in a direction that mimics the ever-increasing functionalism of late industrial life. Western porn may work, functionally (and economically), but, in a peculiarly grim way, it has lost touch with Eros. Araki, on the other hand, is a genuinely and frankly and joyously erotic artist in a long Japanese tradition.

In the end though it wasn’t Araki’s erotica that stayed longest with me. He has said that, “photography is going to and fro between life and death”. You might think that life, the raunchy, Rabelaisian, multifarious life of Tokyo’s red light district where Araki grew up and resides, predominates in his work over death, but the two poles are always present. None of his photographs are more moving than those taken over the winter of his wife’s mortal illness and death in 1990.

In some quite mysterious way, Araki’s images of his balcony, the family cat, a cardboard cut-out girl, the local streets and metro station become imbued with a desolating grief. The trick is one of absence: you sense something is left out, and what is there (the cat with its head bowed) stands for something else. Surprisingly, I was made to think of the poems Thomas Hardy wrote after his first wife’s death, especially “The Walk”, where he speaks of the difference made to everything by the knowledge of irrevocable absence.

But what is also striking is the way these photographs constitute a personal diary. Araki is able to record not just the external features of his life but the gamut of his feelings, from desire to grief to a meditative sense of infinitude, conveyed in a recent series of skyscapes. Araki is a Shakespeare of the camera, avid for and open to all kinds of experience. He shows that far from being a pathetic attempt to preserve unlived moments in aspic, photography can be a way of living with the utmost intensity.harryeyres@care4free.net. See www.ft.com/eyres for more columns

Posted at 11:00 PM · Comments (0)

The New York Times
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2005

KATMANDU, Nepal Last week, Nepal’s Maoist rebels and a coalition of opposition parties agreed on a program to try to end direct rule by King Gyanendra. The accord was the latest twist in this tiny Himalayan kingdom’s decade-long civil war, which took a bizarre turn almost five years ago: On June 1, 2001, the drug-abusing crown prince, Dipendra, murdered nine of the royal household, including his parents, before taking his own life.
Conspiracy theories abound, with a focus on the two factions that benefited from the catastrophe: the faction led by Dipendra’s uncle Gyanendra, who inherited the crown, and the one led by the Maoists.
Since the murders, the new king has twice declared a state of emergency followed by the inevitable suppression of free speech. Trafficking in drugs and women has increased enormously, and rural Nepalese have streamed into the Katmandu Valley, creating a refugee crisis.
All this is on my mind as I venture back to Katmandu for the first time in three years. I had prepared for arrival in a dysfunctional wasteland, yet I find the capital as lively and diverse as I’ve seen it in more than 20 years of visiting. There is one exception: Nobody seems willing to talk about the future.
Pradeep is an economics student I meet at Swayambhunath, the Monkey Temple. While I’m trying to figure out a way to persuade him to open up, a slapstick comedy unfolds: as a tourist reaches into her handbag and takes out an apple, a monkey moving at warp speed grabs the fruit in two tiny hands. The tourist lets out a little scream of shock, by which time the monkey has retreated.
“You see,” says Pradeep, laughing, “you want me to speculate on the future of my country, which is one of the poorest in the world, while that wealthy Westerner cannot control the future long enough to get an apple from her bag into her mouth. There is no certainty but change.”
I had forgotten how Buddhist the thinking can be here. From Swayambhunath, I walk back down the mountain and find a cab that will take me to Pashupatinath. On the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is considered by many to be the second-holiest site in Hinduism, after Benares. I come here whenever I can to see a pal I made many years back….

…Suman, my taxi driver back to the guest house, is a history student when he is not driving a cab. Finally, I have found someone who is prepared to speak his mind. He points out that Nepal has seen worse crises: At times the monarchy’s feuds with pretenders have reduced the kingdom to a few hundred square miles of the Katmandu Valley, but this is an exceptionally resilient country. “You have been trekking here?” he asks. “Then you have used the thousands of miles of steps my people have carved out of the Himalayas by hand. This is the land of Shiva, the most powerful of the gods. When do you have to be at the airport?”
“In about two hours.”
“I will drive you. I will give a discount of 50 rupees, but you will listen.”
“OK,” I say, after I fetch my bag from the guest house. “What?”
Suman says, “Eight years of communist insurrection but we ordinary Nepalis only went crazy once - do you know why? I will tell you. We went crazy after King Birendra was murdered because at first we were sure it was a coup. Why? Because King Birendra was saving us from democracy and the people knew it.”
“Saving you from democracy?”
“Certainly. If we are not very, very careful, democracy in Nepal will mean urban feudalism, the country will be run by the same half-dozen families as run it now, who will join forces with Indian and Chinese businessmen. The people would not be able to find freedom in the countryside anymore. Why do we have to go through the robber baron period - because you did?
“King Birendra understood this and wanted full democracy to come slowly, after all the proper institutions were in place. Our beloved king was our only defense against capitalists and communists both.” Suman has grown so excited he suddenly turns self-conscious. “Are you shocked?”
I think about that. “No, Suman,” I say, “I just wish I could patch you through to the White House.”

For the entire article please see the link below.

(John Burdett is the author of ”Bangkok 8” and ”Bangkok Tattoo.”)

Posted at 9:33 PM · Comments (0)

I’m starting this today — fresh from Amazon. It’s a highly touted and brief first novel by a sharp and privileged young Nigerian author who spent much of his youth at elite schools in the US. More on it very shortly.

2-19-06 - I finished this today at the gym, weeks after I’d first picked it up. It’s a slim volume and a quick read, but I’d put it down in favor of other stuff. My feeling is that this should have been a short story, but was stretched to book form — albeit a very short book.
There is one chapter that I found absolutely compelling, about the rebel army fighter’s youth in his village, having to flee his home when civil war broke out and his family was dispersed and his father killed.
The ending, too, is poignant and powerful.
The rest of the book, though, didn’t move me so much as wear me out. I didn’t find the language terribly convincing, and the mannerisms, placing nearly every verb in the gerund, annoying.

Posted at 1:41 AM · Comments (1)

Posted at 1:37 AM · Comments (0)

Jutting south from Mount Fuji into the Pacific, the Izu Peninsula has something of a holiday air about it. The warm Kuroshio current flowing northward lends the peninsula a mild climate, and its position close to the suture lines of shifting tectonic plates means that rugged Izu has no lack of geothermal springs.

News photo
The Susquehanna is a quarter-size replica of one of Commodore Matthew Perry’s “Black Ships”; a bust of Perry (below) stands by Shimoda Harbor.
News photo

At the northeastern end of the peninsula is Atami — a hot-spring resort and dirty-weekend spot par excellence for those in the capital. Moving down the peninsula from Atami, you pass a string of spas, clutches of small museums and other diversions, one is which is called the Banana and Alligator Park. Then you reach, near the southern tip, the port of Shimoda.

The first impression of Shimoda today is that of a pleasant, sleepy little town — an impression that doesn’t fit so readily with the fact that a century and a half ago it was the focal point of Japan-U.S. relations. Adroitly using gunboat diplomacy, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy forced the signing of the Kanagawa Treaty in March 1854, ending the national seclusion that Japan had imposed upon itself for more than two centuries.

Perry had demanded that ports be opened to American vessels, and Shimoda was one of the two selected. After signing that treaty, Perry sailed down the Izu Peninsula to see Shimoda, which had been appointed as the site of the first U.S. consulate in Japan, and there he signed an additional treaty guaranteeing freedom of movement for Americans in the town.

As might be imagined, intruder Perry was not a popular figure in Japan at the time. When he first arrived in the country, the Japanese begged him to go away again. Contemporary portraits of him, as displayed in Ryosenji Temple, where Perry signed the Shimoda Treaty, were at pains to convey the impression that he was not so much human as a devil, and a very ugly one at that. Impressions, of course, change with time.

Now, Shimoda — which holds a Black Ships Festival every May, marking the arrival of the first Americans — has coopted Perry into its own public image, and looks on the commodore with much fonder eyes.

The modern image of the man, as portrayed in a bust atop the Perry monument beside the harbor, displays a statsemanlike person of great dignity and intelligence. No longer a demon.

News photo
Willow trees, cafes and galleries line Perry Road in Shimoda; the distinctive cross-cutting namako-kabe style (below) is evident on buildings on Perry Road.
News photo

Of all the links with Perry, the most conspicuous in Shimoda is the Susquehanna, modeled on one of the seven ships that brought Perry and his fellow 1,264 Americans to the port. The Susquehanna is used to ferry tourists on cruises around the harbor, and the vessel has a jolly leisure-boat vibe about it, with tourists trooping about and kids shouting. So it is difficult, then, viewing this craft, to get any notion of the tremendous fear that Perry’s ships inspired among the Japanese. Weighing 127 tons, today’s Susquehanna is just one-quarter the size of the original ship of the same name, yet the largest Japanese vessels in Perry’s day weighed only 100 tons. The Japanese had never seen such enormous ships, and Perry’s bristled with firepower. To ensure there was no doubt about his message, Perry fired a thundering 17-gun salute before setting off from his ship to begin negotiations on the Shimoda Treaty.

Connecting the harbor with Ryosenji is the quiet thoroughfare known as Perry Road, which skirts past some of Shimoda’s older buildings. Though the justification for the name of this street rests, according to the pamphlet published by the Shimoda tourist office, on the limp claim that “Perry is said to have once walked” along it, a pleasant old character does hang over the Perry Road district. Plants adorn window boxes; willows droop lazily into the waterway; shops sell antiques and curios; streets are lit by old-fashioned lamps. In evidence here are buildings with namako-kabe, a distinctive architectural feature of southern Izu. Though namako-kabe translates unappealingly as “sea-slug walls,” these walls are in fact rather handsome affairs and consist of dark tiles arranged in diamond patterns, with white plaster used to seal the joints. The rounded lines of the plaster are thought to resemble sea slugs and hence supply the name.

News photo
Shimoda Castle

If Perry Road is the best place for a stroll in Shimoda, the finest view is to be had from Mount Nesugata, which is reached by cable car from the town. From the top of this hill, Shimoda’s superb natural harbor, which would certainly have delighted Perry, stretches grandly into view. At the summit of Nesugata stands the Renjo Photo Memorial Hall, which traces the history of photography back to the days when a camera was not something that came with the cell phone but was a strapping contraption the size of a small trunk. And if you and your beloved wish to have a photo of yourselves standing in front of a faux stained-glass window — he dressed in braided uniform looking like a 19th-century admiral of the fleet, she in a blue ballroom dress looking like a frumpy extra in a palace scene from “Doctor Zhivago” — you really have come to the right spot.

Shimoda’s time in the limelight was brief. The treaties of 1854 contained no provisions for commerce. It was not until the signing of additional treaties, four years later, that several Japanese cities, including Edo (now Tokyo) and Osaka, were opened to international trade. These treaties also provided for diplomatic exchanges, and with them Shimoda’s importance slid into rapid decline.

And so Shimoda has remained as the place we see today, which is an attractive quiet port of around 30,000 people nestled among hills and built on a winding river that feeds into the long sleeve of its harbor. Sitting upon one of those hills is the town’s pint-size castle, which adds an additional historical dimension to the town. Shimoda may no longer have the importance it once did, but, as is often the case, some of the pleasanter places are those that history has edged neatly onto the sidelines.

The Japan Times: Nov. 25, 2005
(C) All rights reserved

Posted at 12:24 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Der SPiegel

Rebiya Kadeer is fighting to bring the Chinese leadership before an international human rights tribunal. She accuses the regime of repressing the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in northwest China.

Ablikim walks through the city of his childhood, looking for a place where he can feel safe talking about his mother. Ablikim is the son of Rebiya Kadeer, China’s most famous dissident.

AP
Rebiya Kadeer
It’s already late in the afternoon and the cold air is beginning to drift down from the nearby mountains. At first Ablikim decides on a snack bar, then a museum. He feels watched wherever he goes.

Earlier in the day, he had called a friend to ask him to translate. He used his mobile phone, but the friend declined, fearing that the police would be listening in on the conversation. “They’ll arrest my parents and harass my sister,” said the friend, “no one will help us.”

Most Uighurs are “chicken-hearted,” says Ablikim.

He finally decides on a restaurant that belongs to his family. It isn’t open yet, and the heat is off and only a few lights are on. A cut of raw meat glistens in a glass display case. The walls are paneled halfway up, and the room looks like someone’s halfhearted attempt to transform a bleak East bloc cafeteria into something cozy and inviting.

Ablikim eats nothing. It’s Ramadan, he says. As he orders a cup of tea, a man walks in: gray suit, dark blue turtleneck sweater, about 50 years old.

The man looks around the room. All the tables are empty. Then he sits down, two tables away.

Ablikim pushes his chair closer to the table. “Secret police,” he whispers.

The man has turned his back on Ablikim. He looks as if he were studying the menu. It’s completely quiet.

The police recently established a special unit, says Ablikim. It’s called “Office 307.” By this point he is speaking so quietly that he’s almost inaudible. The only purpose of “Office 307,” says Ablikim, is to monitor his family.

Ablikim wears his black hair short. He is clean-shaven and is wearing olive-green trousers and an American fleece jacket, probably the only one in all of Urumchi (Urumqi). Following him can’t be terribly difficult. When he stands up, the man in the turtleneck sweater also gets up from his table. He walks out onto the street, takes a few steps and turns around a few times. Then he waits.

Ablikim hails a cab. He wants to show me the prison where his mother was held.

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The cab traverses Urumchi’s outlying districts on a three-lane highway, passing a scene of run-down prefab-concrete apartment buildings and windowless, abandoned houses and factories. Handicapped people sell laundry detergent and grapes by the roadside. Two and a half million people live in Urumchi — Chinese and Uighurs — and all road signs are in Arabic and Chinese. Kazakhstan is only a few hours by car, Mongolia lies to the east and Beijing is 2,400 kilometers (1,492 miles) away. The temperature in winter drops to below -40�C (-40�F).

A dark blue VW Santana with tinted windows follows the taxi at a distance.

Ablikim tells the driver to turn onto a path, then to turn around and return to the road on the same path. But the VW continues to bump along behind the cab.

That evening, the police pick up Ablikim for questioning. They interrogate him for five hours, and then they let him go.

A mother’s mission

Fourteen-thousand kilometers (8,701 miles) away, on the other side of the earth, Rebiya Kadeer sits in a small ground-floor apartment in Vienna, Virginia. It’s a warm, late-summer morning in the eastern United States, and the patio door is open. Kadeer, Ablikim’s mother, wears a black suit and a white scarf. Her voice sounds a little hoarse. The Koran sits on a bookshelf, flanked by videocassettes like “Gladiator” and “Titanic.”

She plans to drive to Washington this morning to meet with Tom Lantos, a powerful Democratic congressman from California. Lantos, the chairman of the Human Rights Caucus, helped secure Kadeer’s release from prison. Now she wants him to help her protect Ablikim and her other children.

A photo of a man wearing a white shirt hangs in Lantos’ office. He stands, his arms outstretched, facing a tank on Tiananmen Square. But today Lantos doesn’t have time to meet with Kadeer, and so she meets with Hans Hogrefe, his office manager, instead. He looks pale. He probably doesn’t get outside much; after all, there are so many ethnic groups in the world who are being persecuted. Hogrefe has reserved 20 minutes of his day for Kadeer.

“Has anything changed in the current situation?” he asks.

Until now, Kadeer says, there had been only accusations and charges. “But now they are simply taking people off the street and locking them up.”

Hogrefe says he admires her attitude, and then he stands up again. “Our door is always open to you,” he says.

“Hans is a good man,” Kadeer says outside, beaming.

She arrived in the US capital six months ago. When she was released in March, after five and a half years in prison, Chinese officials made Kadeer an offer: If she would agree to stop agitating against the government, she could become one of the richest women in China.

And if she refused?

If she refused, she would have to live with the fact that she would be leaving her businesses and her family behind in Urumchi.

Rebiya boarded the next plane to the United States, leaving four of her sons and one daughter behind in Urumchi. The Chinese government confiscated the children’s passports, turning them into hostages of their policies. Kadeer knows that she may never see her children again, but she is convinced that she had no other choice. Her imprisonment has turned her into a symbolic figure.

She wants to help the persecuted Uighurs, and she wants to haul the Chinese government before an international human rights tribunal. She is one woman against China, a mother of 11 children against one of the most powerful countries on earth.

Her family is fighting a regime that persecutes, tortures and kills its opponents. More people are executed in China each year than in all other countries combined.

Is she afraid for her children?

Kadeer says she is concerned but not afraid. She knows what the situation is like in her homeland because her fourth-eldest son Alim fills her in every evening on the phone.

She sits in a Greek restaurant in Vienna, a few blocks from her new home. She wants to talk about what the Chinese have done to her family.

Kadeer was one-year-old when Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. He said that he wanted China’s various ethnic groups to join him in creating a new country.

At the time, Rebiya’s parents ran a small farm, and they also owned a hair salon, a restaurant and a Turkish bath house. By communist standards, they were part of the bourgeoisie. Besides, they were Uighurs, members of an ethnic minority related to the Turks. The Uighurs are mainly Muslims, a people for whom Allah carries more weight than Mao, and a people who can look back on thousands of years of history. They didn’t want a new country. Instead, they dreamed of having their own country one day: East Turkestan.

REUTERS
A camel rests on a barren hill in China’s Xinjiang Province.
When the communists established the Uighur province of Xinjiang in 1955 — an entity covering an area of 1.6 million square kilometers (about 618,000 square miles) and rich in oil and natural gas, iron ore and uranium — they seized her parents’ property and forced the family to move from Altai in the north, where Rebiya was born, to the Tarim basin bordering the desert in the south.

She says she was 14 when a man asked for her hand in marriage. He was the deputy director of a small bank and 12 years her senior. He promised to take care of her. Rebiya accepted his proposal.

They married a year later, and at 17 Rebiya bore her first child. During a hospital stay, she shared a room with a woman who complained about her Uighur husband, a man, she claimed, who never thought of her, only of his people, and was in prison as a result.

Kadeer, impressed by the unknown husband’s self-sacrifice, offered to help the woman.

A political marriage made in heaven

She pauses at this point in her story to order another cup of tea and slice of strawberry cake. She says: “I want to tell you a story that sounds like a fairy tale.” It’s a story that will explain everything — her fight, her resolve and her confidence.

It’s the story of her life.

Her first marriage failed when she was 28. It was 1976, she had openly criticized the government in Beijing, and her husband could no longer stand the resulting pressure.

After her divorce, she wrote a list of ten conditions that her future husband would have to fulfill. Most of all, it had to be love at first sight — for both partners. He had to have been in prison for defending his convictions, and he could not have betrayed anyone while in prison. He also had to be willing to fight for the liberation of his country.

She received a visit from a friend a short time later. He told her that he knew of a man who could fulfill her requirements. “But he is poor,” the friend said. “He cannot feed your children. Do you stand by your conditions?”

“Where is he?” Rebiya asked.

She flew to Artux, a small city in the western part of the province. There she discovered that the man lived in a village, and so she continued her journey by donkey. When she finally stood facing the man, she fell in love at first sight. “My name is Rebiya Kadeer,” she said. “I am 29 years old. I have come here to marry you. Nine of my ten conditions are fulfilled. Only one remains open: Do you love me?”

The stranger asked her to tell her story. He had recently been released from prison and was suspicious of this woman. When she had finished, he asked her whether she was an agent of the Chinese government.

Rebiya slapped him and rode away.

She laughs when she tells this story.

Six months later, the friend brought her a book: 260 poems about Kadeer, written by the stranger she had slapped. It was the same man who had been married to Rebiya’s roommate in the hospital — the couple had since separated. The poet and the rebel were married in 1977.

Kadeer opened a laundry business in Urumchi, sold fruit, vegetables and leather goods, and even conducted business across the border in Kazakhstan. She knew that financial means were necessary to survive a fight. She opened a department store and a second one a short time later, renting store space to merchants. That was how she became wealthy.

She soon made her way to the top of the local chamber of commerce, first in Urumchi and then in Xinjiang Province.

By 1992, Rebiya Kadeer had become such a respected businesswoman in China that she was elected to the National People’s Congress.

Taking on the regime

In 1997, she felt so strong that she decided to challenge the regime. She planned to give a speech before the People’s Congress, an opportunity for which she had been waiting for years.

DER SPIEGEL
Map: Xiajiang Province
She submitted a copy of her speech to party leaders and told them that she wanted to talk about all the things the Chinese have done for the Uighurs. The party functionaries were relieved. They told her that she would speak at the beginning of the party congress, just after the president and party chairman and the chairman of the Politburo.

A day before the congress, Kadeer secretly met with the two interpreters who would be translating her speech into Chinese and showed them the real text of her speech. The two interpreters were afraid. “I am a woman,” she told them, “and you are men. You won’t have any difficulties. After all, you’re just translating what I say.”

Chinese policies in Xinjiang are false and unjust, she said before the congress, in the Great Hall of the People, with 4,800 delegates listening attentively. The Chinese government, she continued, must respect the Uighurs’ religious freedom, put an end to its arbitrary arrests and stop executing political prisoners. She demanded respect for the Uighurs’ history, literature and language. That day, Kadeer wore a white fur jacket and a “doppa,” the Uighurs’ traditional head dress. A few delegates were in tears by the time she returned to her seat.

The speech was a declaration of war.

Kadeer has kept a photo that was taken just after her speech. It depicts Jiang Zemin, the then-president and head of the Communist Party, shaking her hand and smiling. Zemin is surrounded by China’s power elite, including Prime Minister Li Peng and the defense minister — a small, delicate woman in a white fur jacket, surrounded by an army of predators, of old men wearing dark suits and horn-rimmed glasses.

They appear to be congratulating Kadeer, but what they are really doing is forming a barrier between her and the delegates and their questions.

Hu Jintao, then the fifth-ranking member of the ruling hierarchy and now China’s president, is visible in the background. “A very good speech,” Hu told her. “But you must discuss your problems with us. We can solve all problems.”

“The normal procedure is to approach them after giving a speech,” says Kadeer, “but they came to me, and it was because I was right.”

Four weeks later, she was banned from the People’s Congress and her passport was revoked.

In August 1999, just before she was scheduled to meet with a delegation from the US Congress at a hotel in Urumchi, the police arrested her.

A judge sentenced her to eight years in prison for “dissemination of state secrets.” Her crime? Attempting to send magazines to her husband, who had since fled into exile in the US, magazines that were widely available in China.

When her case was tried, there was no audience and she had no legal representation. “We will crush you like a snake,” the chief of police told her.

“And I will emerge from prison like an eagle,” Kadeer replied.

Books were banned in prison, and she was not allowed to receive visitors for two years. She talked to herself, recited verses of the Koran and made plans. Sometimes she screamed.

Persecuting the family

Ablikim, her fifth-eldest son, was arrested on the same day as his mother and was sentenced, without trial, to two years in a prison camp. There he was forced to work 20-hour days, and on several occasions he witnessed guards beating other prisoners with a baseball bat. He knew that prisoners in China are tortured with electroshocks, and that one of the preferred methods to torture a man is to insert horsehairs into his penis.

Kadeer’s sons have been managing the two department stores since she moved to Washington. The businesses are in a section of the city where only Uighurs live, on a street where merchants pushing two-wheeled carts sell dates and pomegranates, dog pelts and dried snakes — which are considered an aphrodisiac.

The family had to take out a loan of 9 million Yuan to build the department stores. When the police searched the business this spring and confiscated the family’s business records, the balance of the loan suddenly turned into 15 million Yuan.

Without her political activities, Kadeer’s life story would have been one of the many success stories in a new China. But she refused to play by the rules of the game.

The Uighurs in Xinjiang admire Kadeer, calling her “mother of the Uighurs,” but they don’t support her — at least not openly.

In late August, when Kadeer had just returned to the US from a visit to Germany, the head of the Communist Party in Xinjiang gave a press conference in which he accused her of having met with terrorists in the European country, and claimed she planned to sabotage festivities marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region. In response, Rebiya’s son Alim called the party leader a liar in an interview with Radio Free Asia.

On the evening after the interview, the police paid a visit to Alim, just as he was on the phone with his mother in Washington. Alim put down the receiver but didn’t hang up, so that she could hear everything.

They demanded that he sign a document stating that Rebiya Kadeer owed taxes to the Chinese state. When he refused, they threatened to punish him. “You’ll see what we do with you,” they said.

Alim and Ablikim would prefer to leave China. They could try to make their way to Taiwan, but Rebiya doesn’t want her children to flee the country. She still hopes for a legal solution. But it’s not entirely clear that she has anything to offer the government in Beijing.

Her problem is that she makes life more difficult for her sons with each new public appearance. But she believes that her children can only live safely in Urumchi if the world knows more about them.

While she describes her vision, her husband, the poet, sits outside on the patio of their small apartment in Virginia and smokes thin Chinese cigarettes. His handshake is soft and he wears his white hair combed back. He says that he aged ten years during his five years in prison. He and his wife still agree on their goals, but they argue over how to achieve them.

For years, he was the more unyielding of the two, and this made him influential. But their roles have been reversed ever since Kadeer was released. When she travels, he stays at home writing a history of the Uighur people, a book he wants published when the Uighurs gain their independence. But he has yet to find a publisher.

When Chinese President Hu Jintao announced his intention to visit Washington earlier this year, Kadeer saw her chance to remind him of the suffering of her people. Hu had planned to meet with President George W. Bush in early September to discuss North Korea and China’s booming export economy. Kadeer, for her part, planned to assemble a group of Chinese political exiles to stage a demonstration against Hu, the world’s third most powerful man, directly across from the White House.

Kadeer had planned to give a speech, a speech about America. But then Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and Hu cancelled his visit to the US capital.

Kadeer followed Hu to New York, where he was scheduled to visit the United Nations a few days later. She and a group of Tibetan exiles and members of the persecuted Falun Gong sect held a demonstration in front of the UN headquarters.

The protestors waved American flags and the colors of East Turkestan, and Kadeer held up a sign that read “Freedom for East Turkestan.”

She isn’t sure whether Hu noticed.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Posted at 9:48 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright Der Spiegel

They earn little and have even less say. Yet waves of willing workers continue to deluge the country’s industrial regions.

The global factory is gearing up for a change of shift. The streets of Dongguan are still relatively deserted — filled only by the rising heat and swirling dust. Trucks rattle along the multilane thoroughfares, thousands every hour. They keep the supplies coming for the plants that line the streets, mile after mile, like gigantic military compounds.

Then, suddenly, Dongguan explodes into life. It’s the same bustling picture every day, morning and night: Workers, most of them women, stream in from every direction, with uniforms in every color of the rainbow. Laminated company IDs dangle from their necks — IBM, Siemens, Nokia, Duracell, Sanyo — to name but a few of the major international brands that have set up shop here.

Most of the workers look like schoolgirls. Holding hands, some are returning to their hostels exhausted, while others dutifully head off to the night shift. Outside the factories, the flags of the world have been hoisted to announce where the employers come from and what their employees are producing: cables for Germany, batteries for the United States, computer components for Japan, cellphones for Finland, clothing for France, toys for Hong Kong, shoes for Taiwan. There is almost nothing that this city of 1.5 million and its roughly 5 million migrant workers cannot supply.

Dongguan is only a small part of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, which is booming like scarcely any other region on the planet. Export plants are mushrooming from the red earth all along the highway that leads to the nearby industrial center of Shenzhen. Here, as everywhere in China, international corporations have turned the battle cry of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ 1848 Communist Manifesto, “Workers of the World, Unite!” into its opposite: “Producers of the World, Unite!”

Where communism meets capitalism

Here, in China, nominally still communist but in reality a hub of unbridled capitalism, the corporations of the world have found a bottomless reservoir of cheap — and eager — workers. Here they can operate largely unfettered by all those niggling social benefits that, from a management perspective, make products so prohibitively expensive: high wages, well-paid overtime, occupational health and safety regulations, maternity leave, free trade unions, and the right to strike.

SPIEGEL SPECIAL NO. 7/2005
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Like many other German companies, the electronics producer Wickmann from North Rhine-Westphalia knows how to make the most of this situation. Some 200 Chinese workers have the company logo — “Weiwen Dianqi” in the local language — emblazoned on their light blue jackets. For 500 to 700 yuan a month, roughly �48 to �68, they produce electrical fuses: nine and a half hours a day, six days a week. Overtime pays 3.5 yuan per hour. “It might actually be less,” says one worker, “because we don’t really know how our wages are calculated.”

They can rest assured that the company calculates very carefully. Wickmann plans to relocate its production altogether to China by the middle of next year. At the main plant in Germany, which still employs some 240 people, the first will soon be getting their marching orders. The company says the high cost of production in Germany and the rising value of the euro against the dollar make products 40 percent more expensive on the Asian market. “We can’t absorb that kind of shock,” managing director Matthias Huber recently noted.

The new El Dorado for German craftsmanship is located in a small alleyway in Changping. Only a village a few years ago, it is now part of Dongguan’s urban sprawl. At the end of the street, close to the pink-and-blue-tiled Wickmann plant, stands the drab factory hostel.

Migrant workers or slave workers?

Despite the wretched conditions, the German company is considered almost exemplary in this Chinese neighborhood. There are certainly worse jobs in south China, much worse. At Tyco, a U.S. company across the street, the work is so grueling that after just three days on the job, four young women from Hunan packed their bags, grabbed their washing bowls and headed for the bus stop. “We’re going home,” one of them says, frantically counting out her fare.

The four women belong to the roughly 120 million migrants who have moved south from poverty-stricken rural provinces like Sichuan, Hunan or Guangxi in search of work. They were prepared to sacrifice their youth and health, but not under these conditions.

Their dream of a better future has vanished now, as has the 1,000 yuan they paid a job broker. They could have earned 800 yuan a month, including overtime, for soldering wires onto small circuit boards. “But the work is too hard, especially on the eyes,” a young girl complains. The minimum working age in China is 16. Though she is underage, she was forced to labor like the adults. “The pace was too much,” she says.

The four Chinese women are leaving. But, all over the country, millions of other migrant workers continue to slave away. Their numbers are swelling every day: About 800 million Chinese live out in the rural areas, and an estimated one-sixth do not have work.

They all want a piece of the prosperity that globalization promises to bring to their country. That’s why they bow to the fate of wage slavery for a few years — in hopes of a brighter future. Few of them have electricity or running water in their villages back home. They have watched neighbors spending their savings from the new jobs, first to buy television sets and then to build homes or open small restaurants and shops. A desire to share in the new affluence drives them into China’s wealthy coastal areas.

An economic power at all costs

The Chinese leader who initiated the biggest migratory wave in his country’s history is omnipresent in the Pearl River delta: Deng Xiaoping. The Communist Party head, who died in 1997, smiles down from propaganda billboards as big as houses, cheering the huge country on to maintain his legacy.

For his successors, Deng’s teachings often come down to the single mantra with which he freed China from decades of ideological torpor in 1978: “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white,” Deng proclaimed, “as long as it catches mice.”

Deng’s pragmatism powers the brute force with which the political elite surrounding President Hu Jintao are catapulting China’s 1.3 billion people into the industrial age. China wants to become an economic power at all costs. And consign to the past the humiliations it has suffered from foreign subjugation since 1842.

Personal well-being and environmental protection have fallen by the wayside during this patriotic leap into the future. Whether more than one million farmers are being resettled at the Three Gorges Dam, or an army of migrant workers is being redeployed from the fields into the factories — what counts is “fazhan” — the incessantly trumpeted “development.”

The strategy, which simultaneously cements the power of the communist leadership, is paying off with breathtaking growth that has reached an average annual rate of 9 percent. The reform course steered by Deng and his successors has lifted some 300 million Chinese out of abject poverty. Per capita income in China has quadrupled since 1990 to well above $1,000.

The effects of this dramatic revolution are reverberating throughout the world. The abundance of cheap goods “Made in China” may well quicken the pulses of Western bargain hunters. But few consumers are aware of the price they will pay for this windfall: the loss of their own prosperity and, increasingly, of their own jobs.

A free hand for employers

The Chinese economic miracle is working, thanks to investors like the Wickmann electronics company which can no longer afford German labor. In Dongguan, Wickmann’s management has a much freer hand than back home. According to its workers, the company provides insurance benefits for white collar workers only — a blatant violation even of China’s social laws.

“I don’t know why,” one young woman says. “Maybe you have to stay with them longer. Three years is what I’ve heard.” But does anyone really care?

The Chinese women at least have valid employment contracts at Wickmann: a luxury in the Pearl River delta. “Anybody who is laid off here can expect one month’s base wages as severance pay,” says one of the women in the company’s blue uniform: “390 yuan” — 180 less than the legal minimum wage. Wickmann grants its employees seven days off three times a year: to mark the Spring Festival and the national holidays on May 1 and October 1. But the women say that only three days of each week are paid.

Wickmann Chairman Horst H�bner paints a different picture. “We pay the legally required minimum wage of 565 yuan. We insure 90 percent of our employees and provide paid vacation. We comply with the laws.”

Even in China, Dongguan has a reputation as a sweat shop. Not that workers automatically fare better in other areas. Such as Wenzhou, which produces some 75 percent of the world’s disposable lighters. Or Yiwu in Zhejiang Province,where cheap Chinese workers churn out Christmas decorations and toys for western consumers. Including Germans.

Or in Ningbo, with its mammoth garment factories. At Youngor, China’s largest shirt manufacturer, some 6,000 seamstresses produce fashions for Pierre Cardin and Nike — in piecework. At the BenQ factory in Suzhou near Shanghai, a workforce of 10,000 builds TFT monitors and other technical equipment for the Taiwanese electronics specialist. And then attaches the logos of HP, Thomson and other global brands.

The hidden side of Shanghai’s glitz

AP
Booming Shanghai: The glittering facade of the world’s factory
Western executives who fly in to China by the hundreds every day train their blinkered sights only on the glittering fa�ade of this global factory. Yet a few yards away, in the backstreets of Shanghai’s neon-lit commercial center, they could readily meet the true heroes of China’s boom: modern-day coolies, who work their hands to the bone every day in the cement dust of construction sites and then collapse into bed exhausted every night. Or the children of migrant workers, who are forced to beg because officials deny them residency permits and thus the right to attend school. In Shanghai alone, half of the eight million workers are migrants.

But western investors walk on by, oblivious to the squalor. Their attention is fixed on new production sites, where labor is even less of a cost factor. The number of businesses outsourcing production to China grows daily. A recent headline read “Rowenta vaporizes Erbach.” The venerable brand from southern Germany’s Odenwald region is planning to manufacture its low-end irons in China — for a fraction of the previous cost.

Posted at 9:34 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Los Angeles Times

In the shadow of a rusting gold-mining factory here, hundreds of sweaty young men slog knee-deep in chocolate pools of sludge. Some heave mud-filled buckets up the slopes of vast open pits, while others strike gray boulders with steel mallets. They pick. Stop. Look for anything that shines. Then pick again.

The miners have gathered in this northeastern village of the Democratic Republic of Congo because they believe years of runoff from the now-shuttered Belgian-built processing plant above them enriched the soil below. On an average day, a miner can unearth nuggets worth $5 to $10.
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FOR THE RECORD:
Congo mining �An Oct. 17 article in Section A about mining by Congolese villagers referred to coltan as a granite. Coltan, which is used in electronics, is more precisely described as a mineral.
“It’s a game of chance,” says mud-splattered miner Jean-Claude Takinga, 29, rising from the brown pit after a backbreaking nine-hour shift that yielded gold flecks worth $20. “Once I found $800 worth and used it to buy a house. The next day you find nothing.”

Until recently, this mining area was off limits, first controlled by the state-owned minerals company, then occupied by Ugandan soldiers, then passed between outlaw militias who used the mining proceeds to buy guns.

Now the foreign army is gone. The militias are lying low. And the central government has little authority in this part of the country.

Finally, villagers say, it’s their turn. “This is our field now,” Takinga says.

This is the closest that most Congolese have ever come to reaping the benefits of the land beneath their feet, for more than a century more of a curse than a blessing.

One of Earth’s richest sources of valuable minerals, Congo is believed to hold one-third of the world’s cobalt reserves and two-thirds of its coltan, a black granite widely used in cellphones and Sony PlayStations. The nation also straddles one of the world’s most lucrative copper belts and was once the No. 1 producer of diamonds.

But the Congolese have watched helplessly as billions of dollars in minerals were systematically pillaged by foreigners and despots, beginning with 19th century colonialists.

Belgium’s King Leopold II used Congo as his colonial piggybank in the late 1800s. Beginning a few years after the country’s 1960 independence, the mines funded strongman Mobutu Sese Seko’s 32-year dictatorship. In 1998, Congo’s envious neighbors launched a bloody four-year war, seizing key mining towns and carting away piles of the nation’s natural resources.

“Congo is like the Garden of Eden,” says miner Serge Utibeli, 26. “God put everything here for us. But it’s also why so many outsiders come to create trouble and take it away.”

Since 2003, a transitional government aided by United Nations peacekeeping troops has improved stability in some of the key northeastern mining towns.

Though rebel militias remain a threat, the lull has cleared the way for an estimated half a million Congolese to rush back to the mines, hoping to scrape together enough minerals to survive another day.

“It’s probably the freest it has ever been,” says Baudio Matata, 49, who has been a miner since he was a boy, starting out working for a state-owned company and then prospecting for himself in the 1980s, when Mobutu liberalized mining laws. It was easier to find gold in the 1980s, he says, but government agents usually seized large finds. Violence and war in the 1990s made mining too dangerous, and those who worked were forced to hand over profits to soldiers or rebels.

“Nowadays it’s harder to find the gold, but I get to keep what I find,” Matata says, waving a small plastic bag containing his day’s take, worth about $6.

Nearly all the small-scale mining is still done by hand, with broken shovels, plastic buckets and homemade hammers. With little else, hundreds of villagers in a remote valley about an hour from Mongbwalu have literally moved a mountain, shovelful by shovelful, over the last two years, excavating a massive red-dirt pit 100 yards deep and 200 yards across. It takes a line of 40 men to toss buckets of dirt and rocks from the bottom of the hole to the top.

George Kubuli, 25, hauling dirt in pink pants and flip-flops, says he doesn’t see much of the 50 grams of gold a day that a manager of the Lafolie mine says it can yield.

“Don’t talk to him,” a supervisor interrupts. “He has work to do.”

At the bottom of the deep pit are gray dolerite rocks containing tiny flecks of gold. Broken rocks are tossed up the same line of men and carried to a tent, where another row of workers pulverizes the stones by striking them with steel poles. To pass the time and make the work less monotonous, the laborers pound and sing in a rhythm that can be heard a mile away.

About 250 miles to the south, in the pastoral highlands near Goma, boys as young as 9 help pan for minerals in the Mumba River, earning money to help their families pay primary school fees. “I’ve already made $10, which I used to buy a goat,” says 14-year-old Asifiwe Barindikije.

Miners there, working in teams of two or three, divert the river into short troughs built of rock and clay, where mud is sifted by hand to isolate the heavier sands containing coltan, cassiterite and manganese.

A middleman makes the arduous three-hour drive from nearby Goma twice a week to buy bags of the sand and rocks.

Faustin Habyambere, 27, says he earns about $5 a day and knows that the middleman, in turn, sells the minerals for about twice that to buyers across the border in Rwanda.

“I don’t care where it goes,” Habyambere says. “Before, I was a farmer, but this pays better.”

Congolese government officials, however, are increasingly frustrated by the export of their nation’s minerals to neighboring countries, much of it done illegally without paying taxes.

“Our loss is enormous,” said Stephen Kitz, a general director at the Office of the Gold Mines of Kilo-Moto, a state-owned extraction company. Kilo-Moto once employed 5,000 people and mined gold worth more than $100 million a year, but today it is nearly bankrupt.

The first stop for the minerals is usually neighboring Uganda or Rwanda. Uganda has few gold mines of its own, yet it has exported an average of $55 million in gold a year since 2000, according to a recent U.N. report. Likewise, tiny Rwanda exports five times as much cassiterite, a black rock used to make tin, as it claims to produce. From these two countries, the U.S. receives much of Congo’s coltan. Brussels gets the diamonds, Switzerland the gold.

In the town of Goma, on the border with Rwanda, there’s little evidence that residents benefit from mining proceeds. Roads remain covered with hardened lava from a deadly 2002 volcanic eruption, and the lack of running water forces residents to make daily treks to Lake Kivu, where they fill jerrycans and do their wash.

“These people are still being pillaged,” says Kevin D’Souza, a mining engineer with resource consultant Wardell Armstrong in London. “That’s the tragedy. It hasn’t changed since the days of King Leopold.

“Nobody even knows how much wealth is being mined and where it’s going. It’s hemorrhaging through various channels.”

Congo’s own mining infrastructure is a shambles. Factories, like the one in Mongbwalu, were closed and looted, leaving no place inside the country to process raw materials. Kitz estimates that $250 million is needed to rebuild the industry.

Sloppy, short-sighted extraction techniques have destabilized most underground mines. Quarries such as Lafolie are reinforced with little more than tree trunks and palm fronds. Elsewhere, cave-ins and falling rocks kill or maim miners every week.

The once-thriving Makala mine, carved into a Mongbwalu hillside in 1948, is one of the most dangerous. Belgians tried to hide the site by burying it and, according to locals, set explosives inside to ward off poachers and destabilize miles-long corridors.

Nevertheless, scores of young men pass through the rusted, moss-covered gates each day, sometimes working in the dark for a week at a time. Inside, they torch the rock to make it smooth and easier to cut, but the fires can suck up all the air and release lethal gases that send miners fleeing. So many are hurt that they’ve set up a committee that collects 15% of everyone’s haul in return for a promise to pay hospital, or funeral, costs in case of an accident.

“I know it’s dangerous, but what choice do I have?” says miner Kasongo Banza, who also runs the collection fund. “If I don’t do this, I don’t eat.”

Although fighting has subsided in the northeast, militias and rebel groups keep a tight grip on mining activities in some areas.

In Mongbwalu, U.N. troops set up camp this year and the mayor was reappointed, but residents know the real authority still rests with the Nationalist and Integrationist Front, or FNI, whose headquarters sits atop a hill overlooking the town.

FNI militiamen show up several times a week at the key mining spots, charging miners $1 each time the workers enter the mines and an additional $12 a week. They even demanded $9,000 in “protection money” from AngloGold Ashanti, a South African mining company under contract with Kilo-Moto.

After Human Rights Watch accused the corporation of funding a “murderous armed group,” AngloGold Ashanti’s chief executive, Bobby Godsell, said he would halt payments to the militia.

Few of the miners complain about the fees they are charged.

“It’s natural to pay,” says Jayerombi Uwechi, 24, squinting at the sun as he emerges from a day inside the partly flooded Adidi mine. “They control the area. We’ve always had to pay whoever’s in control.” The illegal tax, he adds, is better than when the city was controlled by Ugandan soldiers, who sometimes forced people to work in the mines without pay, beating those who refused.

Gold miner John Alio, 27, says he’s just grateful that the minerals provide him with a daily living. He says he can’t imagine his country without them.

“Even if I could trade the minerals for peace, I wouldn’t,” Alio says. “I would never want to give them up.”

Posted at 5:26 PM · Comments (0)

Sunday, November 27

He shouldn’t have been there. Ahmat Soubiane knew he’d eventually have to pack up his wife and four young daughters and leave the official diplomatic residence. He wasn’t the Republic of Chad’s ambassador to the United States anymore; the house no longer was his. After five years in the post, he had been recalled for expressing opposition to his boss, Chadian President Idriss Deby.

But he’d stayed — for 16 months. By law, the Soubianes had become squatters. So they were braced for trouble. And one afternoon, it came.

Someone started banging on the door. They heard the sound of wood cracking as someone kicked it in. And suddenly the place was swarming with people.

There was Mahamoud Adam Bechir, the new ambassador from Chad, along with his driver, his cook, his charge d’affaires. And there was Bechir’s lawyer, as well as a squad of young men who broke down the door.

The politics of Chad, a landlocked country virtually in the middle of Africa’s Sahara, had been visited upon a quiet cul-de-sac in Montgomery County’s Hampshire Green community, the official home of the Chadian ambassador. That July day, Soubiane and Bechir, the dueling diplomats, faced off for 12 hours at the residence, surrounded by officers of the Secret Service, the Diplomatic Security Service, Montgomery County police and State Department officials.

Their test of wills reached a negotiated end a couple of days later in talks brokered by State Department officials. Bechir, who’d presented his credentials to the White House, took up residence in the official Chadian home. Soubiane, his wife, Zarga, and their four daughters — Amina, 13; twins Izza and Iman, 12; and 6-year-old Souad — found refuge in the home of a friend in Columbia.

They had relocated. But the Soubianes’ life was still in limbo. And the battle was far from over.

* * *

As boys in primary school, Soubiane and Deby had been chums. Later, they became comrades in the struggle against the Chadian dictator Hissene Habre, whose government stands accused of arresting, torturing and killing thousands of ethnic citizens during the 1980s.

Such brutality happened amid anti-Habre forces as well, and Soubiane experienced it firsthand. During the struggle in the mid-1980s, he was tortured while imprisoned by an opposition group in the mountains of northern Chad, and then fled to Libya.

Meanwhile, Deby had emerged as a rebel nationalist who wanted to unify and democratize Chad. So when Deby led the overthrow of Habre in 1990, a jubilant Soubiane joined their victory ride into N’Djamena, the Chadian capital.

Soubiane helped craft the country’s constitution. Deby appointed him interior minister, then a regional governor. Soubiane’s commitment to democracy was spurred by those experiences, he says. Deby named him ambassador to the United States in 1998.

Soubiane, 49, sits for an interview wearing gray slacks, blue blazer and white shirt. He speaks softly, slowly, his English deeply accented by the Arabic and French that are his more familiar tongues. His bearing is formal, befitting a diplomat, a politician, as he methodically describes his falling out with his old friend.

“We fought together. We came to power together. And we had a commitment to build democracy,” Soubiane says.

But in 2003, he believed that Deby was moving away from democracy.

Deby was in his second term, facing the end of his rule, when Soubiane learned that the president was pressing for a constitutional amendment that would scrap presidential term limits.

Soubiane wrote a letter urging the ruling party in Chad and the president himself not to do so. Of all provisions in new democracies, term limits are among the most important, Soubiane says.

“All the countries who respect this point go on to development,” he says.

Human rights advocates and the State Department expressed their concern at the constitutional change, which one U.S. official said “opens the door for him [Deby] to stay in power.”

Deby’s response was to fire Soubiane and order him home.

Soubiane especially regrets no longer being part of the talks on Chad’s newfound oil wealth. As ambassador, he had served as a negotiator with the World Bank on the oil pipeline project that has made Chad the newest “petro-state” in Africa. Soubiane expresses pride in the formula his country created with the bank to spend revenue wisely and avoid the waste and corruption that have afflicted Africa’s other petro-states.

But Chad this year was ranked one of the world’s two most corrupt countries, along with Bangladesh. The country has a frightening record of human rights abuses — extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions — under Deby’s regime. Soubiane knows all this. Indeed, he had been part of the Deby government.

Yet there is a certain naivete about Soubiane as he expresses his surprise at what happened to him in the United States after he defied Deby.

Nothing happened. That was the rub. It seemed to make no difference. He heard nothing, he says, from those people who propose democracy for other countries. He expected, at least, for his asylum application to be decided.

“Where are these people who every day are talking about democracy and good governance?” Soubiane asked. “I sacrifice my position. I sacrifice my family. I sacrifice my privilege to step up and to say [of Deby], ‘This is wrong.’ “

In July, Chadian presidential term limits were, indeed, scrapped.

And the new ambassador broke down the door.

* * *

The Soubianes have no income, no jobs, no legal papers, no right to leave the United States pending their asylum application. They are living in donated housing in Columbia, and the girls are worried about their safety and struggle to fit into their new schools.

To Soubiane, it seems that the only people standing with his family are the ordinary people who have learned of their plight and have stepped forward to help them.

Like Bob D’Angelis. He knows nothing of Chad, but he does know a thing or two about helping students in distress.

He is a student support official with Howard County schools and was alerted to a potential problem earlier this fall. A couple of new students at Harpers Choice Middle School were highly emotional and prone to crying. It was the Soubiane twins, Izza and Iman. They were attending Harpers Choice along with their older sister, Amina.

Iman wrote a poem that seemed to reflect her lasting fear of the men behind the door, the men who came to evict them.

How would I know who is behind the door?

How would I know what could happen?

How would I know what to do?

Why should I be punished? Why should I be the problem? …

For the complete article, please see the link below.
� 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Gonzo’s gone, but journalism hasn’t been the same since
Marc Weingarten
Crown: 326 pp., $25

By Robert S. Boynton, Special to The Times

New Journalism is dead. Long live New Journalism!

Has ever a literary movement’s demise been more frequently hailed than New Journalism’s? “Whatever happened to the New Journalism?” wondered Thomas Powers in a 1975 issue of Commonweal. In 1981, Joe Nocera published a postmortem in the Washington Monthly, blaming its demise on the journalistic liberties taken by Hunter S. Thompson. Regardless of the culprit, less than a decade after Tom Wolfe’s 1973 New Journalism anthology, the consensus was that New Journalism was dead.

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And yet, as Marc Weingarten shows in “The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight,” the movement thrived (he calls it “the greatest literary movement since the American fiction renaissance of the 1920s”), survived and has even achieved a measure of respectability. “Once a rear-guard rebellion, its tenets are so accepted now that they’ve become virtually invisible,” Weingarten writes. “The art of narrative storytelling is alive and well; it’s just more diffuse now, spread out across books, magazines, newspapers, and the Web.”

Weingarten takes the reader on an enjoyable romp through New Journalism’s most famous works, telling the “story behind the story” of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima,” Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and Norman Mailer’s “The Armies of the Night.” Along the way, Weingarten drops nuggets that may enrich our readings of these classics (Capote “never tape- recorded any conversations and never jotted anything down in a notebook during the entire six years it took for him to research the story”; Mailer picked up his third-person narrative technique from “The Education of Henry Adams,” which he read as a Harvard freshman). As a narrative history of an important journalistic movement, Weingarten’s book might be paired with Carol Polsgrove’s “It Wasn’t Pretty, Folks, but Didn’t We Have Fun?,” an excellent history of Esquire magazine in the 1960s.

Surprisingly, the writer who seems to have had the most influence on the movement was the New Yorker’s Lillian Ross, whom several others in the book cite as their inspiration. It is sometimes forgotten that long before Tom Wolfe proposed nonfiction that reads “like a novel,” Ross was doing just that in her pieces on John Huston and Ernest Hemingway in the early 1950s. “I don’t know whether this sort of thing has ever been done before, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t try to do a fact piece in novel form,” she suggested to her editor.

The standard interpretation of New Journalism is that it was a writer-centric movement in which renegades like Thompson and Wolfe pushed the form almost to the breaking point. While this is true, Weingarten’s book provides evidence that it was as much, if not more, of an editor’s movement than a writer’s. His portraits of Clay Felker (founder of New York magazine), Harold Hayes (Esquire), Warren Hinckle (Ramparts and Scanlan’s) and Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone) make it clear that the linchpin of the movement was a group of visionaries who were willing to take serious financial and editorial risks. They didn’t merely provide a venue for Wolfe & Co., they were the catalyst that encouraged New Journalists to experiment in the first place. As important as individual writers and articles were, the enduring cultural influence of Rolling Stone (Wenner envisioned it as combining “the professionalism of Time and the hipness of the underground press with stories that would run as long as the New Yorker’s”), Esquire and New York was far greater.

If these editors played a crucial role in the movement’s success, they also bear some responsibility for its failings. As the recent outpouring of praise for the late Hunter S. Thompson shows, we have a tendency to deify these writers, imputing a level of professionalism to their work that most of them never would have.

It is often forgotten that they were, for the most part, a bunch of young writers who were making things up as they went along with a free-spiritedness that occasionally led them astray. With the public’s opinion of journalism at an all-time low, we are still living with the legacy of these corrupt practices. Weingarten is too generous to Thompson’s erratic work, which he characterizes as “journalism as bricolage.” “Back in New York, Hunter had to file the story for Scanlan’s, but he couldn’t recall most of what had transpired,” Weingarten observes of Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.” Similarly, the composites used in New York magazine by Gail Sheehy and George Goodman (who published under the nom de plume of “Adam Smith”) had a deleterious effect on journalism’s reputation. “New Journalism is rising,” the Wall Street Journal wrote, “but its believability is declining.”

So what really “killed” New Journalism? I would say it was the twin evils of all magazine journalism: service and sensationalism. As Weingarten notes, by the early 1970s, magazines like New York were beginning the long slide down toward “Top 10” service features and puffy lifestyle stories. The 1977 appearance of “Star Wars” on the cover of Rolling Stone suggested that, from then on, most magazines would function as little more than “press organs for movie stars.” The journalistic form with which writers like Wolfe chronicled postwar consumerism eventually succumbed to it.

Robert S. Boynton is the author of “The New New Journalism” and teaches magazine journalism at New York University.

Posted at 12:47 PM · Comments (0)

Beijing

The 20-year-old Peking University sophomore sat down at her computer
one day in late April and posted a poem on a university Internet bulletin board. She then walked to the top of a university building and leapt to her death. Her family later found the poem on the university Web site:

I Made a List
Put reasons to live on the left side
Reasons to die on the right
I wrote many on the right
But found little to write on the left
Not willing to imagine
Continuing to live like this for decades.

She was one of 17 college students in Beijing who committed suicide in the first seven months of this year. In September a freshman at a
university in Guangdong province, in southern China, jumped from the seventh floor of a campus building. He had earlier complained to classmates about the poor quality of campus life, saying that the food was bad and that he was even unable to launder his own clothes. “I’m very sorry I cannot live up to your expectations,” the student told his parents in a suicide note.

With harsh competition for a spot at the best universities, Chinese
college students today face conflicting and stressful demands. Products of China’s one-child policy, they are often pampered and protected at home, only to face appalling living conditions� — unheated dormitories, poor food, inadequate washing facilities� — on campus. They also find their intellectual and physical freedom curtailed, even as they struggle to gain independence. Few students take advantage of university counseling, which is only just becoming available on many campuses.

As a result, students are increasingly rebelling against the system,
and psychological problems and suicide are on the rise. The situation is a far cry from the student days of their parents, a generation raised on the cradle-to-grave “iron rice bowl,” or system of guaranteed lifetime employment under Communism. While this is China’s first generation of college students to enjoy previously unknown freedoms� — their parents had their courses of study and jobs chosen for them� — the pressures that accompany these freedoms can be overwhelming.

“People are more and more concerned about the younger generation,” says Myra Lu, a senior at the Communication University of China, in Beijing. “China has really changed a lot. Twenty years ago, my mom never would have imagined that her daughter would live the life she’s living today. We feel
we’ve grown up with society, and we didn’t have enough time to react, no time to think.”

Fang Xin, a Peking University psychologist who has been working with
college students for 12 years, says that students today are “victims of a changing society” in which parents put extraordinary pressure on their only child to succeed.

“Parents tell their children if they work hard they’ll get into a
better university, and if they graduate from a better university they’ll get a
better job, and if they get a better job, they’ll earn more money,” she
says.

Ms. Fang predicts the problem will get worse, saying that the students
who
need help the most don’t realize it, and never come to the
psychological-counseling center. When she held a special online
counseling session following the suicide of the young woman, only 67 of the university’s 25,400 students took part.

“I think the number of suicides will increase,” she says, adding that
the trend is “contagi us.”

Suicide is the main cause of death among people ages 20 to 35 in China, according to a July report by the ministry of health. Doctors cite exam stress, career worries, and relationship problems as the main reasons, according to news reports. In Beijing, 20 cases of suicide were reported last year.

Locking the Gates

In many ways, Chinese students today live similarly to their
counterparts in the West. The pedestrian mall beside Fudan University, in Shanghai, is lined with bookstores, coffee shops, clothing stores, and small eateries. The bookstore shelves are piled high with Western works� — in translation and in the original language� — including Simone de Beauvoir’s biography,
Orwell’s 1984, the recent bestseller The Da Vinci Code, and Francis
Bacon’s Essays.

One summer morning, just inside the main gate of the university, two
students are lost in a kiss beneath a towering statue of the late
Chairman
Mao Zedong. A few yards away, students lie on the grass beside a small
lake, reading textbooks or just chatting. A student wearing dark
black-framed glasses and a T-shirt that says Linkin Park paces back and
forth while memorizing a stack of notecards.

But the similarities to the West soon stop. Chinese students� — both
undergraduates and graduate students� — must maneuver through a
plethora of
regulations and restrictions that students in Western countries would
find
suffocating.

Most university campuses in China are walled and gated to keep
strangers
out and, on occasion, students in. Students are required to live in
dormitories, where doors are locked at a set time each evening. When
thousands of anti-Japanese demonstrators marched through Beijing’s
university district earlier this year, anxious students could only
watch
from a distance. Gates at the leading universities in the city’s
Haidian
district were locked to prevent students from joining the protest.

Secret Exodus

Dormitory conditions are dismal. Normally, a half-dozen students are
crowded into one small room, with toilet facilities down the hall. Hot
water turns off at 11 p.m. And with no showers in the dormitories,
students
have to walk to a shower facility elsewhere on campus.

“The summers are too warm, and in the winters the heat goes on too
late,
and you have to use a lot of blankets,” complains Zhu Ying, a senior at
Capital Normal University, adding that the public showers are a
10-minute
walk away, a long trek on bitter winter nights in Beijing.

Lights in rooms go off at 11 p.m. (a new government regulation
rescinded
that policy, but colleges have been slow to comply), so students move
to
the lit hallway to do late-night work, sitting on stacks of books and
using
chairs as makeshift desks.

“We have six students in one room and three desks,” says Rui Ming, a
student at Nanjing University. “The space between my desk and bed is so
narrow, I have to stand sideways to let someone pass by.”

The conditions have led to an undercover exodus from college
dormitories in
recent years, despite government regulations requiring students to live
on
campuses. No one knows for sure how many students have moved off
campus, as
they must still pay for their dorm rooms, but students generally put
the
figure at about 10 percent� — some say as high as 20 percent.

Chinese universities also have strict rules regarding relations between
male and female students. Some institutions even forbid men from
entering
women’s dormitories and vice versa. “The guard at our building has such
a
keen eye that even a male fly would not be able to sneak in,” the
official
China Daily quoted a Shanghai student as joking.

Students take the restrictions seriously, and for good reason. One
student
was kicked out of Shanghai University earlier this year after it was
learned that his girlfriend spent the night in his room caring for him
when
he was ill.

Last year a university in Chengdu, in Sichuan province, expelled two
students who were caught on a hidden video camera while kissing on an
empty
classroom floor one evening. Although the girl produced a doctor’s
certificate proving that she was still a virgin, the university
insisted
that the incident was an “illicit sexual act” and refused to back down.
A
court case to force the institution to reinstate the students failed.

Students are critical of such policies. “It’s not the school’s
business,”
says Laura Liu, a graduate student in journalism at Fudan University,
in
Shanghai. “You can’t regulate things like this. Students have a right
to
have a boyfriend or girlfriend.”

When two Beijing students were found murdered in their off-campus
apartment
last year, universities adopted an “I told you so” attitude.

Students point in turn to the case of Ma Jiajue, a senior at Yunnan
University, in southwestern China, who last year hacked four of his
roommates to death in their dorm room. Mr. Ma, who was very bright,
came
from a poor farm family. He felt discriminated against and suffered
from
periods of deep depression. He was executed in June 2004.

It’s a Joke

Chinese students also face a good deal of political indoctrination. In
the
summer before their freshman year, all students take part in obligatory
military training for about two weeks. Students speak fondly of this
experience, in the way that soldiers describe the camaraderie created
in
boot camp.

“Standing in the sun for hours isn’t pleasant,” says Daisy Li, a
student in
Shanghai. “But by the end of the training, we had formed good ties with
the
trainers. Some girls have tears in their eyes when they leave.”

University students must also take courses each year in basic communist
philosophy, including Marxism, Mao Zedong’s thought, and theories of
Deng
Xiaoping. Few students� — or professors� — appear to take those
courses
seriously.

“It’s a joke,” says Ms. Lu. “I don’t know why we have to take it. One
student pretends to listen to the teacher and the rest sleep, listen to
music, or completely skip the class. We just memorize the night before
the
exam.”

Students tell of teachers who are aware of the unpopularity of the
courses,
and who use the time to teach Chinese history or Western philosophy.

Some observers worry that China’s pampered “little emperors” are
arriving
on university campuses ill-prepared for the real world. Most new
students
have never been away from home before, never held a job, and have not
had a
romantic relationship.

“They were overprotected by their parents, and when they get into
university they’re not used to dealing with things on their own,” says
Ms.
Liu, the Shanghai graduate student.

Some worried parents move to university cities with their college
children
to take care of them; some families go so far as to hire “nannies” to
take
care of their university-age sons and daughters.

In the case of the Guangdong student who committed suicide this fall,
the
Chinese news media reported that the young man’s parents had planned to
rent a house near the campus to be close to him while he was at the
university. But when his mother told the young man the family could not
afford the rent, and would instead deliver home-cooked meals to him
each
day, the distraught student committed suicide.

Ms. Fang, the Peking University psychologist, blames parents for
spoiling
their children and being overly protective.

“They’re 18 years old, but their psychological age is just 8 or 9,” she
says of students today. “This is because Mom is always telling them,
‘You
needn’t do anything. I’ll wash your clothes, I’ll cook for you.’”

Last year, Nanjing University of Science and Technology began offering
16
types of free hotel-like services in its dorms, including room
cleaning,
morning wake-up calls, the posting of mail, and even putting air in
bicycle
tires. The new services were seen as an attempt to keep students from
moving off the campus. But the venture led to a nationwide debate.

The Beijing Youth Daily welcomed the decision, saying the new services
would “free students from mundane trivial matters, allowing them to
focus
more on academic study.” But the People’s Daily concluded that hotel
services would actually encourage laziness and a dependent mentality
among
students, and accused “overbearing parents” of having kept their
children
“far from daily chores at home.”

Loosening Its Grip

The Ministry of Education has recently begun to take steps to relax its
grip on university life. It has appeared to back down on the
requirement
that all students live on campus when it vaguely altered the wording of
the
prohibition, implying that students might be allowed to choose where
they
want to live.

The ministry also lifted the decades-old ban on students’ getting
married,
a move welcomed by a China Daily commentator. “It is as if an old lady
is
reluctantly loosening her grip on her naughty grown-up children,” the
commentator wrote, adding that the move was “a trend that should be
encouraged.” The author went on to say that excessive supervision by
schools and parents limited the opportunity for students to learn from
their mistakes.

Some universities were quick to capitalize on the changes. Suzhou
University announced that pregnant students would be able to obtain a
one-year maternity leave� — a first. Fudan University said it would
no
longer immediately expel students caught having sex.

The university’s Web site said students caught engaging in sexual
relations� — whether on campus or off� — would be given a warning
and a
negative report in their school records. Students would be expelled
after
two warnings.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of China, which is less progressive than
the
education ministry, responded to changes on the nation’s campuses with
a
characteristic call for a heavier hand in dealing with university
students.
In a People’s Daily article last October that announced the start of a
new
political campaign aimed at students, the party complained that “a
number
of weak links exist in the ideological and political education of
college
students in the face of profound changes in the international and
domestic
situations.”

The document announcing the campaign, which had the unwieldy title
“Views
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council
on
Further Strengthening and Improving the Ideological and Political
Education
of University Students,” also called for better control of college Web
sites and the Internet.

During the past year, the government has shut down popular Internet
bulletin boards. At some universities, Internet usage has been
restricted
to people who are physically on the campus.

Students have also been told to register to use the Internet with their
real names, a move that no doubt has had an intimidating effect on
cyberrebels.

But in the real world, students continue to skirt campus rules intended
to
keep them on a tight leash.

“There’s no way to force a 20-year-old,” says Ms. Lu. “If you want to
go
out every night, no one can watch you all the time. And I don’t think
it’s
necessary. We’re mature enough to make our own decisions and we know
what
we want. If they give us too much pressure, there will be a bad
reaction.”

Posted at 6:10 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times
Published: November 24 2005

The US government is poised to propose rules that could restrict the
ability of Chinese and other foreign nationals to engage in high-level research in the country, a plan that is generating fierce opposition from companies and universities.

The move comes amid growing fears in the US that its relatively open
rules allowing foreign nationals to work with sensitive technologies leave the country open to espionage.

Law enforcement and intelligence officials fear China in particular
could be using some of its more than 150,000 students in the US to spy on behalf of Beijing.

In a few weeks, the commerce department is expected to respond to a
report by its inspector-general, which warned of the espionage risks last year.
The inspector-general’s proposal called for an expansion of the rules that restrict the sharing of advanced technologies with foreign nationals.

Under existing law, companies or universities are required to seek a
government export licence if they allow citizens from controlled
countries, most prominently China, to engage in research involving technologies with potential military uses.

But licences are not required if a Chinese national becomes a citizen
or a permanent resident in another country – such as Canada or the UK – which is not subject to stringent US export controls.

There are particular concerns about the tens of thousands of Chinese
who have taken out citizenship in countries that exchange technology freely with the US.

The proposal under consideration would expand the so-called “deemed
export” requirement to cover anyone born in China or other controlled countries such as Iran and North Korea, even if they had taken out citizenship in another country.
The idea has particularly angered US universities, which have seen the enrolment of foreign students drop sharply owing to the stricter visa requirements imposed after the September 11 2001 terror attacks.

International student enrolment at US colleges and universities has
fallen by 1.3 per cent in the last academic year, following a 2.4 per cent fall the year before.

“The most alarming outcome of this proposed rule will be the
substantial negative impact on attracting the best and brightest people from round the world to participate in the conduct of basic and applied research, which is of extraordinary social and economic value to the nation,” wrote Robert Goldston, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory, in one of hundreds of comments sent to the commerce department in the past six months.

Lawyers and lobbyists following the debate in the US government say the
administration might opt for a less restrictive rule than that proposed
in
the inspector-general’s report.

A senior commerce department official said that whatever rule was
adopted
would “strive to protect national security while meeting the needs of
industry and academia”.

“Controls on the release of technology to foreign nationals in the US
must
– and can – protect national security while allowing business and
the
academic research community to employ the world’s best minds, no
matter
their nationality.”

Posted at 12:54 PM · Comments (0)

On Oct 25, 2005 a three-judge panel of the Tokyo District Court upheld a lawsuit filed by 25 leprosy (Hansen�s disease) patients from Taiwan claiming compensation from the Japanese government for being forcibly segregated during Japanese colonial rule. On the same day, another panel of judges ruled against 117 South Korean leprosy patients seeking compensation who had also been quarantined during the colonial era.[1]

All of the plaintiffs were forcibly institutionalized under the aegis of Japanese colonial administrations. Previously these plaintiffs had unsuccessfully approached the Japanese government for the same redress awarded to all leprosy patients in Japan in a 2001 decision by the Japanese government to offer compensation ranging from 8-14 million yen. This compensation, it should be noted, was granted regardless of ethnicity to all those segregated in Japan. The government later extended the compensation to lepers who had not been segregated, acknowledging that the segregation policy, in effect until 1996, had exacerbated a social stigma against all lepers whether or not they had been quarantined. The colonial lepers filed suit to gain what has been offered to all lepers, and bereaved families of lepers, in Japan.

The Rulings

According to Masami Ito, �In rejecting the compensation demand from former South Korean patients, presiding Judge Tsuruoka Toshihiko ruled that the Diet deliberations that took place while establishing the compensation law show that the law was expected to cover all people who were institutionalized in sanitariums in Japan.� [2] Tsuruoka based his ruling denying compensation to the Korean lepers on his narrow interpretation of the compensation law, asserting that, ��neither the lawmakers in the Diet nor those who established the law had such former patients in mind during the deliberations.� Ito further quotes Tsuruoka as arguing that, �It would be difficult to say that the law specifically excluded patients in institutions outside Japan. But it is also obvious that there is no ground (for concluding) that the law includes such people.� He went on to suggest revision of the compensation law because ��it cannot be denied that those institutionalized outside Japan were also subject to discrimination because of the government�s segregation policy at home, and that there is room for consideration to give compensation to such former patients as well.� In effect the judge is arguing that his decision against granting compensation is based on the current law and the intentions of those who wrote and implemented the compensation statute. However, in principle it appears that he is not against compensating the plaintiffs for the segregation and discrimination they suffered, and is sympathetic to their claim, if the law is revised to include them.

Judge Kanno Hiroyuki, the presiding judge in the panel that ruled in favor of the Taiwanese plaintiffs, took a broader view concerning the aims of the compensation law. Kanno stated, �This is not just compensation for damages or loss�(it is),�a special type of compensation to heal the physical and emotional scars of people who were placed in Hansen�s disease institutions, as well as to ensure a peaceful life for their futures.� In his view, �It is difficult to interpret the law as limiting compensation to certain areas in view of the law�s nature, which is aimed at helping former leprosy patients broadly and comprehensively.� Thus, he ruled that it was illegal for the Japanese government to arbitrarily deny compensation to any lepers who had suffered from discriminatory and inhumane treatment as a consequence of Japanese government policy because the compensation law was intended to provide redress to everyone who had been so wronged. Since the institutionalized colonial lepers had not been specifically excluded, he concluded that there is no basis for denying them the benefits of the compensation law.

In fact the compensation law places no restriction on where the leprosaria are located, stipulating only that redress be paid to anyone forced by Japanese authorities to live in such facilities. Only the implementing ordinance of the Ministry of Health and Welfare limits compensation to patients segregated in Japan.

Judge Tsuruoka based his ruling against the Koreans on the fact that, although the 1934 Leprosy Prevention Law of Japan that stipulated forced segregation of leprosy patients was enacted officially in Taiwan, it was never adopted in Korea. He ruled that the Korean institution could not be regarded as a Japanese state facility. However, the 1917 Korean Leprosy Disease Prevention Ordinance copied an earlier version of the Leprosy Prevention Law in Japan. As a result of this colonial Korean ordinance, a leprosarium was established on the small island of Sorokto off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula. Currently there are 740 elderly former leprosy patients housed there.

However, several legal scholars rejected the idea that this legal nicety explains the clashing rulings. Rather they saw the disparity as normal. Contradictory rulings at the district court level are fairly common and the role of appeals courts is to provide recourse to, and remedy for, such inconsistencies and disparities. Ken Port, a specialist in Japanese law at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota currently conducting research in Tokyo, commented, �It is not unusual in Japan or America to have district courts come to different results. I doubt that it has anything to do with the nationality of the plaintiffs.� [3]

Professor Suami Takao of Waseda Law School, Luke Nottage, a professor of Law at the University of Sydney, and Dan Rosen of Chuo University Law School all agree with this assessment. Suami notes, �The chamber in charge of the Korean case understands that discussion in the Diet was made on the assumption that people outside Japan would not be able to get compensation by the Act. On the other hand, the chamber in charge of Taiwanese considered the refusal to give Taiwanese compensation as the violation of the equality principle�..the difference in legal interpretation will be unified by the Tokyo High Court, which is the Court of Appeals. It is my impression, the Tokyo High Court is in general not in favor of protection of rights of non-Japanese. Therefore, it seems difficult for the Korean plaintiffs to succeed in overruling the judgment of the District Court at the High Court.� [4]

Rosen concludes, �So it seems he (Judge Tsuruoka) is putting everyone not within Japan itself in the same (non-covered) category. I don’t have specific information about former colonial powers taking or avoiding responsibility. However, I imagine that�in general—such countries claim that all such matters are resolved by whatever treaty took effect at the end of the colonial period. In other words…that the claims are extinguished.� [5]

This indeed is the Japanese government�s view; the 1965 Treaty of Normalization with South Korea aimed to extinguish any further legal claims. However, at the end of August 2005 Seoul abruptly shifted its position on this question and indicated that it continues to hold Japan legally responsible for �inhumane crimes�.

The Japan Times reported this diplomatic bombshell as follows,

“We cannot see that the normalization treaty resolved such inhumane crimes as comfort women, in which Japan’s state power, such as the government and military, was involved,” said Yu Chong Sang, a senior official at the prime minister’s office. “Japan’s legal responsibility remains.” Other “inhumane crimes” include slave laborers who died during their ordeal, and those caught up in the atomic bombings who were in Japan against their will, Yu said. However, Seoul is not holding Japan responsible for other slave labor cases, as the money it received from Tokyo at the time of normalization included compensation for that, he said. South Korea received an $800 million package, including $300 million in grants, from Japan in return for establishing ties. Yu said the $300 million was seen as resolving the compensation issue for slave labor.� [6] Higashizawa Yasushi, a lawyer active in the Japan Civil Liberties Union, writes that, �It is not certain whether the {1965 Normalization} Treaty covered claims caused by leprosy detention and treatment during colonization.� [7]

It would appear that segregation of lepers would fall into the category of �inhumane crimes� cited by the Korean government as not being extinguished by the 1965 agreement. In January 2005 the Japanese government released the findings of its investigation of the nation�s leprosaria. This 1,500 page report delves into the history of the facilities since their inception and details the cruel treatment endured by the patients/inmates. Truly, they were houses of horrors. Macabre specimens of aborted fetuses were preserved dating as far back as 1924 without any apparent reason. The report harshly criticizes the medical ethics practiced at the facilities and reserves special condemnation for the consequences of the Eugenics Protection Law that led to abortions, compulsory sterilizations, smothering of babies upon birth, research autopsies and dubious medical experiments. It is particularly damning that the investigators conclude that the main reason why the Health Ministry continued to require segregation of lepers - the official policy between 1907-1996 - was to secure budget allocations from the Finance Ministry and maintain employment for the staff and physicians. This policy was maintained long after effective medication was widely available and everyone involved knew that segregation was unnecessary.

Many of my students, neighbors and friends in Japan believe that the rulings reflect both a bias against Koreans and the political tensions between the two nations. While relations with Taiwan are relatively good, relations with Korea remain troubled by, inter alia, rifts over history textbooks and by PM Koizumi Junichiro�s repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine, seen by many Koreans as a talismanic symbol of unrepentant militarism and a whitewash of Japan�s aggression in Asia. I was surprised to discover that my students do not believe that the judges ruled on the legal merits of the cases and instead insisted that the rulings reflected anti-Korean prejudice. Some students also mentioned that the government is concerned that a favorable ruling on Korean claims for compensation in this case would set a costly precedent that might influence lawsuits by former comfort women and slave laborers. In short, Japan enjoys friendly relations with Taiwan and Taiwanese memories of the colonial era are relatively positive while many Koreans are angry about their shared history with Japan. In this context, the potential liability for settling all possible claims with Korea could be very high.

This disparity in perceptions between legal scholars and the public regarding how subjective factors influence legal rulings is widespread. Judges are seen to be minions of the establishment, usually favoring the government or ruling Liberal Democratic Party. [8] This perception gap is one of the driving forces of ongoing sweeping judicial reforms as the legal community tries to address concerns about a lack of credibility and public distrust of the judiciary.

Courting Compensation

As of 2005, 3,475 former lepers have received compensation in Japan based on the 2001 Compensation Act that is set to expire in 2006. Of the 70 billion yen budgeted for compensation, 42.34 billion has been paid to claimants, ranging from 8-14 million yen. Thus, if the government does decide to compensate the colonial lepers, nearly 40% of the compensation fund has not yet been distributed.

The leprosy rulings bring to mind the similarly inconsistent rulings involving hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) resident overseas, slave labor and comfort women. Different courts have issued different rulings although in general redress has proved elusive.

Wartime slave laborers have won redress at the district court level in Japan only to have their awards overturned on appeal. In contrast, in 2001 the German government and 6,300 German firms started paying redress to 1.6 million slave laborers from Eastern Europe that it had tracked down after considerable effort and on its own initiative. A $6 billion Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation was established to distribute the compensation, funded through government and industry contributions. No lawsuits, no appeals, no legal technicalities or quibbling-just the political will to atone and offer a token of justice to those who had suffered untold indignities and prolonged injustice. [9]

It is estimated that approximately 39,000 Chinese were transported to Japan between 1943-45 and forced to perform unpaid slave labor. Over sixty lawsuits have been filed in Japan by survivors of this ordeal. They won a landmark case in the Fukuoka District Court in 2002 awarding them compensation from Mitsui Mining. However, in the first-ever ruling at the high court level regarding the lawsuits filed by former slave laborers, in May, 2005 the Fukuoka High Court dismissed the plaintiff�s demand for compensation, citing the expiration of the twenty-year statute of limitations. Although compensation was denied, the high court did acknowledge that the government and Mitsui Mining shared joint liability for transporting the men to Japan and forcing them to work in the Mitsui mines.

Interestingly, the high court rejected the government�s claim that it enjoyed immunity because it was not liable for state actions under the Meiji Constitution. This claim to immunity has been a standard government argument in rejecting wartime compensation claims. Bill Underwood states that this may be a �silver lining� to the ruling denying compensation. [10] By weighing in on the constitutional immunity defense the chances are greater that the case might be heard in the Supreme Court with the potential for setting a precedent favorable to redress movements. The high court also accepted evidence presented that proved a post-WWII government cover-up of knowledge about the slave laborers. This damning evidence indicates that the government was aware of the slave labor situation and tried to suppress this information in order to thwart legal action by the former slave laborers. The judge acknowledged that the suppression of such evidence �transgresses moral laws� but stopped short of upholding the district court finding that to apply the statute of limitations in this case �severely contradicts the idea of justice�.

In April, 2004 the Niigata District Court rejected the government�s claim that laws at that time exempted it from paying compensation to slave laborers, arguing that to acknowledge the government�s position would be inappropriate from the standpoint of justice and fairness. The judge also dismissed claims that the statute of limitations precluded compensation. This is the first time that a court has held both the firm and the government liable, prompting a swift appeal. The government is basing its appeal on the Supreme Court�s two previous rulings that the state cannot be held liable for the illegal actions of civil servants. These precedents, along with the 1965 Treaty of Normalization, were most recently cited in the February 2005 Nagoya District Court Ruling against compensation for South Korean women forced to perform slave labor at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries ammunition factory during WWII. It is estimated that some 4,000 Korean women were conscripted to work in wartime Japan.

Underwood argues that former forced laborers, ��have consistently met with insincerity and obstruction from the Japanese government and corporations. As with other Japanese war crimes (Korean forced labor, comfort women, Unit 731, etc.), the GOJ response has been to stick with blanket denials until the emergence of incontrovertible evidence makes the incremental admission of historical facts unavoidable. The unsuccessful Asian Women’s Fund for military sexual slavery was the closest that GOJ, which holds that past treaties and state-to-state agreements have extinguished all claims, has ever come to compensating individuals.� [11]

In general, the postwar Japanese government has shirked responsibility for wartime excesses and atrocities. However, there are recent signs of change on the redress front. In the NBR, an Internet forum focusing on Japan, Underwood writes, �South Korea’s “Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under Japanese Imperialism” has been in the headlines all year and the pressure, described as “new principles” for confronting Japan on its colonial responsibility, is producing real results. Seoul asked Tokyo for information about 135,000 Korean civilians who worked in Japan during the war; Tokyo in turn asked corporations, municipalities and temples nationwide to search for name rosters and human remains. This is no small about-face��. [12]

Even more promising are legal developments regarding the overseas hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) claims for the same benefits that are accorded to hibakusha resident in Japan. In October 2005 the Fukuoka High Court upheld a lower court ruling that overseas hibakusha do not have to come to Japan to apply for health-care benefits. The government long resisted pressures to make it easier for these ailing and elderly atomic bomb survivors to receive the same benefits provided their counterparts in Japan. The advancing age of the hibakusha was cited as one compelling reason why the government decided not to appeal the ruling. As a result of the high court ruling, the health ministry is revising the Atomic Bomb Survivors� Support Law so that overseas hibakusha can apply for recognition and benefits at Japanese consulates and embassies where they live. Currently, 3,660 overseas hibakusha are officially recognized and receive benefits wherever they reside, a consequence of a 2002 court ruling that waived the residence requirement imposed by the government. Now, some 1,000 more hibakusha are expected to benefit from the new policy as of November 2005. This sensible and humane policy shift offers a precedent for extending compensation to the colonial lepers.

Reconciliation

Steve Kuiack, a Canadian free-lance journalist who has written about the grim conditions and experiences of former Hansen�s disease patients in Korea and works with the Hanvit Welfare Association, terms the recent Tokyo District Court ruling against the Korean plaintiffs a miscarriage of justice.[13]

Kuiack comments that,� I am absolutely baffled as to why Japan’s court would make such a damaging and inconsistent ruling. Of course, ruling in favor of Korea could have possibly opened up a whole can of worms by having other helpless victims of Japan’s imperial control also begging for mercy and justice. As for the reaction in Korea, of course the Koreans are outraged as it tends to legitimize their long-held animosity toward Japan. Unlike the Germans who have taken an active role in righting the wrongs of their past aggression, Japan’s token lip-service on some issues seems insincere and lack of action on others is improper. People have a sense that Japan just wants to sweep its shameful treatment in the past under the carpet, but forgiveness can only proceed once an official admission has been formally provided. Koreans also want to put the pain of Japan’s imperialism in the past.� [14]

Lawyers for both plaintiff groups met with officials of the Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare after the split rulings and thought the government had agreed not to appeal the ruling awarding compensation to the Taiwanese. Back in 2001, PM Koizumi rejected the advice of his advisers to appeal the Kumamoto District Court ruling in favor of the Hansen plaintiffs. Pursuing the usually lengthy appeals process would have been tantamount to denying compensation to many of these ailing and elderly patients.

However, on Nov. 8, 2005 the government appealed the ruling in favor of the Taiwanese with an eye towards negotiating a settlement with both sets of plaintiffs. By applying legal pressure, the government is hoping to strengthen its position in negotiating a settlement. Unexpectedly, however, it expanded the scope of the anticipated settlement to other colonial lepers when Welfare Minister Kawasaki Jiro announced that compensation will also be extended to former leprosy patients in Palau, Saipan, Micronesia and the Marshal Islands. Kawasaki told reporters, �We have to quickly consider how to compensate those former leprosy patients who resided in overseas sanatariums.� To this end new legislation is being prepared that will specify procedures for certifying eligibility and establish levels of compensation.

This move to craft a broad settlement represents a significant development in redress. According to Underwood,
�Japan tends to take an exclusive, �small tent� approach in which the goal appears to be compensation for as few individuals as possible. Cynics might observe that the bureaucratic ideal would be compensation for no one at all. When that becomes politically untenable, we see breakdowns in implementation like the Environment Ministry�s ongoing refusal to revise its three-decade-old certification criteria for Minamata Disease, despite the Japan Supreme Court�s clear intention that it do so. In western countries, by contrast, redress-related lawmaking and implementation tend to follow an inclusive, �big tent� model. To employ a funnel image: western governments point the wide end at potential redress recipients; Japan points the narrow end at them.� [15]

Time for �ROUGH JUSTICE�?

The concept of rough justice has been applied to former victims of Germany during WWII. This approach balances the difficulty of clearly documenting claims to redress with the moral imperative of atonement. By setting the bar low for recognition of eligibility for compensation, the German government sought to reach out to as many victims as possible and thereby avoid unseemly disputes that would detract from what is, above all, a symbolic act of contrition. Underwood writes, �This novel legal concept was accepted during the late-1990s string of Holocaust restitution cases by European governments and corporations, having been developed in cooperation with American lawyers, judges, and State Department officials. The idea was to cram as many potential recipients inside the big compensation tent as possible. To a remarkable degree, concrete proof of actual victimization was deemed unnecessary. Compensation was in many cases granted upon reasonable likelihood of having performed forced labor or belonging to some other victim group. �Rough justice� was adopted because there was firm political commitment to enact compensation legislation BEFORE numbers of potential recipients were even known! The chief drawback to the approach: as recipients unexpectedly increased, individual payouts (always intended as symbolic) decreased. The case of Korean hibakusha, who often lack documentation and the necessary witnesses to place them in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, although many Koreans were certainly there, cries out for a �rough justice� solution.� [16]

Overall, it appears that there are some encouraging developments on the various redress fronts, but scant sign of political resolve. In the larger context of Japan�s troubled relations with China and Korea, there are good reasons for the Japanese government to move towards a rough justice solution. The stigma of failing to make any progress on reconciliation, and the growing importance of regional economies to Japan�s future, suggest the need for a pragmatic accommodation. With the 2008 Beijing Olympics fast approaching, the economy on the mend, and neo-conservatives firmly entrenched in power, there is a golden opportunity for Japan to make a significant symbolic gesture of respect towards Asians. The time is ripe for a Japanese Future Fund, a big and inclusive tent, supported by the government and business. This would be good for business, mend fences, remove the stigma of denial, and lay the foundation for continued peace and prosperity in the region. Much is at stake. By taking responsibility and making a grand gesture, Japan can simultaneously lay to rest major injustices of the past that continue to poison relations with its neighbors, restore national dignity and promote its self-interest.

Jeff Kingston is Director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and author of Japan’s Quiet Transformation: Social change and civil society in the twenty-first century.

[1]lhttp://www.asahi.com/english/Heraldasahi/TKY200510260094.html and http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20051026TDY01003.html
[2] Japan Times 10/26/2005
[3] Personal communication
[4] Personal communication
[5] Personal communication
[6] http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgibin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050827a1.html
[7] Personal communication
[8] See Frank Upham�s review essay, �Political Lackeys or Faithful Public Servants? Two Views of the Japanese Judiciary� in Law and Social Inquiry, 2005: 421-455.
[9] See Andrew Horvat and Gebhard Hielscher, eds. Sharing the Burden of the Past: Legacies of War in Europe, America and Asia, The Asia Foundation/Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Tokyo 2003). Also: http://www.dwworld.de/dw/article/0,2144,1757323,00.html
[10] See Underwood article on Chinese Forced labor: http://www.japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=326
[11] Personal communication
[12] NBR (Nov. 5,2005) cited with author�s permission.
[13] See:
http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?term=kuack++&path=hankooki3/times/lpage/200501/kt2005013118494712100.htm&media=kt

http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?term=kuack++&path=hankooki3/times/lpage/200505/kt2005051620331010230.htm&media=kt)
[14] Personal communication
[15] Personal communication
[16] Personal communication

ISSN: 1557-4660

Posted at 9:57 AM · Comments (0)

Maybe English is just an impossible, illogical language, or as Richard
Lederer puts it, it’s a “crazy language,” as he elaborates as follows:

“Let’s face it: English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant
or ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins were not invented in England or french fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find
that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it
that writers write, but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce, and hammers
don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of
booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So, one moose, 2 meese? One index, two
indices? Is cheese the plural of choose?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship
by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and
feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and
a wise guy are opposites? How can the weather be hot as hell one day an
cold as hell another?

When a house burns up, it burns down. You fill in a form by filling it
out and an alarm clock goes off by going on.

When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out,
they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but
when I wind up this essay, I end it?

Now I know why I flunked my English. It’s not my fault; the silly
language doesn’t quite know whether it’s coming or going.”

Posted at 9:44 AM · Comments (0)

Thursday, November 24, 2005
Copyright The South China Morning Post

The central government’s admission yesterday that the Songhua river was
severely polluted in a chemical factory explosion last week confirmed
what many people had suspected. A statement issued by the State
Environmental Protection Administration explained how the pollution had spread
and did not seek to play down the seriousness of the problem. This was
a welcome move to clear up uncertainty. But it was overdue. The
announcement came 10 days after the blast in Jilin . More worryingly, the
chemical plant had denied any pollution spill. And officials downstream in
Harbin had initially claimed that the city’s water supply was being
suspended in order to conduct maintenance - when the real reason was the
pollution.

The way in which the affair has been handled raises fresh concerns
about the willingness of mainland officials to disclose bad news.
Thankfully, it looks as if the situation in Harbin can be controlled. The
pollution has been diluted as it has spread downstream. Hopefully, the water
supply to the city’s three million affected residents can soon be
resumed. But the full impact of the environmental problem is not yet known.
Harbin residents, meanwhile, remain nervous and unsure whether they
have been given the full picture. It is too easy to understand why.

The leaders of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province , said on
Monday that the taps would have to be turned off for four days to allow
maintenance works to be carried out to pipes. This was not a convincing
explanation. It would be a strange time to conduct maintenance works in
the northern city, when sub-zero temperatures make the soil as hard as
rock.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the announcement prompted rumours
which ranged from an imminent earthquake to fears that the Songhua
River had been laced with cyanide that could kill as many as 200 million
people. The rumours and accompanying criticism persuaded the municipal
government to admit on Tuesday that pollution resulting from the blast in
Jilin was their real concern. Now that this has been confirmed, many
questions remain.

It is unclear why Harbin authorities did not explain the situation to
their residents from the start. They might have been concerned about
causing panic in the city. But the rumours fuelled by the failure to make
the situation known increased, rather than eased, people’s fears.

A lack of co-ordination between different authorities has also been
evident. The river is 1,927km long and flows through 30 mainland cities.
But there was no common contingency plan to deal with the emergency. It
appears that local officials in Jilin, Songyuan and Harbin all acted
independently in response to the accident in Jilin. These large cities
have taken what they consider to be suitable precautions to protect their
populations. But that protection is not available to rural farmers and
herders from smaller communities along the river. It is not immediately
clear if they have been told of the potential risks they face in
drawing water directly from the river.

After flowing through Jilin and Heilongjiang, the Songhua River crosses
into Russia. By the time the contaminated body of water crosses the
border, it will hopefully have been sufficiently diluted to pose no more
health risks. But the possibility of similar mishaps in the future
souring not just inter-provincial, but also international, relations should
not be overlooked. There is a need to ensure the provinces come to
sensible arrangements about sharing common resources such as a river and
coping with emergencies that require cross-boundary co-ordination. This
will require the central government to assert its authority. It is to
be hoped the pollution spill will be contained without too much damage
being done. But the situation could have been much worse.

Posted at 3:07 PM · Comments (0)

November 24, 2005 - Copyright The New York Times

By HOWARD W. FRENCH

SHANGHAI, Nov. 23 - On her fourth day of keeping a Web log, she introduced herself to the world with these striking words: “I am a dance girl, and I am a party member.”

“I don’t know if I can be counted as a successful Web cam dance girl,” that early post continued. “But I’m sure that looking around the world, if I am not the one with the highest diploma, I am definitely the dance babe who reads the most and thinks the deepest, and I’m most likely the only party member among them.”

Thus was born, early in July, what many regard as China’s most popular blog.

Sometimes timing is everything, and such was the case with the anonymous blogger, a self-described Communist Party member from Shanghai who goes by the pseudonym Mu Mu.

A 25-year-old, Mu Mu appears online (www.blogcn.com/user48/wunv6/blog/index.html) most evenings around midnight, shielding her face while striking poses that are provocative, but never sexually explicit.

She parries questions from some of her tens of thousands of avid followers with witticisms and cool charm.

Chinese Web logs have existed since early in this decade, but the form has exploded in recent months, challenging China’s ever vigilant online censors and giving flesh to the kind of free-spoken civil society whose emergence the government has long been determined to prevent or at least tightly control.

Web experts say the surge in blogging is a result of strong growth in broadband Internet use, coupled with a huge commercial push by the country’s Internet providers aimed at wooing users. Common estimates of the numbers of blogs in China range from one million to two million and growing fast.

Under China’s current leader, Hu Jintao, the government has waged an energetic campaign against freedom of _expression, prohibiting the promotion of public intellectuals by the news media; imposing restrictions on Web sites; pressing search engine companies, like Google, to bar delicate topics, particularly those dealing with democracy and human rights; and heavily censoring bulletin board discussions at universities and elsewhere.

So far, Chinese authorities have mostly relied on Internet service providers to police the Web logs. Commentary that is too provocative or directly critical of the government is often blocked by the provider. Sometimes the sites are swamped by opposing comment - many believe by official censors - that is more favorable to the government.

Blogs are sometimes shut down altogether, temporarily or permanently. But the authorities do not yet seem to have an answer to the proliferation of public opinion in this form.

The new wave of blogging took off earlier this year. In the past, a few pioneers of the form stood out, but now huge communities of bloggers are springing up around the country, with many of them promoting one another’s online offerings, books, music or, as in Mu Mu’s case, a running, highly ironic commentary about sexuality, intellect and political identity.

“The new bloggers are talking back to authority, but in a humorous way,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. “People have often said you can say anything you want in China around the dinner table, but not in public. Now the blogs have become the dinner table, and that is new.

“The content is often political, but not directly political, in the sense that you are not advocating anything, but at the same time you are undermining the ideological basis of power.”

A fresh example was served up last week with the announcement by China of five cartoonlike mascot figures for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They were lavishly praised in the press - and widely ridiculed in blogs that seemed to accurately express public sentiment toward them.

“It’s not difficult to create a mascot that’s silly and ugly,” wrote one blogger. “The difficulty is in creating five mascots, each sillier and uglier than the one before it.”

A leading practitioner of the sly, satirical style that is emerging here as an influential form of political and social commentary is a 38-year-old Beijing entertainment journalist named Wang Xiaofeng. Mr. Wang, who runs a site called Massage Milk, is better known to bloggers by his nickname, Dai San Ge Biao, which means Wears Three Watches.

His blog mixes an infectious cleverness with increasingly forthright commentary on current events, starting with his very nickname, which is a patent mockery of the political theory of the former Chinese Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, which was labeled San Ge Dai Biao, or the Three Represents.

In a recent commentary, as the government stoked patriotic sentiment during the commemoration of the defeat of the Japanese in World War II, Mr. Wang asked who really fought the enemy, making the provocative observation that only two Communist generals had died fighting Japan, while more than 100 of their Nationalist counterparts had.

“In blogging I don’t need to be concerned about taboos,” Mr. Wang said. “I don’t need to borrow a euphemism to express myself. I can do it more directly, using the exact word I want to, so it feels a lot freer.”

Another emerging school of blogging, potentially as subversive as any political allegory, involves bringing Chinese Web surfers more closely in touch with things happening outside their country.

Typically, this involves avid readers of English who scour foreign Web sites and report on their findings, adding their own commentary, in Chinese blogs.

Several bloggers like this have become opinion leaders, usually in areas like technology, culture, current events or fashion, building big followings by being fast and prolific.

One of the leading sites of this kind was run by Isaac Mao, a Shanghai investment manager who built a following writing about education and technology. He later had his site, isaacmao.com, blocked by the authorities after he posted a graphic purporting to illustrate the workings of the firewall operated by the country’s censors.

Mr. Mao, an organizer of the first national bloggers’ conference in Shanghai this month, recently went back online at isaacmao.blogbus.com/s1034872/index.html .

By far the biggest category of blogs remains the domain of the personal diary, and in this crowded realm, getting attention places a premium on uniqueness.

For the past few months, Mu Mu, the Shanghai dancer, has held pride of place, revealing glimpses of her body while maintaining an intimate and clever banter with her many followers, who are carefully kept in the dark about her real identity.

“In China, the concepts of private life and public life have emerged only in the past 10 to 20 years,” she said in an online interview. “Before that, if a person had any private life, it only included their physical privacy - the sex life, between man and woman, for couples.

“I’m fortunate to live in a transitional society, from a highly political one to a commercial one,” she wrote, “and this allows me to enjoy private pleasures, like blogging.”

Posted at 11:59 AM · Comments (3)

Staff writer

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone warned the half-century-old Liberal Democratic Party against “pandering” to populism and urged it to hammer out far-sighted policies.

He also said Class-A war criminals should no longer be honored at Yasukuni Shrine, and believes prime ministers should refrain from visiting the Tokyo institution for the sake of Japan’s interests, like he did after drawing flak for one such visit.

Nakasone, who joined the LDP when it was formed through a merger of two major conservative parties on Nov. 15, 1955, was prime minister from November 1982 to October 1987 — the third-longest postwar term, when the Japanese National Railways was privatized.

“I think (Prime Minister Junichiro) Koizumi has reached the starting line of a major historical turning point” in politics, the 87-year-old Nakasone said in an interview with The Japan Times ahead of the party’s celebration Tuesday of its 50th anniversary.

Nakasone, chairman of the nonprofit think tank Institute for International Policy Studies, credited Koizumi with pulling the LDP out of a state of flux characterized by frequent changes in the presidency, and hence the prime ministership, and the party’s 11-month absence from power in the early 1990s.

But he said the party has yet to build a policymaking regime that can put the brakes on populism and bring more depth to politics.

Nakasone traced the rise in populism to the 1994 introduction of the single-seat electoral system.

When the multiseat system was in force, a group mentality and active debate prevailed within the LDP, with factions wielding great influence in fielding candidates and holding gatherings at which rival candidates gave campaign speeches, he said.

“But the introduction of the single-seat electoral system changed that group mentality to individualism,” while the vote-drawing power of traditional support groups like agricultural cooperatives and construction industry groups went into decline, he said.

Nakasone said the single-seat system has given great power to the party leaders, and in turn placed greater importance on appearances instead of policies to take advantage of the growing influence of TV. Koizumi has gained the most from this change, he added.

A prime example was the Sept. 11 general election, in which Koizumi used television to let the people watch him battle foes in the LDP opposed to his postal privatization drive, paving the way for the LDP, purged of these foes, to score a landslide victory, Nakasone said.

“However, now that power has come to be concentrated on the prime minister and (the LDP) secretary general, lawmakers are losing their independence and are having to bow before the Prime Minister’s Official Residence,” he said. “This is extremely dangerous.”

Koizumi has vowed to step down as LDP chief next September, and Nakasone hopes his successor tries to steer the party away from populism.

On reforming the Constitution, the LDP’s golden anniversary centerpiece, Nakasone urged the party to come up with a better plan, calling the document endorsed Tuesday “shoddy and imprudent.”

“The biggest problem is the preamble,” he pointed out. “That must be revised by a second draft.”

Nakasone has ardently advocated a charter that pays respect to Japan’s history, culture and tradition, noting the current Constitution, which was mainly penned by the Occupation authorities, does not. He headed the LDP panel tasked with penning the preamble for a new supreme code and drafted it with the common consent of the panel.

But descriptions of Japan’s history, culture and geographical features were deleted by Koizumi and members of the party’s constitutional committee secretariat, he said.

He believes the preamble should express the image of the nation as a whole, including the continuity of its history, culture and tradition as well as the people, and thinks the original version will be restored in a second draft.

He observed that the main purpose of those who modified the draft was also to weaken the war-renouncing Article 9 to clearly stipulate that Japan can possess a military, and that it is so-named, for defense, and to revise Article 96 to ease restrictions on constitutional amendments, Nakasone said.

“(Revising Article 9) would make Japan a ‘normal country’ that can share responsibilities and cooperate with the world,” he said, noting past administrations only managed to reinterpret the Constitution to expand the role played by the de facto military, the Self-Defense Forces.

“But (this method) has reached its limit and distorted the spirit of the Constitution. That’s why it’s time for an amendment.”

He said the time is ripe because the global trend toward nationalism and independence since the end of the Cold War has built momentum toward amending the Constitution — a move long considered taboo.

Nakasone, who angered other parts of Asia when he visited Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the Class-A war criminals along with Japan’s 2.46 million war dead, said, however, he thinks Koizumi had better take some time off from visiting the Shinto shrine in order to end the nation’s diplomatic tensions in Asia.

“The Yasukuni issue is one reason” that Japan has no reciprocal visit of leaders with China and South Korea, which protest the visits because they see them as the national leader worshipping those responsible for Japan’s wartime conduct, Nakasone said.

“China is doing what it wants and getting way ahead (of Japan) in Asia diplomacy” in the meantime, he said.

Nakasone, who visited Yasukuni on Aug. 15, 1985, as prime minister, said he made no further visits out of a desire to protect Japan’s interests and preserve diplomatic relations.

He called the support some conservative lawmakers have shown for Koizumi’s visits nothing but nationalism on a personal level, and urged the prime minister to consider Japan’s interests on a larger scale.

“I don’t regard those who are called war criminals as ‘criminals’ but ‘people responsible for the war.’

“The important thing is to pass down the nation’s spiritual tradition” embodied in Yasukuni, he said. “Since the Meiji Era, many soldiers died shouting ‘Long live the Emperor!’ But the Emperor cannot visit (the shrine because the Class-A war criminals are enshrined there), so I insist (their names) be removed to a separate place.”

Copyright The Japan Times: Nov. 23, 200

Posted at 1:20 AM · Comments (0)

News Release
23 November 2005

NIAMEY � The United Nations World Food Programme warned today that
unless the international community renewed its commitment to deal with the
consequences of this year’s food crisis in Niger — including
prevailing high levels of malnutrition among children — the country faces a
second successive year of extreme suffering and hardship.

“It will take only the slightest adversity to push families over the
edge again,” said WFP Niger Country Director, Gian Carlo Cirri. “Many
people have used every available means to get them through this year and
the harvests will bring only a brief respite. The international
community must renew its efforts to help them through what remains a very
difficult time.”

A recently completed food security assessment by WFP across the worst
affected areas in Niger reveals a worrying picture of poverty, debt and
widespread food insecurity. Over 1.2 million people are estimated to
have cereal stocks sufficient for only three months, while a further two
million have stocks that will last a maximum of five months. Nearly two
million more face a precarious year struggling to maintain what are
already borderline livelihoods.

Even if rains are sufficient, locusts stay away, harvests are good and
food prices remain stable next year, many Nigeriens have already
stretched their ability to deal with difficult times to the limit. Their
survival strategies will be less reliable and less sustainable in 2006.

In the meantime, the current emphasis is on the malnutrition crisis
that continues to affect mainly children. WFP is providing food to
supplementary and therapeutic feeding centres as part of an overall effort to
feed two million of the most vulnerable people. In coordination with
UNICEF and MSF, about 200,000 children have been treated and fed in about
700 centres across the affected regions of Niger this year, with food
rations also provided for their families.

WFP still requires US$20.3 million to fund its current emergency
operation until March next year, with US$8.3 million needed immediately. A
break in food supplies looms as early as December if donations are not
forthcoming.

The recent assessment also showed that agricultural production was not
as healthy as it might have been because many men were forced to leave
villages in search of work this year.

While farmers in Niger often do not harvest enough food for an entire
year, traditional methods of making up the balance have been enormously
eroded. Many have sold most of their livestock to access capital or
because they could not feed them. They rely heavily on daily paid labour
or cash remittances from relatives and are deeply in debt.

In many instances, poor food consumption with little variety in diet is
likely to increase malnutrition among the most vulnerable, especially
young children.

Cereal prices in Niger’s markets have stabilized to a significant
degree since the return of the harvest, allowing most people some relief
from the worst effects of this year’s food shortages. However, the market
cost of millet and sorghum remains slightly above the five-year
average, prompting concerns that key staples will again be priced beyond the
reach of many poor households when their stocks run out.

“If people can’t afford to buy the food they need again next year it is
very possible that they will face a similar situation to this year.
Niger’s biggest problem is one of poverty � when survival strategies are
exhausted and all purchasing power is lost, disaster looms,” said Cirri.

Information gathered from a separate assessment mission conducted with
the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Government of Niger are
being analyzed and will be used to tailor operations appropriately in
2006.

WFP completed general food aid distributions in early October,
following the arrival of the harvest. A total of nearly three million people
have received food, but pressing needs remain. In order to meet the most
immediate requirements, WFP has extended its current emergency
operation until the end of March next year.

“Niger has sadly slipped down the international agenda, which could
have disastrous consequences for those who are still suffering from the
effects of this year’s crisis. But Niger needs more than a quick fix � it
needs sustained and targeted support to help it out of its crushing
poverty once and for all,” Cirri said.

Donors to WFP’s US$57.6 million emergency operation in Niger include
the United States (US$5.45 million); Canada ($3.25 million), the European
Commission ($2.9 million); the United Kingdom ($2.7 million); the
Netherlands ($2.5 million); Denmark ($2.4 million); Germany ($1.53 million);
Australia ($1.53 million); Venezuela ($1.5 million); Algeria ($1.49
million); Luxembourg ($1.23 million); Belgium ($1.2 million); Ireland
($1.2 million); Italy ($1.2 million); Private ($888,000); OPEC Fund
($600,000); Turkey ($600,000); Japan ($500,000); African Development Bank
($500,00); Switzerland ($433,000); Finland ($365,000); Spain ($363,000);
New Zealand ($350,000); Norway ($306,000); Czech Republic ($201,000);
Poland ($100,000); Republic of Korea ($50,000); Greece ($48,000); Monaco
($36,000); Faroe Islands ($33,000).

# # #

WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency: each year, we give food
to an average of 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional
needs, including 61 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world’s
poorest countries. WFP — We Feed People.

WFP Global School Feeding Campaign � For just 19 US cents a day, you
can help WFP give children in poor countries a healthy meal at school � a
gift of hope for a brighter future.

Visit our website: www.wfp.org

Posted at 11:05 PM · Comments (0)

November 23, 2005 - Copyright The New York Times

By HOWARD W. FRENCH
GUIYANG, China

IT is 7:30 on a Sunday night, and business is booming at Guixi, a large and popular downtown food emporium here.

In smoke-filled private rooms, boisterous men vie to best each other in downing shots of fiery mao-tai, the rice liquor that is this city’s most famous product. In the big open dining room, filled with large round tables where extended families gather, including beaming nanas and cavorting children, there is scarcely an empty seat in the house.

What brings many diners to this restaurant is its famous gong bao jiding, a dish whose perfume wafts through the air, distinctive even over the smell of tobacco smoke.

As it is spoken here, the name of the recipe, one of China’s best-known chicken dishes, would mean little to most Americans. Yet it or something very much inspired by it - kung pao chicken - is one of the most commonly ordered items in Chinese restaurants across the United States.

Guizhou province in south-central China is the ancestral home of the dish, and one visit to Guixi, one of Guiyang’s most famous restaurants, makes clear that where this popular concoction is concerned pronunciation was not the only thing lost in translation during its migration around the globe.

Informed for the first time that something called kung pao chicken is widely eaten in the United States, the restaurant’s veteran chef, Wang Xingyun, who was dressed in a white smock, dingy from hours of work with cleaver and wok, expressed his skepticism with the lifting of one weary eyebrow.

“Whatever they are eating there is certainly not authentic,” he said.

Of course Mr. Wang, a stickler for ingredients and for technique who has been preparing meals built around the dish for over 30 years, says much the same even about what passes for kung pao chicken in Sichuan, the province right next door, where it is almost equally popular and where the dish began its journey across the ocean to America. “Nowadays it’s a mess,” Chef Wang announced, leading a visitor on a tour of his busy kitchen. ‘“Everyone says they can make our food, but they don’t even understand its origins.”

Zhang Tao, the publisher of Z-Survey, a popular series of guidebooks for restaurants in China, said that confusion about technique and the mangling of dishes can travel both ways, as can even an occasional improvement on the original.

“If an Italian went to an Italian restaurant in Chengdu, I don’t think his expectations would be so high,” said Mr. Zhang, who attended DePauw University in Indiana.

But Americans who are just learning that there is more than one kind of Chinese food - from Sichuan to Chaozhou to Hunan - have to remember that provincial rivalries also exist here. Just as Memphis cooks consider their ribs superior to ones barbecued in Kansas City, gong bao is a dish in which civic pride is never far from the plate.

Dicing ginger and chives on a cutting board, then heating his wok on a stove whose intense, shooting flames looked like a furnace blast, Mr. Wang demonstrated what he insisted was the genuine item.

The master chef repeatedly placed a heap of chopped chicken into the wok ever so briefly, only to remove it, adding a new seasoning and repeating the process. The technique is a subtle cooking by accretion, whose theatrics, built around quick handiwork with the wok, is a hallmark of an authentic Chinese kitchen.

“Gong bao jiding demands very particular materials,” he said. “Sichuan chefs use the chicken breast, which is wrong. The real thing must have the leg meat of young chickens.” Chest meat, he asserted, is too stringy, whereas the drumstick of a young chicken is “delicate and easy to chew.”

The demonstration continued with a similar disquisition on peppers, which, once again, Mr. Wang said, Sichuan’s more famous chefs, who use dry pepper, get all wrong. “It must be fresh zi ba pepper, and it must be from Huaxi district in Guiyang, which ensures that it is spicy and has a good aroma,” he specified.

Finally, he came to the light, brownish sauce. “Sichuan chefs use a bean sauce, but we use a sweet sauce, and that’s a big difference,” Mr. Wang said. “After the leg meat is chopped, a little fermented rice soup should be added. Authentic gong bao jiding should carry a little aroma of litchi. A little sweetness is a must.”

That cooks in the next province can get a relatively simple dish so wrong, according to one of Guiyang’s best chefs, provides an instructive hint of just how far American versions of this dish, and many others, may have strayed from their origins. The commonly accepted story here is that gong bao jiding was named for a palace guard, or “gong bao,” in the late 19th century, who went on to become a provincial governor.

“Last but not least, authentic gong bao jiding should have absolutely no peanuts,” Mr. Wang said sternly. Unlike Sichuan or American versions, the dish was indeed peanut-free. “One must not be even slightly careless in the choice of materials,” the chef added.

Of course, they forgot to tell the cooks in Sichuan that. “We were not even taught to add peanuts, as it’s so natural to do so,” said Li Wanming, a Sichuan chef who is vice president of a food company in Chengdu, the provincial capital. “People who order the dish would feel strange if there’s no peanuts in it. Peanuts make the dish more crisp and fragrant, and that’s very important.”

Posted at 10:55 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright 1995 - Lise Skov & Brian Moeran eds.

?�
Kawaii style dominated Japanese popular culture in the 1980’s. Kawaii or ‘cute’ essentially means childlike; it celebrates sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak, and inexperienced (1) social behaviour and physical appearances. It has been well described as a style which is ‘infantile and delicate at the same time as being pretty.’ (Yamane, 1990, my translation) Cute style saturated the multi-media and consumer goods and services whilst they were expanding rapidly between 1970 and 1990 and reached a peak of saccharine intensity in the early 1980s.
Cute people and cute accessories were extremely popular. So much so that original cute fashion became a basic style or aesthetic in to which many other more specific and transient fashions such as preppy, punk, skater, folk, black and French were mixed. Cute fashion gradually evolved from the serious, infantile, pink, romanticism of the early 1980s to a more humorous, kitsch, androgynous style which lingered on into the early 1990s. The results of a survey I conducted as late as 1992 showed that 71 percent of young people between 18 and 30 years of age either liked or loved kawaii looking people, and 55.8 percent either liked or loved kawaii attitudes and behaviour. (2) Although many respondents encountered difficulties deciding what social class they were in and what politics they supported, few had any problems explaining their relative fondness for the cute.
The word kawaii itself was by 1992 estimated to be ‘the most widely used, widely loved, habitual word in modern living Japanese.’ (CREA, 11.1992:58) Iwashita, president of the Kikan Fanshii (Fancy Goods Periodical) trade journal, recalls that, ‘Rather than being another post-war value, the present meaning of kawaii has not been in existence for any longer than fifteen years.’ (Shimamura, 1991a:225, my translation) The term kawaii appears in dictionaries printed in the Taisho to 1945 period as kawayushi. In dictionaries printed after the war until around 1970 kawayushi changed into kawayui but the meaning of the word remained the same. Kawaii is a derivation of a term whose principle meaning was ‘shy’ or ‘embarrassed’ and secondary meanings were ‘pathetic’, ‘vulnerable’, ‘darling’, ‘loveable’ and ‘small’. In fact the modern sense of the word kawaii still has some nuances of pitiful whilst the term kawais� derived directly from kawaii means pathetic, poor, and pitiable in a generally negative if not pleasing sense.
Cute Handwriting and Slang
The emergence of the modern term kawaii in the early 1970s coincides with the beginning of the cute handwriting craze and childish fashion. In 1974 large numbers of teenagers especially women began to write using a new style of childish characters. By 1978 the phenomenon had become nation-wide and in 1985 it was estimated that upwards of about 5 million young people were using the new script.
Previously Japanese writing had been written vertically using strokes that vary in thickness along their length. The new style was written laterally, preferably using a mechanical pencil to produce very fine even lines.(3) Using extremely stylised, rounded characters with English, katakana (4) and little cartoon pictures such as hearts, stars and faces inserted randomly into the text, the new style of handwriting was distinct and the characters difficult to read. In middle and high schools across the country the craze for writing in the new style caused discipline problems. In some schools the writing was banned entirely or tests which were completed using the new cute style would not be marked. The new style of handwriting was described by a variety of names such as marui ji (round writing), koneko ji (kitten writing), manga ji (comic writing) and burikko ji (fake-child writing). Through the 1980s magazines, comics, advertising, packaging and, word processor soft ware design (Macintosh) adapted the new style. Yamane Kazuma carried out two years of research into cute handwriting between 1984 and 1986 which he officially labelled, ‘Anomalous Female Teenage Handwriting’. Arguing against the common view that cute handwriting was something young people had mimicked from the lettering in comics, Yamane furnishes evidence that in fact the craze for rounded lettering pre- dates its use in comics which relied on the later invention of photo composition methods in order to be able to use the round characters. Instead, he concludes that teenagers ‘spontaneously’ invented the new style. Results of Yamane’s survey carried out in 1984-85 amongst middle and high school students showed that the older students were, the more likely it was that they would use the childish hand writing. 22.5 percent of 11 to 12 year old female pupils, 55.3 percent of 12 to 15 year old female middle school pupils, and 55.7 percent of 15 to 18 year old female high school pupils, used the cute writing style. Amongst young men 10 percent of 12 to 15 year old middle school, and 17.5 percent of 15 to 18 year old high school pupils used the cute style. The increasing incidence of cute handwriting amongst older students illustrates that cute handwriting was a style acquired with maturity and exposure to youth culture rather than the result of any adolescent writing disability. Yamane asked some of these young people why they used the round hand writing style and was unequivocally informed:
‘It’s got a kind of cute feel.’ ‘I think it’s cute and it’s my style.’ ‘I think these letters are the cutest.’ ‘Cute! They are hard to read but they are so cute I use them.’
(Yamane, 1986:132, my translation)
It is interesting that cute style did not start in the multi media which are frequently criticised for originating all the trends of youth culture if not exercising a virtual mind control over young people. Cute style began as an underground literary trend amongst young people who developed the habit of writing stylised childish letters to each other and to themselves.
Cute handwriting was arrived at partly through the romanization of Japanese text. The horizontal left to right format of cute handwriting and the liberal use of exclamation marks as well as English words such as ‘love’ and ‘friend’, suggest that these young people were rebelling against traditional Japanese culture and identifying with European culture which they obviously imagined to be more fun. By writing in the new cute style it was almost as though young people had invented a new language in which they were suddenly able to speak freely on their own terms for the first time. They were thus able to have an intimate relation with the text and express their feelings to their friends more easily. Through cute handwriting young people made the written Japanese language - considered to be the lynch pin of Japanese culture - their own.
The spread of cute style handwriting was one element of a broader shift in Japanese culture that took place between the mid 1960s and the mid 1970s in which vital popular culture sponsored and processed by the new fashion, retail, mass-media and advertising industries began to push traditional arts and crafts and strictly regulated literary and artistic culture to the margins of society.
At the same time that Japanese youth began to debase written Japanese infantile slang words began to spread across the nation typically coming into high-school vogue for only a few months before becoming obsolete again. In 1970 the Mainichi Shimbun carried an article describing how the common word kakkoii, meaning cool or good had sprouted a deformed infantile version of itself. The term kakkoii was deliberately mispronounced as katchoii, thus mimicking the speech of a toddler incapable of adult pronunciation. There are even a few examples of deliberately contrived childish speech such as Norippigo officially invented by pop-idol Sakai Noriko, alias Nori P, in 1985. Norippigo, now obsolete, consisted of changing the last syllable of common adjectives into a pi sound. Therefore kanashii (sad) could be changed into kanappi, and ureshii (happy) could be changed into ureppi. Meanwhile Nori P invented a few words of her own, such as mamosureppi (very happy). However infantile slang was not limited to the contrived over-use of puritanical kindergarten adjectives. ‘Sex’ became popularly referred to by the morbid term nyan nyan suru (to meow meow).
Cute handwriting is strongly associated with the fashion for using baby-talk, acting childish and wearing virginal childish clothes. Young people dressing themselves up as innocent babes in the woods in cute styles were known as burikko (fake-children) a term coined by teen starlet Yamada Kuniko in 1980. The noun spawned a verb, burikko suru (to fake-child-it), or more simply buri buri suru (to fake-it). Another 80s term invented to describe cute pop-idols and their fans is kawaiikochan which can be roughly translated as ‘cutie-pie-kid’.
The Fancy Goods Industry
Cute culture started as youth culture amongst teenagers, especially young women. Cute culture was not founded by business. But in the disillusioned calm known as the shirake (‘doldrums’) after the last of the student riots in 1971, the consumer boom was just beginning and it did not take companies and market research agencies very long to discover and capitalise on cute style which had manifested itself in manga and young peoples handwriting.
In 1971 Sanrio - the Japanese equivalent of Hallmark Cards - experimented by printing cute designs on previously plain writing paper and In In 1971 stationary. Sanrio began to produce cute decorated stationary and fancy diaries for the dreamy school students hooked onto the cute handwriting craze. The success of this early prototype of fanshi guzzu (fancy goods) inspired by cute style in manga animation and young peoples handwriting encouraged Sanrio to expand production and its range of fancy goods proliferated. Sanrio established a firm monopoly in the fancy goods market and during 1990 sold 200 billion yen worth of goods (Shimamura, 1991a:60-62), whilst the fancy goods business as a whole reached an estimated turnover of 10 trillion yen in 1990. (Japan Times 5.1.1991) Typical fancy goods sold in cute, little shops were stationary, cuddly toys and gimmicks, toiletries, lunch boxes and cutlery, bags, towels and other personal paraphernalia.
The crucial ingredients of a fancy good are that it is small, pastel, round, soft, loveable, not traditional Japanese style but a foreign in particular European or American style, dreamy, frilly and fluffy. Most fancy goods are also decorated with cartoon characters. The essential anatomy of a cute cartoon character is small, soft, infantile, mammalian, round, without bodily appendages (arms), without bodily orifices (mouths), non-sexual, mute, insecure, helpless or bewildered. Sanrio invented a large cast of cute proprietary characters to endorse and give life to its fancy goods: Button Nose, Tiny Poem, Duckydoo, Little Twin Stars, Cheery Chums, Vanilla Bean and, most famous of all, Hello Kitty and Tuxedo Sam. Not only do these cute characters inhabit cute- shops, but they have also worked hard selling under license the goods and services of over ninety Japanese companies. A large number of these are financial institutions such as twenty three banks, including Mitsui, Sumitomo, Sanwa, and Mitsubishi; fourteen stock companies, including Yamaichi, Daiwa and Nomura; and seven insurance companies, including Nihon Seimei, Sumitomo Seimei and Yasuda Kasai.
Cute design was not limited to banking cards and stationary, however. For the privileged, whose passion for cute was stronger than their sense of traditional good-taste, there was the option of purchasing a ‘short cake’ house resembling a little cottage or fairyland abode in Hiroo or Seij� or a cute rounded apartment in Roppongi or Akasaka- Mitsuke. As the 1930s has been remembered for the brutal police implementation of thought-crime (shis�han) laws, so the 1980s may be remembered as the decade which left behind police boxes designed as ‘gingerbread houses’ (okashi-no-ie).
Meanwhile Sanrio organised Sanrio festivals and athletics meetings, Hello Kitty Santa tours, a Strawberry Mate travelling caravan, Halloween and Valentine extravaganzas, and printed Ichigo Shimbun (The Strawberry News). Sanrio built cute shopping arcades such as the Sanrio Ginza Gallery, and Sanrio Fantagen -a cluster of 18 cute goods shops in Funabashi, Ichigo Hall in Den-en Chofu, Sanrio Theatre in Matsudo and Harmony Land in Kyushu and Puroland in Tama City, Tokyo.
Cartoon characters printed on to goods literally add character to their lifelessness and slogans etched on to the actual good or printed on the packaging put across more forcibly the same notion of light fun. Cute slogans were more often written in fractured English or pseudo-French than Japanese. A toilet bowl called petit etoile. A pink toaster in the shape of a cottage called My Sweet Bread Toaster. A can opener which tells its user this can-opener is not just a kitchen tool, treat it kindly and it will be our loyal friend. School note paper inscribed with the message, OK! You’re in my team. Let’s have fun together!. A set of plates saying Life is sweet like a poem when you are with kind friends.
The industrial, impure or masculine nature of some of the objects decorated in fancy style can produce incongruous images, such as the almost transvestite like character of baby pink road diggers or adult gambling machines called My Poochy and Fairies. But there has been no mischievous conspiracy of camp designers behind these articles. Despite appearances to the contrary there was no strong sense of kitsch attached to cute culture until the late 1990s. In some cases a mismatch between the goods function and its design had simply gone unnoticed, at other times it was a deliberate attempt to camouflage and mask the dirty image of the good or service in question. The typical household toilet, maybe unconnected to a sewage system and sometimes foul smelling often resembled a tiny grotto, festooned with puffy gingham curtains, quilted toilet brush covers and toilet roll dispensers, fluffy toilet seat covers, fancy cartoon slippers. Love hotels, which sell room space for sex are named after good, sweet girls like Anne of Green Gables and Laura of the Little House on the Prairie. Yakuza run pachinko gambling parlours are recognisable as the light buildings full of pink and blue neon with baskets of plastic flowers arranged on the pavement outside.
Cute style gives goods a warm and cheer- me-up atmosphere. After the production process had de-personalised the good cute design could re-personalise it. Consumption of lots of cute style goods with powerful emotion inducing properties could ironically disguise and compensate for the very alienation of individuals from other people in contemporary society. Cuteness loaned personality and a subjective presence to otherwise meaningless -and often literally useless- consumer goods and in this way made them much more attractive to potential buyers. The good could appear to have a character of its own because of its winsome UFO or mammalian shape, such as little round, weeping digitalized vacuum cleaners and rice cookers, or the 1980’s mini caasu (little cars) designed to feel playful and cuddly.(6) Modern consumers might not be able to meet and develop relationships enough with people but the implication of cute goods design was that they could always attempt to develop them with cute objects.
Cute Clothes
Adverts and articles printed in An-an and Non-no (7) two of the leading women’s fashion magazines suggest that the desire for a more than just youthful, but distinctly child-like, cutie-pie look began in the mid 1970s. In May 1975 An-an ran a special article introducing its readers to the novel new concept of cuteness:
‘PLAY! Cuteness! Go for the young theme! On dates we only want feeling, but our clothes are like old ladies! It is the time you have to express who you really are. Whatever you say co-ordinating a very young theme is cute. Wear something like a French slip…..for accessories try a cute little bracelet. BUT! It will look much cuter if you don’t use high quality exclusive materials. Cute looking plastic and veneer looks younger. For your feet try wearing colourful socks with summer sandals, it will exude a sporty cuteness! Hair is cutest styled straight with children’s plastic hair pins fixed in the sides.’
Cute clothes are deliberately designed to make the wearer appear childlike and demure. Original cute clothes were simple white, pink and pastel shades for women and more sort of bright and rainbow coloured for men. The clothes were often fluffy and frilly with puffed sleeves and lots of ribbons, - a style known as ‘fancy’, or alternatively were cut slightly small or tight and came decorated with cartoon characters and slogans. In the first half of the 1980s the most fashionable design house in Tokyo was ‘Pink House Ltd.’ which produced adorable outfits for budding cuties. Pink House was so sought after that the Hakuhodo research institute began to refer to young people aspiring to the Pink House image as the ‘Pink House movement.’ (Hakuhodo, 1984:227) Women’s underwear was also cute, the dominant taste being for puritanical white pants and vests, in addition to the infamous white tights, frilly ankle socks or knee length ‘school-girl’ socks. Then there was the understanding habit of manufacturers in placing great lengths of elastic in underwear so that women’s pants often looked like a little girl’s off but fortunately stretched to three or four times the size in service.
By the late eighties cute fashion had matured into a cheeky, androgynous, tomboy sweetness. Apart from the perennially popular tight, white, baby vest like T-shirts, nursery colours, cartoon characters and baby doll frills have mellowed out into woolly Noddy hats, dungarees and tight little sweaters. This change is well illustrated by the fashion magazine Cutie For Independent Girls (8), first published in spring 1986 and attracting a readership of 100,000 by October 1989. Obviously Cutie takes cuteness as its starting point but on top of the basic ingredient of childlikeness Cutie style is also chic, eccentric, androgynous and humorous. Cutie is published monthly by the odd ball media corporation Takarajimasha which was founded by a group of ex-revolutionary Waseda University students and is more well known for publishing the sub-culture oriented magazine Takarajima through the 1980s, and in Cutie the rebellious, individualistic, freedom seeking attitude embodied in acting childlike and pursuing cute fashion is very clear. The magazine and prints pages of photographs of readers which it calls ‘kids’ posing in clubs and streets trying to look bad and cute at the same time.

For the entire article, please see the link below.

Posted at 10:41 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright Slate
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005, at 7:13 PM ET

When I e-mailed a knowledgeable friend that I’d be writing on jazz and hip-hop, she replied, “Man, can people stop talking about this already?” She’s right, in a way. The jazz/hip-hop nexus is simply a cultural and genealogical fact. Turntablists, MCs, and jazz musicians are collaborating every day. And yet the impact of hip-hop on some of the best new acoustic jazz still isn’t widely understood.

To borrow a term from DJ Shadow, jazz and hip-hop are omni-genres, held together more by musical and cultural philosophies than by any limiting parameters of “style.” While hip-hop has devolved time and again into disposable pop, it has never lost its vitality as an underground, alternative art form. This is the aspect of hip-hop that jazz musicians are responding to; they’re encountering hip-hop on creative rather than commercial terms. And they’re refuting the popular view that today’s jazzers are stuck in the ’50s and ’60s.

The cross-pollination of jazz and hip-hop is often explicit, with hip-hop elements in plain view: turntables, samplers or laptops, and maybe even an MC on the mic. Some of the most forward-thinking instrumentalists, such as the trumpeters Wallace Roney, Dave Douglas, Russell Gunn, and Graham Haynes, or the pianists Andy Milne, Omar Sosa, Matthew Shipp, and Jason Lindner, have done substantial work along these lines. But just as hip-hop is more than rhymes and turntable scratching, jazz is more than a ching-a-ling ride cymbal. Hip-hop aesthetics�not aural pastiche per se, but approaches to rhythm, mood, and form�have filtered into acoustic jazz in subtle ways. Young virtuosos like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Robert Glasper, and Vijay Iyer note the influence of hip-hop on their work, but that influence is almost always implicit and uncalculated.

In an interview, Rosenwinkel, a guitarist, had high praise for Jay Dee (James Yancey, aka J Dilla), the iconic hip-hop producer from Detroit. But in nearly the same breath he cited Charles Ives’ “Central Park in the Dark” (1907) and Arnold Schoenberg’s “Five Pieces for Orchestra” (1909) as similar “beacons of harmonic quality.” In these Ives and Schoenberg fragments, conventional harmony is replaced by a flow of spooky timbres and tone colors�what Schoenberg termed Klangfarbenmelodie (sound-color-melody). This instrumental mix of Jay Dee’s “Come Get It” is oddly similar in its textural and tonal ambiguity. Lurking among the melodic lines is a burble of ambient noise that almost functions as a chord.

Cueing up Rosenwinkel’s “Brooklyn Sometimes” from his 2005 Verve release Deep Song, we hear him play (and sing) an eerie melody over sustaining chords. The beat, with its steady repetitions and modern bounce, could almost be programmed, yet we hear the strings of the bass and the wooden shells of the drums. The harmony is not as “outside” as Ives’ or Schoenberg’s, but there is a kindred tonal eccentricity. In the spectral timbre of Rosenwinkel’s guitar and voice is a hint of Jay Dee’s blurry, ineffable sonance. The link may seem distant, but such is the allure of creative music. (I recently heard Elvis Costello explain that “Alison” was partially inspired by the Spinners’ “Ghetto Child.”)

Robert Glasper, a 26-year-old pianist, has just debuted on Blue Note Records with Canvas. He is also in Mos Def’s touring band, and appears (with Rosenwinkel, as it happens) on Live at the Renaissance, a forthcoming album by Q-Tip. Glasper, too, is a huge fan of Jay Dee. “I’m not like a cat who says, ‘Oh, hip-hop is popular so let me put some of that in my music,’ ” Glasper told me. Referring to his peers, he added, “We are children of the hip-hop generation who play jazz. Just like back in the day, cats were the children of the Motown generation, and they played soul music.” In the opening to “Canvas,” Glasper sets up a slow, hypnotic groove. The structure�a pithy chord progression cycling in an off-kilter rhythm�alludes to contemporary hip-hop and “neo-soul.”

Vijay Iyer, also a pianist, leads a quartet and frequently collaborates with the hip-hop performance poet Mike Ladd. In addition to hip-hop, Iyer is influenced by avant-garde jazz and the music of his Carnatic (South Indian) heritage. Discussions with Iyer get deep fast�he holds a Ph.D. from Berkeley in music and cognitive science. In an e-mail he wrote: “To me, hip-hop [i.e., programming, sampling, etc.] performs a tension between the human and the post-human. � The question with acoustic music, which is always made by physical bodies, is how to invoke that same tension.”

“Infogee’s Cakewalk,” from Iyer’s latest Savoy disc, Reimagining, opens with austere harmony over a rhythmic template that may sound intuitive, but, in fact, is too complex to describe here. In our exchange, Iyer described the appeal of “creating specific repeating rhythms for the drummer to play, much like one might in a pop song or a drum machine loop.” He added that “these illusions of the post-human can only persist for a few moments, before they are shattered by some unquestionably mortal sound.”

These musicians listen closely to one another; would that more of us listened to them. But from a market standpoint, it matters little whether they play hip-hop or polkas. Gene Santoro was admirably blunt about this reality in his recent book Highway 61 Revisited: “The fact is, most Americans don’t like instrumental music.” It’s a crystalline insight, rendering the arguments of jazz detractors, such as Rosa Hyde, writing in the London-based online magazine Fly, quite beside the point:

[J]azz has priced itself out of the pockets of today’s youth and placed itself amongst the dusty company of Beethoven and Bach. � I think [Coltrane] too would be saddened to see how stagnant the music has become. � Faced with extinction, jazz must open its eyes, clean out its ears and learn from hip hop. � What would be the impact of a living legend like Wynton Marsalis to play while Jay-Z flowed on the beat? I’d pay to see it, wouldn’t you?

I’d pay not to see it. There’s a huge difference between the organic musical evolution I’ve tried to outline and Hyde’s hypothetical publicity stunt. (Not so hypothetical, in fact: Think Jay-Z and Linkin Park, Nelly and Tim McGraw, and the pairing that started it all, Aerosmith and Run-DMC.) Of course, Hyde is partly right: Jazz is often too expensive, too insular, too classicized. But spend a week in fairly cheap New York haunts like the 55 Bar, the Jazz Gallery, Cornelia Street Caf�, and Fat Cat, and see how fast the “stagnation” thesis collapses. Jazz is not “facing extinction”�this is laughable�and it has already learned from hip-hop. So, rather than hold our breath for Wynton to play music he openly and emphatically hates, why not get hip to what’s already out there?

David R. Adler writes for the New Republic Online, Jazz Times, and many other publications.
Audio excerpts from Mahler Symphony No. 1/Charles Ives, Central Park in the Dark; The Unanswered Question � 2002 Hanssler Classic; Serenade/Five Pieces for Orchestra/Ode to Napoleon � 1993 Sony Classical; Welcome 2 Detroit (Instrumental) � 2005 BBE/BeatGen; Deep Song � 2005 Verve; Canvas � 2005 Blue Note; Reimagining � 2005 Savoy Jazz. All rights reserved. Photograph of Robert Glasper by Nancy Kaszerman/Zuma Press.

Posted at 10:29 AM · Comments (0)

China will order 60 bullet trains from a Japanese consortium led by
Kawasaki
Heavy Industries as Beijing turns to both Japanese and German firms to
expand its rail network.

The Railways Ministry will buy 60 bullet trains from the Kawasaki-led
consortium to run in China as early as 2008, the Yomiuri Shimbun said
on its
evening edition on Monday.

The orders will be placed as part of a project to increase the speed of
China’s trains, Kyodo News said, citing industry sources. Kawasaki had
no
immediate comment on the reported deal, the value of which was not
specified.

The report said China, looking to introduce high-speed trains, had
chosen to
buy half in the form of Japan’s Hayate bullet train system and half
from a
system run by German engineering giant, Siemens. Siemens said last
week it
had won a contract to supply 60 high-speed trains to China, and had put
the
value of its deal at $824 million.

The Hayate-model bullet trains, which run in northern Japan, were
introduced
in 2002 and operate at a speed of about 275km an hour.

Rail link

State media in China has said Beijing wants to use foreign technology
to set
up a high-speed rail link between Beijing and Shanghai, which will help
to overcome serious transport bottlenecks.

Japanese politicians and business leaders have aggressively courted
their
Chinese counterparts to win the contract. The sale has also been
politically
sensitive at a time when relations between China and Japan are at their
lowest level in decades, in part over memories of World War II.

Japan has reportedly offered to include the bullet train deal as part
of its
final low-interest loans to China. Japan plans to end such loans -
which
have been seen as an indirect compensation for its wartime record on
the
mainland - before Beijing hosts the Olympics in 2008.

Japan’s bullet train was introduced before the 1964 Tokyo Summer
Olympics,
showcasing the country’s rapid technological advances since its defeat
in
World War II.

Posted at 11:35 PM · Comments (0)

MONROVIA, Nov 9 (Reuters) - As Liberia counts the votes in the final round of its first post-war presidential election, many officials in the West African state are indulging in a final round of their own.
A final round of surreptitious looting.
Computers are disappearing from offices, number plates are being changed on government cars so their drivers can keep them, and the head of the agency responsible for procuring — and recovering — state assets is receiving death threats.
“They threatened to shoot me, said that the war is not yet over,” said Edward Farley, the head of the government services agency. “But next week I am going to publish the names of everyone who owns government property.”
Endemic corruption was one of the key causes of the 14-year civil war that devastated Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic founded by freed American slaves in 1847.
Both contenders in Tuesday’s second round election run-off, soccer millionaire George Weah and former Finance Minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, have promised to stamp out graft if they win.
Under former President Charles Taylor, bribes from businessmen were used to fund the activities of militias responsible for a series of atrocities such as making roadblocks of human skulls and slitting open the stomachs of pregnant women. A quarter of a million people died.
A peace deal was finally signed in 2003, setting the date for elections, but a series of high-level corruption scandals frustrated early attempts to rebuild the country.
Following the disappearance of millions of dollars, foreign donors insisted the government sign up to a programme earlier this year allowing foreign experts to oversee all revenue-generating arms of government and the central bank.
Although many politicians opposed the Governance and Economic Management Programme (GEMAP) on grounds of national sovereignty, it is highly popular among ordinary Liberians.
“We love GEMAP,” said storekeeper Henry Williams, to nods from the crowd around his counter. “It will stop the politicians from stealing from us. Look at this country, the oldest republic in Africa and what have we got to show for it?”

TOO LATE
It may be too late to save many assets. No one really knows how many government vehicles and other state assets exist and ministers have been slow to provide an inventory demanded by the chairman of the transitional government, Gyude Bryant.
Farley’s agency purchased 138 government vehicles in the past two years, but says many others were bought directly from the budgets of individual ministries.
The shiny new four-wheel-drives, valued by the government at $37,000 each, caused widespread popular resentment as the most visible sign of the millions haemorrhaging from central government.
Unemployment stands at 80 percent and most of the population struggles to make ends meet on less than a dollar a day. Protests by civil society groups earlier this year were averted only after Bryant promised the vehicles would remain public property.
Now the National Assembly is trying to pass a law granting legislators the right to retain their vehicles after the current parliamentary session ends in January.
A draft of the resolution, leaked to a local paper, said:
“In the event the title documents (granting ownership) are not finalised within a week, every assemblyman is at liberty to use said vehicle as his/her personal property, without let or hindrance.”
Replacing the two-year-old vehicles will require a significant sacrifice in a country with an annual budget of only $80 million, especially since the government announced revenues fell nearly 50 percent last month because of uncertainty surrounding the first round of voting on Oct. 11.

WISPS OF CARPET
Inside the once-grand national legislature, members said the bill was being debated but refused to confirm the text.
In the hallway, wisps of red carpet still clung forlornly to the stairs and electrical wires dangled unused from the ceiling. Liberia has not had state-supplied electricity or water for 14 years and its government works mostly in darkness.
Nevertheless, the car park outside was full of shiny government vehicles, some already bearing new plates.
The licence number on one new white Laredo, the type purchased for ministers, was originally issued for an old sedan owned by Benoni Urey, the ex-Commissioner for Maritime Affairs.
A close associate of the exiled Taylor, Urey was accused of embezzlement and gun-running by the United Nations and his assets were frozen in Liberia, a decision later overturned by the Supreme Court.
“It’s the tradition in this country that (government) members keep their cars and we’re keeping ours,” Urey said, adding that he had decided to change the plates on the vehicle after government cars were damaged in riots last December.
On the potholed and rubbish-strewn streets of the capital, citizens reacted with anger to the impending legislation.
“People are disappointed with the government’s performance. They never responded to the needs of the people,” said Ezekiel Pajibo, head of the Centre for Democratic Empowerment, a civil group dedicated to tackling government corruption.
“In three budgets, there was no provision for social services; they never did anything for a single school, hospital or road, so why should we give them these cars as a reward?”
REUTERS
Reut01:01 11-09-05

Posted at 11:29 PM · Comments (0)

Nov 17th 2005
Copyright The Economist

The one management thinker every educated person should read
Corbis
ON NOVEMBER 11th, a few days short of his 96th birthday, Peter Drucker died. The most important management thinker of the past century, he wrote about 40 books (the last, �The Effective Executive in Action� will be published in January) and thousands of articles. He was a guru to the world’s corporate elite, not just in his native Europe and his adoptive America, but also in Japan and the developing world (one devoted South Korean businessman even changed his first name to Mr Drucker). And he never rested in his mission to persuade the world that management matters�that, in his own rather portentous formula, �Management is the organ of institutions…the organ that converts a mob into an organisation, and human efforts into performance.�

Did he succeed? The range of his influence was extraordinary. George Bush is a devotee of Mr Drucker’s idea of �management by objectives�. (�I had read Peter Drucker,� Karl Rove once told the Atlantic Monthly, �but I’d never seen Drucker until I saw Bush in action.�) Newt Gingrich mentions him in almost every speech. Mr Drucker helped to inspire privatisation�an idea that in the 1980s galvanised Britain’s sclerotic economy.

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He changed the course of thousands of businesses. He spawned two huge revolutions at General Electric�first when GE followed the radical decentralisation he preached in the 1950s, and again in the 1980s when Jack Welch rebuilt the company around Mr Drucker’s belief that it should be first or second in a line of business, or else get out. Yet Mr Drucker is also cited as a muse by both the Salvation Army and the modern mega-church movement. Wherever people grapple with tricky management problems, from big organisations to small ones, from the public sector to the private, and increasingly in the voluntary sector, you can find Mr Drucker’s fingerprints.

This is not to say that Mr Drucker was invariably right�or even always sensible. He was given to making sweeping statements that sometimes turned out to be nonsense. He argued, for example, that the great American research universities are �failures� that would soon become �relics��odd for a man who made so much of the knowledge economy. He was slow to shift his attention from big firms to entrepreneurial start-ups. But he was much more often right than wrong. And even when he was wrong he had a way of being thought-provoking.

The man who became famous as an American management thinker was really a Viennese Jewish intellectual. The author of this article once visited him in his home in Claremont, California�a modest affair when set beside the mansions of most management gurus. His choice of a restaurant for lunch was more modest still. But as Mr Drucker talked it was easy to forget about the giant plastic wagon wheels that decorated the walls or even the execrable food. He talked with his deep, heavy Teutonic accent about meeting Sigmund Freud (as a boy), John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig Wittgenstein (as a student at Cambridge). He said that he liked to keep his mind fresh by taking up a new subject every three or four years (he was heavily immersed in early medieval Paris at the time). The overall effect was rather like listening to Isaiah Berlin channelled by Henry Kissinger.

Mr Drucker was born in 1909 in the Austrian upper middle class�his father was a government official�and educated in Vienna and Germany. He earned a doctorate in international and public law from Frankfurt university in 1931. In normal times this would have led to a distinguished, if predictable, academic career. But those were not normal times�and Mr Drucker was not a man to bow down to the confines of academic disciplines. He spent his 20s trying to avoid Adolf Hitler and drifting among a number of jobs, including banking, consultancy, academic law and journalism (his journalistic career included a spell as the acting editor of a women’s page).

Along the way, he became increasingly convinced that the best hope for saving civilisation from barbarism lay in the humdrum science of management. He was too sensitive to the thinness of the crust of civilisation to share the classic liberal faith in the market, but too clear-sighted to embrace the growing fashion for big-government solutions. The man in the grey-flannel suit held out more hope for mankind than either the hidden hand or the gentleman in Whitehall.

He finally found a home in American academia, teaching politics, philosophy and economics. But it was not exactly a happy home. His first two books��The End of Economic Man� (1939) and �The Future of Industrial Man� (1942)�had their admirers, including Winston Churchill, but they annoyed academic critics by ranging so widely over so many different subjects. This might have sealed his fate as just another discontented academic maverick. But �The Future of Industrial Man� attracted the attention of General Motors�then the world’s biggest company�with its passionate insistence that companies had a social dimension as well as an economic purpose.

The car company invited Mr Drucker to paint its portrait�and offered him unique access to GMers from Alfred Sloan down. The resulting book��The Concept of the Corporation��changed the young man’s life. The book not only became an instant bestseller, in Japan as well as in America, remaining in print ever since. It also helped to create a management fashion for decentralisation. By the 1980s, about three-quarters of American companies had adopted a decentralised model. Mr Drucker later boasted that the book �had an immediate impact on American business, on public service institutions, on government agencies�and none on General Motors.� Mr Drucker the management guru had been born.

Knowledge workers
The two most interesting arguments in �The Concept of the Corporation� actually had little to do with the decentralisation fad. They were to dominate his work.

The first had to do with �empowering� workers. Mr Drucker believed in treating workers as resources rather than just as costs. He was a harsh critic of the assembly-line system of production that then dominated the manufacturing sector�partly because assembly lines moved at the speed of the slowest and partly because they failed to engage the creativity of individual workers. He was equally scathing of managers who simply regarded companies as a way of generating short-term profits. In the late 1990s he turned into one of America’s leading critics of soaring executive pay, warning that �in the next economic downturn, there will be an outbreak of bitterness and contempt for the super-corporate chieftains who pay themselves millions.�

The second argument had to do with the rise of knowledge workers. Mr Drucker argued that the world is moving from an �economy of goods� to an economy of �knowledge��and from a society dominated by an industrial proletariat to one dominated by brain workers. He insisted that this had profound implications for both managers and politicians. Managers had to stop treating workers like cogs in a huge inhuman machine�the idea at the heart of Frederick Taylor’s stopwatch management�and start treating them as brain workers. In turn, politicians had to realise that knowledge, and hence education, was the single most important resource for any advanced society.

Yet Mr Drucker also thought that this economy had implications for knowledge workers themselves. They had to come to terms with the fact that they were neither �bosses� nor �workers�, but something in between: entrepreneurs who had responsibility for developing their most important resource, brainpower, and who also needed to take more control of their own careers, including their pension plans.

All this sounds as if Mr Drucker was an exponent of the airy-fairy human-relations school of management. But there was also a �hard� side to his work. Mr Drucker was responsible for inventing one of the rational school of management’s most successful products��management by objectives� (this is the one that Mr Bush still follows).

In one of his most substantial works, �The Practice of Management� (1954), he emphasised the importance of managers and corporations setting clear long-term objectives and then translating those long-term objectives into more immediate goals. He argued that firms should have an elite corps of general managers, who set these long-term objectives, and then a group of more specialised managers.

For his critics (who had a point), this was a retreat from his earlier emphasis on the soft side of management. For Mr Drucker it was all perfectly consistent: if you rely too much on empowerment you risk anarchy, whereas if you rely too much on command-and-control you sacrifice creativity. The trick is for managers to set long-term goals, but then allow their employees to work out ways of achieving those goals.

From early on, Mr Drucker tried to apply his interest in management in a universal way. For instance, he realised that America has no monopoly on management wisdom. This might not sound like much of an insight today, in the light of the Asian miracles. But in 1950s America�when most American managers dismissed Japan as a maker of cheap knickknacks and the rest of Asia as an irrelevance�it was a revelation.

Mr Drucker used his newfound fame in Japan to flesh out his suspicion that Japan was turning itself into an economic powerhouse. (As a sideline he managed to develop a fine collection of Japanese art.) He wrote extensively about Japanese management techniques long before they became popular in America in the 1980s. But he also exported many American techniques to a country that was desperate to learn from Uncle Sam.

More than just a business thinker
If Mr Drucker helped make management a global industry, he also helped push it beyond its business base. He was emphatically a management thinker, not just a business one. He believed that management is �the defining organ of all modern institutions�, not just corporations; and the management school that bears his name at Claremont College recruits a third of its students from outside the business world.

In the public sector, as well as championing privatisation, he helped to inspire the reinventing-government movement that Al Gore promoted with some success in the 1990s. That movement has gone into eclipse at the federal level, but is still forging ahead in some states, such as Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney, the governor, is a powerful supporter.

Some of Mr Drucker’s most innovative work was with voluntary and religious institutions (indeed, Mr Bush singled out his contribution to civil institutions when he awarded him the presidential medal of freedom three years ago). Mr Drucker told his clients, who included the American Red Cross and the Girl Scouts of America, that they needed to think more like businesses�albeit businesses that dealt in �changed lives� rather than in maximising profits. Their donors, he warned, would increasingly judge them not on the goodness of their intentions, but on the basis of their results.

One perhaps unexpected example of Druckerism is the modern mega-church movement. He suggested to evangelical pastors that they create a more customer-friendly environment (hold back on the overt religious symbolism and provide plenty of facilities). Bill Hybels, the pastor of the 17,000-strong Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, has a quotation from Mr Drucker hanging outside his office: �What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?�

Mr Drucker went further than just applying business techniques to managing voluntary organisations. He believed that such entities have many lessons to teach business corporations. They are often much better at engaging the enthusiasm of their volunteers�and they are also better at turning their �customers� into �marketers� for their organisation. These days, business organisations have as much to learn from churches as churches have to learn from them.

What he got wrong
There are three persistent criticisms of Mr Drucker’s work. The first is that he was never as good on small organisations�particularly entrepreneurial start-ups�as he was on big ones. �The Concept of the Corporation� was in many ways a fanfare to big organisations: �We know today that in modern industrial production, particularly in modern mass production,� Mr Drucker opined, �the small unit is not only inefficient, it cannot produce at all.� The book helped to launch the �big organisation boom� that dominated business thinking for the next 20 years.

The second criticism is that Mr Drucker’s enthusiasm for management by objectives helped to lead business down a dead end. Most of today’s best organisations have abandoned this idea�at least in the mechanistic form that it rapidly assumed. They prefer to allow ideas�including ideas for long-term strategies�to bubble up from the bottom and middle of the organisations rather than being imposed from on high. And they tend to eschew the complex management structures of the management-by-objectives era. The reason is that top management is often cut off from the people who know both their markets and their products best (a criticism that certainly rings true in Mr Bush’s White House, though that is another story).

Third, Mr Drucker is criticised for being a maverick in the management world�and a maverick who has increasingly been left behind by the increasing rigour of his chosen field. He taught in tiny Claremont rather than at Harvard or Stanford. He never grappled with the rigours of quantitative techniques. There is no single area of academic management theory that he made his own�as Michael Porter did with strategy and Theodore Levitt did with marketing. He would throw out a highly provocative idea�such as the idea that the West has entered a post-capitalist society, thanks to the importance of pension funds�without really clarifying his terms or tying up his arguments.

There is some truth in the first two arguments. Mr Drucker never wrote anything as good as �The Concept of the Corporation� on entrepreneurial start-ups. This is odd, given his personality: this prophet of the �age of organisations� was a quintessential individualist who was happiest ploughing his own furrow. (One of his favourite sayings was, �One either meets or one works.�) It is also remarkable since he spent so much of his life in southern California�a hotbed of individualism and entrepreneurialism that helped to produce the small-business revolution of the 1980s. Mr Drucker’s work on management by objectives sits uneasily with his earlier (and later) writing on the importance of knowledge workers and self-directed teams.

But the third argument�that he was too much of a maverick�is both short-sighted and unfair. It is short-sighted because it ignores Mr Drucker’s pioneering role in creating the modern profession of management. He produced one of the first systematic studies of a big company. He pioneered the idea that ideas can help galvanise companies. And he helped to make management fashionable with a constant stream of popular writing. It may be over-egging things to claim that Mr Drucker was �the man who invented management�. But he certainly made a unique contribution to the development of the subject.

It is true that he cannot be put into any neat academic pigeonhole: he liked to refer to himself as a �social ecologist� rather than a management theorist, still less a management guru (he once quipped that journalists use the word �guru� only because �charlatan� is too long for a headline). It is true that he eschewed the system-building of some of his fellow academics. And he preferred reading Jane Austen to doing multivariate analysis.

But system-building often produces castles in the air rather than enduring insights. (It is notable that Mr Drucker’s most systematic work�on management by objectives�has lasted least well.) Mr Drucker made up for his lack of system with a stream of insights on an extraordinary range of subjects: he was one of the first people to predict, back in the 1950s, that computers would revolutionise business, for example. His reading of history enabled him to see through the fog that clouds less learned minds: he liked to puncture breathless talk of the new age of globalisation by pointing out that companies such as Fiat (founded in 1899) and Siemens (founded in 1847) produced more abroad than at home almost as soon as they got off the ground.

These days management theory is increasingly dominated by academic clones who produce papers on minute subjects in unreadable prose. That certainly does not apply to a man who claimed that the academic course that most influenced him was on, of all things, admiralty law.

The legacy
The biggest problem with evaluating Mr Drucker’s influence is that so many of his ideas have passed into conventional wisdom�in other words, that he is the victim of his own success. His writings on the importance of knowledge workers and empowerment may sound a little banal today. But they certainly weren’t banal when he first dreamed them up in the 1940s, or when they were first put in to practice in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 1980s. Remember the way that many British bosses scoffed when Japanese carmakers set up factories in Britain and told their Geordie workers that they had to think as well as rivet, weld and hammer?

Moreover, Mr Drucker continued to produce new ideas up until his 90s. His work on the management of voluntary organisations�particularly religious organisations�remained at the cutting edge. America’s business academics have only just begun to look seriously at the organisational transformation that he helped to pioneer.

Mr Drucker has a way of getting the last word. Richard Nixon once began a pep talk to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare with a side-swipe at him. �Mr Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. It’s the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong.� In retrospect, Mr Nixon failed even at those potentially achievable tasks.

Asked which management books he paid attention to, Bill Gates once replied, �Well, Drucker of course,� before citing a few lesser mortals. Management theory has not evolved into the world’s most rigorous or enticing intellectual discipline. But in Peter Drucker it at least found a champion whom every educated person should take the trouble to read.

On November 1st 2001 we published a survey by Mr Drucker called �The Next Society�. It can be found at www.economist.com/nextsociety

Posted at 6:48 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Nation - from the December 5, 2005 issue

“Is Jazz Dead?” asks Stuart Nicholson in a provocative book title. Anyone following jazz journalism for the past decade would be familiar with its alleged assassins. The remaining four major American labels have eviscerated their jazz rosters. Norah Jones—with her mix of country mannerisms and pop accessibility—keeps Blue Note afloat while lauded musicians cling to their contracts for dear life. “Neoconservatives” run Jazz at Lincoln Center while the avant-garde languishes. Legends are dying while young lions fail to live up to early promise. Conservatories—a booming, multimillion-dollar educational industry, Nicholson laments—are stultifying the young and suppressing innovation. And even though that Ken Burns PBS documentary aired nearly five years ago and tried to spread the word, it too is somehow to blame for jazz’s misfortunes. Armstrong, Ellington and Basie managed to thrive during the Depression and segregation, but label conglomerates, MTV, file-sharing and institutional repertory have been hazardous to the music’s health on its native grounds. Nicholson, an English jazz critic for the UK magazine Jazzwise, paints a grim picture indeed, but he has a solution: relocate to Europe. The Europeans support the arts, he tells us, are hip to the latest experimental styles and even have Norwegians who play better Ellington revivals than anyone in the dreary United States.

For the jazz musicians and jazz journalists struggling for mainstream attention, the sky could appear to be falling, but judging from the deluge of recent books, the music’s shelf life is just beginning. Jazz, more than any other musical genre, currently dominates academic presses; compared with pondering the use of the grace note in Haydn, chasing the path of Django Reinhardt or a riverboat band might even seem sexy. Hip-hop is so recent, rock and roll so flaky and ubiquitous. Scholarly presses are more willing to admit jazz’s importance today than they were when the music was at its most vital stages of development. For years Oxford’s Sheldon Meyer was the only university press editor willing to risk a jazz book, and even then most of the ones he edited were collections of newspaper and magazine columns by journalists with no academic credentials; now, even as these presses are tightening their belts and streamlining their lists, they are devoting more pages to the music than ever. “There are days when I think we are in the Golden Age of my obsessions,” wrote John Szwed in Crossovers, one of the many recent university press books on jazz. “The scholarship and popular writing on the contribution of African Americans is now so extensive that you could spend a lifetime reading, looking, and listening, and still never catch up.” It would take a while to catch up on jazz books published in the past year alone. In addition to collections of previously published writings by Szwed, Gary Giddins and Dan Morgenstern, more specialized studies abound: biographies and cultural histories, investigations global and local, musicological and historical, journalistic and scholarly. Is jazz dead? As Louis Armstrong is said to have replied when asked to define jazz, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

Ripeness is all, in Nicholson’s book. For his research, he leans heavily on jazz criticism from the past decade and interviews with the musicians he deems to be sufficiently forward-looking, while the villains of the book get only glib dismissals without a chance for retort. Nicholson does not detect jazz’s pulse through virtuosity but instead listens for obvious journalistic hooks. The Bad Plus’s intricate jazz trio covers of Black Sabbath and Gloria Gaynor make easy copy for reviewers, but are they making music of value or merely technically adept kitsch? It doesn’t matter to Nicholson: They’re making it new. According to this line of reasoning, only musicians who are utilizing the latest technology or counterintuitive pop songs, or who are otherwise attracting the attention of English newspaper editors, are keeping the music alive. Nicholson laments the crossover vocalists, jazz educators and repertory revivalists before deciding that Europe is the environment most congenial to the jazz beat he covers. He has a nose for news, but where is that device Hemingway recommended to younger writers: the bullshit detector? Nicholson swoons over Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen, describing him as “an exceptionally lucid soloist” with “a sure sense of melodic structure and lyrical imagination.” That may be, but Gustavsen’s performance at New York’s Merkin Concert Hall last spring was an exceptional snooze, an elegant but desiccated retread of territory covered better by Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. Nicholson has nevertheless found his Great Nordic Hope.

There’s also a colonialism lurking beneath this progressive veneer. Nicholson’s favorite younger musicians—with the exceptions of avant-garde pianist Matthew Shipp and eclectic clarinetist Don Byron—tend to be white and European, while his neocon enemies, notably Wynton Marsalis, are black men in impeccably tailored suits. Nicholson quotes a range of jazz critics and his appointed European jazz saviors—he places a particular premium on Jan Garbarek’s “Nordic tone,” a revolution he likens to the films of Ingmar Bergman—but neither Marsalis nor any of his musical and critical partisans are given a fair chance to respond to the charges made against him, despite the book’s two chapters about him. The book has a couple of quotations from Marsalis about his playing and his nonlinear sense of jazz history, but these statements are batted away like so many straw men. It is unclear whether these conversations with Marsalis took place before, during or after Nicholson had developed his rhetorical strategy, but a more substantial response from Marsalis would have only strengthened Nicholson’s argument.

“Wynton Marsalis’s legacy for an idealized representation of jazz from its golden years is simply a means of asserting black cultural identity within the predominantly white cultural mainstream of the United States,” Nicholson claims. Has there ever been anything “simple” about asserting black cultural identity against a white mainstream? And is Nicholson himself contributing to a version of that white cultural mainstream, even if it is that rather marginalized mainstream of jazz critics? Marsalis’s merits as a composer—Pulitzer Prize and all—can be debated, but Nicholson’s one-sided screed hardly provides a forum in which such a debate can take place. Besides, anyone attending recent Jazz at Lincoln Center fundraisers would be puzzled by Nicholson’s portrait of Marsalis as a hidebound ideologue who rejects all forms of postwar popular culture. While raising money for his orchestra’s lavish new Columbus Circle quarters over the past few years, Marsalis and members of his orchestra performed with Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, producing collaborations without compromise or condescension. It was a long way from the Bad Plus’s gimmickry. In fact, Marsalis’s insistence on laying down the iron law of swing with rock and r&b icons added a rich tension to their performances. This more eclectic side of Marsalis—even if it emerged merely in the service of getting his concert hall built—would also provide a nuance to Nicholson’s invective, and nuance is one thing this book is conspicuously lacking. Is jazz as we know it dead? The reply growled by trumpeter Lester Bowie in his 1968 composition “Jazz Death” still resounds today: “Well, that all depends on what you know.”

Nicholson may believe that the future of jazz lies in Europe, but Michael Dregni’s Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend reminds us that a vital part of its past flourished there, too. The story of the Gypsy is one that includes survival from a near-fatal fire, the development of a ferocious, percussive and widely imitated guitar style with the use of only three working fingers, stardom in Vichy France (and unemployment after Allied victory), a disastrous American tour with Duke Ellington and more. He was a spendthrift, a near-illiterate, a dandy, a na�f and a scoundrel, and it’s hard to believe he was real, although his sublime recordings and a film clip with the Hot Club provide sufficient evidence that he somehow was. He found a place in the traditional jazz canon like no other European, and none of the explanations truly suffice. As John Szwed muses in Crossovers, “In Django’s case street logic had it that his great abilities stemmed from the fact that either (a) he was a Gypsy, a member of a pariah caste, and therefore homologous to black; or (b) Gypsy culture and black-American culture shared more than either did with white Euro-American culture.” These provocations are fascinating, but they are also speculative. How did this Gypsy assume an exalted space in an otherwise all-American traditional jazz canon? Such a query should invite a biographer to hit the ground with some demystifying facts or researched ruminations.

Or at least some good gossip, but even that requires documentation. Reinhardt the legend has thrived, but Reinhardt the historical figure is hard to reach. French jazz violinist St�phane Grappelli taught Django how to write a little in adulthood, and all he had to show for it was one semi-coherent letter. He disowned in court his one published interview and left behind little more than scratchy records, old reviews of his concerts and the fading memories of those who knew him. Reinhardt’s recordings are well-known, and his percussive guitar style is still imitated and revered, but we know very little about the man himself. He was a prototype for Sean Penn’s scumbag savant in Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown—a film that mystified and mythified the real Reinhardt even further. Apart from some colorful anecdotes and jangling arpeggios, the Gypsy remains a mystery.

One Reinhardt performance impressed the initially disdainful guitarist Andr�s Segovia enough to inspire the classical virtuoso to ask the jazz icon, “Where can I get that music?” “Nowhere,” Reinhardt retorted. “I’ve just composed it!” The Gypsy guitarist’s genius never presented itself on the page. It only added to his mystique that he seemed to live by instinct alone, even though his astonishing musical logic was obvious to anyone who could appreciate it. It would be the task of others to explain exactly what he did and how he did it. Reinhardt could have been the most significant jazz musician to come out of Europe, but he was also the most underdocumented one since Buddy Bolden died unrecorded in an insane asylum. Anyone writing a Reinhardt biography faces an extraordinary story and a nearly insurmountable task, and it would require considerable literary skill to follow a subject who left such a scant paper trail. Dregni, a contributing writer for Vintage Guitar magazine, did his fieldwork and knows every string and fret of Reinhardt’s instrument, but he is not the writer for the job. This book has been justly celebrated for all the rigorous original research Dregni has done on the Gypsy. But to attain this information, one has to slog through a considerable amount of wince-inducing prose. Some examples: “Here, outside the City of Light, was a city of blight.” “While Les Halles—with its vast food markets—was the poetic belly of Paris, Pigalle was its penis.” “Django and St�phane jammed on them as though their hearts beat to an American foxtrot rhythm.” “For Django, it was all a moveable feast eaten during a life on the move.” “For Django and for jazz, World War II was the best of times and the worst of times.” “Goebbels ordained that the capital was to be its old self, the City of Light even amid the darkness of war.” Reinhardt was virtually incapable of playing a clich�, but Dregni writes plenty of them.

Dregni was apparently struggling with how to write a biography and maintain a consistent narrative as he went along. We are told that Reinhardt “preferred Armstrong’s formidable playing over the erudite technique of the orchestra of Duke Ellington,” only to learn 100 pages later that he “attempted to style his arrangements like his other hero, Duke Ellington.” How did Ellington suddenly ascend in Reinhardt’s pantheon? We are told more than once that Reinhardt took a Gypsy father’s pride in his son’s ability to steal silverware from hotel rooms, but buried in the middle of the book—in a well-researched account of Reinhardt’s artistic and commercial triumphs in Vichy France—we stumble upon this little detail: “His mother was Jewish and he could forsee what that meant.” This is the first and last we hear about the Jewishness of this Gypsy star of the occupied jazz circuit, an irony begging for pages of copy. We certainly shouldn’t have to wait for the Gestapo to come knocking on page 155 to discover this in a book whose subtitle promises us “The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend.” There simply isn’t enough archival data to lean on to present Reinhardt whole without a more adept writer’s imagination and skill to fill in the gaps. By the time Reinhardt dies on his way to go fishing, it is hard to mourn the death of a man we have barely gotten to know.

Reinhardt created an original style when he fused Gypsy musette with the swing of Ellington and Armstrong. But the European jazz musicians who came after World War II did not merely mine local folk music; they improvised according to the principles of Schoenberg, Stockhausen and other theorized clangor. Mike Heffley’s Northern Sun, Southern Moon: Europe’s Reinvention of Jazz investigates the music of many of these practitioners as a phenomenon distinct from their American counterparts. Pianist Cecil Taylor, born in the United States, continues to slam the keys and demonstrate the journey from Bud Powell to the New England Conservatory and beyond, pounding out European avant-garde jazz better than anyone on the Continent. Why do we need Joachim K�hn, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Ekkehard Jost, Peter Kowald and others discussed in Heffley’s book when we have Taylor? The answer has something to do with a Hegelian theory of freedom and atonality, but before Heffley can canonize the European avant-gardists of his book, he characterizes the “smiling stage personae of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and many others” as “crafted for those they served as masters throughout history.” This was the view of some bebop musicians and hipsters in the 1950s—pretty much the attitude summed up by James Baldwin’s 1957 story “Sonny’s Blues.” Indeed, managers Joe Glaser and Irving Mills did put Armstrong and Ellington where they wanted them—faux jungles, mobbed-up clubs, at a distance from their white co-stars in films. Still, Ellington never played a chef, servant or hero’s best friend, and Armstrong even played a gangster in Artists and Models. In America’s post-Ellison moment of jazz studies, the master-slave dialectic posed by Heffley has been negated.

The European view of jazz is rather different, though, and that is the view of Northern Sun, Southern Moon. You have to hand it to Heffley: This is a man who knows his von Schlippenbach, his Jost, his Kowald. European jazz is certainly a subject important enough to justify substantial scholarly heavy lifting, and for anyone who wants to understand it, this is the definitive study. Distilled from a 1,757-page ethnomusicology dissertation directed by Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan, Heffley’s book—trimmed to a Spartan 300 pages—is in the grand sweeping theoretical tradition of Durkheim and Weber, and one does not have to be persuaded by its argument or enjoy the music he champions to appreciate its heft. There is a certain jingoism about studying jazz as an exclusively American phenomenon, although one invites arguments when one tries to distinguish how essential the American—and African-American—influence has to be to call it jazz. Reinhardt might have been playing Gypsy music in cafe obscurity for the rest of his life if he hadn’t fully intuited and appropriated the music of Louis Armstrong, whom he tried (and failed) to impress in an impromptu performance. “Ach moune!” Reinhardt cried in a Romany expression when he first heard Armstrong. Translation: My brother!

The German musicians discussed in Heffley’s study find kinship with late period John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman (the latter evidenced in Colors, Coleman’s fascinating 1996 duet with K�hn). But the German Emanzipation movement Heffley meticulously documents is not only an emancipation from rhythmic and harmonic structure but from swing and the blues. This is an Emanzipation proclamation of an ironic kind, a relinquishing of a distinctly African-American musical aesthetic; some of the European musicians covered in this book reject the word “jazz” altogether, a semantic distinction welcomed by jazz traditionalists in America. It’s hard not to be unsettled by this German erasure of black influence, which Heffley neither judges nor endorses but studies rigorously.

If you like swing, blues and melody, you won’t like the music discussed in these pages, but these European movements—with all their noise—are vital, seldom acknowledged elements of jazz history, and it is unlikely that anyone will cover it as thoroughly as Heffley. What finally emerges from all this noise is an attempt to dismantle ethnic and geographical boundaries, as much as it assaults harmony, rhythm and comfortable decibel levels. Heffley’s book examines what happens when jazz is displaced from its native land, leaving swing and the blues behind. As the East German critic Bert Noglik put it, “Jazz, its background as an African-American idiom, has developed into a global musical language.” But there are many ways to embrace musical revolutions, and there were some musicians in America who did not feel the need to choose. Charles Mingus, who had internalized the atonal scores of Schoenberg as a teenager in Watts while steeped in blues and bop, could be trans-idiomatic and swinging at the same time. Before any of the European improvisations documented in Heffley’s book took place, Mingus was arguing for a global musical language in a Down Beat manifesto back in 1951. “All music is one,” he wrote.

Before jazz could go international, though, it had to become national, and the journey from Storyville to St. Louis and beyond happened on riverboats. The music played on these boats has long been the stuff of legend. “There’s been so much that’s been written and sung about the Mississippi, all romantic and wonderful somehow,” recalled clarinetist Sidney Bechet. “But there’s a lot of misery there too, a lot of the bad times and the hurt that’s been living there beside the river.” Still, said Bechet, “that music was so strong, there was such a want for it that there was no moving away from it.” The romance, the misery and the music of migration are all captured in William Howland Kenney’s Jazz on the River, a book that narrates a history that couldn’t be captured merely by doting on scratchy records, tattered scores and old reviews. It was commonly known that jazz was born in New Orleans and made its way up the Mississippi, but until Kenney no one had investigated the makers of the boats and the conditions of the musicians who worked on them. And no study before this one ever charted that northern migration so that we can appreciate the artists and how their musical communities were formed, giving us new ways to appreciate the Pittsburgh of Billy Strayhorn, Art Blakey and Mary Lou Williams, the St. Louis of Miles Davis.

We get to know the riverboat manufacturing Streckfus family, in need of entertainment and cheap labor, and the black musicians who were glad to accept the $35 a week to get the hell out of Louisiana. Some bands were integrated decades before Benny Goodman desegregated his band, a liminal realm where Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke could at least get a chance to check each other out. “When perceived from the middle of the Mississippi River, North peacefully coexisted with South, Confederate gray with Union blue, and whites with blacks,” writes Kenney. “Riverboat jazz reaffirmed confidence in the United States.” This is not merely a Mark Twain-style allegory but a startling historical phenomenon, a demonstration of how jazz could desegregate Americans nearly half a century before civil rights became the law of the land.

It was not always lovely to be on a raft, of course. Beiderbecke had neither the reading chops nor the discipline to make the gig, and while Armstrong had a crucial early job working in Fate Marable’s band, he was frustrated by the rigidity of the format and was glad when he got a chance to leave. When the young Armstrong’s sight-reading abilities were later tested by another bandleader, Fletcher Henderson, after Armstrong responded to a pianissimo marking—an instruction to play softly—with a blaring note, he said, either joking or dodging, that he thought “pp” meant “pound plenty.” Those jokes got him out of trouble many a time. This story has been told in every Armstrong book, but until Kenney’s we never got to feel what that or the riverboat gig was actually like. What we get in this book, with lucid prose and meticulous research, is a geographical and cultural context for the figures who would eventually become canonical, providing a vital new backdrop for music and anecdotes that had seemed well trodden.

The musicians were overworked, underpaid and didn’t always even get sleeping quarters on the excursion boats. They were required to be excellent sight readers, but the most significant music to come out of those bands couldn’t be notated. The teenage Armstrong’s improvisational impulses might have put him at odds with Marable, but it only made him want to swing harder. The riverboats were as repressive as they were crucial. Kenney’s book functions as labor history as much as it does an aesthetic trajectory, laying out all the arbitrary forces, from the market to racial segregation, that somehow combined and floated upstream, allowing Armstrong to get some essential early exposure before he could get off the score and onto his own flights of fancy. As the music made its way north, the riverboats provided the first sounds of that music to Ma Rainey and W.C. Handy. “St. Louis Blues” couldn’t have been written without the boats carrying the New Orleans musicians up the river.

At the end of the book, Kenney quotes a scene from Ellison’s Invisible Man to give us a flavor of those wonderful, terrible riverboat days. In the beginning of the novel, sharecropper Jim Trueblood profits from telling a compelling but dubious tale of father-daughter incest. Trueblood’s tale is as ribald as a Fats Waller lyric, but it’s also as artful. Before he tells his story, he recalls hearing the music wafting from the riverboats: “Then the boats would be past and the lights would be gone from the window and the music would be goin’, too,” he says, before comparing the music’s enticement to a “plump and juicy” woman “kinda switchin’ her tail ‘cause she knows you watchin’ and you know she know.” In a more exalted moment, but still celebrating the trickster spirit represented by Trueblood, Ellison lamented on a 1965 PBS show that “one of the most intriguing gaps in American cultural history sprang from the fact that jazz, one of the few American art forms, failed to attract the understanding of our intellectuals…. It is a fact that, for all their contributions to American culture, no Edmund Wilson, no T.S. Eliot, no Cowley or Kazin has offered us insights into the relationship between this most vital art and the broader aspects of American social life.” Heffley did journeyman work investigating how jazz got imported—and maybe distorted—when it collided with broader aspects of European life. As for actually placing jazz in its historical and cultural context in America, Kenney is among the scholars who have explored exactly what Ellison had asked for, with a scholar’s mission to bring the music into a geographical, economic and social investigation of what was going on around it, that same sound that Ellison’s Trueblood heard from those riverboats. That cultural moment of public intellectuals Ellison yearned for forty years ago is long gone, and the moment of the music Kenney studied is even further away. Now that New Orleans stands in danger of losing its jazz archives amid the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the starting point of that riverboat journey—the Storyville whorehouses, the dance halls and the street parades where it all began—will float even further into the realm of myth. Now there are more books than ever to document a world that recedes every day. But before there was Ellison there was another writer, one who named an age after jazz, whose words are now particularly poignant. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Posted at 1:23 AM · Comments (0)

November 20, 2005
Copyright The New York Times

By HOWARD W. FRENCH
BEIJING - As the teacher, a career Chinese diplomat, spoke, his class of African diplomats scribbled furiously.

At the United Nations, China opposed the United States invasion of Iraq and has defended the right of Iran and other developing countries to use civilian nuclear power, said the teacher, Yuan Shibin. China, he noted pointedly, swept aside American objections to making an African the secretary general.

There was nothing subtle about his message, which will be repeatedly hammered home to the African diplomats during their three month, all-expenses paid stay at the Foreign Affairs University here. “China will always protect its own interests as well as those of other developing countries,” Mr. Yuan said. By contrast, “U.S. national interests are not often in conformity with those of other nations, including China.”

The classes are one element in a campaign by Beijing to win friends around the world and pry developing nations out of the United States’ sphere of influence. Africa, with its immense oil and mineral wealth and numerous United Nations votes, lies at the heart of that effort.

Since 2000, Chinese trade with Africa has more than tripled, reaching nearly $30 billion in 2004. Beijing has signed at least 40 oil agreements with various African countries. Medical teams from China are training counterparts in numerous African countries and providing free equipment and drugs to help fight AIDS, malaria and other scourges.

“China is making a determined effort to make sure that its interests are represented,” said Drew Thompson, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They are making sure they have a seat at the table, and that their relationships are comprehensive and not just economic. It isn’t competitive in the way the cold war was. It’s more a case of seeing to it that their message is on one of the many cable channels out there.”

China’s efforts to cultivate African ties date to the earliest days of the independence era on the continent, when Beijing armed and trained liberation movements and sent its workers by the thousands to build roads, railways and stadiums. Today, Chinese bankers and oil executives are as common a sight as Westerners in African capitals.

Meanwhile, several Chinese ministries, including Science and Technology, Agriculture, Commerce and Education, are working with African governments to train officials and develop human resources.

While the aid seems aimed at winning African hearts, the classes in diplomacy, constantly refined over the past decade, seem aimed more at swaying African minds. In addition, to impart a sympathetic view of China, they put forth a distinctly Chinese view of the world on questions about everything from economic development and history to democracy.

“Soft power is said to be coercive, persuading people to do what you’d like them to do, as opposed to hard power, which means forcing them to do what you want to do,” said Qin Yaqing, vice president of the Foreign Affairs University, a state-run school that trains China’s own diplomats and works with foreign trainees. “In traditional Chinese philosophy we have something similar to this, and it is called moral attraction.”

China’s appeal to Africa and much of the third world centers on the idea that nations will be drawn to an emerging superpower that does not lecture them about democracy and human rights or interfere in what Beijing considers “internal affairs.”

The other pole of attraction is, of course, China’s remarkable quarter century of economic growth, which has lifted it from the ranks of the poorest to make it one of the largest and most powerful economies.

For developing countries, many of which have grown disenchanted with the so-called Washington consensus, a mixture of lowered trade barriers, privatization, democracy and free markets, there is intense interest in trying to learn from China. There is talk of a rival “Beijing Consensus,” which emphasizes innovation and growth through a social-market economy, while placing less emphasis on free markets and democracy.

Officially, China denies that it is promoting a competing program. “Yes, a lot of African countries have been coming to China,” said Liu Jianchao, deputy spokesman of the Foreign Ministry. “But although people may call it a Beijing Consensus, we are not trying to pose as a model for other countries.”

Although he emphasized that he was speaking for himself, Mr. Qin of the Foreign Affairs University gave a serviceable summation of what many see as the official Chinese view. “Many of these countries in economic crisis get advice from these institutions that just can’t work,” he said. “China has a certain development experience that is relevant to these countries, and my advice is derived in part from Samuel Huntington, whose view is that democracy is a luxury.”

Posted at 12:03 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
Published: November 19, 2005
TOKYO, Nov. 14 - A young Japanese woman in the comic book “Hating the Korean Wave” exclaims, “It’s not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!” In another passage the book states that “there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of.”

In another comic book, “Introduction to China,” which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: “Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There’s nothing attractive.”

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Sharin Yamano/Shinyusha
In “Hating the Korean Wave,” a young Japanese woman says, “It’s not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!”
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The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.

In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan’s fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan’s worsening relations with the rest of Asia.

They also point to Japan’s longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain’s apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan’s history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea’s rise to challenge Japan’s position as Asia’s economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.

Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country’s wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.

Mr. Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan’s most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West and leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.

“I wonder why they haven’t grown up at all,” Mr. Nishio said. “They don’t change. I wonder why China and Korea haven’t learned anything.”

Mr. Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea, said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as Fukuzawa advocated. “Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China,” Mr. Nishio said. “Economically, it’s difficult. But in our hearts, psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude.”

The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer’s World Cup and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the so-called Korean Wave - television dramas, movies and music from South Korea - swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop cultural exports.

The wave, though popular among Japanese women, gave rise to a countermovement, especially on the Internet. Sharin Yamano, the young cartoonist behind “Hating the Korean Wave,” began his strip on his own Web site then.

“The ‘Hate Korea’ feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup,” said Akihide Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still, the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book’s editors, suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had believed.

“We weren’t expecting there’d be so many,” said Susumu Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. “But when the lid was actually taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way.”

So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing around $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream news media. For example, Japan’s most conservative national daily, Sankei Shimbun, said the Korea book described issues between the countries “extremely rationally, without losing its balance.”

As nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced, said Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University here. Mr. Yoshida said the growing movement to deny history, like the Rape of Nanjing, was a sort of “religion” for an increasingly insecure nation.

“Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing,” Mr. Yoshida said. “Even if we say that story is different from facts, it doesn’t mean anything to them.”

The Korea book’s cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who attains a “correct” understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter on how South Korea’s soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup; later chapters show how Kaname realizes that South Korea owes its current success to Japanese colonialism.

“It is Japan who made it possible for Koreans to join the ranks of major nations, not themselves,” Mr. Nishio said of colonial Korea.

But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan’s conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.

That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided that the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching here was to emulate them.

In 1885, Fukuzawa - who is revered to this day as the intellectual father of modern Japan and adorns the 10,000 yen bill (the rough equivalent of a $100 bill) - wrote “Leaving Asia,” the essay that many scholars believe provided the intellectual underpinning of Japan’s subsequent invasion and colonization of Asian nations.

Fukuzawa bemoaned the fact that Japan’s neighbors were hopelessly backward.

Writing that “those with bad companions cannot avoid bad reputations,” Fukuzawa said Japan should depart from Asia and “cast our lot with the civilized countries of the West.” He wrote of Japan’s Asian neighbors, “We should deal with them exactly as the Westerners do.”

As those sentiments took root, the Japanese began acquiring Caucasian features in popular drawing. The biggest change occurred during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, when drawings of the war showed Japanese standing taller than Russians, with straight noses and other features that made them look more European than their European enemies.

“The Japanese had to look more handsome than the enemy,” said Mr. Nagayama.

Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, “An Introduction to China,” which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.

The book describes China as the “world’s prostitution superpower” and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, “I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China.”

The book waves away Japan’s worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38, as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment.

The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army’s Unit 731 - which researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners - was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese.

“The only attractive thing that China has to offer is Chinese food,” said Ko Bunyu, a Taiwan-born writer who provided the script for the comic book. Mr. Ko, 66, has written more than 50 books on China, some on cannibalism and others arguing that Japanese were the real victims of their wartime atrocities in China. The book’s main author and cartoonist, a Japanese named George Akiyama, declined to be interviewed.

Like many in Taiwan who are virulently anti-China, Mr. Ko is fiercely pro-Japanese and has lived here for four decades. A longtime favorite of the Japanese right, Mr. Ko said anti-Japan demonstrations in China early this year had earned him a wider audience. Sales of his books surged this year, to one million.

“I have to thank China, really,” Mr. Ko said. “But I’m disappointed that the sales of my books could have been more than one or two million if they had continued the demonstrations.”

Posted at 10:30 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Boston Globe

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2005

BUFFALO, New York The election last week of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the Harvard-educated former World Bank economist as president of Liberia, is a milestone. She will become the first woman African head of state and give her tormented country the only real opportunity in more than a generation to emerge from the ashes of a savage civil war. But these rays of hope will be extinguished if George Weah, her vanquished opponent, becomes bellicose and stokes violent conflict.
It is virtually impossible to imagine a place on Earth where life has been more hellish than Liberia. For almost three decades, the country has been in the grip of brutal dictatorships or ruthless warlords.
It reached its nadir in 1980 when Samuel Doe introduced a rein of terror. In 1990, Doe was killed by rebel forces led by Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson, two equally ruthless warlords. Liberia remained lawless until 1997 when Taylor intimidated his compatriots into electing him president.
But rather than pursue peace and reconstruction, Taylor instigated coups and civil wars in neighboring states. He sold arms in exchange for diamonds to Sierra Leone rebels who cut off the limbs, ears and noses of opponents. In 2003, Taylor was forced to resign but was granted refuge in Nigeria in spite of an indictment for war crimes by the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone. His forced departure paved the way for last week’s elections.
The election of Johnson-Sirleaf notwithstanding, history will repeat itself unless the international community acts resolutely. Although she won 60 percent to Weah’s 40 percent, Weah has refused to concede defeat, charging fraud and other irregularities. International monitors have categorically stated that there is no evidence to bolster Weah’s allegations.
Weah’s threat to the democratic process should not be taken lightly. Liberia has been down this path before. Easily the most famous Liberian, 38-year-old Weah is a former international soccer star who draws most of his support from dispossessed urban youth, former child soldiers and scores of warlords. A product of the slums of Monrovia, the barely literate Weah’s rags-to-riches story resonates with poor youth.
Even so, most Liberians seem to have voted for experience and technocratic competence over glamour. The belief is that 67-year-old Johnson-Sirleaf, with her connections and legitimacy in the world of global finance and capital, stands a better chance of leading Liberia to economic recovery and international demarginalization. The silver lining for Weah is that he has established himself as a powerful political force and the man likely to succeed Johnson-Sirleaf.
Liberia has not known a modern democracy. Weah can change that dismal history if he accepts the election results and joins a government of national unity or plays the role of a legitimate democratic opposition. What the country needs is not another warlord but a massive reconstruction effort.
But Weah’s support from unsavory characters, including Taylor’s backers, should give pause. There are indications that Taylor himself maintains an unhealthy interest in Liberian politics from exile. It is unlikely that Liberia will know peace until Taylor is held accountable for the atrocities he committed in office. Weah should join those democrats and reformers who have called for Nigeria to turn Taylor over to Sierra Leone’s Special Court.
Unless Weah makes these commitments - and renounces confrontation - his backers are likely to revert to violence. Yet, it is his supporters who must be rehabilitated for this election to relaunch Liberia. UN peacekeeping forces cannot allow the situation to deteriorate. Nor should the international community permit thugs to reverse the freely expressed will of the Liberian people.
Finally, the United States must recognize its special responsibility. The country was established by Americans, and successive administrations treated Liberia like an unofficial vassal. That is why Washington bears some responsibility for Liberia’s woes. U.S. material, diplomatic and logistical support is crucial if Liberia is to emerge from its long night of privation.

Posted at 10:52 PM · Comments (0)

Friday, November 18, 2005

PETER KAMMERER’S WORLD

Copyright The South China Morning Post

US President George W. Bush’s staff clearly are not being terribly upfront with him these days. If they were, he would not be going to Mongolia next week at the end of his Asian tour.
When Mr Bush steps off Air Force One on Monday, he will be going where no American president has gone before - and for good reason. McDonald’s has not yet arrived in Mongolia, nor has Starbucks. In fact, the only US franchise establishment in the remote, landlocked country of just under 3 million people is a branch of a Michigan-based fast-food outlet called BD’s Mongolian Barbeque.

The neglect of Mongolia by American corporate globalisation will not last forever - the 10-per-cent-plus growth rate of its gross domestic product is bringing wealth and consumerism. Sooner or later, Mongolians will hanker for a slice of good old main-street USA.

This is where Mr Bush’s aides come into the equation and one of the reasons why they should be disciplined: Mongolian cuisine is said by many a traveller to be the worst in the world. Diplomatic protocol demands that at some stage during his brief visit, out of politeness to his hosts, he will have to go native.

The staple national dish is mutton, served in a variety of ways - boiled, stewed, cooked with fat and flour, served with noodles or in dumplings. As Mongolians do not season their food to any great degree, meals are bland and greasy - in effect, mutton dressed as, well, mutton.

Those wishing to escape mutton can choose yak, horse meat or the must-be-tried delicacy, roasted marmot. The animal is ready to be eaten when it bloats and its limbs extend, which is probably the time the diner slides into the abyss of Mongolia’s other national treat - milk.

Cheese and yoghurt made from yak’s milk are obvious accompaniments to a mutton or marmot feast, but why not go all-out authentic and try alcohol made from the same product? Many is the time, after a hard day at the office, I have wanted a tall glass of cold nermamilke, a relative of vodka distilled from yoghurt, or airag, created from fermented horse’s milk.

Mr Bush’s alcohol-swilling days ended about 20 years ago, so he will most likely opt for the national drink, suutei tsai, a salty tea made from hot water, milk, butter, rice, plenty of salt and - if any is available - tea. It is supposedly good for indigestion, most likely caused by mutton, yak, marmot or cheese.

But forcing their boss to be adventurous with his eating habits is not the main reason the president’s staff should be disciplined. By thinking he can escape his troubles - a disastrous showing at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, record low public-opinion figures, and top aide Lewis Libby’s resignation after being indicted for perjury - by taking him to the farthest-possible country from the US is foolish in the age of CNN.

Television pictures of Mr Bush checking out what is inside a yurt (carpets for walls and a dirt floor) and inspecting what remains of the military (170 Mongolian troops were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan) will do little for sceptical American viewers. Nor will congratulating leaders for embracing democracy - the nation still has strong communist roots. Worse, though, the president’s staff have committed the ultimate sin, which should constitute immediate dismissal. That is, giving international media attention to the mystique and breathtaking, wild beauty of one of the planet’s last untouched frontiers.

Without doubt, a horde of tourists will soon be heading there in Mr Bush’s wake, destroying what has for so long been the secret of a privileged few - albeit ones lacking taste buds. Their clamouring for McDonald’s and Starbucks will be the biggest tragedy of all.

Peter Kammerer is the Post’s foreign editor.

peter.kamm@scmp.com

Posted at 10:49 PM · Comments (0)

The man whose music someone wrote somewhere was somehow, in some way responsible for the French riots! Set to something with a faintly Indian chord structure playing in the background, over an insistent beat.

“When I die I want to fuckin’ go to hell, cause I’m a piece a shit, it ain’t hard to fuckin’ tell. It don’t make sense to go to heaven with the goody-goodies dressed in white. I like black Tims’ and black hoodies. God’d probably have me on some real strict shit: no sleepin’ all day, no getting my XXX lit. Hanging with the goody-goodies, loungin’ in paradise, fuck that shit. I want to tote guns and shoot dice. All my life I’ve been considered the worst. Lying to my mother, even stealing out her purse. Crime after crime, from drugs to extortion. I know my mother wish she got a fuckin’ abortion. She don’t even love me like she did when I was younger. Sucking on her chest just to stop my hunger. I wonder if I died would tears come to her eyes. Forgive me for my disrepect, forgive me for my lies. My baby mother’s 8 months, her little sister’s two. Who’s to blame for both of them? I swear I want to just slit my wrists and end this bullshit. Draw a magnum to my head and threaten to pull shit, and squeeze, until the bed’s completely red… I want to leave. I feel like death is fuckin’ calling me…

Posted at 11:57 PM · Comments (0)

“When I get to having a feeling for something there ain’t too much of, my little darling gives me her love. Won’t catch me chasing around at night. I’m not impressed with the glamorous types. Lil’ darling may not be as pretty as some other girls you may see, but my little darling only loves me.
… She was never chased around by a lot of guys. She never won no beauty prize. As long as she loves me, I don’t care!”

Kurt warms it up slowly and beautifully, taking his precious time (2:38 seconds) before injecting it with his signature power and feeling, investing himself in the song, and finally owning it. What a singer!

Posted at 11:47 PM · Comments (0)

This one goes out to France, ablaze of late. I read somewhere it’s all because of rap. I think Bob said it all well enough a generation ago:

This morning, I woke up in a curfew. Oh God, I was a prisoner, too.
I could not recognize the faces standing over me;
They were all dressed in uniforms of brutality;
How many rivers will we have to cross before we can talk to the boss;
All that we’ve got it seems we have lost;
We must have really paid a cost, that’s why we’re going to be burning and looting tonight…

The whole album holds up amazingly well, in fact. Try Small Axe:

“If you are a big tree, we are the small axe, sharpened to cut you down, ready to cut you down. These are the words of our master. We all shall prosper, or no they can’t.”

Or another favorite, Duppy Conqueror:
The bars coiuld not hold me. Force could not control me.
They tried to keep me down, but Jah want I around.
Yes, I’ve been accused many a times, and wrongly abused. But through the powers that puhold me, they’ve got to turn me loose… Don’t try to call me a disgrace now. I’ve got to reach Mt. Zion. If you are a Bullbucka, I’m a Duppy Conqueror.
Yes, me friend, dem say we free again.

Posted at 11:31 PM · Comments (0)

Goldberg Variations on the tenor, set to a propulsive Jazz beat — circa 1958. Indeed, the album is called Settin’ the Pace. Brother John is on his game here. You can ride this one all the way home, time and again (what he does at the end of the tune is simply fantastic). What can one say beyond the title itself. Red Garland blows it up, too, on the piano. Listen!

Here’s a link to a sample:
http://www.emusic.com/album/10589/10589356.html

Posted at 10:42 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Australian
18 November 2005
The rise of China will not be peaceful at all

THE question at hand is simple and profound: will China rise peacefully? My answer is no.

If China continues its impressive economic growth over the next few decades, the US and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war. Most of China’s neighbours, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam, will join with the US to contain China’s power.
To predict the future in Asia, one needs a theory that explains how rising powers are likely to act and how other states will react to them.
>
> My theory of international politics says that the
> mightiest states attempt to establish hegemony in
> their own region while making sure that no rival great
> power dominates another region. The ultimate goal of
> every great power is to maximise its share of world
> power and eventually dominate the system.
>
> The international system has several defining
> characteristics. The main actors are states that
> operate in anarchy which simply means that there is no
> higher authority above them. All great powers have
> some offensive military capability, which means that
> they can hurt each other. Finally, no state can know
> the future intentions of other states with certainty.
> The best way to survive in such a system is to be as
> powerful as possible, relative to potential rivals.
> The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that
> another state will attack it.
>
> The great powers do not merely strive to be the
> strongest great power, although that is a welcome
> outcome. Their ultimate aim is to be the hegemon, the
> only great power in the system. But it is almost
> impossible for any state to achieve global hegemony in
> the modern world, because it is too hard to project
> and sustain power around the globe. Even the US is a
> regional but not a global hegemon. The best that a
> state can hope for is to dominate its own back yard.
>
> States that gain regional hegemony have a further aim:
> to prevent other geographical areas from being
> dominated by other great powers. Regional hegemons, in
> other words, do not want peer competitors. Instead,
> they want to keep other regions divided among several
> great powers so that these states will compete with
> each other. In 1991, shortly after the Cold War ended,
> the first Bush administration boldly stated that the
> US was now the most powerful state in the world and
> planned to remain so. That same message appeared in
> the famous National Security Strategy issued by the
> second Bush administration in September 2002. This
> document’s stance on pre-emptive war generated harsh
> criticism, but hardly a word of protest greeted the
> assertion that the US should check rising powers and
> maintain its commanding position in the global balance
> of power.
>
> China - whether it remains authoritarian or becomes
> democratic - is likely to try to dominate Asia the way
> the US dominates the Western hemisphere.
>
> Specifically, China will seek to maximise the power
> gap between itself and its neighbours, especially
> Japan and Russia. China will want to make sure that it
> is so powerful that no state in Asia has the
> wherewithal to threaten it. It is unlikely that China
> will pursue military superiority so that it can go on
> a rampage and conquer other Asian countries, although
> that is always possible.
>
> Instead, it is more likely that it will want to
> dictate the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to
> neighbouring countries, much the way the US makes it
> clear to other states in the Americas that it is the
> boss. Gaining regional hegemony, I might add, is
> probably the only way that China will get Taiwan back.
>
>
> An increasingly powerful China is also likely to try
> to push the US out of Asia, much the way the US pushed
> the European great powers out of the Western
> hemisphere. We should expect China to come up with its
> own version of the Monroe Doctrine, as Japan did in
> the 1930s.
>
> These policy goals make good strategic sense for
> China. Beijing should want a militarily weak Japan and
> Russia as its neighbours, just as the US prefers a
> militarily weak Canada and Mexico on its borders.
>
> What state in its right mind would want other powerful
> states located in its region? All Chinese surely
> remember what happened in the 20th century when Japan
> was powerful and China was weak. In the anarchic world
> of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla
> than Bambi.
>
> Furthermore, why would a powerful China accept US
> military forces operating in its back yard? American
> policy-makers, after all, go ballistic when other
> great powers send military forces into the Western
> hemisphere. Those foreign forces are invariably seen
> as a potential threat to American security. The same
> logic should apply to China.
>
> Why would China feel safe with US forces deployed on
> its doorstep? Following the logic of the Monroe
> Doctrine, would not China’s security be better served
> by pushing the American military out of Asia?
>
> Why should we expect the Chinese to act any
> differently than the US did? Are they more principled
> than the Americans are? More ethical? Less
> nationalistic? Less concerned about their survival?
> They are none of these things, of course, which is why
> China is likely to imitate the US and attempt to
> become a regional hegemon.
>
> It is clear from the historical record how American
> policy-makers will react if China attempts to dominate
> Asia. The US does not tolerate peer competitors. As it
> demonstrated in the 20th century, it is determined to
> remain the world’s only regional hegemon. Therefore,
> the US can be expected to go to great lengths to
> contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point
> where it is no longer capable of ruling the roost in
> Asia. In essence, the US is likely to behave towards
> China much the way it behaved towards the Soviet Union
> during the Cold War.
>
> China’s neighbours are certain to fear its rise as
> well, and they too will do whatever they can to
> prevent it from achieving regional hegemony.
>
> Indeed, there is already substantial evidence that
> countries such as India, Japan, and Russia, as well as
> smaller powers such as Singapore, South Korea and
> Vietnam, are worried about China’s ascendancy and are
> looking for ways to contain it. In the end, they will
> join an American-led balancing coalition to check
> China’s rise, much the way Britain, France, Germany,
> Italy, Japan, and even China, joined forces with the
> US to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
>
> Finally, given Taiwan’s strategic importance for
> controlling the sea lanes in East Asia, it is hard to
> imagine the US, as well as Japan, allowing China to
> control that large island. In fact, Taiwan is likely
> to be an important player in the anti-China balancing
> coalition, which is sure to infuriate China and fuel
> the security competition between Beijing and
> Washington.
>
> The picture I have painted of what is likely to happen
> if China continues its rise is not a pretty one. I
> actually find it categorically depressing and wish
> that I could tell a more optimistic story about the
> future.
>
> But the fact is that international politics is a nasty
> and dangerous business and no amount of goodwill can
> ameliorate the intense security competition that sets
> in when an aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia.
>
> That is the tragedy of great power politics.
>
> John Mearsheimer is professor of political science at
> the University of Chicago and the author of The
> Tragedy of Great Power Politics (W.W. Norton, 2001).
>
>

Posted at 10:36 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne)
November 14, 2005
Posted to the web November 15, 2005
Arusha

The major allegation in a book entitled “Rwanda. L’histoire secrete”
by Lieutenant Abdul Ruzibiza, recently published, is that the current
Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, ordered the shooting down of a plane
carrying former president Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994 thereby
triggering off the genocide.

“It is him who gave the order to shoot down the plane”, firmly says
35-year old Ruzibiza - a defector from the former rebel Rwandese
Patriotic Front (RPF) now in power in Kigali.

Ruzibiza claims to have been a member of the “network commando” which
shot down the plane.

His book published by editions Panama in Paris is a war diary that
retraces “the October war day by day” and the ensuing atrocities
committed by different factions especially members of the RPF.

The armed conflict which took place in Rwanda between October 1990 and
July 1994 was christened the “October War”.

Nearly all books on the Rwandan genocide gave a wide coverage to human
rights violations committed by the government side but very little has
been documented in the zone controlled by the RPF.

As an “insider”, Ruzibiza was on many fronts and had first hand
information on what went on in the “liberated” zones where the
population was huddled together and killed en masse.

Ruzibiza does not hesitate to use the term “genocide of Hutus” and
according to him, the rebel high command “had given orders to
commanders of different units and intelligence officers to kill as
many Hutus as possible especially if they were found grouped
together”.

The author considers April 1994 “the worst month in the history of
Rwanda”. Apart from the massive genocide of Tutsis, “a large number of
Hutu citizens were massacred because of a crime not all of them
committed; that of having exterminated Tutsis”.

Ruzibiza is quick to warn those who might be tempted to misinterpret
his book to forward the “double genocide” theory. “It should not be
understood that way. The Genocide of Hutus should neither be blamed on
Tutsis nor that of Tutsis on Hutus. The gravity of these crimes
surpasses ethnic dimensions. Those who committed these crimes are
savages who should individually answer for them”.

All specialists on Rwanda agree that the systematic massacres that
took place in Rwanda between April and July 1994 were triggered off by
the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana on the night of
April 6, 1994.

Grabbing power

Of the 491 pages in the book, Ruzibiza narrates in 15 pages details of
the preparation of the air attack and points out the authors.
According to him, Paul Kagame chaired many meetings to plan the
assassination, the last of which was held at the RPF headquarters in
Mulindi (Byumba, northern Rwanda) on March 31, 1994.

Many of Kagame’s associates were present, among them Colonels Kayumba
Nyamwasa, Theoneste Lizinde and Lieutenant Colonel James Kabarebe.

In Ruzibiza’s opinion, Habyarimana’s death “was not an answer to
Rwanda’s ills but a way to grab power”.

The author continues that the RPF first considered shooting
Habyarimana “at close range on the route” but that that option was
abandoned because he had reduced his travel by road.

The only remaining possibility was shooting down his plane. RPF then
decided to transport to Kigali SA-16 missiles from the Ugandan
arsenal. They could shoot the plane as it landed at Kigali airport.

The RPF managed to smuggle the missiles into Kigali by hoodwinking the
Ghanaian contingent of the UN peacekeepers.

The weapon “was chosen because of its power, speed, and preheating
which took less time”.

Habyarimana “was almost killed on April 5, 1994 as he returned from
Zaire, but it was not possible to place the missiles at the site in
broad daylight”.

The right occasion came up the next day when the president was
returning from Dar es Salaam. He arrived over Kigali as night was
falling.

Missiles had been placed on Masaka hill. Lizinde, a former officer in
the Rwandan army, had picked out the spot.

The attack was carried out by two gunmen, a soldier who was deployed
to protect them and a driver.

“The first person to fire, Captain Eric Hakizimana, touched the plane
on its right wing but without bringing it down. 2nd Lieutenant Frank
Nziza sent the next missile flying 3-4 seconds later and shot down the
plane”.

“I am an eye witness to what took place when the SA-16 was fired
because I was present”, writes Ruzibiza.

After the attack, soldiers of the RPF who had been readied in advance
were assembled to immediately launch attacks which culminated in the
fall of Kigali on July 4, 1994.

Posted at 10:27 PM · Comments (0)

Mure Dickie in Beijing
Copyright The Financial Times
Published: November 16 2005 22:03

Beijing has halted plans to allow foreign newspapers to print in China
because of concerns raised by recent �colour revolutions� against
authoritarian governments in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, according to a
senior media regulator. Shi Zongyuan, head of the General
Administration of Press and Publication, said the role of the international media
in such popular revolts had prompted the suspension of what had been a
cautious, but significant easing of China�s curbs on foreign news
publications.

�The �colour revolutions� were a reminder not to let saboteurs into the
house and that the door must be closed, so we have closed it
temporarily,� Mr Shi said in an interview with the FT. Mr Shi�s remarks
underline the increasing concern with which Chinese leaders have viewed the
toppling of the government of Georgia in 2003, of Ukraine in 2004 and of
Kyrgyzstan earlier this year. Moscow has alleged that the hand of
America�s CIA lay behind some of these revolts.

Fears that China�s own political order could also be undermined have
fuelled a broad effort by Beijing propaganda officials to tighten
controls on cultural and media imports. Mr Shi�s linkage of foreign newspaper
printing in China to national security issues is likely to disappoint
international newspaper publishers , eager to build their presence in
what is potentially a huge media market.

Foreign newspapers are currently flown into mainland China from print
sites in Hong Kong and elsewhere, and distribution is limited to places
where foreigners are numerous, such as hotels and airports, and to
approved subscribers. The press administration had planned to allow local
publications to print foreign newspapers including the FT on a contract
basis, while retaining restrictions on distribution.

Mr Shi said that any return to the liberalisation policy depended on
the conduct of foreign media.

Posted at 10:22 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Monthly Review

Yiching Wu was born and educated in the People�s Republic of China. He is currently completing a dissertation on Chinese intellectual politics and social movements, at the Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago. For comments and criticisms, please contact him at yw16@uchicago.edu.

The author wishes to thank Judith Farquhar, Saul Thomas, Matthew Hale, Mingyu Zheng, Hairong Yan, and Yiwen Li for very helpful discussions and suggestions.

Over a quarter century after China ventured onto the market path, it is high time to take a hard look and ask some very tough questions. That is what Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett did in �China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle� (Monthly Review, July�August 2004) and they concluded that �market reforms� have fundamentally subverted Chinese socialism. The considerable costs of economic liberalization, they argued, reflect the inherent antagonisms of the capitalist system that is in the midst of being imposed. �Market socialism� is at best a contradiction in terms, an unstable formation that only awaits progressive degeneration: �the Chinese government�s program of �market reforms,� which was allegedly to reinvigorate socialism, has instead led the country down a slippery slope toward an increasingly capitalist, foreign-dominated development path.�1 They also showed how market reforms generate their own dynamic�how each stage �generated new tensions and contradictions that were solved only through a further expansion of market power, leading to the growing consolidation of a capitalist political economy.�2 Moreover, they insisted on a class-based critique, an admirable position in an ideological milieu that deems such emphasis unfashionable. Chinese reforms have produced such consequences as income polarization, increased poverty, and intensified exploitation, which are integral to processes of capitalist marketization. The vital issue of class antagonism is thus not to be glossed over by the neoliberal myth of �transition.�

Hart-Landsberg and Burkett have made an important and timely contribution to our understanding. However, the issues involved�history, class, and socialism�are of such magnitude and importance that they merit further discussion and development.

Market Socialism: Utopian or Historical?

The idea of market socialism has become a major field of interest among political theorists, sociologists, and economists on the left. Even as proponents have devised many ways in which socialist values may be combined with market mechanisms, critics have expressed doubts whether such models can be coherent, or whether they are desirable or even feasible after all. In a well-known exchange between Ernest Mandel and Alec Nove, Mandel�a key critic of market socialism�insisted that the debate was concerned neither with reform strategies in given societies nor with the malfunctions which the market is meant to fix, not even with analyzing the possible directions of change; rather, in Mandel�s words:

Our controversy turns only around two questions: whether socialism as conceived by Marx�i.e. a society ruled by freely associated producers, in which commodity production (market economy), social classes, and the state have withered away�is feasible, and whether it is desirable.3
But processes of history surely should matter much more, and that is where we should focus our attention.

It is not at all uncommon on the left to view the market negatively. Even for those who might sympathize with the promise of market socialism, the market is often viewed with ambivalence as at best a necessary evil, only to be tolerated if accompanied by very vigilant regulation. Market relations are viewed as contradicting and undermining the ideal of socialism. Once embraced, the Fall may be initially gradual, but the slippery slope will eventually lead all the way down. An unbridgeable gulf exists between socialism and the market�the system of commodity relations upon which capitalism has historically and structurally rested. That brings us back to the question: for reinvigorating socialism, why the market road after all?

In these pages, Harry Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster pointed out that the post-Mao �U-turn in the ruling ideology� originated in the class-ideological divergence in the earlier phase of Chinese socialism:

What is clear from the Chinese experience is that the basis of the class struggle continues even after nationalization of business institutions. The mentality of the old society does not evaporate into thin air after a revolutionary change. It remains and conflicts with the socialist road. Other strains arise from the potential and actual entrenchment of a bureaucratic elite, the persistence of hierarchy, and the complexity of building a people�s democracy….In this way the class struggle persists, though in different forms from the past. At heart, as Mao pointed out, even some in high Communist Party positions wanted to take the �capitalist road.�4
In this view, shortly after Mao�s abortive victory over such regressive tendencies during the Cultural Revolution, a small clique of capitalist roaders holed up inside the party succeeded in reversing the achievements of the revolution and imposing the capitalist road simply by governmental fiat, and the restoration of capitalism is now almost complete.

Often associated with Monthly Review, these views have formed the kernel of a long-standing tradition of radical analysis and criticism in relationship to the historical vicissitudes of Chinese socialism and its post-Mao transformations.5 But in today�s highly constricted ideological atmosphere, this fruitful tradition is being largely marginalized even in left-wing circles. However, admirable efforts to stress the class perspective notwithstanding, some of the basic historical premises of this tradition with respect to the social and political nature of Chinese socialism need to be scrutinized in order for the critical potential to be realized.

Clearly, there is a methodological orientation at stake here. Eric Hobsbawm once noted that the evident importance of the actors in the drama does not necessarily mean that they are also serving as dramatist, producer, or stage-designer. To follow Hobsbawm�s spirit, I argue that we may approach the problem of post-socialist market reforms somewhat differently, in a way that is more historically situated and less conceptually dichotomous. I think that the debate over market socialism�whether it can be a coherent model or whether it can really lead toward socialism�may be fully rational and important, in theory at least. However, we must also examine the historical side of the coin, unless our job is merely to design blueprints for institutional utopia in some pristine political laboratory. Market measures are adopted usually to tackle socialism�s difficulties, and they derive their political significance from the specific historical setting in which they are deployed. Therefore, in what way is such an ideological line conditioned by determinate class and political relations? Are market reforms principally a policy matter as designed by the leadership? Should we focus on the class conditions of such reforms as well as their class consequences? Or, what is really behind the market line?

Class Relations in Chinese Socialism

A critical assessment of Chinese socialism is much needed in order to understand its contemporary mutations. Yet instead of merely heaping up the list of failings, which has been done by many, we should also consider a stance that may bring the class dimension into sharper focus.

How do we characterize the basic class relationships characteristic of the post-1949 Chinese society? Where do we begin? There is no doubt that class in Chinese socialism is a thorny issue. This is first and foremost a more general political and theoretical problem. Richard Kraus, the author of perhaps the best book on the subject, wrote that �there still exists no adequate theory of socialist class relationships,�6 and his remark is probably no less true today than it was two decades ago. Ever since the 1930s, Marxists of various strands have been engaged in intense arguments about the class nature of state socialism of the Soviet-type, and enormous political and theoretical energy has been expended on these debates. Briefly, the controversies have centered on three closely interrelated issues: first, whether there exists a ruling class in state socialism; second, how its class character might be defined, or whether it constitutes a bourgeois or state-capitalist class; third, how the nature of such societies and polities may be characterized in class-analytic terms. In spite of the frequent fissures and convolutions that these debates have spawned, they have nonetheless produced valuable lessons and insights. There is no good reason why our present inquiry into Chinese socialism and its permutations should not benefit from the accumulated insights from generations of Marxian debate.

Yet for our purpose of understanding China�s market path, I think a somewhat weaker or more flexible approach may suffice for the moment, and may even be more productive in the long run. Our task here is not to slap on labels, i.e., to categorize whether China was less or more socialist, or even capitalist. Such an approach only smacks of political pedantry. Rather, I think our present inquiry can go a long way simply by beginning with certain minimal facts�i.e., to recognize the fundamentally class-divided character of Chinese socialism, yet without having to rush to definitive closure with regard to the state�s class nature. The real point of a class perspective is how to draw out its implications for understanding China�s current transformations.

Any critical assessment of contemporary Chinese socialism should begin with the premise that the socialist objectives of the Chinese Revolution were unmistakable, and its social and political accomplishments historically significant. Led by a Marxist-Leninist party with a vast popular base, the protracted revolutionary struggle shattered a decomposing semi-traditional and semi-colonial order in which economic exploitation and social oppression were rampant, and fashioned the fragments of the decaying former empire into a modern nation state. After its founding in 1949 the new state moved quickly to abolish private ownership of the social means of production by expropriating the property-owning classes. However, despite the broad socialist accomplishments, we should acknowledge�and I do not think this is too controversial�that as far as the social relations of production are concerned, there was an actual separation of the popular working classes from the means of production and distribution. Productive social property was controlled in effect by an immensely powerful state bureaucracy, an apparatus that was not under effective popular-democratic control. These facts should constitute the basic point of departure for understanding Chinese socialism and its historical permutations.

The key point is that the political form of the new state largely reproduced and maintained the expropriated status of the working classes�both rural and urban, even though their new enjoyment of certain socioeconomic benefits was historically significant. Proletarianization was not necessarily the historical condition of the revolution, which was brought about more by severe social dislocation and economic exploitation based mostly on precapitalist social relations. More a post-revolutionary phenomenon, proletarianization developed rapidly after 1949, and was accomplished for the most part with the completion of agrarian collectivization and the nationalization of urban trades and industries in the mid and late 1950s. Generalized proletarianization was thus the direct result of state control over productive resources, yet without the state itself being socialized�that is, without a political framework being constituted wherein the controlling apparatus itself could be effectively supervised and controlled by the citizenry.7 In this context, juridical forms of property ownership must not be confused with actual class relations�they were only a derivative fact, expressive of the underlying production relations. Social, collective, or public ownership existed largely as schoolbook theory�indeed, a legal fiction. And despite the highly visible role of mass activity, democratic participation in the life of the state by the popular classes enjoyed little institutional guarantee, and its political significance was severely limited.

As a result, the revolutionary state was estranged from its social basis even at its early beginning, when there existed much closer ties between the popular classes and the governing stratum, when the sacred events of revolution were still fresh, and the tradition of mass struggle was presumably quite robust. The political apparatus that was used to destroy old inequalities had itself given rise to a new set of inequalities. The power of the state was supposed to be wielded in the interests of the working people, to be sure. But in fact, the subordinate working classes were at best to be the dependent beneficiaries of a paternalistic bureaucracy�not to mention that such hard-won benefits can be easily taken away as political circumstances may change, as recent developments in China have so clearly demonstrated.

The historical reasons for the political estrangement of the state were no doubt extremely complex. The new state was founded under difficult circumstances of revolutionary struggle and counter-revolutionary violence, debilitating conditions that understandably limited its transformative potentials. But this is a separate issue and should merit its own independent inquiry. Rather, the point here is that any earnest attempts critically to examine China�s contemporary transformation from a class perspective must begin with the sober recognition of this historical limitation, and moreover, with taking its political implications into very serious consideration.

Marketization and Ruling-Class Formation

If the market road to socialism has utterly failed in China, how are we to interpret this failure? Market reforms generally do not occur in a social or political vacuum. �Men make their own history,� wrote Marx in the Eighteenth Brumaire, �but they do not make it just as they please.�

The new market society was not some historical clay that either Beijing�s grand architect or Washington�s neoliberal designers could mold at will. Rather, market reforms are necessarily mediated by existing social-class relations. As a result we must keep in mind the historical conditions under which market measures are being employed, and try to grasp the full political import of such conditions. Granted capitalist market relations conflict with socialist values, but they must also pass through the Chinese polity and its underlying class structure. In doing so, marketization tends to extend or amplify deeply entrenched class privileges and inequalities. In the making of the new historical bloc�the unholy alliance between capital and state power�market-generated disparities are compounded by bureaucratic prerogatives, which are not as commonly believed antagonistic to the market, but rather can coexist with the latter in a mutually reinforcing way. Hence, if the market leads to capitalist restoration, it is in part that it supplies fresh opportunities for certain continuous�and yet previously amorphous�processes of class formation to differentiate, accelerate, or even break out. That is, the governing elites are now able to employ their monopolized political power for direct economic gains and to convert the state-controlled public assets to their own private capital. Marketization does not necessarily bring about fundamental changes in the basic structure and organization of class power, but it unquestionably transforms and displaces its field of application, by multiplying the points and circuits where ruling-class power can be deployed.

Such processes of ruling-class development are indeed structurally conditioned, yet they may also exhibit a certain amorphous or uneven character. This may warrant some additional clarification. The alienation of the state does not necessarily mean that the bureaucracy and bureaucrats have already formed a fully developed ruling class or bourgeois class. We need to keep in mind that class structure and class formation are two different levels of analysis, and a useful distinction can be made between structural positions and developmental potentials, with the latter being structurally conditioned but not fully determined. I argued earlier that critique of China�s post-socialist transformations should make use of the Marxist discussions on statist socialism or state capitalism. But I don�t think that should amount to a simplistic adoption of ready-made concepts. The problem of capitalist restoration would have been much more easily resolvable if we could simply claim, as Chris Harman has famously argued in the Eastern European context, that the current changes represent neither a historical slide backwards nor a leap forward, but only a step �sideways��a self-restructuring of capitalism, or in the words of Mike Haynes, �an internal transformation within a mode of production, in this instance a shift in the form of capitalism from one of strong state capitalism to more mixed state and market forms.�8 But that, I think, is too easy a solution for the particular problem of Chinese socialism and its capitalist transformation.

Instead, I would argue that our present inquiry will benefit more if we can in some way re-map the main arguments in these debates�which have been hitherto based primarily on a synchronic mode of analysis�along a more historical line and moreover, rework them into a more flexible or extended temporal frame. The point is rather simple: the ruling stratum (even with its long-standing monopoly of politico-economic powers) may or may not already form a fully developed ruling class or bourgeois class at any given point in time (for example, China in 1964). However, that does not mean that they will not be capable of evolving into such class positions when objective conditions ripen or become more hospitable, as new institutional mechanisms or ideological resources (e.g., market relations, neoliberal doctrines) become available to encourage certain developmental tendencies that have previously been held in check, and thus have remained only in latency.

Some sense of ambiguity or indeterminacy may indeed benefit us. The problem of class formation in post-revolutionary China, with regard to the ruling class in particular, may be messier than what the neat formulations of state-capitalist theories can easily accommodate, at least for some of the stronger versions.9 Yet class is conventionally defined as a relationship between collectivities whose structurally defined positions and interests in the social division of labor are necessarily antagonistic. Given such a view, I understand I may encounter some serious theoretical difficulties: for example, can there be dominated and exploited classes without a well-developed ruling class? Would it be totally absurd in conceptual terms to talk about a state but not a fully constituted dominant class? Or, can there be the fulfillment of certain class or class-like functions�e.g., control of means of production, surplus extraction, domination, etc.�yet with no unambiguously constituted groups for their �support,� i.e. without fully-fledged formation of the class subjects that perform such functions?

Such difficulties of unevenness or �one-leggedness� will be less troubling if we are less constrained by our conventional historical scheme and employ a more expansive temporal framework. It should not come as a surprise to us that real history is quite often more complicated than our elegant conceptual scheme may wish. In the long waves of history, class subjects and positions form, re-form, and may even de-form, yet it is highly improbable that all the jigsaw pieces will fall into their proper places magically all at once.

Indeed, what we have witnessed in China during the past decade or so is precisely the blossoming�the phase of acceleration and differentiation�of the continuous and yet uneven process of ruling-class formation. A cadre-capitalist class has been in the construction with astonishingly swift speed, striving to expropriate public assets by any means possible. �Gangster capitalism,� indeed. But denouncing these illicit practices as mere corruption grossly trivializes their political and historical significance.10 It is really under the broader rubric of state (re)-formation and capital accumulation that such matters should be discussed. What is happening in China is nothing short of a societal great transformation�the brutal processes of primitive capital accumulation.11 But it is occurring with a twist; and this is what is most important for us to keep in mind. Specifically, privatization and capital accumulation have been spearheaded often by a specific class of agents�the bureaucratic power-holders and their networks of well-placed cronies. Such systematic conversion of public assets into private capital constitutes part of the more general process of privatization of political power. The bureaucratic monopoly of economic and political power is therefore a key to our understanding of the course of China�s restoration.

The issue here is not how this might account for the apparent primitiveness of capitalism with Chinese characteristics. Rather, what I am trying to get at is a sense of the pivotal role played by the bureaucratic class in China�s march toward capitalism. A bureaucratically-dominated socialist society cannot be revitalized simply by embellishing or mixing it with the market. A fundamental political transformation is imperative, lest its existing class structure and inequalities inevitably constrain and distort whatever liberalizing effects such measures may bring about, and channel them in a direction that can only further aggravate existing social and political contradictions.

The Sweezy�Bettelheim Debate Revisited

There may be another angle from which to approach socialism�s market path from a class standpoint, namely, marketization as ruling-class strategy. Here it may be instructive to begin with some of the ideas from the Sweezy�Bettelheim exchange from thirty years ago. Suffice it to say that their decade-long discussions revolved around two major issues: first, how to interpret the trend toward bourgeois restoration, and second, the class nature of socialism.12 These issues are hardly irrelevant to our concerns today. Again, I think our present endeavor may be greatly enhanced if we can tap more into the critical insights of past Marxian discussions (particularly those within the Monthly Review tradition itself), or else we might risk reinventing the wheel.

Paul Sweezy was a vocal critic of market socialism long before the idea became intellectually fashionable. The market, for Sweezy, constitutes �a standing danger to the system and unless strictly hedged in and controlled will lead to degeneration and retrogression.�13 Charles Bettelheim�s sympathetic criticism of Sweezy rests on his state-capitalism thesis, which was developed in his seminal study of early Soviet history.14 According to Bettelheim, market relations are only the secondary fact, or the �indices or results,� that express an anterior political relationship. The decisive factor here is the underlying structure of class power, wherein the �the proletariat…has lost its power to a new bourgeoisie, with the result that the revisionist leadership…is today the instrument of this new bourgeoisie.�15 This, for Bettelheim, is the class origin of market liberalization��If…the restoration of bourgeois domination is accompanied by an extension of the role of the market, this is evidently because this domination cannot be complete except through the full restoration of market relationships.�16

Sweezy�s important formulation of the �post-revolutionary society� reflects his substantive agreement with Bettelheim with respect to the class-stratified character of actually existing socialism (as it was then called), despite their sharp disagreements over its specific class nature.17 Sweezy argues in no less strong terms that a post-revolutionary society is class-divided, and this is worth quoting at some length:

The most important difference between capitalism and post-revolutionary society is that this overwhelming dominance of capital has been broken and replaced by the direct rule of a new ruling class which derives its power…from the unmediated control of the state and its multiform apparatuses of coercion. This means that the utilization of society�s surplus product�which…is produced by a propertyless working class�is no longer governed by the laws of value and capital accumulation but instead becomes the central focus of a political process and of course of political struggles, including (but not exclusively) class struggles.18
But in contrast to Bettelheim�s strong �state-capitalism� argument, Sweezy also asserts that such societies are neither socialist nor capitalist. For Sweezy the post-revolutionary society, in spite of its fundamental reality of class division and domination, is still more or less indeterminate, a transitional �two-way street�:

Post-revolutionary society contains not only contradictions inherited from millennia of class-riven society, but it produces and reproduces its own contradictions. This revolution provides no final solutions. It only opens the possibility of moving forward in the direction of eliminating classes. But the existence of this as possibility implies its opposite, the possibility of moving backward toward the re-entrenchment of an exploiting class based not on private property in the means of production but on control of an all-encompassing repressive state apparatus.19
The forward movement toward socialism would require a progressive state power and economic policy��the leadership and guidance of a party deeply rooted in the working class and dedicated to its emancipation.�20 In Sweezy�s view, China and the Soviet Union exemplify the two possible courses of response to socialism�s socioeconomic woes, in fact two divergent political and ideological lines. Whereas Maoist China was more successful in revitalizing socialism and carrying out a cultural revolution, the Soviet Union failed utterly in this task and had to rely on capitalist measures of market discipline and incentives.

While my own intuition tilts somewhat toward Bettelheim�s view, I think he was a bit premature or too easy in closing off the arguments. He posited too direct�and, as a result too deterministic�a link between class structure and class formation. In this regard, Sweezy�s concept of post-revolutionary society has great heuristic value. Sweezy begins with a postulate that appears to be deceptively minimal�that is, its unambiguous recognition of the fundamental fact of class rule. However, in allowing a greater scope for historical possibility, Sweezy�s approach is more elastic and potentially more productive in the end if we are willing to pursue its implications further.

Still, with the benefit of historical hindsight, it can be seen that Sweezy�s argument is not without its own difficulties. There seems to be some ambiguity or a lack of theorized connection between his class diagnosis and his view of historicity. Despite Sweezy�s bleak view of the class-dominated character of the post-revolutionary society, his take on its positive evolutionary potentials (in the Chinese case in particular) seems too sanguine�the �two-way street� formula implies that the central issue is more a matter of having the correct political and ideological leadership. Instead of exploring the ambiguity, Sweezy falls back on an oddly quantitative conception of historical determination, postulating that �the ratio of determinism to voluntarism in historical explanation necessarily varies greatly from one period to another,� and �it is precisely in the transitional societies, or at least in a particular phase…that the �determinist� elements in historical causation are weakest and the �voluntarist� elements most significant.�21 Such a notion, however, merely banishes the original ambiguity, only to repackage it. Circumventing the issue only after raising it, Sweezy seems to have underestimated the gravity of the problem of ruling-class power, thereby falling short of making use of the full critical implications of his own class analysis.

Market Reforms, A Passive Strategy of the Ruling Class?

I would contend that the key point here is not only about the evolutionary or self-reform possibilities among such transitional societies�Maoist or post-Mao China can serve as a clear example of how vibrant such self-critical energies can be�but also about their political limits. What are the possibilities and limits of re-revolutionizing post-revolutionary societies through a process of radical reforms? What is the likelihood that radical changes in pursuit of genuine democratic and egalitarian aims can proceed within the existing framework of class relations? These are difficult questions, but also very important ones.

I submit that Marxists should have the least difficulty acknowledging this key proposition�that under no ordinary circumstances should the ruling classes be expected to abdicate their ruling power and prerogatives, unless they are compelled by extraordinary forces. Applying this to a post-revolutionary society wherein the bureaucracy monopolizes political and economic power, the question arises: What is the likelihood that internally generated reforms might promote unity between direct producers and the social means of production through democratic self-management? In other words, what likelihood is there that such reforms can be used to implement the central premise of the socialist project?

Instead of democratically mobilizing and reorganizing society, a depoliticizing, reformist program is much more likely to emerge as the political necessity of the existing class structure and relation of political forces. Such a program becomes necessary precisely because the ruling elite will not voluntarily adopt a course of fundamental reforms that would undermine its own power. A passive strategy of gradual and partial adjustments that aims at preserving the ruling-class position is also likely to succeed, due to the fundamental political weakness of the subordinated classes. A social form, Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebooks, ��always� has marginal possibilities for further development and organizational improvement, and in particular can count on the relative weakness of the rival progressive force as a result of its specific character and way of life. It is necessary for the dominant social form to preserve this weakness.�22 The popular working classes, whose political mobilization was vital to the success of the Chinese Revolution, were indeed severely weakened and disorganized as an outcome of decades of repression and control.23 Fragmented, dependent, and demoralized, the Chinese working people were left with few alternative ideological and organizational resources for active resistance and self-development, thereby unable to press for more deep-seated changes with respect to the reorganization of state power. �In the absence of effective counter-forces,� noted Sweezy, �conditions favoring the development of a class system…will bear their natural fruit. And by effective counter-forces we do not mean ideological doctrines or statements of good intentions but organized political struggle.�24

Relying largely on market discipline, profit incentive, and private consumption, a market-based reform program has a discernible political logic: first, it poses much less of a threat to the ruling class; second, it preempts popular upheavals that threaten from below. This is the line of least resistance, so to speak.25 Thus in the absence of vigorous popular pressure from below, a typical ruling-class strategy for addressing society�s woes is first of all firmly to consolidate its monopoly on power (e.g., national integration, political stability, governing capacity).26 Market mechanisms are introduced to bring about some controlled (and controllable) openings in social life, to shield the ruling elite from the popular dissatisfaction by depoliticizing socioeconomic decision-making through commodification of large areas of social life, and to buy time in relation to both global capitalist competition and growing domestic discontent.

Such a path of �revolution from above� offers favorable prospects insofar as the ruling-class position is concerned. As noted earlier, market liberalization gives rise to massive opportunities for the ruling elite to convert the public power they are entrusted with into private economic gains. The creation of such a milieu, I shall add, tends to be the unintended consequence of initial reforms, when this particular abuse of power arises more from individual opportunism. However, the expansion of the money-power nexus and entrenchment of the bureaucratic-capitalist class have emboldened the ruling elite, enabling them to employ the expedient instrument of state policy to facilitate their ends more efficiently and systematically�i.e., to alter existing institutional arrangements or simply create new regulatory apparatuses and the like ex nihilo for the sake of enhancing their particularistic interests and positions. As Wang Hui�the leading critic of the emerging Chinese intellectual left�has observed, what is referred to as �neoliberalism� in the Chinese context in fact enjoys a special relationship �with the proliferation of interest groups within the state itself�:

The ideology of…�neoliberalism� had already begun to germinate [in the late 1980s], with its core content being the intensification of reforms calling for greater devolution of political and economic power…the furtherance of a comprehensive course of spontaneous privatization under the guiding premise of a lack of democratic guarantees, and the legitimization through legislative means of the polarization of classes and interests created by these individual efforts. Because of this, the principal embodiment of neoliberalism lay in the benefits accruing to social groups [formed] through the process of the creation of interest groups within the state structure.27
Therefore it has become clear, as Hart-Landsberg and Burkett argued perceptively in China and Socialism, that market imperatives �generated new tensions…that were resolved only through a further expansion of market power.�28 But this is only part of the story. Market reforms are in a fundamental way mediated by political-structural factors, and marketization derives its significance from historically existing class relations. Market expansion is unquestionably driven by the structural logic of capitalist relations of production, yet it also has its distinct political momentum. Market mechanisms, initially introduced by the ruling stratum for its defensive self-preservation, have since been seized upon by the ruling elite as an instrument that not only changes the basic contours of society, but also actively transforms and expands itself into a more self-conscious, full-blown ruling class, in the processes of which money and the power to rule are inseparably amalgamated, and society�s class antagonisms are ever more sharply felt. This is no small leap forward, to say the very least.

Maoism, An Incomplete Project

Up until now I have deliberately avoided the issue of Maoism. The historical complexity of Chinese socialism is more than ever relevant to our present concerns. However, I think that any serious inquiry into the general problem of the possibilities and limits of socialist reforms must examine the Chinese experience, especially the role of Maoism as it culminated in the political practices of the Cultural Revolution.

There is little doubt that late Maoism and the Cultural Revolution are an aberration in the history of world socialism. But let me begin by saying that it would be politically shortsighted if we limited our view of reforms only to the post-Mao era. What is unique about the historical experience of Chinese socialism is precisely its incessant dynamism and energy for self-reformation. Instead of moving down the market path, which would have been much easier insofar as preserving ruling-class positions was concerned, Maoist China took an uncharted course of reform that was far more challenging and could rely on no blueprints whatsoever.

Late Maoism developed a highly dynamic view of the process of post-revolutionary class formation and bourgeois restoration, integrating the reciprocal interactions among ideological, political, and economic levels in a single analytical framework. It is Maoism�s distinctive emphasis that class struggle persists even after the exploiting classes have been overthrown. Thus the degeneration of socialism, in Mao�s view, does not necessarily occur through the violent overthrow of the socialist state, but more probably through peaceful evolution from both inside the ruling party and its surrounding environment, under the corrosive influence of the still existing overthrown classes. The restorative process begins with the acceptance of bourgeois ideas by a degenerate clique of leaders. The usurped party leadership then sets about the transformation of the class character of state power, dismantling the socialist economy and creating a new dominant, exploiting class. This, in turn, demands the development of a more thoroughly bourgeois political system so as to consolidate the ruling-class position.

As an active attempt to revitalize socialism, the Cultural Revolution was deeply rooted in the collective history and popular traditions of the revolution. But despite its high aspirations, I would like to argue that late Maoism was seriously flawed, and in the end ineffectual. Very briefly, I would argue that Maoism lacked a clear class focus as defined in structural terms. The Maoist politics of class was simultaneously too broad and too narrow, a contradiction merely in appearance. Its political targets were often personalized and therefore too diffuse. In the most fiercely iconoclastic days of the Cultural Revolution, it struggled against everything and anything�from tradition, inner consciousness, remnants of former propertied classes, capitalist roaders, and bureaucratic privilege to arts and literature, sexual behavior, dress styles, shoe heels, and so on. The notion of �class� was spectacularly vulgarized and stretched to the point of near-lunacy, where it became a confused hodgepodge that was totally pointless and toothless.29

Yet the political myopia of late Maoism is equally striking. This is most visible in its inherent inability to be self-critical�that is, to face up to its own historical situatedness, as well as to acknowledge the prevalent class relations and the corresponding institutional structures in which it was entrapped. This rather paradoxical appearance of Maoism may be understood, at least in part, as the ideological effect of the aforementioned unevenness of post-revolutionary class structure, particularly with respect to the greater or lesser amorphousness of the ruling class. Yet on a more fundamental level this myopia about the most basic structure of class rule is also suggestive of Maoism�s essential political limits.

In spite of its extreme vigilance against regressive tendencies, late Maoism thus failed successfully to address the fundamental structure of class domination in the post-revolutionary state. By focusing on bureaucratism, revisionist line, and distributional privileges, the Cultural Revolution attacked the bureaucrats, their ideological affiliations, and the remnant classes much more than the system of bureaucratic domination. Maoist politics was indeed successful in temporarily interrupting the closure and consolidation of the incipient ruling class�a major achievement by itself�by attempting to revolutionize culture, to promote a proletarian consciousness, to combat bourgeois selfishness, and to exhort the cadre-bureaucrats (and everyone else) to serve the people rather than serving themselves. Hence it was no accident that the Cultural Revolution was cultural, and that such �revolution through culture� ipso facto represents Maoism�s highest development, and its political limit as well.

The more radical political implications of Maoism, I should briefly note, were pressed further by a number of young critics, who audaciously questioned the official Cultural Revolution�s inherently conservative, reformist proclivity for attacking individual power-holders and remnant ideologies instead of searching for the class-structural roots of China�s social and political problems. Their radically anti-bureaucratic and democratic impulses were accompanied by a general concern with the nature and organization of state power in the post-revolutionary era and a deep anxiety that a new bureaucratic class could rise to dominate society.30 Invoking the historical example of the Paris Commune, they claimed that China�s �new bureaucratic bourgeoisie� and their monopoly of the state machine would have to be destroyed in order to establish a genuine egalitarian and socialist society, in which people could truly participate and self-govern.

During the later months of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, in the midst of mass movements from below, a different political logic and a different ideological trend�however primitive�began to emerge and became operative, with the potential of breaking out of the dogmatic constraints of official Maoism. Not surprisingly, the political views of these young activists, whose usefulness for Maoist mass mobilization was very short-lived, were nonetheless denounced as too radical, as ultrademocratic, bourgeois-anarchic, anti-Party, or simply counterrevolutionary. Their theoretical and political activities were without exception suppressed ruthlessly, very often under direct instructions from the �established left� of the Maoist Cultural Revolution leadership, and all of them vanished in the demobilization of mass movements and purges of the so-called ultra-left that began as early as 1967.31

Cannibalizing its own rebellious children, Maoism quickly exhausted its political energy and was in the end unable to transcend its essential historical limits by fundamentally transforming state power. Thus despite its appearance of extreme vibrancy and radicalism, the Cultural Revolution was a rather predictable, if dramatic, mass mobilization that was ostensibly participatory but nevertheless hierarchically divided, wherein the intermediary governing structures were weakened, and the bureaucratic staff were ritualistically humiliated. Here lies the fundamental contradiction in which Mao was caught during the Cultural Revolution. As critic Richard Kraus aptly characterized it: he was the �chief cadre� of the bureaucratic regime which he personally embodied, and simultaneously its �leading rebel.�32 As a result, the Cultural Revolution failed as a bold experiment in post-revolutionary and socialist reforms. It left virtually untouched the basic structural and functional distinction between rulers and ruled. If the social reforms that resulted from the Cultural Revolution mitigated some of the more glaring manifestations of bureaucratic elitism, they did not fundamentally alter the relationships between the political elite and subordinated popular classes.

Bourgeois Restoration: The Cunning of History?

The Cultural Revolution was conceived as an active attempt to deter regressive tendencies in a post-revolutionary society. With some trepidation, I would posit that �capitalist restoration� was mainly a myth, serving an important ideological function. The Maoist claim that without further revolutionary agitation China would inevitably gravitate back toward capitalism was a misleading one at best. Revolution in permanence is indeed the essence of socialism. However, China�s post-socialist history has shown that the perils of subversion should have been thought of as part of a broader, more complex historical problematic�backward or forward, or even sideways. Yet the origin of the greatest peril was stubbornly beclouded by all the thunder and fury on the �bourgeois restoration.�

Invoking the historical experience of the Chinese Revolution, William Hinton conveyed the Maoist thesis of �bourgeois restoration� in the vivid metaphor of revolutionary prairie fire:

A single spark can start a prairie fire. And so it…ignited a prairie fire that carried all before it, bringing more change to China in a few decades than two millennia had previously brought forth. But now the fire has burned itself out, and, as the flames die down, it becomes apparent that change has not been deep. Fire burned the foliage off, but the roots of the old civilization survived and are now sending up vigorous sprouts that push aside and overwhelm, in one sphere after another, all revolutionary innovations.33
Hinton�s colorful metaphor, however, is premised on a problematic conception of historical determination, namely, the determination of the present by the residual forces of the past. Revolutions certainly do not eliminate the past, they write on top of it. Yet the revolution also produces its own contradictions. Socialism is not just built on top of the surviving deposits of capitalism, feudalism, or whatever. The remnants of the past enter into the new society and are necessarily conditioned by its newly created antagonisms and contradictions. The dead weight of past history cannot be easily restored backwards. Or it will perhaps take much longer�certainly longer than the two or so decades taken by the very speedy �restoration� in China. The extraordinary development of capitalism in China today is fueled by a more powerful logic of social recomposition�it has been aided by far more efficient and expeditious means, driven by class forces that operate more from above than from below, more within than without. The ideological significance of bourgeois restoration�and the Maoist theory of class struggle that formed its nucleus�lay in their function of diversion and mystification. By concentrating on remnants from past traditions, spontaneous petty tendencies from below, and insidious capitalist roaders and their line from within, the Maoist discourse of capitalist restoration distorted and obscured the central contradiction of post-revolutionary Chinese society.

What are the important historical lessons to be learned from China�s transition toward capitalism? Setting aside the theoretical question whether socialism without market mechanisms is viable or desirable, at least one lesson seems particularly compelling: socialism without meaningful democracy is unfeasible. The problem of socialism and democracy is not at all merely a philosophical task of defining utopia, but pertains more fundamentally to the ineluctable logic of history and politics. A genuine democracy is not just what defines the ethical telos of socialism, it also serves as its effective safeguard.

Revolutions to accomplish socialist aims, as Rosa Luxemburg admonished shortly after the success of the Russian Revolution, cannot rely on some ready-made formula that �lies completely in the pocket of the revolutionary party.� Rather, socialism can only prosper through a mass political process in which genuine democracy holds the key. In her simple words:

The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New Territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening up new ways. Only unobstructed, effervescing life falls into a thousand new forms and improvisations, brings to light creative force, itself corrects all mistaken attempts. The public life of countries with limited freedom is so poverty-stricken, so miserable, so rigid, so unfruitful, precisely because, through the exclusion of democracy, it cuts off the living sources of all spiritual riches and progress.34
Far from the ultimate solution, the conquest of state power can poison or even destroy a socialist movement, unless alternative forms of democratic organization can be developed to replace the alienated form of state power. The central political problem is therefore how to ensure that revolutions do not transmute into their opposite and become the basis for a new kind of oppression and exploitation. In the ultimate sense, socialism and democracy must be envisioned as one and the same project. Genuine revolutions should not, and must not, become merely half-way houses.

In China and elsewhere in the world, post-socialist transformations offer a valuable opportunity for reflecting on these important issues. The Chinese Revolution has produced historic achievements to its credit as well as failures. My main purpose to stress the lack of democracy is not just to lament the revolution�s past disappointments, but rather to seek a point of view from which the long-term historical effects of such limitations can be comprehended. It is the aim of this essay to demonstrate that a coherent dual criticism�a critique of both capital and state, of economic accumulation and bureaucratic power, and a fuller understanding of their structural and historical connections�is not only imperative but also possible. Our critique of neoliberal-capitalist development in post-socialist contexts calls for a much more developed criticism of actually existing socialism�a relentless self-critique so to speak�for the sole purpose of advancing egalitarian and democratic objectives.

Socialism emerged as a political and ethical ideal that offered a potent alternative to capitalism. Yet actually existing socialism produced very powerful states which, while non-capitalist or even decisively anti-capitalist, concentrated and monopolized social and political resources, all in the name of socialism. Nationalized means of production and distribution without the concurrent socialization of political power only creates a legal fiction. For Marx, the abolition of private property was not the end in itself, but only a means toward the ultimate abolition of relations of alienated labor.

However, the continued predominance of alienated labor and its political form was to have fateful consequences. With the benefits of hindsight, it can be demonstrated that actually existing socialism ironically prepared some of the key ingredients responsible for its own eventual mutation into capitalism. That is to say, it achieved certain crucial yet incomplete functions of original or primitive accumulation needed for the later �restoration� of capitalism: first by reproducing the dominated and appropriated status of the working population, and second, by vesting a powerful state that was not democratically accountable with control of the social means of production. The final flowering of this evolutionary process has to await some specific conjuncture of auspicious global and domestic social conditions. With the systematic enclosure of public assets and their conversion en masse into private capital by those who control political power, the immense wealth appropriated and accumulated during the previous decades is being drawn into the circuit of capitalist production and distribution. The path of marketization begins as the passive strategy of the ruling class for self-preservation and political appeasement, yet eventually it turns into their end-game or exit strategy�their massive self-transformation from power-holders to capital owners.

History, Lenin once wrote, knows all sorts of metamorphoses. In light of the transformations now under way, was �actually existing socialism� ever a stop on the shining road to genuine socialism? Would it be entirely preposterous to suggest that socialism as such might indeed have been something else�i.e., a detour or a transitional phase in capitalism�s long history through all its variety and metamorphoses? Should we not ask whether instead of being the heroic gravedigger, actually existing socialism might not have served as the midwife of capitalism, or even of an especially unruly kind of capitalism? That would be a huge historical irony, and a colossal tragedy. But history is very cunning indeed in suggesting such questions. And its cunning lies in the fact that nothing is ever finally determinant or determined�precisely because of the possibility of human action.

Notes

Martin Hart-Landsberg & Paul Burkett, China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005), 13.
Hart-Landsberg & Burkett, China, 40.
Ernest Mandel, �The Myth of Market Socialism,� New Left Review, no. 169 (1988), 108, italics added; also see Alec Nove, �Markets and Socialism,� New Left Review, no. 161 (1987), 98�104.
Harry Magdoff & John Bellamy Foster, �Foreword,� China, 9.
William Hinton�s writings are probably the most outspoken expression of such a view, for example, see The Great Reversal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990).
Richard Kraus, Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 190.
In this sense, I would argue that a �commune member� in the 1960s was probably not much less �proletarian� than a rural migrant laborer today, if only in a different form. In this respect, I disagree with William Hinton�s argument that rural China underwent the �most massive class transfer in world history� during the post-Mao years, wherein millions were transformed from �community shareholder� to capitalist �wage-laborer� (Hinton, The Great Reversal, 19�20). It would be more accurate to argue that a �massive class transfer� occurred long before the decollectivization of the early 1980s, in the mid-1950s actually�when hundreds of millions petty producers were transformed nearly overnight into quasi-wage-laborers under a statist regime.
Mike Haynes, �Class and Crisis: The Transition in Eastern Europe,� International Socialism 54 (Spring 1992), 47, italics added; Chris Harman, �The Storm Breaks,� International Socialism 46 (1990), 3�94.
For classic examples, see Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia (London: Pluto Press, 1974); Charles Bettelheim, Class Struggles in the USSR: The First Period, 1917�1923 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
See Nancy Holmstrom & Richard Smith, �The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China,� Monthly Review 52, no. 2 (February 2000), 1�15.
Two contemporary Chinese critics, He Qinglian and Qin Hui, have spearheaded criticisms of the plundering of public assets by the ruling elite. He, a journalist and economist, is the author of Pitfalls of Modernization: Economic and Social Problems in Contemporary China (Beijing, 1998), a path-breaking critique of bureaucratic corruption. The book, which became enormously popular in China, was quickly banned. Qin, a prominent historian in Beijing, has penned many highly influential essays harshly critical of �cadre privatization.� See He�s �A Listing Social Structure,� and Qin�s �Dividing the Big Family Assets,� both appeared first in New Left Review and were later collected in Wang Chaohua, ed. One China, Many Paths (London: Verso, 2003), 128�159, 163�188.
Paul Sweezy & Charles Bettelheim, On the Transition to Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).
Sweezy & Bettelheim, Transition, 26�7.
See Charles Bettelheim, Class Struggles in the USSR: The First Period, 1917�1923.
Sweezy & Bettelheim, On the Transition to Socialism, 16, 29, emphasis original.
Sweezy & Bettelheim, Transition, 20, emphasis original.
Paul Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary Society (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980).
Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary, 147, italics added. Largely siding with Bettelheim, Sweezy also polemicized in a series of essays against Ernest Mandel and Isaac Deutscher for their underestimation of the formation of a bureaucratic ruling class and overestimation of working-class power in the Soviet Union. For Mandel�s response, see his �Why the Soviet Bureaucracy Is Not A Ruling Class,� Monthly Review 31, no. 3 (March 1979), 63�68.
Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary, 95, emphasis original.
Sweezy & Bettelheim, On the Transition to Socialism, 28; Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary Society, 150.
Sweezy & Bettelheim, On the Transition to Socialism, 89, 31�32.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), Quentin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds. and trans., 222.
For an excellent study that chronicles the post-revolutionary remaking and �unmaking� of the urban working class, see Andrew Walder, �The Remaking of the Chinese Working Class, 1949�1981,� Modern China 10, no. 1 (January 1984), 3�48; also see Walder�s Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) for a well-documented study of the socioeconomic dependence of the Chinese working class.
Sweezy, On the Transition to Socialism, 88, italics added.
This political logic is certainly not lost on the advocates of market liberalization. In the not-so-subtle words of Wu Jinglian (nicknamed �Mr. Market Wu�), a senior advisor to the State Council and one of the chief strategists of China�s market reforms, �the political will of the leadership for economic reform is based on the following central proposition: economic reform is good for economic development, which in turn is good for maintaining the Party�s power.� See Qian Yingyi and Wu Jinglian, �China�s Transition to a Market Economy: How Far across the River?� Working Paper, Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform, Stanford University, 2000, 8.
�Governing capacity� (zhizheng nengli) is China�s new political buzz phrase. First written into the CCP Constitution in 2002, the issue of �strengthening the Party�s �governing capacity�� was elevated to �the most important task among all tasks� in the most recent Party Central Plenum in September 2004.
Wang Hui, China�s New Order (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), Theodore Huters, ed. and trans., 58�59, italics added. The rise of a Chinese intellectual left (xin zuopai, or the �new left�) in the late 1990s is a very important development, which would warrant a separate study. For two collections that provide useful information on the Chinese �new left,� see Wang Chaohua, One China, Many Paths; Zhang Xudong, Whither China (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002).
Hart-Landsberg & Burkett, China, 40.
This �hyper-politicization� of social life, which generated much wanton violence and targeted mostly people in relatively subordinate positions, also contributed to the pervasive demoralization with the socialist project in general, and to at least the early popular receptiveness to the Dengist �reforms.�
Understandably, such a �heterodox� strand to radicalize Maoism has received little attention in the political milieu of post-Mao China, and in the Western sinological academy as well. The best-known example�the Sheng-wu-lian pamphlet Whither China? was collected in Klaus Mehnert, Peking and the New Left (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, China Research Monograph No. 4, 1969). For the few surviving cases, see Gregor Benton & Alan Hunter, eds. Wild Lily, Prairie Fire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 104�156; Jonathan Unger, �Whither China�Yang Xiguang, Red Capitalists, and the Social Turmoil of the Cultural Revolution,� Modern China 17, no. 1 (January 1991), 3�37; Anita Chan, Stanley Rosen, & Jonathan Unger, eds. On Socialist Democracy and the Chinese Legal System (Armond, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1985). Written in the mid-1970s, Chen Erjin�s extraordinary manuscript �On the Proletarian Democratic Revolution� is probably the most articulate and best developed statement within this critical tradition. The English translation appeared as China: Crossroads Socialism, An Unofficial Manifesto for Proletarian Democracy (London: Verso, 1984).
For a perceptive study of such radical, anti-bureaucratic currents during the Cultural Revolution, see Wang Shaoguang, ��New Trends of Thought� during the Cultural Revolution,� Journal of Contemporary China 8, no. 21 (1999), 197�217.
Kraus, Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism, 181.
William Hinton, �What Went Wrong?,� Monthly Review 43 (May 1991), 16, italics added. The metaphor itself was derived from Mao�s early writings during the 1930s.
Peter Hudis & Kevin A. Anderson, eds. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 305�6.

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WE ATE LUNCH SOMETIMES in a broad meadow, speckled with horses and the ruins of a Buddhist monastery. Dan Vermillion was working with the Tributary Fund, a Montana-based nonprofit devoted to protecting native species by collaborating with indigenous cultures. A local monk, perhaps mindful of the fund’s contribution to rebuilding the Dayan Derkh monastery, had ruled that Buddhist sutras condemning the unnecessary harming of animals might be relaxed for catch-and-release fishing if the sport could help protect the species.

Dan was hoping that a Buddhist endorsement would do more than justify a sport fishery. Mongolia’s rivers are salted with flakes of alluvial gold, and one mine using cyanide extraction was already operating within earshot of the Uur. There was also proposed placer mining, which would involve ripping up the entire streambed, wiping out the taimen and much else. A “faith-based conservation” movement, as Dan called it, was crucial to stopping the mines and, more important, stopping taimen poaching by Chinese and Russian meat fishermen. Foreigners, too, were having outbreaks of faith. One grateful angler had sent a check for $25,000 to the Tributary Fund; after my visit, the same client contributed another $150,000.

Upstream one afternoon, I hauled in two 20-inch baby taimen in quick succession, and looked up to see Jim waving at me from the far bank. Dan picked me up in the boat and we went over to find Jim paused over a set of bear tracks in the sand.

“Siberian brown bear,” Dan said as we slowly followed the paw prints up from the water’s edge, across a beach, and down into a tributary stream. “He better watch out,” Dan said. The tracks were heading out of the Uur Valley, toward human settlements. The bear would get shot there and sold in parts for black-market medicine and trophies.

With the Tributary Fund, Dan had arranged for field scientists from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Nevada�Reno to monitor the taimen. Protecting this paradise required some proof of the value of these fish, of the size of their population, of their migration patterns and appeal to sportfishermen. The scientists had their own ger camp a half-mile from ours and were busy putting radio transmitters into the bellies of captured fish�anesthetizing the taimen, slicing them open, and suturing them back tight. They named each fish before releasing it, so that the river was now dotted with radio-beeping taimen named Snoop Dogg, Pumpkin, and�the very largest, a five-footer weighing in at around 100 pounds�Anna Nicole. We fishermen had a small role to play; in addition to tagging our catches, Dan had volunteered us as fish herders.

That’s how I found myself drinking whisky in my underwear during the season’s first light snowfall. I had roared upriver in an aluminum skiff with Zeb Hogan, a curly-haired Wisconsin fish biologist, and Brant Allen, an experienced taimen researcher from UC Davis. Brant had asked us to help make a “visual survey,” which turned out to mean swimming down the Uur, three abreast, trying to drive the fish toward Zeb’s Nikonos camera. At a long, gentle curve in the river, we unloaded the boats and started warming ourselves pre-dunk with Johnnie Walker Black and a driftwood fire.

The view encompassed every combination of wild beauty, with steep, snow-dusted mountains in one place and bright sun falling on yellow larch in another. Some scholars believe that our love of spectacular landscapes may be less the product of sentiment than of natural selection. As early as 1.5 million years ago, they argue, our ancestors were genetically imprinted to favor views like this: a valley with hunting grounds; grass to attract animals; a river with clean water; trees for ambush and escape. According to this “woodland-mosaic hypothesis,” we are drawn to the patchwork of nature. Just as trout stalk the seam between two currents, we reach for the borders between states of being.

Hopping from foot to foot, we wrestled into drysuits, masks, and snorkels, adding neoprene hoods, booties, and gloves against the cold. We flailed into the Uur and were immediately swept downstream, bobbing like corks and just as helpless. Before I could even gesture at it, the first taimen was gone. But there was another, at once, a silvery juvenile in the lee of a rock. It dropped back warily, looking a bit surprised by my arrival. I lifted a hand to start herding and immediately flipped upside down. By the time I righted myself, I’d spotted another taimen and a pair of lenok.

All week I had angler’s blindness: Because I caught few fish, I believed there were few fish. But here it became obvious there was a taimen or a lenok for every 20 feet of good river. Brant and Zeb had flushed as many as I had. We got out, laughing for no reason. A few seconds on the bank, in the wind, was enough to send me jogging upstream toward the fire.

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Nov 17, 2005

China and Japan - the two giants of East Asia - are competing for energy resources around the globe. Their rivalry in the East China Sea, Russia, Central Asia and Southeast Asia has been well documented. Yet little has been written in Washington about the impact of Sino-Japanese rivalry in Africa.

With one-third of its top 15 oil suppliers in Africa, the United States ignores the challenges of this geopolitical dynamic at its peril. As the world’s largest consumer of energy and protector of the sea lanes, the United States plays a critical role in ensuring the free flow of this important commodity.

Currently the United States’ top two foreign policy objectives are combating global terrorism and promoting democracy around the world. In Africa and Asia, the number of democracies has

increased dramatically over the last 25 years. While some policy experts, such as Francis Fukuyama, argue that strong Chinese economic growth has underpinned democratic transformation in Asia, other experts have identified potential problems emerging from Beijing’s search for energy resources in Africa.

A former US ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa, Princeton Lyman, recently asked, “Does China want to be seen in Africa as the defender of rogue states, the more aggressive seeker of Africa’s natural resources, without regard to transparency, development and stability there?”

Last year, China displaced Japan as the second-largest importer of African oil after the US, according to The Economist newspaper. Despite falling total petroleum imports, Japan’s African supplies grew by nearly 20% in 2004. Over the same period, Chinese imports grew by more than 35%.

Tokyo’s approach to its relationships in Africa includes an emphasis on democratic reform and human rights. In 2002, Japan’s task force on foreign relations for the prime minister argued, “Bringing about democracy and good governance in Africa is essential for world stability and prosperity.” Japan has also supported elections in Nigeria and in the Democratic Republic of Congo and funds African rule of law and human rights initiatives. For instance, last month through the United Nations’ Trust Fund for Human Security, Japan donated more than $2 million to provide training on international humanitarian and human rights law to African Union Mission troops in Sudan.

Japan and African nations have not always agreed at the UN, however. A bone of contention has been UN Security Council reform. Japan is part of the G-4 that includes including Germany, Brazil and India. Differing G-4 and African proposals have been a source of disagreement for Japanese and African interlocutors. For its part, China supports Africa’s position on Security Council reform and opposes Japan’s membership.

In order to secure supplies, Beijing seeks to gain control of African oil at its source. As a result, China’s strategy is heavily dependent on bilateral ties to oil-producing states. Beijing’s cultivation of relationships with Africa elites facilitates its state-owned oil companies exploring, securing, extracting, processing and shipping African crude.

Africa nations including Sudan, Chad, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Gabon and Angola supply China with about 25% of its oil. Although individually these countries make up a modest share of Chinese imports, Beijing’s purchases are a significant share of African oil producers’ exports. Beijing imports a quarter of Angola’s oil, 60% of Sudan’s and an increasing percent from Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Gabon. These are poor countries and petroleum exports account for a sizable part of gross domestic product in each. As such, the effect of China’s approach on these countries domestic political and social development is significant.

In Sudan, Beijing’s financial and military support for the Khartoum government during its civil war and genocide in Darfur coupled with Chinese attempts to water down UN resolutions targeting Sudan have been roundly criticized in Western capitals.

In Angola, Chinese loans and aid packages have undermined attempts to improve government transparency and corporate governance in the oil sector. The majority of Angola’s roughly 13 million people live in poverty, and elites have siphoned off much of the nation’s oil wealth. As part of a larger package in March 2004, China provided Luanda with more than $2 billion in loans in accordance with its principle of non-interference in countries internal affairs. Just last week Jose Pedro de Morais, Angola’s finance minister, said he expected future Chinese loans would exceed $2 billion, adding “when we ask our Chinese counterparts if they are willing to provide more loans, they say yes.” [1]

Beijing’s loans are oil-backed and many are targeted at infrastructure projects that facilitate development of the petroleum industry. Chinese capital has encouraged Angola to refuse International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans that would require the country to open its books to independent scrutiny and reveal and reform the poor African nation’s corrupt leadership. Given growing US dependence on African oil imports and the importance Washington places on democracy promotion, policymakers must consider the effects of China’s strategy on African suppliers.

China’s methods in Africa are not lost on the Japanese media. In February, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that China is accelerating its search for oil in Africa, and in an August editorial, the Sankei Shimbun warned that China chooses to do business with supporters of terrorism and anti-democratic African states.

But for Washington, the challenge of energy security goes beyond Africa. If disputes over energy resources disrupt trade and investment, Asian economic growth would be undermined and the ripple effect would be felt all over the world. Tensions, such as those in the East China Sea, could escalate into real conflict, putting the United States in an awkward position between its closest strategic ally and the region’s rising economic power. Washington would be well served to seek collaboration with Beijing and Tokyo in an effort to ensure energy supplies for importers while encouraging exporters’ accountability and good governance.

This collaboration would seek to achieve a standardization of procedures designed to avoid disruption in the supply of oil, further develop alternative energy and energy-saving measures, minimize the cost of extraction and risk of conflict, and maximize the benefits by working to improve transparency and good governance in oil-producing states. As the world’s top three oil importers, the US, China and Japan have an opportunity to avoid conflict and underscore the importance of accountability in energy suppliers in Africa and throughout the developing world.

In its annual report to Congress, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission recommended the formation of a US-China energy working group to mirror the successful US-Japan energy working group. This would be a positive first step for the president to explore during this week’s meetings with the Chinese and Japanese leaders.

Note
[1] Reuters, Angola sees new Chinese loans above $2 bln

Joshua Eisenman is the co-editor of China and the Developing World: Beijing’s Strategy for the 21st Century and author of the book’s chapter on China’s strategy towards Africa (M E Sharpe 2006). Devin Stewart is Fellow, Office of the Japan Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.

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Copyright The Financial Times

AFRICA: With oil companies jostling for concessions, there are concerns that a country regarded as one of the most corrupt is under little pressure to improve governance, writes John Reed

Sonair, the airline of Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company, operates direct flights between Houston and Luanda. Foreign oilmen are whisked from the airport to pink villas in fenced compounds or via helicopter directly to the rigs floating in the country’s prolific deep-water fields. Angola, already sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, is also one of the world’s fastest-growing, pumping 1.3m barrels a day. Riggers compareit in significance to the North Sea atits peak.

While “offshore Angola” is prized for its isolation from the onshore conflict afflicting Nigeria or the Middle East, conditions in much of the country are dire. A large portion of Luanda’s population inhabit hovels pieced together from cement and tin, red earthen bricks or cast-off materials such as car panels. Apartment blocks in the jammed city centre have seen few renovations since independence in 1975. One high-rise denuded of its facade is nicknamed “Chechnya”.

“Angola is very rich - we have oil, we have diamonds,” says Manuel Andre Muhongo, who lives with his family of five in a tent in Luanda’s poor Kilamba Kiaxi quarter. Echoing a view often heard in the city, he adds: “But everything is for the people who govern.”

Angola on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of its independence. The milestone evokes mixed feelings among Angolans, whose country began slipping into a brutal and long war just as they broke free of Portuguese colonial rule. At various times, the warring sides were supported by the US and the Soviet Union and their proxies, South Africa and Cuba. By the time the conflict ended in 2002 with the assassination of Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Unita rebel movement, at least half a million people had died, 4m were displaced and much of Angola’s infrastructure was destroyed.

The country is now the site of a global struggle of a different kind. The oil majors are jostling for lucrative concessions as they seek new sources of oil outside the Middle East. Sonangol is due to launch a fresh round of bidding for deep-water blocks next month.

The US looms large in Angola, with an imposing new embassy in Luanda’s exclusive Miramar district and multibillion-dollar investments by Chevron and ExxonMobil. The US imports more than half Angola’s oil production, which last year accounted for 7 per cent of its non-Opec oil and 4 per cent of total imports. China’s Sinopec is also prospecting for oil offshore and Beijing is underwriting and supervising the reconstruction of two railway lines ruined during the war (see below).

As Angola’s oil wealth burgeons, human-rights campaigners are focusing increased attention on the country. Extrapolating from International Monetary Fund data, Global Witness, aLondon-based non-governmental group whose sponsors include George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, estimate that between 1997 and 2001 Dollars 8.45bn (Euros 7.21bn) of public money, an average of 23 per cent of Angola’s gross domestic product, was unaccounted for. Transparency International recently listed the country as one the world’s ten most corrupt, alongside Tajikistan and Cote d’Ivoire, on its Corruption Perceptions Index.

Cabinda, the northern oil-producing enclave, has been plagued by alleged human-rights abuses against civilians believed to support a long-running independence movement. The US State Department, in its report on Angola last year, pointed to “serious problems” in the country’s human-rights record, including unlawful killings, torture and arbitrary arrest and detention.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, whose party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), held Luanda and controlled the oil industry during the war, has not stood for election since 1992. A list of Angola’s richest men compiled by Semanario Angolense, an independent newspaper, in 2003 named him as the country’s richest man. His daughter Isabel also has extensive business interests, including in diamonds.

Support from the US and other oil-consuming countries helped the MPLA make a smooth transition, in the words of Tony Hodges, a British expert on Angola, “from Afro-Stalinism to petro-diamond capitalism”. With the war now more than three years over, some Angolans want their leaders to move on to a footing of good democratic governance. “Peace is more than the absence of war,” says Carlos Leitao of Padepa, an opposition party that hopes to challenge the MPLA if it makes good on a promise to hold parliamentary elections in 2006. “We are in a situation of oppression.”

Accusations of corruption have dogged other oil producers around the Gulf of Guinea, including Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo Brazzaville. Yet Angola is seen, almost uniquely among African countries, as a potentially rich and viable economy with prospects beyond oil. With a population of 13m inhabiting a territory bigger than South Africa’s, the country has vast tracts of fertile farmland in addition to its large oil and diamond deposits. Its wartime isolation means that it has southern Africa’s lowest prevalence rate for HIV/Aids, a drag on development across the continent.

“The reason there’s so much focus on Angola is that there’s so much money they don’t need to have this poverty,” says Robert Bulten, Angolan country director for Care, the charity. A senior western diplomat says: “This is a country that could really make it, and there are not a lot of countries in Africa that could say that.”

Diplomats and aid agencies point to some signs that Angola’s situation is stabilising. Since 2002, most of the country’s refugees have returned. Unita has transformed itself into a political party represented alongside the MPLA in a government of national unity. The government has undertaken some reconstruction of war-damaged infrastructure. State spending on education, health and other public services - low even by African standards during the war - has increased markedly since 2000, according to official figures.

Yet the majority of Angola’s population remains desperately poor, living on less than Dollars 2 a day. The UN’s Human Development Index, which measures such indicators as life expectancy and infant mortality, ranks the country 160th out of 177 worldwide. A recent UN-led survey of the Planalto, the richest agricultural region before the war, found that about 60 per cent of people were chronically malnourished.

In several years of talks, Angola has failed to secure an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, normally the first step for a developing country seeking international financial respectability. The body’s misgivings about the country’s management of and accounting for its resource wealth remain a big obstacle. In July, after its latest talks with the Angolan government, the IMF praised “important improvements” made over the last two years in Angola’s fiscal accounts and the transparency of oil transactions.

However, the fund criticised “continuing conflicts of interest” at Sonangol and Endiama, the state diamond company, which act as both regulators and participants in their respective sectors. Sonangol, which some analysts describe as a parallel government, does not publish its accounts. Nor does the government produce accounts to justify its own expenditure, Global Witness points out. Similar accusations are made about Endiama.

It is precisely Angola’s oil wealth that makes the country a special case for foreign actors seeking to influence government’s behaviour. Like oil-rich Nigeria, Angola’s GDP per head has risen to the point where it no longer qualifies for concessional lending from the IMF. Where the Fund has hesitated to sign agreements with Angola, foreign banks and countries have been happy to lend it billions of dollars. According to the IMF, in 2003-4 the government raised Dollars 3.4bn from commercial banks in oil-backed loans and over Dollars 500m drawn from bilateral oil-backed credit lines. Last month Sonangol raised a syndicated Dollars 2bn loan led by France’s Calyon and collateralised by a long-term agreement to supply oil to the trading arm of China’s Sinopec.

Because of the limitations of traditional IMF and World Bank conditionality in Angola, anti-corruption campaigners have trained much of their attention on the oil companies. Chevron alone plans to invest Dollars 5bn in the country over the next five years, according to a company spokesman. This is separate from the company’s portion of a Dollars 5bn shared investment by the oil majors in a new liquefied natural gas project.

Global Witness has been a leading supporter of a campaign aimed at prodding oil companies and governments to divulge the massive “signing bonuses” paid when deals are concluded. The effort bore some fruit last year when Chevron extended its concession on Cabinda’s Block Zero by 30 years at a Washington ceremony attended by Mr dos Santos. His government made public a Dollars 280m signing bonus, which included a Dollars 80m “social bonus” spent on development programmes in Cabinda and elsewhere.

Global Witness remains unimpressed: “It’s good that Chevron published their bonus last year, but there is no consistent practice by oil companies in doing that,” says Ms Wykes. Others criticise the companies for being too timid in their community involvement for fear of antagonising Angola’s leaders. “The government has played a very tough game with the oil companies,” says Care’s Mr Bulten. “They have them in their pocket.”

Luanda has shown itself to be an unforgiving partner for foreigners it perceives as unfairly critical. Sonangol, for example, declined to extend Total’s concession for offshore block 3/80 last year. Although reasons for the link were not made public, and Total will not comment, Angolan analysts linked it to French authorities’ ongoing prosecution of a scandal involving the alleged purchase of arms for oil by the dos Santos government in the 1990s.

When the Fund earlier this year published a document by a US academic on its website entitled “The Main Institution in the Country is Corruption”, Luanda extracted a rare apology from Rodrigo de Rato, the IMF president, and the removal of the offending document.

However, Angola’s government does appear to be sensitive to growing criticism on governance issues. In an interview with the Financial Times last month, Jose Pedro de Morais, finance minister, said that he hoped to secure an IMF agreement by early next year, while adding: “The conditions are on the Fund’s side, not our side.” Angola did not qualify for or need IMF financing, but Mr Morais noted that a deal was an important precondition for a rescheduling of debt arrears to the Paris Club, which he estimated at Dollars 1.5 bn to Dollars 1.8 bn.

The minister added that Angola was “doing a lot of things on the transparency side, and has set some priorities.” Once the country had an IMF agreement, it would be willing to sign on to the UK’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Angola is currently the only country to claim “observer status” in the initiative, an effort led by Tony Blair’s government to improve management of revenues in resource-rich nations.

Human-resource constraints appear to be a major factor in Angola’s failure to produce fully transparent oil and diamond accounts. Ad hoc practices that took hold during the war have been continued in peacetime by underpaid civil servants, only a small minority of whom have higher education. “Part of the problem with the IMF getting the data is that the people just aren’t there,” says the foreign diplomat. Officials also point to a split between the pragmatism of government technocrats such as Mr de Morais and the camp of the president, who takes little public interest in economic issues. His office did not reply to several requests from the FT seeking an interview.

Some Angolans remain sceptical that their government faces any real pressure to improve governance, especially at a time when both oil and diamond revenues are rising. Upcoming elections will also demand resources for the patronage networks said to permeate Angola’s elite. “This government has always been supported,” says Rafael Marques, a human-rights activist and researcher. “The only way it has been able to maintain itself is through international forces.”

“It’s all about oil - it’s about resources,” he continues. “The west legitimises this mockery of a democracy because of its own interests.”

Angolans hold some modest hope for elections, although registering voters will prove a daunting task after the mass dislocations of the war. The opposition’s weakness and MPLA’s control of the levers of the state mean that few expect a poll upset. However, opposition parties such as Mr Leitao’s Padepa and the PRS, a regional party centred in the diamond-producing east, hope to increase their representation.

Reflecting on this week’s anniversary of independence, Mr Leitao calls the end of colonial rule a “good thing.” But he goes on to voice a dispiriting sentiment often heard in Africa’s toughest cases, from Eritrea to Zimbabwe. “The people governing Angola are worse than the colonists,” he says. “The people who lived in colonial times do not have the difficulties we have now.”

Posted at 11:58 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

The beauty pageant, once the west’s symbol of oppression of women, has become the east’s champion of opportunity, writes Alexandra Harney

Wang Yaoyao strode to centre stage in a packed Beijing theatre wearing a slinky black cocktail dress: “Beautiful faces also have beautiful dreams,” she told a row of judges seated in the crowd. “My wish is that everyone can realise their own dreams.” A 21-year-old native of the central Chinese province of Hubei, Wang had already paraded before the audience in a royal blue swimsuit. But few people had come to hear her speak or see her walk across the stage. At the first annual Miss Artificial Beauty contest, the real focus was on what Wang’s plastic surgeon had given her: a nose job, double eyelids, a smaller chin, thicker lips and a tummy tuck.

“Even if you’re smart and good at what you do, nobody will listen to what you have to say if you’re ugly. But if you’re beautiful, people want to be close to you immediately. Then you can talk to them and get your message across,” Wang, an advertising executive, told me later.

Like at least one other contestant, Wang had struck a deal under which she agreed to promote the hospital that performed her plastic surgery in exchange for getting the work for free.

Beauty pageants have become big business in China. In the past year, the country has hosted Miss World for the second time, reaching an estimated 200m television viewers across the country, while Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, held a Miss Intercontinental competition, and south-western Sichuan province hosted its own Miss Universe-China pageant. Then there was Miss Tourism Queen International in the eastern city of Hangzhou and Miss International in Beijing.

Not to mention the Top Model of the World pageant, the China International Stewardess Beauty Pageant, and the Zhen’ao Cup National Contest of the Beauty of the Gray-Headed Group, open only to those aged over 55.

By January of this year, mini-beauty pageants had become so popular in Chinese schools, at both primary and high school age, that the Ministry of Education saw fit to ban them.

China’s new found passion for beauty pageantry reflects a sea-change from the days of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, when Chinese women were forced to wear drab blue dresses, cut their hair short and forgo make-up. Looking overly feminine was considered bourgeois, a view encapsulated in Mao Zedong’s aphorism: aphorism: “Times have changed, men and women are the same”.

In 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, Chinese women bought Rmb75bn (Dollars 9bn) of beauty products, according to the China Association of Fragrance, Flavour and Cosmetics Industry.

The plastic surgery business, which sponsored Miss Artificial Beauty, is booming.

There are now so many beauty contests in China that people in the industry are starting to complain of saturation.

As an American in China, I am fascinated by the popularity of these pageants. Growing up in a suburb of Washington, DC, in the 1970s and 1980s, not long after feminists dumped their high heels and girdles in a “freedom trash can” outside the 1968 Miss America contest, had watched beauty pageants with amused disdain.

Where I come from, no matter how fervently the contestants expressed their desire for world peace, no matter how expertly they performed their baton routines, all anyone ever really talked about was how they looked in the swimsuit competition.

Miss Artificial Beauty, though, turned the traditional beauty contest on its head by celebrating the superficiality and pecuniary motives of pageantry. Had China, with its characteristic swift pace of social and economic change, already hurtled past several decades of Western thinking on these issues to come to its own, unique conclusions? In search of an answer, I paid a visit to Ning Xiaozhou. A heavyset, jovial man who looks younger than his 49 years, Ning helped create one of China’s first beauty pageants as an executive at Guangzhou Television in the southern province of Guangdong in the late 1980s.

As a newly established station with a mandate to generate cash from advertising rather than rely on government funding, Guangzhou TV was strapped for cash.

Ning and his colleagues cast around for new sources of advertising revenue. They settled on a TV drama and a beauty contest, though Mr Ning admits that he had never seen a pageant.

The contest was controversial from the start. Although Beijing had, since the late 1970s, considered Guangdong a petri dish for experimentation with reform, beauty contests tested the limits of official tolerance.

They were, after all, a cultural import from the capitalist west.

Guangzhou TV tried to head off complaints from government officials by naming naming the contest Mei zai hua cheng, or City Beauty, to brand it as a local event rather than a bikini parade.

“If we called it a beauty contest, the authorities wouldn’t have given us permission to hold it,” Ning said. The station even recruited male as well as female contestants.

But, come pageant day in May 1988, public opinion was still mixed.

Nearly two decades later, Chinese people may have forgotten their reservations about beauty contests but the government has not. Chen Ci, mayor of Sanya, the resort town on the southern island of Hainan that hosted Miss World in 2003 and 2004 and will host it again next month, admits winning official approval for the competition wasn’t easy.

“We tried to convince our colleagues in Beijing and other people that it’s not simply a beauty contest. It’s not simply a demonstration of women’s bodies,” he told me just before last December’s Miss World.

“We just said it’s good for tourism and it’s not against the socialist spiritual civilisation. They didn’t say no.” What intrigues me is that while beauty pageants were once portrayed as a manifestation of the oppression of women in the US, in China they are seen as evidence of social and economic development. “The Chinese government thinks that if they have these kind of contests, people will think we are an open country,” Wang Ning, professor at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, said.

And, in some ways, the Chinese government is right. For all the irony implicit in flying 107 beautiful women, their designer gowns, curlers and make-up to an island as poor and backward as Hainan, Miss World has brought with it a modicum of economic improvement.

Chen, wearing a “Blue Canyon Country Club - Phuket” shirt, ticks off the benefits in fluent English: tax income and land prices are up sharply, in no small part because of the exposure the contest brings the island.

More tourists are coming to Sanya - Japanese, South Koreans, Russians, and especially Germans. Then there are the intangible benefits.

“When the contestants came last year, I was proud to see that our teenagers behaved well, with warmth and openness. They were also able to communicate with (the contestants) in English.” says Li Boqing, deputy director of Sanya’s tourism bureau.

“Their behaviour was completely different from when we had similar events here seven or eight years ago, when the children were inarticulate.

Money can’t buy what we’ve gained from this pageant.” Which is fortunate, because Sanya invested heavily in luring Miss World. Li says the city paved roads, built a theatre tailored for the contest called the “Beautycrown” and paid the Miss World Organisation Dollars 4m for the licence to host the pageant before it had received Beijing’s approval.

I asked Ma Yong, an executive at the Southern Metropolis Daily, one of China’s most progressive and popular newspapers with a reputation for investigative reporting, what his newspaper wanted to gain from its sponsorship of the Miss Shenzhen contest and the publication of a thick insert filled with pictures of, and interviews with, young women.

“We had two aims: to build our brand and to make money,” said Ma frankly, as he sat in an office in the newspaper’s Shenzhen bureau flanked by former Miss Shenzhen contestants.

In 2002, the first year Southern Metropolis held Miss Shenzhen, it generated revenues of Rmb2m. By last year, the figure had tripled to Rmb6m.

Most of this money comes from sponsors, not all of them Chinese. City Beauty, the contest Ning helped start, counts as its largest sponsor Procter & Gamble, the US consumer goods group.

Volvo, the carmaker, Clarks, the UK shoe company, and Malaysia Airlines also chip in. The contest receives about Rmb25m in sponsorship.

Contestants pay Rmb100 to register for the contest and another Rmb900 for the beauty boot camp that precedes the pageant. City Beauty’s two- month training course covers everything from how to walk and talk during the show to handling the humiliation of losing.

These courses have given China’s beauty queens an eerie confidence and polished fluency familiar to fans of the rotating cuppedhand “Miss America wave”.

When asked a question, they don’t hesitate but answer swiftly, and in complete sentences.

“Why are beauty pageants so popular in China?” I asked Li Jinling, who was elected Most Popular at the 2004 City Beauty competition, her first beauty pageant.

“I don’t think this contest is purely a beauty pageant.

It is helping to improve the quality of our generation,” she replied with a smile.

Pageants are also improving the profits of a generation of businessmen, who are not shy about admitting their motivation in making money from parading women around in bathing suits.

“Pageants are new to China, and people like to follow fads,” said Lu Junqing, Junqing, chairman of Tianjiu Media, which organised Miss Artificial Beauty, Miss Universe- China, Miss Intercontinental and Miss International Super Model.

Lu created Miss Artificial Beauty after Yang Yuan, then 18 years old, was thrown out of the Miss Beijing round of Miss Intercontinental because she had had plastic surgery. A Beijing court refused to hear a lawsuit against Lu’s company, filed by Yang, who spent Rmb110,000 surgically improving her looks before the pageant.

Lu, like others I spoke to, warned that too many people were trying to cash in on the beauty contest fad. “People have come to accept beauty pageants but, at the same time, some people have said that there are too many.” It’s a common story line in Chinese business these days: someone hits on a good idea, his rivals pile into the same market, competition drives prices down, and all of a sudden, nobody is making any money any more.

“I believe contests like Miss Old Lady or Miss Universe, or the model contests won’t last long in China,” said Ning. “They might last two or three years but not more than four because their sponsors won’t be cheated twice … their only goal is to make money.” It took a while to find someone in China who saw pageants in the same way as my forebears protesting outside the Miss America pageant.

Most of the coverage in the Chinese media focuses on the contestants and the occasional ejection of a transsexual or a person with plastic surgery from one of the international pageants.

But Wang Hongwei, a professor at Guangzhou’s South China Normal University has given a great deal of thought to the social implications of what she calls China’s “beauty economy”.

Over a salad and fruit juice at her university canteen, she told me that she worried pageants are narrowing the standard for what Chinese people consider beautiful. Pageants are part of a trend, Wang said, of elevating beauty’s importance in society to a point where less attractive women would have trouble finding a husband or a job.

“When I ask my male students what they dream of, they say owning a car and being with a beautiful woman. They never used to talk like that,” she said.

Even this description struck me as evidence of the type of tectonic shift that Chinese people see so frequently these days that they no longer appear dramatic.

Chinese women’s dreams of instant wealth or overnight celebrity are no different from those of many in the West, as the hit TV programmes American Idol and Survivor illustrate. The popularity of these dreams in China testifies to how the lives of its people have changed, in a few decades.

During the Cultural Revolution, state propaganda promoted the “Iron Woman”, the strapping tractor-driving, oil-drilling female. Today, women in Chinese advertisements recline on sofas in their new homes and wonder at their sleek shampooed hair.

Meanwhile, real Chinese women, like young women in small towns across the US, line up for pageant after pageant.

Of course, most cannot afford the extravagance of a beauty pageant, much less the homes in those advertisements: about 800m of the country’s 1.3bn people still live in poverty.

I saw this contrast in the beauty queens I met, who embodied the contradictions that China’s explosive economic growth is creating.

They journey to and from pageants on the country’s ageing, crowded rail network but they crave Dior cosmetics and Burberry perfume.

They dream of travelling abroad but are good daughters in the traditional Chinese sense. Li Yang, who won last year’s City Beauty contest, gave the Rmb150,000 prize money together with the new Honda car she won to her mother.

And yet, the pageants do seem to represent a widening of the band of economic opportunity for women.

“Everyone comes to these contests with their own purpose,” Dai Xuan, who competed in last December’s Miss Shenzhen, told me at Southern Metropolis Daily’s office. “The contestants get what they want, and the public gets entertained.” She is right: China’s beauty queens do have an agenda. Feng Qian won Miss Artificial Beauty in no small part because she told the judges she was studying to be a plastic surgeon. Many of the judges were representatives from the plastic surgery industry. Contestants from other pageants told me they hoped to use the contest to launch acting or modelling careers.

After Miss Artificial Beauty, a colleague and I boarded a coach with the contestants bound for a dingy Chinese restaurant in a corner of Beijing. I wanted to know what the contestants planned to do after their careers in pageants.

Wang, the advertising account executive, told me that this would be her last contest. She wasn’t going to win every pageant, she reasoned.

Instead, she was planning to focus more on her job, to improve her relationships with clients. And then later she’d like to be a freelance writer, so she could work at home. “I’d like that kind of freedom,” she said.

It occurred to me that that was exactly the kind of thing an American girl her age might say.

Posted at 5:54 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2005

NEW YORK If the past is any guide, Chinese President Hu Jintao is poised to score another diplomatic tour de force. This week, he is joining Asia’s leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Pusan, South Korea, and playing host to George W. Bush in Beijing. Early next month, he will travel to Kuala Lumpur for the inaugural meeting of the East Asia Community.

All the while, Hu and his team will advance their “win-win” diplomacy
and earn praise for being the good superpower. But if you look more
carefully, here is what you see: a rising power exploiting other
countries’ natural resources, spoiling the global environment, making
economic deals but looking away from serious government mistreatment of
its citizens and not delivering on promises.

In Peru, workers at China’s Shougang-owned Hierro Peru mine have
protested unsafe labor and environmental standards and watched their
incomes decline, even as the mine has posted record profits. In Myanmar, where Chinese military assistance props up a brutal dictatorship, Chinese logging companies are ravaging old-growth forests and exploiting mineral resources with little benefit to the Burmese people.

Brazil’s ambassador to the United States, Manuel Rocha, has also noted that while Brazil granted China much-desired recognition as a market economy, China has yet to deliver the huge infrastructure investment or seat among the UN powers that Brazil anticipated in return.

China gets away with this because it has matched its growing economic
prowess with an attractive political tag line. Its leaders skate through Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America striking trade and aid deals, outlining grand bargains on infrastructure development, promoting military exchange and cooperation and building hospitals, palaces and sports stadiums. In the process, they pitch their “peaceful rise” diplomacy - China is the rising tide that lifts all economic boats - and portray China as a “kinder, softer, gentler” rising power that doesn’t exploit others’ resources in pursuit of economic gain and doesn’t mix business with politics.

Not surprisingly, such investment and financial largess, with no
apparent strings attached, has been well received in the developing
world. Sudan’s mining minister, Awad Ahmad Jaz, has praised the Chinese for “looking for business, not politics,” while Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has complimented China as a “creator of prosperity of the highest order.”

But the downside is beginning to show. Discussions among African elites at a conference in Johannesburg last month skipped quickly through the benefits of Chinese investment to focus on the challenges presented by China’s growing engagement with the continent. Topping the list of concerns were China’s financial and military contribution to conflicts in Sudan and Zimbabwe; support for the corrupt Dos Santos regime in Angola; and lack of transparency in business dealings with a number of African governments. The promise not to mix business with politics is clearly at odds with the situation on the ground.

The international community should press China to bridge this gap
between word and deed. A few measures could jump-start this process.
First, when China does business abroad, ensure that it applies the same
standards for its multinationals that it demands from multinationals
that do business in China.

The price of doing business in China increasingly means observing best
labor and environmental practices, as well as significant technology
transfer and providing extensive training for Chinese workers. The
developing countries, in turn, should use their leverage - the natural
resources that China seeks to exploit - to require that China and
Chinese multinationals observe these same best practices.

Second, shine a harsh light on Chinese behavior. No country should
free-ride its way to global leadership.

Eventually, the downside will catch up to Beijing. Countries that
provide assistance to sustain unpopular regimes for short-term economic
or strategic interests often pay a steep long-term political price once
these regimes fall out of favor. China should look carefully at its
engagement in countries like Sudan, Zimbabwe and Myanmar, among others.
Chinese multinationals, too, should consider the longer-term health,
safety and environmental welfare of the communities in which they
operate, or risk growing local protest.

Better for China’s leaders to make a course correction now, before their
“peaceful rise” diplomacy loses its luster.

(Elizabeth Economy is director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations.)
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/11/15/opinion/edeconomy.php

Posted at 12:56 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Salon

Nov. 16, 2005 | A friend of mine, a classicist, believes that the news stories that most captivate the public always tap into some venerable Western myth or folk tale. George W. Bush (or any recovered addict) is the prodigal son; Chandra Levy is a sacrificial maiden along the lines of Andromeda or Iphigenia; Scott Peterson is Bluebeard. Sometimes the people acting out these old stories know just what they’re doing — W. expects his evangelical base to respond instinctively to his remake of the New Testament parable. Others, like Peterson, find themselves cast in their roles against their will. And chances are that the bottom-feeding tabloids that capitalized on Levy’s death have never even heard of Iphigenia.

But maybe my friend’s idea is tautological — perhaps the definition of a myth is simply this: a story we feel compelled to tell over and over again. That’s the notion behind a new series of books, “The Myths,” launched this fall. Canongate Books will publish novella-length retellings of ancient myths, written by such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Donna Tartt.

The first two books, Atwood’s “The Penelopiad” and Winterson’s “Weight,” choose classical Greek myths, “The Odyssey” and the story of Atlas and Heracles, respectively. (Presumably, some contributors will follow the lead of Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe and pick myths from other traditions.) Atwood and Winterson stick pretty close to the earliest versions of these stories, but their results are radically different without actually violating the premise. There could be no better illustration of the fact that after centuries of telling and talking about myths, we’re still not sure what they are and why they move us.

By way of introduction, the series kicks off with a nonfiction volume, “A Short History of Myth” by Karen Armstrong. The choice of Armstrong makes sense: Her exploration, in “The Battle for God,” of the differences between two modes of thought, “logos” and “mythos,” is an eloquent argument for the value of certain impractical ideas. Logos, Armstrong explained, is “the rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world.” It “must relate exactly to facts and correspond to external realities if it is to be effective.” Mythos, in contrast, is “not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning.”

According to Armstrong, premodern people considered both modes “essential; they were regarded as complementary ways of arriving at truth, and each had its special area of competence.” While logos can tell us how to grow crops, build cathedrals and split atoms, mythos, often in circuitous ways, speaks of why we do these things.

A Briton, a former nun and a self-described “freelance monotheist,” Armstrong lives in a mostly secular society set in a larger world roiled by religious fundamentalism. The mythos/logos formulation serves her well in the task of criticizing both. As a liberal person of faith, she can argue that a logos-ruled culture like Britain’s fails to speak to the persistent desire for meaning. And then she can point out that literal-minded fundamentalists — who insist that biblical stories describe actual historical events and divine directives — mistakenly treat the metaphorical mythos of the Bible as if it were the logos of, say, Newton’s law of gravitation.

But, at heart, Armstrong writes about religion, not literature, and her “A Short History of Myth” isn’t a very satisfying lead-in to a collection of fictional works. For Armstrong, the high point in the history of religion came with what the German philosopher Karl Jasper called “the Axial Age,” when “new religious and philosophical systems emerged: Confucianism and Taoism in China; Buddhism and Hinduism in India; monotheism in the Middle East and Greek rationalism in Europe.” These aren’t, however, traditions known for their great myths (except for the legends in the Old Testament, which seem to be a holdover from earlier times anyway).

The Axial Age heralded a new kind of spirituality that even Armstrong acknowledges “was not so heavily dependent upon external rituals and practices,” rituals that many scholars regard as indivisible from the myths themselves. This “new concern about the individual conscience and morality” introduced by the Axial faiths may be worth celebrating (provided the faithful manage to act accordingly), but by concentrating on the inner life of the individual it made the communal ceremonies of mythic pantheism less important.

And none of this explains why the myths — particularly the Greek and Norse myths — are still with us, why painters still paint them, audiences still turn out to see them performed and writers still plunder them for material. When Armstrong insists that a myth cannot be separated from the rituals that embodied it, she is voicing a common anthropological idea about how mythic religions work. But is it really true, as Armstrong asserts, that “reading a myth without the transforming ritual that goes with it is as incomplete an experience as simply reading the lyrics of an opera without the music”?

Demeter, the Greek harvest goddess, forsook the world when Hades, the god of the underworld, kidnapped her daughter, Persephone. To save the planet from ruin, the gods reunited the mother and daughter, but because Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds while she was with Hades, she is forced to rejoin him for a few months of the year; hence, winter. No doubt this story had its maximum resonance in the secret seasonal rituals — the Eleusian Mysteries — performed by the people who believed it to be “true.” But the story still retains great beauty for those of us who don’t subscribe to that religion or observe those rituals. (We don’t even know what those rituals were, as no record of them survives.) And in a way, millions of us relive Demeter’s story every time we see a lurid movie in which a distraught parent searches for a daughter lost in an urban underworld of drugs or porn or prostitution.

Even stripped of their original religious significance, even when we don’t know their source, myths still strike us as being filled with meaning. Why this should be so is one of the mysteries of human culture. In the Middle Ages, scholars believed that ancient myths that seemed to pre-figure Christianity were allegorical premonitions of the revealed truth of the New Testament — sort of like echoes that worked backward in time. Mr. Casaubon, the desiccated scholar in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” labored on a Victorian version of the same idea, his famously pointless and unfinished “key to all mythologies.”

In the 20th century, the psychiatrist Carl Jung formed his theory of archetypes, motifs recurring throughout most cultures. The archetypes, he believed, arise from the collective unconscious, an inherited body of symbols shared by all humanity. Jung’s concepts have stuck with us, and were eventually popularized by Joseph Campbell, who described various heroic myths as metaphors for the journey of an individual psyche from childhood to maturity. The fact that George Lucas was able to fashion a blockbuster pop epic — “Star Wars” — using Campbell’s work as a blueprint demonstrates just how much power those stories retain.

Winterson approaches the myth of Atlas in this way, as a vehicle for reflection on the self. Atlas was a giant, a Titan condemned to support the world on his shoulders as punishment for rebelling against the gods. (Winterson, a lesbian raised in an evangelical Christian home, identifies with that rebellion.) He gets a brief respite when Heracles offers to take over the task in exchange for the golden apples that grow on a tree in Atlas’ garden. (Only Atlas can pick them, and obtaining the apples is one of 12 labors Heracles is compelled to perform as punishment for flying into a rage and killing his own family.) Once the giant returns with the apples, Heracles asks Atlas to spell him for a moment so he can pad his shoulders, then runs off with the apples.

For Winterson, this is a story of unnecessary burdens — not just Atlas’, but Heracles’ labors as well. Her Heracles is a boorish brute, a man of pure action, made uneasy by the immobility imposed by Atlas’ task. Compelled to stand still for once, “his only company was the hornet buzzing outside his head, the thought-wasp buzzing Why? Why? Why?” Atlas, on the other hand, holds up the world with “such grace and ease, with such gentleness, love almost.” In the story’s most charming development, Atlas winds up freeing and adopting Laika, a dog shot into space by the Soviets in 1957. Having learned to love Laika as much as he loves the world, he finally considers the possibility of laying his burden down. “I chose this story above all others,” Winterson writes, “because it’s a story I’m struggling to end.”

For Jung, myths and other archetypes stood for internal psychological states; Campbell’s theories, as presented in his televised interviews with PBS journalist Bill Moyers, had a more social aspect. The purpose of myths, Campbell claimed, was to instruct us on “how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.” Moyers’ questions — not surprisingly, given his political background — prompted Campbell to expound on how myths show us how to have a better marriage, reject empty consumerism and respect the environment.

Structuralism, beginning with the great French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in the 1950s, often took a less sanguine view of what myths teach us. These stories, they argued, are founded in cultural concepts that shape the way the people in that culture understand their world. Our inclination to grasp our experience in terms of duality — light/dark, male/female, good/evil or, for that matter, mythos/logos — is one example of such an underlying concept. Myths, a structuralist might say, supply us with dramatic confirmation of our own way of interpreting things. The peculiar, heady response they elicit from us — that feeling of recognition — comes from the fact that, on a subterranean level, they tell us that the values of our culture, the values we already hold, are right and true.

Atwood’s ironic “Penelopiad” would probably please the structuralists. She has Penelope tell the story of Odysseus’ long absence, but complicates it with the choral commentary of the 12 maids her husband executed upon his return. Was Penelope, as she and the “official” version of the story insist, faithful to her husband for the 20 years he was away? Were the maids, hanged for consorting with the suitors, merely the unfortunate victims of bad luck? “The Penelopiad” exhibits some long-standing Atwoodian interests: the difficulty of discovering the truth about people’s private lives and the casual brutality of class hierarchies. She takes the Greeks’ notion of heroism and turns it inside out, like a shirt, so that we can see the seams.

Theories about what myths are meant to teach us vary, but the idea that their job is to teach is tenacious. It’s tempting to raise the Armstrongian point that this is a utilitarian, logos-shaped view of the ultimate in mythos material. C.S. Lewis, in his capacity as a literary critic, once wrote that myth gives us the sensation that “something of great moment has been communicated to us,” and that “the recurrent efforts of the mind to grasp — we mean, chiefly, to conceptualize — this something, are seen in the persistent tendency of humanity to provide myths with allegorical explanations. And after all allegories have been tried, the myth itself continues to feel more important than they.”

Lewis wrote persuasively about myth because (despite his Christianity) he was at heart a platonist and perfectly comfortable with the notion that what makes myths powerful is the fact that we can never adequately explain how they work and what they do. He also believed that people have never stopped making myths, even if nowadays they don’t usually consider themselves to be doing something religious. Lewis’ own good friend J.R.R. Tolkien created an imaginative work in “The Lord of the Rings” that millions of readers respond to with an immediacy that has little to do with modern notions of a “great” novel. Lewis thought Kafka had a similar myth-making genius.

In contemplating the stylistic inadequacy of one of his favorite writers, George MacDonald, Lewis asked himself if myth weren’t, after all, something “extra-literary.” A myth, he concluded, was “a particular kind of story which has a value in itself — a value independent of its embodiment in any literary work. The story of Orpheus strikes and strikes deep, of itself; the fact that Virgil and others have told it in good poetry is irrelevant.” Language itself isn’t even required. The story could be told in mime or silent film or in a wordless comic book and it would still be itself. Furthermore, it can be told in widely different ways — set in the favelas of Brazil, for example, like Marcel Camus’ 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” or in a kind of modern, surrealist neverland like Cocteau’s “Orpheus” — and still be the same myth.

Today, our standards of literary excellence are intimately entwined with the idea of originality and individual expression. Myths, on the other hand, are communal. They are also stories first and foremost, and contemporary literary critics do not hold story in particularly high regard, when they regard it at all. Like depictions of sex, story is seen as appealing to people on the crudest level, to the lowest common denominator. A book that has nothing else to offer can still thrill hordes of unsophisticated readers with pure, page-turning plot.

The seminal modernist works that still define our idea of literary genius often referred to myth without actually partaking of it. Mythic fragments float through T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” but there are no stories in the poem. James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is not the epic tale of a man’s 10-year journey home from a foreign war; instead, the novel aims to elevate a day in the life of an ordinary fellow to the grandeur of a hero’s adventures. When such works succeed, they succeed in a modern fashion, as unique, form-breaking innovations, but not as myth.

As exhilarating as the modernist experiment has been, it eventually collided with what appears to be a fact of human nature, the reality that our minds are built of stories. To stick with the metaphor above, a steady diet of books without stories turns out to be as appealing as a life without sex; some people take to it, but not many. At the same time, an explosion of media has immersed the average citizen in a cloud of competing voices, and those voices have learned that stories capture people’s attention. In a culture where nearly everyone — politicians, TV producers, journalists, advertisers — talks obsessively about the power of stories, the very artists most associated with the telling of tales, novelists, seem the least comfortable doing it.

So the “Myths” series is very welcome. It reminds us that not every talented writer can or should aspire to the model of the novelist as iconoclastic Great Man. (It’s no coincidence that some of highest-profile contributors to the series are women.) Both Atwood and Winterson weave less prestigious modes of storytelling — gossip and memoir — into their new versions of Greek myths. The best novels have always had at least a dash of both. And perhaps the best myths have, too. But underneath it all there is still the “something of great moment” that Lewis wrote about, a something that eludes definition. Perhaps Winterson puts it best when she writes, “These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true.”

Posted at 12:32 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The South China Morning Post

Shanghai
Amid the anti-Japan hysteria sweeping the mainland this year, there is one man whose history the official media will not recount. Kanzo Uchiyama first arrived in Shanghai in 1913, and travelled round the country selling eye medicine for a Japanese company. He liked China so much that, in 1916, he moved to Shanghai and established a bookshop that has a worthy place in Chinese literary history. He became friends with many of the most prominent Chinese writers and intellectuals, especially Lu Xun , who was a close friend, and also wrote widely about China.

During the Japanese army’s occupation of the city, he used his shop to hide Chinese intellectuals, enabling them to escape to safer parts of the country and saving them from interrogation and possibly execution. Uchiyama remained in Shanghai throughout the war, helped with the repatriation of Japanese after the surrender, and wanted to stay on. But the Nationalists expelled him in 1947 because he knew too many left-wing writers.

At home, he continued to work for Sino-Japanese relations and, aged 74, was invited to Beijing in 1959, the 10th anniversary of the founding of the new state. At a welcoming banquet in Beijing, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and died the next day. He was buried in a cemetery in Shanghai, as he had requested.

A plaque depicting Uchiyama and Lu adorns the wall of a bank building in northern Shanghai, marking the site of the bookshop. A memorial room inside contains artefacts of that era.

Uchiyama’s life is a poignant testimony to what history might have been. A devout Christian and a socialist, he started selling religious books and then Japanese books and magazines, including works translated from western languages. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Japan became the first foreign country where Chinese students went to study. It was a model of a formerly closed Asian country that had modernised and defeated a major European power - Russia - in war.

For thousands of Chinese, Japanese was the medium through which they came to understand the west. The most prominent of these was Lu. Uchiyama described their friendship as “the greatest joy in my life”.

Uchiyama knew nearly all the leading Chinese writers of his day and shared with them a passion for contemporary Chinese poetry and literature. For his audience at home, he wrote extensively about these writers, everyday Chinese life and culture.

What a tragedy that it was the right wing of the army and not the attitude of Uchiyama that decided his country’s treatment of China, setting off a vicious cycle that has continued without end until today.

Posted at 12:19 PM · Comments (0)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2005 - Copyright The International Herald Tribune

SANTA MONICA, California Not to cast aspersions but, with all the furor over performance-enhancing drugs, it’s remarkable that Philip Roth’s name hasn’t surfaced.

Just last week the baseball player Rafael Palmeiro avoided perjury charges, but his career achievements have been irreparably tarnished. Not so Roth. In fact, since turning 60, an age when most renowned writers start having trouble making stuff up, Roth has written, arguably, four of his finest novels.

Is he juiced or merely the beneficiary of superior genes? No one can - or will - say for sure.

However, as Roth closes in on several of Dostoevsky’s records, whispers are circulating through the literary community. One writer, who requested anonymity to avoid seeming cranky, whispered, “Since I came out with ‘Bonfire of the Vanities,’ I’ve written two novels. Roth has churned out, what, 12? Do the math.”

Roth’s bulked-up output is not the only factor raising eyebrows. Most notably, his sentence structure has shown no signs of the usual age-related deterioration cited in medical literature.

At 64, some eight to 10 years after most writers betray noticeable passive voice, Roth completed his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “American Pastoral” (1997). One of the book’s astonishing sentences began with the words, “Only after strudel and coffee,” and ended nearly a full page later without even one dangling modifier.

No less a talent than James Joyce (in one of his more piquant observations) said: “By the age of 45, I knew I could no longer start a sentence with a mention of strudel. My fingers would want to do it but my mind just wouldn’t react.”

In addition, Roth’s continued graphic depiction of, and obsession with, sexuality is seen by some as another indicator that he may be doping. Even D.H. Lawrence, by the age of 42, tended to write less about sex and more about supper. Yet, Roth’s “Sabbath’s Theater” (1995) and “The Dying Animal” (2001) were rife with carnal observations usually associated with novelists freshly called up from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Roth’s defenders point out that he lives in an age of superior mental conditioning, allowing him to extend his productive years well beyond those of Cervantes or the Grimm Brothers.

In addition, Roth has never fallen into the kinds of traps that have cut short the careers of others. He has displayed none of the draining machismo of Norman Mailer. He is never haunted by his childhood like Eugene “the Real Deal” O’Neill. He has no reputation for the late-night carousing favored by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Truman Capote.

Finally, technology in the form of “spell checker” and the “light bulb” have given Roth an advantage over, say, Rousseau. Some feel it would be foolish of him to forgo such labor-saving devices simply to maintain fair comparisons to the early romantic.

“Writing is hard,” said one famously blocked author, who requested anonymity in order to keep her publisher believing she died 12 years ago. “You look for any edge you can get.”

And yet, the dull hum of innuendo may become an annoying hum as volumes of Roth’s work are reprinted by the prestigious Library of America.

In an irony befitting the writings of O. Henry and Jose Canseco, much of the criticism for this controversy could ultimately land at the feet of that august imprint, whose testing has been so notably lax that Hunter Thompson repeatedly came up clean.

Thus far, Roth has been spared the kind of public denials to which we’ve grown accustomed. When a bottle of Allegorical Growth Hormone turned up in a Nebraska junior high school creative writing class, Roth was almost conspicuously not asked to comment on his status as a role model.

In short, Philip Roth simply lets his writing speak for itself. As one literary agent said: “You can dope me up all day and I ain’t going to write ‘Good-bye Columbus.’ So when the time comes, I, for one, will write in Philip Roth for the Time magazine 100 Best Authors issue.”

Posted at 11:59 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

China’s rural population will have to fall by tens and possibly
hundreds of millions in coming decades if farmers’ incomes are to rise to match
living standards in the mainland’s increasingly prosperous cities, according
to a report by the Operation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The first comprehensive study on Chinese agriculture by the Paris-based
body says agriculture employs 40 per cent of China’s workers, but produces only
15 per cent of economic output, a gap that can narrow only if many
farmers are employed more productively in other sectors. “The transfer of huge
numbers of workers from low productivity agriculture to higher
productivity manufacturing is one of the basic ingredients of China’s economic
growth,” the report says.

Fully 200m of China’s 248m rural households farm on plots of land of
around 0.65ha. While output is high per unit of land, it is low relative to
the number of workers employed.

Between 70m and 100m more rural workers will leave agriculture between
2000
and 2010 on current trends, but the capacity of businesses in smaller
towns
to absorb them is doubtful, raising the pressure on China’s larger
cities to
take them in.

The OECD says the Beijing government should liberalise restrictions on
the
rural population’s mobility to help manage this outflow. It also says
Beijing should clarify farmers’ property rights over their land, to
allow
them to use it more flexibly.

“Land has been extremely fragmented. [Farmers] need to have incentives
to
release it to other people for agriculture,” said Andrzej Kwiecinski,
the
principal author of the report.

The report also says China would benefit from relaxing its policy of
self-sufficiency in food, which is now defined internally to mean
providing
about 95 per cent of its grains and feedstock locally.

Mr Kwiecinski said the government was already redefining
self-sufficiency to
cover just rice, rather than grains and oil seeds and the like.

“They are differentiating between what is consumed by humans and what
is
consumed by livestock,” he said.

Concern over this issue was heightened by the fact that China recorded
a
deficit in agricultural trade in 2004, the first for well over a
decade.
However, the OECD says this should not deter the leadership from
further
liberalising the sector.

Hu Jintao, China’s president has already removed a swathe of
agricultural
taxes and committed to spending more on education and health in the
countryside.

Posted at 12:12 AM · Comments (0)

Some sinister ghosts from Japan’s past haunt today’s politics in Tokyo as neo-nationalist causes and personalities, mostly promoted by the reactionary prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, raise disturbing memories of racism and fascism. These were especially evident in his recent new cabinet choices, described by the Seoul newspaper, Dong-a Ilbo, as “hard-line and rightist.” One of them elevated a racial supremacist.

Meanwhile two more events confirm the sorry state of Japan’s official racial and social views. One involves Amnesty International’s condemnation of the “comfort women” scandal — females forced by the Imperial Army into what Amnesty calls “sexual slavery.”

The other is the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights’ investigator, Doudou Diene’s official complaint about “the insularity of Japan’s peoples” and the nation’s “real racism and xenophobia.” This remark was his preface to a full report he will deliver next year, but it received scant coverage in Japan or none at all — about the same space devoted to the Amnesty report.

Koizumi continues to demonstrate chauvinistic right-wing bias, and indifference to Asian — and world — protests raised over his October prayer visit to the ultra-patriotic Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo. Even although China and South Korea express repeated concerns over his born-again patriarchal patriotism, he insists on not only accommodating neo-nationalism but encouraging it. But is the man awarded the mantle of “modernist” by the corporate media overseas, only appeasing his more backward political cronies? Or is he one of them?

Consider the details. His choice of the racist Taro Aso as foreign secretary snubs his two closest Asian neighbors’ concerns over the refusal of Japan, unlike Germany, to confront openly its legacy of imperial aggression. As a reactionary rightist of many years standing, Aso is another devout supplicant at Yasukuni, where in the Shinto religion convicted war criminals are worshipped as divine spirits. He last prayed there in mid-April at the beginning of the holy sanctuary’s annual spring festival, and has vigorously supported Koizumi’s five annual visits.

Most extraordinary about his choice of the man to negotiate personally with the modern world, is Aso’s open advocacy of the mythical racist superiority theory that propelled Japan’s 1931-45 military hostilities. (Could he have inherited this from his grandfather, Shigeruo Yoshida? He was a diplomat in Imperial Japan, known for his autocratic and arrogant ways, and prime minister in 1946-7 and 1948-54.)

In a formal speech on October 15 opening a national museum in Kyushu, the southern island where he comes from, Aso, then Interior and Communications Minister, proclaimed Japan as “one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture, and one race, the like of which there is no other on this earth.” This echoed a 1986 statement by a previous right-wing premier, Yasuhiro Nakasone, that caused uproar, and of which Aso, 65, must have been aware.

Not only is there nowhere in the world this unique, but Japan does not measure up either. Aso’s asinine speech ignored the indigenous inhabitants of Japan, the Ainu, who live cooped up in the northern island of Hokkaido. It also ignored the different origins of Okinawa’s people and the various Asian strains from which the Japanese themselves emanate.

Coming from the opposite end of the archipelago, Aso’s apparent ignorance of the Ainu might be excused — if he refrained from his master-race remarks. For his information, the ethnic origins of the Ainu are subject of scholarly dispute, but even a casual observer cannot mistake them for Japanese.

The men never shave and have luxuriant beards, the women tattoo their faces, both sexes are taller and broader than Japanese, their language is different (and was banned during Japan’s 19th century Meiji period), and they do not eat raw fish. They feel strongly enough about their rights to independence in Hokkaido to have fought three wars, in 1457, 1669, and 1789, all of which they lost to main island Japanese.

If Aso is ignorant of the Ainu, he is arrogant about Koreans and Chinese. In an extraordinary interview in August in the Japanese monthly magazine Bungei Shunju, he said: “Whatever China and South Korea say, we should behave as if nothing happened [at Yakusuni shrine]. The most ideal way of resolving the Yasukuni dispute is that it works out peacefully after they realise that it is useless for them to complain any more.”

Aso is also guilty of an offensively racist slur of people referred to by the UN’s Diene as the “descendants of outcasts from Japan’s feudal period,” as one newspaper delicately put it. These are the “burakumin” (village people), who live in communities not even noted on maps. They are Japan’s untouchables, whose ancestors were employed to dispose of human waste, but unlike the Ainu, are Japanese [[itals Japanese]], although many choose to disbelieve this.

Aso’s racist reference came in September 2003 at the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic party’s last meeting attended by Hiromu Nonaka, a Diet (parliament) member for 20 years and a brilliant politician, who some thought had the makings of a prime minister. Nonaka was from burakumin origins, something he never concealed.

At the meeting he confronted Aso with a remark the minister had made that “Burakumin like him cannot be prime minister.” The comment came in Nonaka’s absence, but was confirmed by three witnesses and was something, Nonaka said, that he would “never, never forget.” Aso did not deny the remark but reddened.

This man now represents Japan in its dealing with foreign countries — one of which is North Korea, with whom talks recently resumed after a year’s interruption. Top of Japan’s agenda is the North Korean abduction of at least 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and ’80s in order to use them for training spies. The return and survival of these people remains in deadlocked dispute, and whatever the full truth, it was outrageous behavior by Pyongyang.

Yet does it compare with the Japanese invasion of the Korean peninsula in 1910, and its colonial occupation until 1945 (during which it banned the Korean language)? This is not just old history, because although South Korea signed a treaty with Japan in 1965, its reparations concerned only matters known at that time. (Such a treaty has yet to be signed with North Korea.)

One nasty revelation emerging since 1965, is the international scandal of “comfort women.” This is the cruel Japanese euphemism for an estimated 200,000 Asian women, and some Dutch, forced into sexual slavery for Japanese Imperial army soldiers during their 14 years of Asian conquests.

Another cabinet member, who with Aso is one of three favorites to succeed Koizumu to the premiership next year, is Shinzo Abe, 51, now made chief cabinet secretary and therefore its spokesman. He has sought to minimise the comfort women scandal and is another forceful conservative, a Yasukuni ritist, and defender of old Japan — in which his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was an imprisoned wartime criminal and a post-war prime minister (1957-60).

Japan has never fully accepted its responsibilities for the sex slavery and in 2001, when the national broadcast network NHK made a television documentary about the women, Abe, then deputy chief cabinet secretary, pressured the producers to moderate it.

In a painful coincidence, Koizumi’s cabinet appointments came immediatly after the Amnesty report, ‘Still Waiting After 60 Years: Justice for Survivors of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery System’, about Japan’s failure to compensate the prostituted women. Yet the October 28 report has been almost totally ignored by the Japanese media.

There are more examples of Japan’s reactionary refusal to deal with the aftermath of its wartime aggression, its evasion of honesty or frankness in recalling its cruelties, and its lack of educating its young about that history. Perhaps ghosts are difficult to deal with rationally…

One is the idolatrous homage offered by Japan’s politicians at Yasukuni to 14 notorious Class A war criminals who were enshrined there only in 1978. I dealt with this in detail previously (CounterPunch October 19). But other specters waft in.

The most recent example of Japan’s newly flexed nationalism is its arrogance over exiled Peruvian president-dictator Alberto “I-am-not-a-crook” Fujimori, a fugitive from justice in Japan since fleeing Lima in 2000. Fujimori, who presided over death squads, disappearances, and other human rights outrages during his 10-year regime, left Japan in early November for Chile, to attempt a come-back in Peru, but was promptly arrested. He now fights deportation.

Meanwhile Lima has withdrawn its ambassador from Tokyo over its continual refusal to hand over Fujimori because he is a Japanese citizen. But of what kind? He was born in Peru, educated in Peru, the US, and France, hardly spoke any Japanese, and is wanted on grave accusations. But he has a Japanese name — and again Tokyo flouts Amnesty, which in 2003 called for his extradition.

By refusing to do so, Amnesty said, Japan’s action “can only lead to further human rights violations by showing that those responsible are not held to account.” Not holding people, or events, to account, is a Japanese specialty.

Today, it is significant that of Koizumi’s cabinet, no less than six, including himself, are sons and/or grandsons of senior politicians, some ministers, who were active during the war period or immediately thereafter. The Japanese people have been poorly educated in their nation’s former militarism, but Koizumi’s cabinet and the premier himself have no such excuse.

Christopher Reed is a journalist living in Japan. He can be reached at: christopherreed@earthlink.net.

Posted at 11:24 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Guardian

Liberians have elected their first female president. But, says Akwe Amosu, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s gender may well be the least important thing about her as a politician

Monday November 14, 2005

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
Liberia’s new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf: Photograph: Chris Hondros/Getty

“She finally made it,” says a beaming Nana Tanko, a long-standing west African women’s campaigner and civil society activist. “I’m absolutely delighted.”

Stella Tamale, dean of law at Makerere University in Uganda, is equally pleased: “No one can tell us any more that Africa is not ready for a woman president,” she says.

“But Ellen’s not a woman,” another colleague objects. “She’s … Well, she is a woman, but …”

The gender of someone already in their late 60s is not usually in doubt - except, apparently, in the case of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the newly elected president of Liberia.

Even Ghana’s president, John Kufuor, recently told Johnson-Sirleaf he didn’t see her as a woman. But we’re not talking biology here: it’s just that Johnson-Sirleaf has reached the top in some distinctly male preserves.

She can variously be described as: Harvard-trained economist, ex-finance minister, former vice-president of Citicorp, past assistant secretary general at the UN, senior World Bank official, one-time president of the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment and twice-over political detainee - and Liberian prison is not for the faint hearted.

Several reporters nevertheless choose to describe her as a “diminutive grandmother”. (Perhaps they would also describe Tony Blair as a “father of four”.)

The frequently deployed epithet “Iron Lady” may be an attempt to have it both ways. But the fact is, she is more than qualified for this job without reference to gender.

Top-level politics in Africa remains largely a male club, but Johnson-Sirleaf is only one of many women demanding to be let in - and she is in no doubt about the potential impact of her victory.

She says it will make “a big difference for African women. I might even say for women all over the world. I think African women today are sitting on the edge of their chairs waiting for this to happen because it is going to open the doors,” she told journalists during her campaign.

In fact, they already have their foot in the door: Zimbabwe has a female vice-president, as does South Africa, and Uganda had one until two years ago when she left office revealing that she had been the victim of domestic violence.

Mozambique also has a woman prime minister, in Luisa Diogo, while Nigeria’s finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is probably more powerful than many of Africa’s male heads of state; she certainly commands more money than the vast majority of them.

Besides these there are many more women ministers, and several women candidates are currently campaigning in presidential elections. And we are not just talking about figureheads: Rwanda’s parliament boasts the highest number of women members in the world, at 48.8%, and the parliaments in South Africa, Mozambique and Burundi are each over 30% female.

Nor have such developments necessarily come in the teeth of resistance: the architects of the African Union, overwhelmingly male, insisted that 50% of its commissioners should be women, and every delegation to the new pan-African parliament will have a minimum quota of women.

“Mama Ellen’s” appeal to Liberian women voters was evident during the campaign. International banker she may be, but she looked fully at home at village level, cracking jokes in Liberian English and singing and dancing with her supporters.

Johnson-Sirleaf is quoted as saying she wants “to bring motherly sensitivity and emotion to the presidency” and heal the wounds of war.

In similar vein, she told a journalist recently: “Women are the ones who truly have the heart to care and serve, perhaps because of the role that nature has bestowed on us. A woman is naturally crafted to take care of the children and keep the home together, and our constitution is patterned towards selfless service.”

In truth, such comments belong to the campaign trail: she is not famous in international financial circles for her mothering skills. Her supporters have good reason for calling this hard-headed, business-minded manager, who is tough on herself and others, “our man”.

Women may gain under her leadership, but it will be because she believes their market stalls are vital to the country’s economic stability; she will work for peace not because she is a woman but because that is the only route to growth and a new deal for Liberians.

“Ellen doesn’t rely on her gender,” says Nana Tanko, who leads the Open Society Initiative for West Africa. “She’s not a sentimental person. The ordinary woman on the street is delighted, and they hope she will have more open ears, but I don’t think she will give women special treatment.”

And she warns that Johnson-Sirleaf still has some listening to do. “I’m glad she had to earn her victory in the second round by hearing what Liberians are saying. Meaningful engagement with people at grassroots level has been lacking until now.

“Ellen can be confident because of her international experience and professional standing - but now she has to get down to the ground and listen.”

That view is echoed by some in Liberia who complain that as a politician and businesswoman during the many years of corrupt government and conflict, Johnson-Sirleaf is part of the country’s problem and has not always advanced the cause of peace.

Whether such comments are sour grapes or fair comment, there is little doubt that she will have to mend some fences. In the end, though, Liberia is a challenge that could defeat anyone. If things go wrong for Johnson-Sirleaf, it won’t be because she is a woman.

� Akwe Amosu is a writer and broadcaster on African affairs

Posted at 1:12 PM · Comments (0)

November 9 2005 Copyright The Financial Times

The Chinese president’s visit to Britain this week provided a great
opportunity to talk about better bilateral trade links and China’s
human rights record. But I hope Tony Blair also was able, at some point, to
talk about China’s extraordinary demographics – something which could
shape thecountry’s destiny over the coming decades.

One reason for China’s stellar growth is that it is at a demographic
sweet-spot. The massive reduction in infant mortality achieved by
China’s barefoot doctors in the 1960s and 1970s is now yielding a surge of
young workers – an extra 10m working-age adults per year. China’s
challenge now is just to absorb them into the labour force. Add to that the massive
population flow from the countryside and you can see why wages are low
and growth is so fast. There are few pensioners and there are not many
children either. The rabbit is indeed in the middle of the python.

As early as 2015, China’s working age population will actually start
falling. By 2040, today’s young workers will be pensioners – in
fact the world’s second largest population, after India, will be Chinese
pensioners. There could well be 100m Chinese people aged over 80, more than the
current worldwide total, as Richard Jackson and Neil Howe point out in their
excellent paper, The Graying of the Middle Kingdom (CSIS 2004).

Because of China’s one-child policy there will be fewer new workers
under its so-called “4,2,1” population structure – four grandparents,
two parents and one child. This is a demographic transition that many countries go
through. But a process that is taking a century in the west will take
40 years there. The desperate rush for economic growth is fuelled by fears
that China could grow old before it grows rich.

Not so long ago, China was one of the world’s most youthful
countries, with a median age of 20. Its median age is now estimated at 33. By 2050, the
United Nations forecasts, China’s median age could be 45, against 43
for the UK and 41 for the US.

Older countries are good at incremental improvements in productivity
that come from age and experience. But they are not good at the type of
improvement in performance that comes from doing things differently.
Radical innovation seems to come from youth.

Another important dimension to all this is that China does not have a
strong civil society. What it does have instead is strong family ties. Old
people are the responsibility of their families, and about two-thirds of
people aged over 65 in China live with their children. Only 1 per cent of
those over 80 are in old people’s homes, compared with 20 per cent in the
US.

Imposing the one-child policy on these long established customs is
having
an
extraordinary effect. If you can have only one child it becomes highly
desirable to have a boy. The rule is not as strictly enforced as it
was,
but
you can now see its effect on the second child, which in the eyes of
many
Chinese really is the last chance to have a boy. For every 100 female
second
children, there are 152 males. Overall, there are now about 120 boys
for
every 100 girls in China.

The country is waking up to this extraordinary imbalance. Last year it
banned ultrasound testing to try to stop gender-based abortion. But
already
it means China is facing a world not unlike a traditional Oxbridge
college,
with far too many men relative to women. That is why we can already
read in
the media accounts of young women being bribed or even kidnapped from
places
such as North Korea or Vietnam. China is going to have to attract
large-scale female immigration or many of its young men will leave.

Gender balance can shape a society’s values. If men are in the
majority,
their negotiating position is weak and they have to be prudent and
hard-working to win a wife. If women are in the majority, it is their
negotiating position that is weak and men can get away with being
irresponsible and feckless. (One theory about the problems of
America’s
inner cities is that there is a shortage of young men because of
large-scale
incarceration and high levels of military service.)

So China is going to be full of old people and rather earnest,
frustrated
young men. It will be one of the most dramatic and unusual demographic
changes the world will have seen for a very long time, and Chinese
leaders
now would do well to plan for such a future.

The writer, UK opposition spokesman for trade and industry, is a member
of
the Global Aging Initiative, established by the Centre for Strategic
and
International Studies in Washington DC

Posted at 11:25 PM · Comments (0)

It’s probably a sign of impending old age but these days, I find myself recalling the words of my late grandmother and applying them to current life situations.

Just the other day, I freaked someone out by quoting an ancient Chinese proverb in connection to a work-related topic — forget the fact that I was wearing a shirt from Number Nine (OK, it’s from several seasons back, but still!) and jeans from Miss Sixty, I was immediately branded “roushi (old master)” and offered a walking stick. But that very night I witnessed an impressively made-up, decked-out oneechan (babe) in 5-inch heels outside the am/pm conbini (convenience store) in Roppongi and she was lecturing — yes, lecturing — her girlfriend because the latter had thrown away a packet of half-eaten sandwiches. “Nanishiteruno, mottainai! Me ga tsubureruyo! (What are you doing? It’s so wasteful. You’ll be struck blind!)” she said and at that moment I had to stifle an urge to run over and give her a hug. Surely, surely that was no oneechan but my grandma, come back to life in dyed golden hair and a leopard-print dress.

Actually, a lot of Japanese seem to be channeling the wisdom of their grandmothers and/or equivalents lately as the word mottainai (that suggests something shouldn’t be thrown away or wasted) is uttered up and down the nation like some newly coined, exotic phrase, instead of one of the most oft-repeated words in the Japanese vocabulary. Generations of Japanese had been screaming mottainai for many centuries, threatening blindness, sudden death of a parent, plague and other heavenly punishments for wasting anything, ANYTHING at all.

In my family, the word was uttered by the elder female members at least seven times a day and any action was measured according to the standard of whether it was, or wasn’t, a waste. I grew up thinking that the habit of repeating mottainai was an acquired trait that came flying out of nowhere and stuck to the brain of people over 35. In my younger years it was practically a dirty word; one that should never be uttered in the presence of one’s boyfriend for fear of being called “dassaaai (tackkyyy)!” or the dreaded: “obasan-kusaaaaai (smells like a middle-aged woman)!”

And now mottainai is totally acceptable, even fashionable. The instigator, of course, was 2004 Nobel Prize winner Prof. Wangari Maathai, who earlier this year linked the word mottainai to her Green Belt Movement. Which is wonderful and honoring but leaves a strange feeling at the back of the mind — why is it that the Japanese refuse to recognize certain merits of Japanese culture (say, ukiyo-e, green tea, Takashi Murakami, et al.) unless a foreign voice tells them it’s OK to do so?

My grandmother saved everything from bottle caps to old bath towels. She refused to throw out even a spoonful of rice left in the corner of the suihanki (rice cooker), which she would recycle into a bowl of ume-gayu (porridge with salted plum). Far from being praised for her thrift, however, her antics were most often simply tolerated, or joked about. She used to cover her wrists in rubber bands that came with the mail, and peel them off one by one to use on various household tasks. I begged her not to do this, and then one day I got her a box of colored rubber bands (thinking that at least the different hues would look cute) upon which she scolded — yes, you guessed it: “mottainai!”

Grandma’s reasoning was that it was better to have them handy than to waste time looking for them. Now as we all know, rubber bands are in. The mottainai fad is tied to the howaito bando (white band) fad which has stretched out into the kala bando (colored band) fad (each color representing a different social statement) and now even the kacho (section manager) across the hall is letting his howaito bando peek from under his suit sleeve. These wide rubber bands (because really, that’s what they are) are not only the Coolest Things (endorsed by the likes of soccer star Hide Nakata and actress Norika Fujiwara), it shows the wearer is socially and ecologically conscious, that he/she is the type to: gomi o bunbetsu suru (divide the trash) and kokyo no kotsukikan ni noru (take public transportation) among other environmentally friendly acts.

It’s a good thing Grandma is no longer around because she’d be chortling nonstop. And what would that do to her digestion, ume-gayu or not?

The Japan Times: Nov. 8, 2005
(C) All rights reserved

Posted at 4:18 PM · Comments (0)

Nov. 13, 2005. 07:50 AM

Beauty, as it turns out, isn’t skin deep. A study at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, has shown that attractiveness in females relates to the hormonal composition of blood.

Researchers found that men tend to be attracted to women who have high levels of estrogen, a naturally occurring sex hormone linked to fertility. The report also found that women with high estrogen levels had more feminine features, such as bigger eyes, fuller lips and smoother skin.

The researchers photographed 59 women between 18 and 25, who were wearing no makeup, and took a urine sample from each subject for hormone analysis. A group of men then rated the women in the photographs for health, femininity and attractiveness.

The results showed that men were most attracted to the women who tested for high levels of estrogen. Miriam Law Smith, who helped carry out the research, says men were, in effect, choosing the women best poised to bear children.

“From an evolutionary point of view, it would now make sense that men prefer feminine female faces because those are the women who have higher estrogen levels, and who are ultimately more fertile,” says Law Smith. “In our evolutionary past, men who favoured women with feminine features would be choosing the more fertile female, thus would have had more babies and be passing on more of their genes.”

The study also suggests cosmetics do much more than merely add a touch of colour to a woman’s face.

Law Smith believes women wear makeup to mimic the facial cues that allude to heightened fertility. A woman with low levels of estrogen, then, would be more likely to wear more makeup.

“What we think is happening here is that women are using makeup to cover up the cues of low fertility that would normally be found in the face,” she says.

It seems to work. In an alternate test, photographs were taken of the same women, this time wearing makeup. The rankings showed no correlation between beauty and estrogen levels. The women had successfully mimicked the facial fertility cues.

Law Smith has been asked repeatedly if the study will result in new beauty treatments.

The point of the experiment, she says, was not to find a way to enhance female beauty but to explore the workings of human attraction. She points out that while estrogen supplements have been known to clear up skin, they aren’t likely to give a developed woman more feminine features.

“We wouldn’t suggest that this research could implicate the use of estrogen supplements to improving women’s (attractiveness),” says Law Smith. “I would never recommend giving adults or adolescents estrogen in the hope that it would make them more attractive.”

That men are hardwired to be attracted to the women at the peak of fertility � an affinity that doesn’t lessen with men’s age � seems to paint a bleak picture for older women.

But Smith Law says the test shows only men’s initial reaction and doesn’t take into consideration the other elements that come into play when choosing a partner.

Interestingly, the phenomenon doesn’t appear to apply when the genders are switched.

“Men with higher levels of testosterone have more masculine-looking faces, but it’s different in terms of determining attractiveness because masculine men aren’t always found more attractive,” says Law Smith.

“Females tend to have a lot more variation on what they find attractive. A handsome, rugged man might ultimately not make a good father… Multiple motives contribute to female preference, whereas male preference, across all cultures and time, tend to favour the most feminine-looking females.”

Answer: The composite image of 10 women with high estrogen levels is the one on the left.

Posted at 3:52 PM · Comments (1)

Corpyright Barrons

(We know what they give losers…)

Last Wednesday, by way of illustration, Alan Greenspan, the present and impending former chairman of the Federal Reserve, received one of these coveted metallic decorations. He thus joined two other prominent ex-civil servants, Paul Bremer and George Tenet, who were similarly honored last year.

In the four decades since its inception, the medal has undeniably been awarded to persons of true distinction and the selected this year were no exception, including the likes of the great heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali; the comedienne (we trust we won’t be accused of being hopelessly sexist by not calling her a comedian, but we’re meekly bowing to the official designation) Carol Burnett; the historian Robert Conquest; and the renowned golfer Jack Nicklaus.

But we fear that Mr. Bremer, Mr. Tenet and Mr. Greenspan lay claim to a different order of achievement. Mr. Tenet, late of the CIA, became famous, you may recall, for his conviction that it was a “slam dunk” that Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction, thus paving the way for the invasion of Iraq. And Mr. Bremer during his disastrous stint as proconsul, made such a botch of the occupation as to ensure that the dream of turning that woebegotten nation into a prosperous, peaceful democracy would metamorphose into a nightmare without end.

For his part, Mr. Greenspan created two of the greatest speculative bubbles in all of history, one in stocks and one in housing. Just as a measure of how remarkable an accomplishment that is, none of his dozen predecessors stretching back over nearly a century, including such formidable figures as William McChesney Martin and Paul Volcker, can legitimately be credited for creating even so much as a bubblette.

It’s almost as if Mr. Bush — who is certainly not without his playful side — in awarding the medal to this trio was aiming for a trifecta of the messups. A kind of sly payback for the pain they’ve caused him, both at home and abroad. Or, it could be, a profoundly forgiving soul, he adheres to the dictum that no bad deed goes unrewarded.

We want to be fair. Mr. Greenspan’s unrivaled bubble-blowing talent is by no means his only call on recognition. Equally noteworthy is his critical contribution to making this proud nation the world’s leading debtor and his key role in enabling Americans to become the world’s most remorseless borrowers, ravenous spenders and reluctant savers. Nor should we slight his essential participation in the magical transformation of lush budget surpluses into historic budget deficits.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, for all its status as a vaunted symbol of appreciation for service to the citizenry, is by no means Mr. Greenspan’s only tangible evidence of the esteem he so widely enjoys. Over the years, he has earned innumerable honors for his outstanding performance in behalf of the commonweal.

Thus, in our mind’s eye, we can see him dusting off a place on his award-laden mantelpiece for the Medal of Freedom right next to the Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service bestowed on him back in November 2001.

If memory serves, he accepted the prize a mere handful of days after Enron disclosed it had filed five years’ worth of phony financial reports. Ah, well, for all his heralded virtues, Mr. G’s timing has always left something to be desired.

Posted at 4:56 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2005

LAGOS, Nigeria — Zanzibar
As the dust begins to settle on Zanzibar’s election, perhaps we can look at the vote with a little more objectivity.
Reporters flocked in, lured by the promise of rigged elections in an African tourist paradise where the smell of blood-letting mingled with the scent of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Moreover, the Tanzanian balloon was too tempting not to prick. The East African country, which incorporated the islands of Zanzibar in 1964, is one of the continent’s success stories: politically peaceful, democratic and exhibiting consistently high rates of economic growth. Surely something must be wrong.
For days, journalists highlighted the run-up to the election with stories and photos of mayhem and murder, intimidation and fraud.
Then the election took place. As most diplomatic observers expected, the ruling party - the one allied with the ruling party of mainland Tanzania - won with a small majority, while the opposition gained a considerable presence in the House of Representatives. Yet the Economist reported, “Western diplomats tended to deride the vote in private but endorse it publicly.”
One European ambassador said, “The media don’t see it from the inside… We have not had a catastrophe here.” Others point to the extraordinary lengths President Benjamin Mkapa went to to avoid a blood bath and make sure the election was conducted fairly and openly, overcoming much resistance from his party colleagues on Zanzibar.
The observer mission of the Commonwealth said, “Overall, this was a good election.” The European Union’s team concluded: “The election process was a marked improvement on past polls and it was generally administered in an efficient manner.”
No wonder President Mkapa exploded: “Derision, cynicism, prejudice, stereotyping and hunger for stories of failure than of success will be the undoing of democratic progress on the continent.”
The media are stuck in a rut on Africa. For over a decade, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Africa was largely a mess of economic misrule and civil war.
While Tanzania was exceptionally peaceful, it also was in economic decline. Zanzibar, with the traditional hostility between its Arab-descended ruling class and its African peasantry and proletariat, was always simmering on the edge of violence.
But a lot of good things have been happening in Africa in the last decade, as Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa report makes clear. Violence has gone sharply down.
The number of civil wars is much reduced and the recent election in Liberia is one more indication of how the worst violence can be ended by a mixture of forceful African diplomacy, African and UN peacekeeping and quiet backroom support from the United States and Europe.
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, President Thabo Mbeki and former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa have worked hard at mediating successfully a wide number of civil wars.
If one looks at the economies of Africa, it seems as though a miracle is underway. Seventeen sub-Saharan African countries attained 5 percent annual growth in 2003.
If we narrow this field down to the active democracies with firm term limits on the elected head of state we see an even more significant degree of promise.
Senegal, Mali and Ghana have had for a number of years steady 5 percent growth rates. Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with half of West Africa’s population, has achieved 5 to 6 percent growth the last few years; Mozambique 7 to 9 percent; Botswana, boasting the world’s fastest growing economy in the 1990s, 7 to 10 percent, and Tanzania nearly 6 percent for the last four years.
In all of these countries inflation is sharply down and the received wisdom of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is that if they continue with their reforms at the same pace as they have over the last decade, they can push these growth rates up even further.
This will make a big impact on a range of very important things, from adequate water supplies to girls’ education to declining birth and poverty rates.
It is a question of perspective and mind-set. How many of today’s African reporters and editors knew Africa in the 1960s and early-70s when there was progress? Not very many. Most of their memories only go back to the dark 80s and 90s when it has been decline and carnage.
As Benjamin Disraeli wrote, “Thought is the child of action.”’ But Disraeli also wrote, “Experience is the child of thought,” and the press covering Africa badly need to have some new experiences.
(Jonathan Power is a commentator on foreign affairs.)

Posted at 2:44 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright London Review of Books
Vol. 27 No. 22 dated 17 November 2005

Mao Zedong�s long, wicked life has generated some lengthy biographies in English. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday�s is the longest, having overtaken Philip Short�s Mao (1999) and Li Zhisui�s The Private Life of Chairman Mao (1995). It represents an extraordinary research effort. The authors have been working on the project since at least 1986, to judge by the date of the earliest interview cited, which � and this is typical of the access they gained to many highly-placed and interesting people � was with Milovan Djilas. They have visited remote battle sites of the Long March, Mao�s cave in Yan�an, �over two dozen� of Mao�s secret private villas around the country, the Russian presidential and foreign ministry archives, and other archives in Albania, Bulgaria, London and Washington DC. They even tried � and failed � to get access to the Chinese war
memorial in Pyongyang.

The book cites by name 363 interviewees in 38 countries, including two former US presidents; Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore; the Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko; the Mao aide and later Chinese head of state Yang Shangkun; a former Japanese cabinet secretary who
confided that Mao escorted his prime minister to the lavatory in Zhongnanhai; Mao�s daughter and grandsons; and the Red Guard leader Kuai Dafu. Chang and Halliday also cite dozens of interviews with anonymous sources, including a laundry worker who describes the fine cotton used
for Mao�s underwear in Yan�an; a pharmacist who allegedly prescribed lysol
for one of Mao�s political rivals in the 1940s; Mao�s daughter�s nanny in
Yan�an; staff at Mao�s villas; and �multiple� Mao girlfriends. They
have used about a thousand non-archival written sources, including published
and unpublished works in Chinese, English, Russian, French and Italian.
These include many that are unfamiliar to me and perhaps to many other
specialists on Chinese Communist history and politics.

As their subtitle proclaims, in virtually every chapter Chang and
Halliday
have turned up �unknown stories� of Mao. Some, if true, will be big
news
for historians. Mao amassed a private fortune during the Jiangxi Soviet
period; his troops fought only one real battle during the Long March;
their break-out from Nationalist military encirclement was deliberately
allowed by Chiang Kai-shek; the most famous battle of the Long March
never
took place; Mao attacked India in 1962 with the support of the Soviet
Union.

Other scoops have important implications for Mao�s character. He
poisoned
a rival during the Yan�an period. He would send his own soldiers to be
massacred if it would help him to move up the ranks of the Party. He
took
pleasure in the slow, agonising death of Liu Shaoqi. We already knew
that
Mao was selfish and ruthless. Chang and Halliday add that he was a
brutal,
sadistic power-monger lacking in vision or ideals, comfort-loving and
often lazy, riding the revolution to power to satisfy a lust for
torture
and sex.

It is hard to imagine a more panoramic subject in terms of time,
geography
and historical forces. Yet Chang and Halliday focus tightly on Mao.
Around
him we glimpse a Communist Party leadership of cowards and fools,
either
manipulated by Mao, as Zhou Enlai was, or killed by him. In the deeper
background, we perceive a political-movement-turned-regime that engaged
in
fifty years of mass torture, killing and destruction for no good
purpose,
leaving its people impoverished and exhausted. Lost in the distance are
the larger forces of history that some might think explain the violence
and longevity of Mao�s regime: sociological or institutional
explanations,
or explanations based on China�s geostrategic position between two
contending superpowers in the Cold War. Such theories would presumably
be
too impersonal for this intensely moralising work. They might seem to
exculpate Mao by suggesting that he did not always intend the disasters
he
presided over.

That Mao�s story might still be to some extent unknown need not
surprise
us, given the secrecy that surrounds the Chinese archives, the regime�s
tight control over historiography and propaganda, and Deng Xiaoping�s
decision in 1981 to preserve the regime�s continuity by committing the
Party to an official view of its former ruler as �70 per cent right, 30
per cent wrong�. Mao (or something resembling Mao) remains embalmed in
the
heart of Tiananmen Square, and his image remains branded on the
official
heart of the Party. Deng�s decision influences all officially
sanctioned
writing on the former dictator, and that means everything openly
published
on Mao in China. Few historians outside China in recent decades have
clung
to the older romantic image of Mao as a sage, visionary and humanist,
but
Chang and Halliday�s Mao is a revelation even for today�s demystified
historiography.

There are problems, however: many of their discoveries come from
sources
that cannot be checked, others are openly speculative or are based on
circumstantial evidence, and some are untrue.

The inaccessible sources are of two kinds: anonymous interviews and
unpublished documents or books. The former include �the wife of a
Shanghai
delegate�, �interview with a local Party historian�, �interview with an
old underground worker�, �interviews with people who had been
told�, �interview with a staff member who knew about Mao�s
account�, �interviews with Mao�s girlfriends�, �interviews with Mao�s
personal staff�, �interview with a Russian insider� and �interview with
a
family member�. The book contains dozens of citations like these. The
inaccessible documents include the partially unpublished manuscript
memoirs of Mao�s second wife, Yang Kai-hui (one of these manuscripts is
quoted at length in words �mostly recalled from memory after reading
this
document in an archive�); the �records of interrogations of
executioners
in the 1960s, unpublished�; �contemporary newspaper reports�;
the �unpublished manuscript of a person present�; the �handwritten,
unpublished� diaries of Mao�s son Anying; �medical documents that
established the poisoning�; and many more.*

Basing their argument on such sources, Chang and Halliday claim that
the
most famous battle of the Long March, at the Dadu Bridge in 1935, never
took place. Their key piece of evidence is an interview with
a �sprightly … local woman … who was 93 years old when we met
her
in 1997�, supplemented by an interview in 1983 with the then curator of
the museum at the bridge. Their related claim that Chiang Kai-shek had
deliberately �left the passage open for the Reds� is unsourced.

Chang and Halliday state that Mao�s chief political rival in Yan�an,
Wang
Ming, was poisoned by a Dr Jin, acting at Mao�s behest. They say that
this
was established by an official inquiry, whose �findings, which we
obtained, remain a well-kept secret�. They cite the document in the
notes,
but do not say where it can be seen. They assert that Mao blamed the
Indonesian Communist Party for failing to seize power in Jakarta in
1965.
Their evidence is a conversation Mao had with Japanese Communists in
1966,
in particular some remarks which, according to the source note, �were
withheld from the published version� of the talks and �were made
available
to us by the Japanese Communist Party Central Committee�. How other
scholars can consult these remarks isn�t stated.

Chang and Halliday report that near the beginning of the Great Cultural
Proletarian Revolution, Mao�s ally Lin Biao warned the other members of
the Politburo that Mao had been preparing to face a coup for years and
had
intensified these preparations in the previous few months. Their source
is
a three-volume work called �Documents for Researching the Cultural
Revolution� compiled by the People�s Liberation Army Defence
University,
which they describe as unpublished. They do not say where they saw it.

They argue that Mao rejected a death sentence during the Cultural
Revolution for the purged state president Liu Shaoqi because he
preferred
to have Liu suffer a slow, lingering death, that Mao was kept �fully
informed� of Liu�s sufferings, that photographs of the dying Liu were
taken and, by implication, that Mao saw them. The sources for this
string
of assertions are interviews with Liu�s widow, Wang Guangmei, and with
an
unnamed member of Lin Biao�s family.

Of course, anonymous interviews and unpublished sources are often used
in
reputable China scholarship. They have to be, because of the secrecy
imposed by the regime on its own history and workings. I have engaged
in
such research myself. What is troubling about Mao: The Untold Story is
the
authors� failure to give readers any information to help them to
evaluate
their sources� reliability. A lengthy research project that denigrates
Mao, involving access to many individuals and many remote and secret
locations all over China, over a period of many years, and drawing on a
significant number of sensitive unpublished sources, in a country where
the keys to history are tightly held, legitimately raises questions
that
the authors should have anticipated and addressed.

How was it possible to gain access? Who gave authorisation or
protection,
formal or informal, to this project, or if none was given, how was
secrecy
maintained as the research progressed? How were the interviewees found?
In
what settings were they interviewed? In what manner were they
questioned?
How were records of the interviews kept? What motivations did
informants
have for talking? What methods were used to confirm their identities
and
to corroborate their information? How were unpublished sources
obtained?
How were they authenticated? Where, if anywhere, may they be consulted
by
other scholars (and if they can�t, why not)?

Such a methodological essay might have included some reflection by
Chang
and Halliday on the history of their project and their motives for
taking
it on. Chang is the author of the justly acclaimed Wild Swans (1991),
which told the stories of her grandmother, her mother and herself, over
the span of seven turbulent decades from 1909 to 1978. Chang was one of
the millions of people damaged by Mao. Her anger, deeply justified,
shapes
this new book.

Halliday�s name appears in smaller type on the spine and dust jacket,
suggesting that his role in the project was secondary. He seems to have
been responsible for the use of Russian, Bulgarian and Albanian
archives
and sources, and for interviews with Russian diplomats and Comintern
officials. Not a China specialist, he is among other things the author
of
A Political History of Japanese Colonialism, the co-author of a
revisionist history of the Korean War and the editor of the English-
language edition of the memoirs of Enver Hoxha. In short, he appears to
be
a man of the left, whose disappointment with Mao may be political as
well
as personal.

It is clear that many of Chang and Halliday�s claims are based on
distorted, misleading or far-fetched use of evidence. They state, for
example, that the Chinese Communist Party �was founded in 1920�, and
not,
as is usually said, in 1921 � a point they think important because Mao
wasn�t in Shanghai in 1920. The two sources they cite, however, merely
confirm that early Communist cells were founded a year before the First
Party Congress met in Shanghai in 1921, something not contested by
historians. They claim that the Kuomintang politician Wang Jingwei was
the
hidden �patron� of Mao�s early Party career, which appears to be a
misreading of the fact that Wang, who served briefly as head of the
Nationalists, appointed Mao as well as other Communists to KMT posts
during the time of the KMT-Communist united front.

Chang and Halliday cite four sources to support their statement that
Mao
amassed �a private fortune� during the Jiangxi Soviet period of the
early
1930s. One is an anonymous interview which cannot be checked. The
second
source is a book in Chinese by a writer called Shu Long, which says
that
Mao ordered his brother, Zemin, who was president of the Communists�
state
bank, to disperse money from a �secret treasury� to the various
Communist
military units when a gathering enemy offensive threatened the money�s
security. The third is The Long March by Harrison Salisbury (1985),
which
says similarly that Zemin took part in hiding the Red Army�s money and
treasure in a mountain cave for two years until it was removed shortly
before the Long March and divided among the Communist armies that were
about to set off on the March. The fourth source is a file in the
Harrison
Salisbury papers at Columbia University. However, the citation is
garbled,
so the file Chang and Halliday used cannot be located in Columbia�s
Rare
Book and Manuscript Library (nor can the correct citation be
reconstructed
from the information given).

In the chapter subtitled �Chiang Lets the Reds Go�, Chang and Halliday
say
they have �no doubt� that Chiang Kai-shek allowed Mao�s army to escape
from encirclement in 1934 so that it could threaten the warlords of
Sichuan and Yunnan, who would then have to capitulate to Chiang to save
themselves. It�s true that the Red Army escaped, but most scholars
attribute this to Chiang�s incompetence. Chang and Halliday�s clinching
evidence is a published reminiscence that Chiang told his secretary:
�Now
when the Communist army go into Guizhou, we can follow in. It is better
than us starting a war to conquer Guizhou. Sichuan and Yunnan will have
to
welcome us, to save themselves.� Although the quote is accurate, it
does
not prove the existence of a strategy. The source � who is not the
person
to whom the remark was allegedly made, Chen Bulei, but a lower-ranking
staff member, Yan Daogang � himself explains Chiang�s remark by saying
that he first made every effort to prevent the Red Army from entering
Guizhou, and only after this failed decided to pursue the Reds there
despite the opposition of the local warlord. In any case, one would
expect
a complex, long-term strategy of this kind to leave more than one
fugitive
piece of evidence.

They argue that the battle of Tucheng during the Long March was a huge
defeat, not a victory as officially claimed, and that Mao engineered
this
disaster on purpose. This conclusion is reached by distorting what the
sources say. The sources describe a protracted battle during which Mao
refused to withdraw his troops and during which they suffered heavy
casualties, but that nonetheless ended in a Red Army victory. Although
the
sources may be tendentious, Chang and Halliday do not explain why it is
reasonable to use them in support of an opposite argument.

They believe that Chiang Kai-shek acceded to the Communists� demands
for a
united front against Japan during the Xi�an Incident of 1936 because
Stalin made this a condition for releasing Chiang�s son, Ching-kuo,
from
Moscow. Chang and Halliday call this a �Reds-for-son deal that Chiang
had
been working on for years� and that �marked the end of the civil war
between the CCP and the Nationalists�. Their sources for this argument,
developed through several chapters, are all circumstantial; the key
piece
of evidence is that when Zhou Enlai met Chiang in Xi�an, he told Chiang
that Moscow would send his son home. Their source for this information
is
Han Suyin�s biography of Zhou, in which it is claimed that a senior
Communist official overheard this remark while he was standing outside
Chiang�s door. Han � in any case an unreliable author � does report
that
Wang Bingnan overheard part of the conversation between Zhou and Chiang
and that Zhou �assured Chiang that his son would return, that he was
patriotic and undoubtedly wished his father to resist the invaders�.
But
she does not frame this as part of a deal: rather, as evidence of Zhou
Enlai�s human touch. There is no direct evidence of a Stalin-Chiang
deal
and no good reason to think that Chiang would have altered his strategy
for a personal reason.

The chapter entitled �Red Mole Triggers China-Japan War� argues that
the
KMT general who in 1937 resisted Japanese encroachments in Shanghai
against Chiang Kai-shek�s orders, thus triggering an intense battle,
was a
Communist agent acting on commands that �almost certainly� came from
Stalin. To support that interpretation, Chang and Halliday cite the
general�s memoirs, published years later, in which he states that as a
military cadet at the Whampoa Academy more than a decade before the
battle
of Shanghai he had been sympathetic to the Communists, who were then in
their first united front with the KMT and formed part of the leadership
of
Whampoa. General Zhang says that Zhou Enlai told him at that time �
1925 �
to �wait for a while for the appropriate time� to join the Party. �But
the
CCP guarantees that from now on we will covertly support you and make
your
work go easily.� This becomes in Chang and Halliday�s telling an
instruction �to stay in the Nationalists and collaborate �covertly�
with
the CCP� and � along with the fact that Russians in contact with Zhang
were subsequently executed � shaky proof for the proposition that Zhang
acted 12 years later on orders from Stalin.

Chang and Halliday say that Mao got Zhou Enlai to draw up a list of
notable people to be exempted from persecution during the Cultural
Revolution, and that Zhou does not deserve the credit that he later got
for saving people. Neither of their sources backs this up. One is a
compendium of Mao�s memos and other documents, which includes a one-
sentence directive from Mao to Zhou to protect one individual. The
compilers� note says that Zhou did this and then also drew up a short
list
of other people who should be protected; it doesn�t say that Mao told
him
to do this. The other source, an article by Michael Schoenhals, says
that
rather than intervening in persecutions managed by others, Zhou himself
managed the main high-level persecutions of the Cultural Revolution.
While
this supports Chang and Halliday�s point that Zhou was not blameless,
it
does nothing to clarify the issue of who drew up the lists of notables
to
be protected.

Some of Chang and Halliday�s arguments go beyond the misuse of sources
to
make claims that are simply unsourced. Perhaps they think these are
conclusions that flow self-evidently from the pattern of events. They
include claims that Stalin deliberately kept his ambassador away from
the
Security Council meeting in June 1950 which authorised a UN response to
North Korea�s invasion of the South, because he wanted to draw US
troops
into Korea; that Mao helped cause Stalin�s fatal stroke; that Mao�s
remarks to the East German leader Walter Ulbricht about the Great Wall
had
something to do with Ulbricht�s decision some years later to erect the
Berlin Wall; and that Mao started both the Taiwan Strait crises, in
1954
and 1958, in order to provoke an American nuclear threat to China that
would in turn put pressure on the Soviet Union to give more help to
China�s own atomic bomb programme.

Chang and Halliday�s false claims include the assertion that Mao had
planned for some time what became in 1962 the Sino-Indian border war,
and,
as part of this, a �hefty horse-trade� occurred in which Khrushchev
told
the outgoing Chinese ambassador that Moscow would take China�s side if
war
broke out with India in return for Mao�s support for the Russian
position
on missiles in Cuba. But according to their own source, Mao�s
ambassador
reported these Russian protestations to Beijing as a hypocritical
attempt
to mask a growing alignment with India. Chang and Halliday further
imply
that Khrushchev�s promise of support helped Mao decide to give �the go-
ahead for crack troops to storm Indian positions�; they fail to provide
the important background information that, to quote an authoritative
study
by John Garver, Nehru had previously �ordered Indian forces to advance
into disputed areas and clear Chinese forces, though without firing
first.
India ignored Chinese warnings to halt this �forward policy�,� and only
then did the Red Army strike �suddenly with overwhelming force�.

Chang and Halliday state that on the eve of the Cultural Revolution,
Peng
Zhen, the mayor of Beijing, flew to Sichuan for secret talks with the
purged general Peng Dehuai. Their source confirms that this meeting
took
place. But they misreport what the source says, claiming that the
meeting
was conducted �in secret� (their italics), whereas it was arranged by
the
local Party secretary, Li Jingquan, as indeed it would have had to have
been under the bureaucratic system operating in China at that time,
although Li and Peng Zhen agreed not to report the meeting to
Beijing. �What the two Pengs talked about has never been revealed,�
Chang
and Halliday write, although the book they cite contains four pages of
reconstructed dialogue. �Judging from the timing and the colossal risk
Mayor Peng took in visiting� Peng Dehuai, they say, �it is highly
likely
that they discussed the feasibility of using the army to stop Mao.�
Nothing of that sort is indicated in their source, which says that the
two
discussed an ideological campaign then unfolding in Beijing. It is
unlikely that the two discussed military options, because neither of
them �
a civilian official and a purged general � had any access at all to
troops.

Chang and Halliday report the case of a brigadier general called Cai
Tiegen, who thought of organising a guerrilla force to resist Mao
during
the Cultural Revolution and was shot for that crime. Their source,
however, states that Cai was the victim of a frame-up by a political
activist, who distorted some discussions between Cai and his friends
about
guerrilla warfare to create the false impression that Cai wanted to
form
guerrilla bands to oppose the regime.

These three kinds of flaw do not rule out the possibility that in some
cases Chang and Halliday�s findings may be true and represent a
significant contribution to scholarship. The book makes the most
thorough
use to date of the many memoirs that have emerged since Mao�s death,
written by his colleagues, cadres, staff and victims, and shows special
insight into the suffering of Mao�s wives and children. It contains
much
information from Russian, Albanian and Bulgarian archives and
publications, which so far as I know other scholars have not used.
Among
the new findings from these sources are that it was the Russians who
first
ordered the CCP to pay attention to the peasants; that Sun Yat-sen�s
widow, Soong Ching-ling, was a Soviet agent; that the Russians had
dealings with a warlord rival of Chiang Kai-shek�s in the 1930s,
leading
him to think they might sponsor him to replace Chiang as China�s ruler;
that Mao initiated a long-term collaboration with Japanese intelligence
in
1939; that Mao had his own �powerful intelligence network� within the
American Communist Party, unavailable to the Russians; that, before the
Korean War, Mao promised Kim Il-song that China would send in Chinese
troops; that at some unspecified date Mao plotted to depose Kim
Il-song;
and that in the early 1950s Mao undertook unspecified �conspiratorial
operations� in the USSR. Such assertions must be examined in the
future,
but cannot yet be accepted as established conclusions.

Chang and Halliday are magpies: every bright piece of evidence goes in,
no
matter where it comes from or how reliable it is. Jade and plastic
together, the pieces are arranged in a stark mosaic, which portrays a
possible but not a plausible Mao. This Mao is lazy, uncommitted, driven
by
lust for power and comfort, lacking in original ideas, tactically smart
but strategically stupid, disliked by everyone he works with, selfish
and
mindlessly cruel. �Absolute selfishness and irresponsibility lay at the
heart of Mao�s outlook.� Mao was a �lukewarm believer� in Marxism. �Mao
discovered in himself a love for bloodthirsty thuggery.� He
�demonstrated
a penchant for slow killing�. He �out-bandited the bandits�. He �was
addicted to comfort�. His �most formidable weapon was pitilessness�.
This
was a man with many enemies, generated and regenerated by his
persecutions
and oppressions. �Mao evinced no particular sympathy for peasants�;
�Mao
was extremely unpopular�; �Mao was disliked by the locals.�

How could a man like this win power? Chang and Halliday�s answer is
that
he was more vicious than his rivals. Thanks to his possession of
shameful
secrets, his manipulation of slander, character assassination and
actual
murder, his withholding and falsifying of information, and his sheer
skill
at browbeating, he defeated the hardened revolutionaries who were his
former comrades-in-arms, turning Zhou Enlai into �a self-abasing
slave�, �hyper-intimidating� Liu Shaoqi, forming a purely instrumental
alliance with Lin Biao and then discarding him � and doing some
matchmaking for Lo Fu, for Mao was �shrewd about the ways of the heart,
particularly in sexually inhibited men�. Mao ran rings around Chiang
Kai-
shek because �Chiang … let personal feelings dictate his political
and
military actions.� Mao �had none of his weak spots�.

Chang and Halliday position themselves as near omniscient narrators,
permitting themselves to say constantly what Mao and others really
thought
or really intended, when we seldom have any way of knowing. A cautious
historian would avoid taking poems or speeches from Mao as a clear
expression of what he felt or intended, understanding that poetry may
express a state of feeling, and that a political speech or dialogue may
contain rhetorical flourishes, humour or irony, or may be intended to
mislead. Chang and Halliday take what Mao says literally, even his
well-
known outrageous statements that famine and nuclear warfare were no big
deal. And they repeatedly impute feelings and intentions to him when
they
lack even a poem or a speech on which to base their interpretation.

Of course Mao deserves harsh moral judgment. Too many previous accounts
of
his life, awed by his achievements, have overlooked their human cost.
But
this portrayal impedes serious moral judgment. A caricature Mao is too
easy a solution to the puzzle of modern China�s history. What we learn
from this history is that there are some very bad people: it would have
been more useful, as well as closer to the truth, had we been shown
that
there are some very bad institutions and some very bad situations, both
of
which can make bad people even worse, and give them the incentive and
the
opportunity to do terrible things.

Chang and Halliday�s white-hot fury no doubt represents the unpublished
and anonymous Chinese sources that they have used. More authentically
than
the officially licensed propaganda, these as yet subterranean opinions
reflect the current evaluation of Mao within the Party as well as
outside.
This book can thus be read as a report on the crumbling of the Mao
myth,
as well as a bombshell aimed at destroying that myth. That the Chinese
are
getting rid of their Mao myth is welcome. But more needs to take its
place
than a simple personalisation of blame.

Footnotes

* The structure of the book makes checking the sources more difficult
than
is usual for a work of serious scholarship. To identify a source, you
have
first to flip to a section of notes at the back, where source citations
are arranged by the page numbers of the main text. Under each page
number
are several bold-face tag lines keyed to sentences on that page. After
each tag line is a list of sources, often as many as five or six. These
citations provide only the author�s name and page numbers. You have to
flip back and forth in the bibliography to identify the sources. The
bibliography in turn is divided into two sections, one for Chinese
sources
and one for non-Chinese sources. Moreover, many of the source titles
are
abbreviated, so you have to check the two lists of abbreviations before
going to the two bibliographies. When multiple sources are cited for a
single assertion, it is often unclear which source is intended to
support
the controversial part of a passage in the text. If four sources fail
to
do so and the fifth is inaccessible, then the controversial assertion
is
impossible to check.

Andrew Nathan is the Class of 1919 Professor and Chair of the
Department
of Political Science at Columbia. He co-edited The Tiananmen Papers and
is
the author, with Bruce Gilley, of China�s New Rulers.

Posted at 2:31 PM · Comments (0)

The News and Observe

Over dinner a few weeks ago, the novelist Lawrence Naumoff told a troubling story. He asked students in his introduction to creative writing course at UNC-Chapel Hill if they had read Jack Kerouac. Nobody raised a hand. Then he asked if anyone had ever heard of Jack Kerouac. More blank expressions.

Naumoff began describing the legend of the literary wild man. One student offered that he had a teacher who was just as crazy. Naumoff asked the professor’s name. The student said he didn’t know. Naumoff then asked this oblivious scholar, “Do you know my name?”

After a long pause, the young man replied, “No.”

“I guess I’ve always known that many students are just taking my course to get a requirement out of the way,” Naumoff said. “But it was disheartening to see that some couldn’t even go to the trouble of finding out the name of the person teaching the course.”

The floodgates were opened and the other UNC professors at the dinner began sharing their own dispiriting stories about the troubling state of curiosity on campus. Their experiences echoed the complaints voiced by many of my book reviewers who teach at some of the nation’s best schools.

All of them have noted that such ignorance isn’t new — students have always possessed far less knowledge than they should, or think they have. But in the past, ignorance tended to be a source of shame and motivation. Students were far more likely to be troubled by not-knowing, far more eager to fill such gaps by learning. As one of my reviewers, Stanley Trachtenberg, once said, “It’s not that they don’t know, it’s that they don’t care about what they don’t know.”

This lack of curiosity is especially disturbing because it infects our broader culture. Unfortunately, it seems both inevitable and incurable.

In our increasingly complex world, the amount of information required to master any particular discipline — e.g. computers, life insurance, medicine — has expanded geometrically. We are forced to become specialists, people who know more and more about less and less.

Add to this two other factors: the mind-set that puts work at the center of American life and the deep fear spawned by the rise of globalization and other free market approaches that have turned job security into an anachronism. In this frightening new world, students do not turn to universities for mind expansion but vocational training. In the parlance of journalism, they want news they can use.

Upon graduation, they must devote ever more energy to mastering the floods of information that might help them keep their wobbly jobs. Crunched, they have little time to learn about far-flung subjects.

The narrowcasting of our lives is writ large in our culture. Faced with a near infinite range of knowledge, the Internet slices and dices it all into highly specialized niches that provide mountainous details about the slightest molehills. It is no wonder that the last mainstream outlet of general knowledge, the daily newspaper, is suffering declining readership. When people only care about what they care about, their desire to know something more, something new, evaporates like the morning dew.

Here’s where it gets really interesting. In comforting response to these exigencies, our culture gives us a pass, downplaying the importance of knowledge, culture, history and tradition. Not too long ago, students might have been embarrassed to admit they’d never heard of Jack Kerouac. Now they’re permitted to say “whatever.”

When was the last time you met anyone who was ashamed because they didn’t know something?

It hasn’t always been so. When my father, the son of Italian immigrants, was growing up in the 1930s and 40s, he aspired to be a man of learning. Forced to go to work instead of college, he read “the best books,” listened to “the best music,” learned which fork to use for his salad. He watched Fred Astaire puttin’ on his top hat and tyin’ up his white tie, and dreamed of entering that world of distinction.

That mind-set seems as dead as my beloved Dad. The notion of an aspirational culture, in which one endeavors to learn what is right, proper and important in order to make something more of himself, is past.

In fairness, the assault on high culture and tradition that has transpired since the 1960s has paid great dividends, bringing long overdue attention to marginalized voices.

Unfortunately, this new freedom has sucker punched the notion of the educated person who is esteemed not because of the size of his bank account or the extent of his fame but the depth of his knowledge. Instead of a mainstream reverence for those who produce or appreciate works that represent the summit of human achievement, we have a corporatized and commodified culture that hypes the latest trend, the next new thing.

A fundamental truth about people is that they are shaped by the world around them. In the here and now, get-the-job-done environment of modern America, the knowledge for knowledge’s sake ethos that is the foundation of a liberal arts education — and of a rich and satisfying life — has been shoved to the margins. Curiously, in a world where everything is worth knowing, nothing is.

Posted at 6:41 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2005

PARIS On one hand, there is French hubris, and its gratuitiously insulting embrace of France’s immigrants as partners in the country’s threadbare formulas of grandeur, equality and universality.
On the other, there is the eternal French dependency on the state, the allegiance to the French model that has failed to provide the jobs, education, housing, or respect adequate to integrate Arab and African Muslims into a rich and resourceful country with real claims to special grace.
These two elements run together, and it is at the point where they cross that French reality has imploded: the intersection of the fakery producing a one-size-fits-all Frenchness, and the ceaseless defense of a rigidly statist social model refusing to reform the economy, open up the labor market, or consider affirmative action.
This unique French context makes the nearly two weeks of rioting at the edges of Paris and other big French cities, and now the declaration of a national state of emergency and curfew, something less than an absolute forewarning for the rest of Europe.
Thelocal context is the constant denigration by the political class of everything that works elsewhere, especially if it is in the United States or Britain. It is the general immodesty, engrained both left and right, concerning a supposed French model for civilization for the world that cannot find substantiation at home. And in the case of the current rioting, it is the boomerang effect of a particular kind of French romanticism that, over the years, legitimized intifadas, anti-globalist street fighters, and fire-bomb tossing with the subtext, we’re with you, brothers.
So the violence here arises not only from specially French circumstances including massive housing projects in enclaves for the poor, and a dismal colonial history in North and Black Africa. It also comes, pre-rationalized, from the homegrown French who provided the conceits fashioning the rationale, however jumbled, of the rioters.
An Arab kid in Clichy-sous-Bois may not articulate it, but what rage it must create to hear he lives in the greatest, smartest, most fair country in the world, revered as Islam’s best-friend-in-the west from Algeria to Oman, and then have to deal with a French reality of racist scorn and rejection.
Not to mention the French state which, clothed as the ideal republic, runs the school, the bus, the M�tro, owns the housing project, operates the job center, and fails, in relation to immigrants, on all those levels.
In the country of the 35-hour week, where the state is hardly the symbol of the work ethic, or civic sense in the land of the continuous public service strike, administrative and school buildings have become the choice targets of the rioters’ Molotov cocktails. The republic’s social welfare payments are there, but accompanied by private sector job creation so enfeebled and hiring discrimination so real that they turn any young person taking up the state’s offer to wield a broom or toilet brush into his neighborhood’s collaborateur.
Alain Touraine, the sociologist and perhaps the country’s best known academic, has pointed to the falseness and the lies in French society’s portrayal of itself for itself as the place where the most profound causes of the violence and disintegration are found.
More self-defeating for France, the integration myth here, he said, was stronger than in places like Germany and Italy.
In other countries in Europe, this kind of French-type self-aggrandizement would be embarrassing or plain absurd. If places like the Netherlands or Denmark can have problems in defining the Dutch or Danish ethos they want their immigrants to comply with - although pressing foreigners to speak the language and work instead of living from welfare - they spare them anything as hollow as having to buy into a triumphant national myth.
A large majority of the French, those who still live well through the system, in the meantime seem to have presumed their country was rich enough to buy off, geographically isolate, and police the difficult immigrants.
Regardless of whether North Africans living in France jeered the Marseillaise at international soccer matches in Paris, this arrangement hardened into all the integration the country had to shell out for.
The fact was that France paid no attention to an average of 60 cars (the figure is from the Interior Ministry) burned every night around the country in the months leading up to the riots.
Or that in 2004, an internal security agency reported that there were 300 communities nationwide “in retreat,” basically ones with a marked presence of Islamic fundamentalism, hatred of France and the West, anti-Semitism, and violence.
Touraine avoids any mention of these realities in his analysis, published this week in Le Monde.
But he acknowledges that there will have to be some change in the notion of a single, French identity, the French “me” he calls it, as the standard of universal value here.
Change, more nuance, a more specifically diverse French model, or bluntly, minority hiring quotas, preferential school admission, and school busing to create palpable integration: These are not easy matters in a place where the national myth of the republic and its incantation of perfect equality provide a baseline of comfort and self-justification to politicians of all parties.
Lionel Jospin, talking on the radio Wednesday morning, when asked about affirmative action as a solution, just dismissed it out of hand. The former Socialist prime minister, whose failure to provide the French a strong enough notion of personal security led to his defeat in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, said this kind of affirmative step “contradicts our republican tradition.” If France is to go forward, he insisted, “it’s got to be within our model.”
Indeed, a day or two before the riots began, Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister, described affirmative action as “semantic debate” in a country known by one and all to be committed to equal opportunity.
Now, Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist group that with the neo-Gaullists, makes up Jacques Chirac’s presidential majority, describes France as a “sick state, a state swollen into impotence” with “a democracy that doesn’t work well.” This means, he said, that “reality never enters political discussions.”
But asked why the riots were happening here, since France’s neighbors seemed to be escaping its misery, Bayrou offered a general response that, like the answers of the other politicians he condemned, hid from the specifics of both responsibilities and solution:
“As long as French democracy doesn’t change,” Bayrou said, “these accidents are going to continue.” He left it there.

Posted at 9:46 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright China Daily

President Hu Jintao suggested in his September 15 speech at the United Nations General Assembly that a “world of harmony” be brought about by all nations on Earth.

This signifies first of all the importance of the co-existence of
diversified civilizations on our planet.

About 6 billion people of 2,500 ethnic groups in more than 200
countries
dwell on Earth. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and many other faiths
exist side by side.

Pluralist civilizations constitute a very important driving force for
the progress of the human race.

Tolerance, which is free of restrictions by any ideologies and social
systems, plays a role of paramount importance in bringing about
peaceful
co-existence for different civilizations. Only respect for each other,
equal treatment, learning from each other and being considerate can
ensure harmony in the world.

Applying this in the international political arena means consultation
among all parties involved, not unilateralism driven by hegemonic
ambitions.

This calls for democracy in international politics, instead of “what I
say goes.”

This is based on an optimistic judgment of international politics over
the last six decades since World War II, when the idea of “world of
harmony” was yearned for and conceived.

Fully-fledged wars and the Cold War in the 20th century were waged by
big powers whose mutual relations were strained over a long period.

Looking to the future in the new century, we can be sure the big powers
will alternately encounter times of strained relations and enjoy
relaxed
exchanges. Although the possibility of a deterioration of relations
should not be ruled out, the big-power relations are poised to develop
in a benign direction. The international community should help make
this
happen because the nature of relations between the leading global
powers
will determine war and peace on the world stage and the smooth running
of world affairs and upheavals, as historical experience tells us.

In addition, countries are becoming more and more dependent on each
other economically, taking into account the accelerating economic
globalization process, which will help foster better ties between
nations, big powers included.

At the same time, the negative aspects of globalization should by no
means be ignored. While driving world economic growth, globalization is
making the world’s wealth disproportionately concentrated in the hands
of a small number of countries and a handful of individuals.

The ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots has become the
root cause of upheavals and social unrest, which renders this world
disharmonious.

The gap between the least developed nations and the most developed
widens each day, as does the disparity between the poorest populations
and the richest ones.

According to a UN report on the development of the human race released
this year, the total income of the richest 500 people in the world is
higher than that of the 416 million poorest people put together.

The unfair and unjust world economic order is seriously hampering the
harmonious development of the world economy.

Take aid to poor countries. Some rich countries that have enjoyed
sustained prosperity since the end of the Cold War have not become more
generous. Their per capita income has increased by more than US$6,000
but their per capita aid to poor countries has dropped to US$1.

Poor countries often run into tariff barriers set up by rich countries
that are three to four times higher than those between wealthy
countries.

Taking all this into account, eradicating world poverty and redressing
the current unfair world economic order are pre-conditions to the
world’s balanced development, and, in turn, harmony.

Viewed from other angles, the idea of a “harmonious world” has been put
forward because this world is not harmonious at present.

After September 11 and the Iraq war, profound changes have taken place
in the world political arena. Contradictions have become
unprecedentedly
acute - the clashes between terrorism and anti-terror campaigns; the
contradiction between the United States’ unilateralist inclinations and
the world’s general trend towards multilateralism.

Wars and armed conflicts are posing a large threat to the harmony of
the
world.

Twenty-three serious armed conflicts are going on in the world today,
including those raging and those cooling down.

Environmental damage, refugees, deteriorating public hygiene,
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and cross-border organized
crime are other factors threatening the harmonious development of the
world.

In view of this, a common security mechanism, common prosperity and
pushing for the reform of the United Nations, in addition to tolerance,
are the remedies prescribed by China.

In particular, the role of the United Nations, which is at the core of
the world’s collective security mechanism, should be strengthened, not
weakened.

The idea of harmony is rooted in traditional Chinese thinking.

The Chinese word “he” has not only the connotations of “harmony” and
“unity” but also those of “centripetal” and “coherence.”

For the ancient Chinese, “harmony” was always at the core of dealing
with everything from state affairs to neighbourly relations. The
concept
has always had a profound influence on the country’s relations with the
rest of the world.

At the same time, the Chinese have always emphasized the importance of
“ruling a country benevolently,” instead of “rule by force.” This is a
different expression of “harmony.”

Putting forward the idea of bringing about “a world of harmony” today
is
also a way of promoting Chinese culture in the modern context.

The article is based on a discussion by international affairs
specialists that appeared in Global Times

(China Daily 11/10/2005 page4)
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-11/10/content_493387.htm

Posted at 11:59 AM · Comments (0)

Nov 10, 2005
Author: Rufus S. Berry II, President

King George M. Weah, you have done much that is great and right, stay the course and gracefully welcome Liberia�s duly elected President Ellen. You must call of the rally of your diehard supporters on November 11, because it is a guise for planned violence.

King�s FM broadcast this morning, November 10, announced that CDC is urging all its supporters, partisans and well wishers to assemble tomorrow November 11, 2005 at the party�s headquarters �for an important meeting�. According to the announcement, which was signed by the Cud�s Executive Committee, those from areas such as Kakata and Harbel are also invited to the meeting. The announcement said, �matters of vital importance will be discussed� in the meeting. Mr. Weah, for the sake of the country, I strongly suggest you call off this rally as it will lead to violence and you, and you alone, will be held responsible.

The election is over and Ellen has won. I hope you will be graceful in accepting defeat. You are barley 40 years old and have many good years ahead of you. However, you are now on the path to self-destruction.

Ellen will become Liberia�s 23rd President, and the first female to be freely elected leader of an African nation. For the sake of maintaining your magnificent legacy, and admiration of many people around the world, you should do everything humanly possible to make sure your diehard supporters don�t act foolishly by turning to violence. Otherwise, you will be the greatest loser, and all the love and admiration you have earned over the years will disappear. Mr. Weah, you are still young, with many useful years ahead of you. Do not be influenced by folks who are seeking their own egotistical interests at the expense of Liberia�s

According to the Voice of America broadcast on Wednesday November 9, 2005, one of your diehard supporters said, “I want to tell the international community, if they want to be sure that they want for the Liberian people to have peace, that they bring George Weah to us. Or else, we will kill. We are ready to kill for George Manneh Weah. We will die for this man, that’s what I wanted to say.” Mr. Weah, please do not allow your supporters to kill innocent men, women and children in order to advance your cause, If this transpires, the International Community will brand you a terrorist.

Mr. Weah, you must put Liberia above your personal interests, and make sure this election doesn’t end in violence. If not, the world, especially the United States where you�ve made most of your investments will treat you as a criminal and freeze your assets. It is highly anticipated that the international observers will endorse this election as free and fair. You and your supporters should also embrace the election results as free and fair.

Weah, we love you, and pray that you will put your country first. Do not let your reputation as a noble humanitarian be transformed into that of a warlord. Do not allow Liberia�s fragile peace to be destroyed because you did not win the Presidential election.

May God continue to bless our beloved Country and People.

Rufus S. Berry II, President
Liberian Community Association of Northern California
November 10, 2005

Posted at 9:16 AM · Comments (0)

Posted Thursday, Nov. 10, 2005, Copyright Slate

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist and author who brought us Bobos, Patio Man, and other armchair sociological formulations, is at it again. In today’s column, Brooks takes his shtick overseas and into the realm of pop music with a denunciation of “French gangsta rap.” Citing the prevalence of hip-hop culture among “the rioters”�”poor young Muslim men” from Parisian banlieues and other French slums�Brooks goes on to to spin a theory of global gangsta rap hegemony.

It’s not only that [the rioters] use the same hand gestures as American rappers, wear the same clothes and necklaces, play the same video games, and sit with the same sorts of car stereos at full blast. It’s that they seem to have adopted the same poses of exaggerated manhood, the same attitudes about women, money and the police. They seem to have replicated the same sort of gang culture, the same romantic visions of gunslinging drug dealers� The images, modes and attitudes of hip-hop and gangsta rap are so powerful they are having a hegemonic effect across the globe.

The result, Brooks says, is a battle for the hearts and minds of Muslim youth “between Osama bin Laden and Tupac Shakur.”

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That anachronistic reference to Shakur isn’t the only thing in the piece that gives off a musty stench. Brooks’ entire rant is shopworn: He tut-tuts French rappers for having “nothing but rage for the institutions of society,” infers a link between rap and “horrific gang rapes,” and declares, in a breathtakingly doofy attempt to kick a little lingo, “if you want to stand up and fight The Man, the Notorious B.I.G. shows the way.”

If you feel like you’ve read this before, it’s because you have. Way back in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when Bill Bennett was at war with Ice-T and Time Warner�and Bill Clinton was triangulating his way through his first presidential campaign by dissing Sister Souljah�the op-ed pages were full of anti-rap fulminations. But Brooks is undismayed. It’s tempting to imagine that Brooks actually wrote this article back in early ’90s, when he was a lowly book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal. Picture Brooks, in the heady weeks after the Los Angeles riots, frustrated that he couldn’t shoehorn his gangsta-rap riff into a piece on Andrew Morton’s Princess Diana biography. It’s been sitting in a desk drawer ever since, just waiting for some inner-city unrest to come along. Et voil�.

To be fair, Brooks is tromping into territory that has befuddled even hardened music critics. For at least a dozen years, the French hip-hop scene has been the world’s most vibrant outside of the United States, yet it has been almost completely ignored by the American music press. And while rock critics have championed British grime, Brazilian baille funk, and other foreign hip-hop offshoots, they’ve completely missed the boat on IAM, Supr�me NTM, Arsenik, TTC, Sa�an Supa Crew, and dozens of other French MCs, who, in addition to voicing the disaffection of the French underclass, happen to be masters of the form�rappers of amazing skill, style, and wit.

On a certain level, it’s hard to blame Anglophone critics. Your junior-high �tre et avoir won’t get you very far with the torrents of slang that fill French rap. Even most French-speakers find it hard to follow along. Many MCs deliver whole songs in Verlan, the ingenious, dizzying slang in which words are reversed or recombined, turning arabe (arab) into rabza, bourr� (drunk) into r�bou, b�te (stupid) into teub�, and so on. (Verlan is itself an example of the form: Verlan= l’envers, “the inverse.”) It’s not surprising that France, the nation that enshrines conversational grandiloquence as a civic virtue right up there with fraternit�, would take to the most blabbermouthed genre in music history. France’s chanson tradition is famous for emphasizing lyrics�the complete works of George Brassens and Charles Trenet are for sale in the poetry section of bookstores, right alongside Baudelaire and Rimbaud�and rappers are widely viewed as heirs to the chansonniers. The French Ministry of Culture, stodgy arbiters of all that is Truly French, has already given one of its top music prizes to Marseille firebrands IAM, largely because of the poetic skills of its lead rapper, Akhenaton.

It’s safe to assume that David Brooks hasn’t spent a whole lot of quality iPod time with the new Disiz La Peste album. Which is fine. But it might have made sense to do at least a little listening to French rap�or least some more thorough Web-trawling�before writing a treatise on hand gestures, hegemony, and “gangsta resistance.” When Brooks starts citing lyrics, things get dodgy quickly. Midway through Brooks’ piece we find the following paragraphs:

When rap first came to France, American rappers dominated the scene, but now the suburban immigrant neighborhoods have produced their own stars in their own language. French rap lyrics today are like the American gangsta lyrics of about five or 10 years ago, when it was more common to fantasize about cop killings and gang rape.

Most of the lyrics can’t be reprinted in this newspaper, but you can get a sense of them from, say, a snippet from a song from Bitter Ministry: “Another woman takes her beating./This time she’s called Brigitte./She’s the wife of a cop.” Or this from Mr. R’s celebrated album “PolitiKment IncorreKt”: “France is a bitch. … Don’t forget to [deleted] her to exhaustion. You have to treat her like a whore, man! … My niggers and my Arabs, our playground is the street with the most guns!”

Problem: Brooks’ first example of “French rap lyrics today” is, well, 13 years old. The song in question, “Brigitte (Femme du Flic)” appeared on the 1992 album Pourqoui Tant de Haine, by the long defunct duo Minist�re A.M.E.R. (The group’s rappers, Passi and Stormy Bugsy, have gone on to successful solo careers.) Moreover, Brooks’ research seems to consist of reading two articles in conservative-identified American periodicals. I suspect that Brooks’ source is Theodore Dalrymple’s article, “The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris,” which appeared in the Autumn 2002 edition of the City Journal. Dalrymple provides the exact translation that Brooks cites as “Bitter Minstry’s � best-known lyric”�though the lyric is not so well-known that (based on a Google search) anyone else appears to have ever translated it into English.

Now there’s nothing wrong with Brooks using Dalrymple’s translation, or even relying on his ideas. But isn’t Brooks implying some broader knowledge of the topic at hand? Look again at his citation: “Most of the lyrics can’t be reprinted in this newspaper, but you can get a sense of them from, say, a snippet from a song from Bitter Ministry.” That “say” suggests that Brooks has any number of examples at his fingertips. The truth is, it’s probably one of only two French rap lyrics he’s ever heard�or, rather, read. The other he cites is the invective of “Mr. R,” who, needless to say, the French know as Monsieur R. And lo and behold, a quick Google search turns up “France’s Homegrown Gangstas,” from the Sept. 28, 2005, issue of the Weekly Standard (where Brooks is an editor), which features the exact same English translation of lyrics from Monsieur R’s “Fransse.”

The crime here isn’t just laziness. It’s tackiness and gall. Did Brooks bother to notice that the rappers whose songs he cites in his piece about “the future of Islam” aren’t Muslim at all, but two black Frenchmen and one black Belgian? There’s a word for this kind of stuff. “Mr. R,” I suspect, would call it teub�.

Jody Rosen is The Nation’s music critic and the author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song.

Posted at 9:10 AM · Comments (0)

La France est un vieux pays fier de ses traditions et de son histoire.
Sans son apport sur le plan de la philosophie, de la culture, de l’art
et de l’esth�tique, notre monde serait sans doute plus pauvre en esprit
et en humanit�. Voil� le c�t� limpide, presque cristallin de son
identit�.

La B�te et sa face nocturne

Malheureusement, la vieillesse � elle seule ne rend, ni les peuples, ni
les �tats n�cessairement plus raisonnables. En fait, chaque vieille
culture cache toujours, derri�re le masque de la raison et de la civilit�,
une face nocturne - un �norme r�servoir d’obscures pulsions qui, �
l’occasion, peuvent s’av�rer meurtri�res.
En Occident, le point de fixation de cette face nocturne et de ce
r�servoir de pulsions a toujours �t� la race - cette B�te dont la r�publique
fran�aise, dans son souci parfois aveugle d’universalit�, a toujours
refus�, pas toujours � tort, d’admettre l’existence. Parlant pr�cis�ment
de la race, la philosophe juive Hannah Arendt avait raison de proclamer
qu’elle repr�sentait l’ultime fronti�re au-del� de laquelle le
politique en tant que tel n’avait, strictement parlant, plus aucun sens.
N’avait-elle pas vu comment l’Allemagne, dans les ann�es 1930-1940, mit en
place des camps de concentration dans le but d’en finir une fois pour
toutes avec � la question juive �. La France, heureusement, n’en est pas
l�.
Ceci dit, le jeu de cache-cache qu’elle n’a cess� d’entretenir avec la
B�te depuis le d�but des ann�es quatre-vingt risque, � tr�s moyen
terme, de lui sauter � la figure. Peut-�tre plus que d’autres pays
europ�ens, elle fait aujourd’hui l’exp�rience d’une double crise - crise de
l’immigration (sous la figure de l’�tranger) et crise de la citoyennet�,
les deux se nourrissant d�sormais l’une de l’autre. � la faveur de cette
crise, la face nocturne de la r�publique, fouett�e en tr�s grande
partie par le � le p�nisme � et relay�e par le � sarkozysme �, petit � petit
se d�voile. On peut l’apercevoir � travers la banalisation du racisme
d’�tat qui, de tous temps, a constitu� la face honteuse - et pour cela
soigneusement voil�e - de la d�mocratie fran�aise. La B�te, que dans
l’ordre de la d�magogie l’on d�ployait de pr�f�rence � l’encontre des
�trangers, aujourd’hui se retourne contre le corps politique lui-m�me et
menace de le diviser en � Fran�ais de pure souche � et � Fran�ais pas
tout � fait comme les autres �.
Comme toujours, dans les cas d’urgence, on sacrifie au � pr�sentisme �
et l’on tend � oublier les causes profondes. Pendant longtemps, les
rapports de la France avec l’Afrique noire et arabe ont servi d’exutoire �
ce racisme d’�tat - paternaliste et commode dans sa version
postcoloniale, monstrueux quand il le fallait, comme lors de la guerre d’Alg�rie.
Tapie sous la p�nombre a donc toujours �t� la B�te. Pendant un temps,
on ne pouvait la voir tr�s clairement qu’� la lumi�re de la politique
africaine men�e, dans une parfaite continuit�, par les diff�rents r�gimes
qui se sont succ�d�s en France depuis 1960.
On peut se demander quel rapport les �meutes dans les banlieues de
Paris ont avec l’Afrique. C’est oublier que la politique men�e pendant
plusieurs ann�es par la France dans ce continent est, en tr�s grande
partie, responsable de la double crise de l’�tranger et du citoyen dont les
flamb�es actuelles de violence dans les cit�s sont l’expression. Apr�s
tout, qu’il existe tant de citoyens fran�ais d’origine africaine parqu�s
dans les ghettos est le r�sultat direct de la colonisation de parties
de l’Afrique sub-saharienne et du Maghreb par la France au XIXe si�cle.
Avant la colonisation, il y eut la Traite des esclaves - d’o�
l’existence des Antillais, des Guadeloup�ens, et de bien d’autres.
L’acc�l�ration des mouvements migratoires en direction de la France est, elle aussi,
le produit direct de cette longue histoire. Mais de mani�re plus
d�cisive, l’afflux d’immigrants ill�gaux en provenance des pays d’ancienne
colonisation fran�aise est l’une des cons�quences de l’appui multiforme
que n’ont cess� d’apporter les gouvernements fran�ais aux �lites
pr�datrices indig�nes en charge de pays qu’elles n’ont pas cess� de saccager
et d’appauvrir depuis les ind�pendances.
Dans une large mesure, la France est en train de r�colter, chez elle,
ce qu’elle a cru pouvoir semer ailleurs, dans l’irresponsabilit�. Cela
fait un moment que l’on demande � la r�publique de prendre au s�rieux la
question des m�moires plurielles. Des efforts relativement tardifs ont
�t� accomplis dans le sens d’une prise en charge symbolique de
l’esclavage et de son abolition. La � fracture coloniale � reste, quant � elle,
b�ante. Nul ne voulant entendre parler de politiques de discrimination
positive, la restauration de l’ordre public dans les banlieues sera
n�cessairement effectu�e par des policiers blancs pourchassant des jeunes
gens de couleur dans les rues des cit�s. Entre-temps, un projet de loi
c�l�brant l’*uvre � civilisatrice � et coloniale a �t� adopt� au
Parlement.
Il est, en effet, bon de tenir t�te aux Etats-Unis lorsque ces derniers
foulent aux pieds un droit international que tr�s peu d’�tats
respectent au demeurant. Encore faut-il, dans ses propres rapports avec les plus
faibles, les plus vuln�rables et les plus d�pendants, montrer
l’exemple. Or, de ce point de vue, la conduite de la France vis-�-vis de ses
minorit�s est comparable � sa conduite en Afrique depuis la fin des
colonisations directes : tout sauf �thique. Depuis 1960, la politique
africaine de la France contredit radicalement tout ce que la France pr�tend
repr�senter et l’id�e qu’elle se fait d’elle-m�me, de son histoire et de
son destin dans le monde.
Entre la France et l’Afrique, il n’existe plus aucun rapport
d’attraction mutuelle. Ex�cration et rejet semblent d�sormais caract�riser cette
vieille relation jug�e, de chaque c�t�, plus que jamais abusive.

G�ographie de l’infamie

En Afrique francophone notamment, l’hostilit�, voire la sourde haine
des nouvelles g�n�rations � l’�gard de la France et de ce qu’elle
repr�sente ne font que s’aggraver. Dans toutes les grandes m�tropoles, la
col�re monte au d�tour de chaque incident, aussi insignifiant soit-il. Le
paradoxe est que l’anti-francisme est en train de prosp�rer au moment
m�me o� les signes sinon d’un r�el d�sengagement, du moins d’une large
indiff�rence de l’ancienne puissance coloniale � l’�gard de ses
ex-prot�g�s se multiplient.
Des nombreux points d’ancrage de cette tension, deux en particulier
risquent de conduire � un immense g�chis dans le court terme. Le premier a
trait � la politique d’immigration et au traitement inflig� aux
r�fugi�s et autres Africains qui s�journent ill�galement en France. Le
deuxi�me - corollaire du premier - a trait � la politique de � pacification �
des banlieues o� vivent, pour l’essentiel, les citoyens fran�ais
d’origine africaine ou les descendants d’esclaves africains devenus, par la
force des circonstances, des citoyens fran�ais.
L’on est tous au courant du durcissement en cours et qui s’est traduit,
r�cemment, par la multiplication des rafles sur les trottoirs des
villes, dans les lyc�es ou au sortir du m�tro. L’on a entendu parler des
�victions. Des familles, des enfants scolaris�s, des c�libataires � qui on
ne proposait que quelques nuits � l’h�tel ont �t� jet�s dans la rue.
Chaque jour, sur l’ensemble du territoire fran�ais, des milliers de gens
de couleur sont syst�matiquement contr�l�s sans raison apparente. En
certains cas, r�sultat de la logique du rapport de force et du
harc�lement permanent, il commence � y avoir des morts. L’on est �galement au
courant de la g�n�ralisation des camps visant � mettre � l’�cart les
�trangers en situation irr�guli�re, puis � les refouler, souvent manu
militari, vers leurs lieux d’origine. Ou encore des pratiques
d’externalisation - c’est-�-dire l’exportation, au-del� des fronti�res de l’Union
Europ�enne et la sous-traitance, par des pays sous-d�velopp�s, de la
responsabilit� de la gestion et de la protection des r�fugi�s moyennant une
augmentation de � l’aide au d�veloppement �.
Camps-fronti�res situ�s � proximit� des a�roports, des ports et des
gares internationales, zones dites d’attente, centres locaux dits de
r�tention, camps pour �trangers, centres de � d�p�t � des �trangers - peu
importe d�sormais la nomenclature. Des juges font �tat du fait que les
pr�fectures leur pr�sentent chaque jour des �trangers pour prolongation
de la r�tention alors m�me qu’il n’y a plus de places dans les centres.
L’ensemble du territoire hexagonal est d�sormais maill�e par toute une
g�ographie de l’infamie, de Bordeaux � Calais-Coquelle ; de Strasbourg
� Hendaye ; de Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes � Nice, Bobigny, Le
Mesnil-Amelot ; de Roissy, Nanterre, Versailles, Vincennes � Rivesaltes,
Rouen, S�te, Toulouse ; de Dunkerque, Lyon-Saint Exup�ry, Saint-Nazaire �
La Rochelle, Toulon, et ainsi de suite.
De l’autre c�t� de l’Atlantique, tout le monde est au courant des
humiliations auxquelles font quotidiennement face de nombreux Africains
cherchant � obtenir un visa pour la France dans les consulats d’Afrique -
exception faite des bureaux d’Afrique du Sud. L’arbitraire des m�thodes
utilis�es dans les consulats se situent en droite ligne de celles dont
usait autrefois la colonisation, lorsque chaque � petit roi de la
brousse � avait l’habitude d’agir � sa guise.
Triple logique du contr�le, du filtrage et du refoulement donc, avec
son cort�ge de brutalit�s, de s�vices physiques et de violences morales
appliqu�es, une fois de plus, comme aux temps de l’esclavage, sur le
corps n�gre - la diff�rence �tant qu’en lieu et place du bateau,
l’instrument privil�gi� est, aujourd’hui, le charter.

Palestinisation ?

Des traitements et formes d’humiliation qui n’�taient autrefois tol�r�s
que dans les colonies refont aujourd’hui leur apparition en pleine
m�tropole o� ils sont appliqu�s, lors des rafles ou des descentes dans les
banlieues, non seulement aux �trangers, migrants ill�gaux et r�fugi�s,
mais de plus en plus, � des citoyens fran�ais d’origine africaine ou
descendant des anciens esclaves africains.
En d’autres termes, la conjonction est en train de s’op�rer entre,
d’une part, les modes coloniaux de contr�le, de traitement et de s�paration
des gens ; de l’autre, le traitement des hommes et femmes jug�s
ind�sirables sur le territoire fran�ais ; et enfin le traitement de citoyens
consid�r�s de seconde zone pour la simple raison qu’ils ne sont, ni des
� Fran�ais de souche �, ni des Fran�ais de � race blanche �.
Que l’on soit arriv� � ce point n’est pas fortuit. Au cours des dix
derni�res ann�es, on n’a pas seulement fabriqu� des repr�sentations de
l’�tranger, du migrant et du r�fugi� qui font de ces derniers une menace �
la s�curit� nationale. On a �galement produit des l�gislations qui,
parce qu’elles violent si manifestement les lois communes, s’inspirent �
bien des �gards du Code de l’Indig�nat sous la colonisation. Au d�tour
de la lutte contre le droit d’asile, l’immigration ill�gale et le
terrorisme, la sph�re du droit a �t� envahie par des conceptions guerri�res
de l’ordre juridique. Ces conceptions guerri�res ont, en retour,
provoqu� une nette r�surgence du racisme d’�tat dont on sait qu’il �tait l’une
des pierres angulaires de l’ordre colonial.
Le droit est d�sormais utilis�, non comme un outil pour rendre justice
et pour garantir les libert�s, mais comme l’artifice qui autorise le
recours sinon � la violence extr�me, du moins l’exposition des
populations les plus vuln�rables et les plus d�munies � des moyens exceptionnels
de r�pression. Ces moyens pr�sentent l’avantage de pouvoir �tre
employ�s de fa�on rapide, arbitraire, presque irresponsable. Pour contr�ler
les flux migratoires, on a proc�d� � une parcellisation de
l’administration de la justice.
Comme � l’�poque coloniale, le droit lui-m�me est d�sormais fragment�.
On se retrouve aujourd’hui en France avec des l�gislations qui ne
s’appliquent qu’� certaines � esp�ces humaines �. Ces l�gislations �dictent
des infractions propres aux � esp�ces humaines � qu’elles visent en
m�me temps qu’elles accordent aux autorit�s charg�es de leur application
des pouvoirs exceptionnels et d�rogatoires au droit commun. Les d�lits
invoqu�s au titre de ces lois ne peuvent l’�tre que contre ces � esp�ces
humaines � particuli�res. Le r�gime des sanctions appliqu�es au titre
de ces d�lits est, lui aussi, particulier puisque soustrait au droit
commun.

Le Code de l’Indig�nat avait �t� �labor� dans le cadre du gouvernement
des colonies. Le gouvernement des colonies �tait, dans sa nature m�me,
un gouvernement d’exception fond� sur le racisme d’�tat. Ici, la
fonction du droit �tait pr�cis�ment de multiplier, de banaliser, puis de
g�n�raliser les situations de non-droit et de les �tendre � toutes les
sph�res de la vie quotidienne des gens de races jug�es inf�rieures. Le
rapatriement, vers la M�tropole, de la philosophie juridique sous-jacente
au Code de l’Indig�nat - et du racisme d’�tat qui en �tait le corollaire
- est en cours. Cette philosophie juridique est pr�tendument d�ploy�e
dans la lutte contre les cat�gories de personnes jug�es ind�sirables sur
le territoire fran�ais (immigrants ill�gaux, sans-papiers, r�fugi�s).
Mais l’on sait bien que depuis plusieurs ann�es, l’on fait croire � la
population fran�aise que les banlieues constituent une menace directe �
leur style de vie et � leurs valeurs les plus ch�res. � gauche comme �
droite, on veut croire qu’on ne pourra refonder le lien social dans les
cit�s qu’en faisant, d’une part, des probl�mes de l’immigration et
d’int�gration des probl�mes de s�curit� et, d’autre part, en �rigeant la
la�cit� en police et de la religion et de ce que l’on appelle avec d�dain
le communautarisme.
Or, � partir du moment o� l’on d�finit la banlieue comme habit�e non
par des sujets moraux � part enti�re, mais par une masse indistincte que
l’on peut disqualifier sommairement (sauvageons, racaille, voyous et
d�linquants, ca�ds de l’�conomie parall�le); et � partir du moment o� on
l’�rige comme comme le front int�rieur d’une nouvelle guerre plan�taire
(� la fois culturelle, religieuse et militaire) dans laquelle se joue
l’identit� m�me de la r�publique, la tentation est grande de vouloir
appliquer, aux cat�gories les plus vuln�rables de la soci�t� fran�aise,
des m�thodes coloniales tir�es des le�ons de la guerre des races.
Toutes proportions gard�es, les images de centaines de policiers blancs
arm�s, en train de pourchasser ou de proc�der � l’arrestation de jeunes
� gens de couleur � dans les quartiers urbains de la France en plein
XXIe si�cle ne sont pas sans rappeler ce qui se passait dans les ghettos
des villes du nord des Etats-Unis et, surtout, dans le Sud du pays il y
a plus de quarante ans. Les m�mes images font remonter � la m�moire les
�v�nements survenus plus r�cemment encore, dans les townships d’Afrique
du Sud, au cours de la d�cennie 1970-1980. Mais plus que le Sud des
Etats-Unis, les ghettos nord-am�ricains et les townships d’Afrique du Sud,
les jets de pierre et autres violences par le feu dans les banlieues de
Paris font, de fa�on subliminale, �cho aux flammes et � la fum�e qui
monte des camps de r�fugi�s de la Palestine.
Au demeurant, le vocabulaire du � nettoyage au Karcher� et de la �
chasse � la racaille � utilis� par certains parlementaires et par de tr�s
hauts repr�sentants de l’�tat ne fait qu’encourager de tels
rapprochements. Si l’on n’y prend garde, pouss�e aux extr�mes, la logique du
rapport de force peut facilement d�boucher sur une � palestinisation � des
cit�s, dans le droit fil de l’id�ologie coloniale de la guerre des races.
Tel est, quant au fond, le grave danger qui menace la soci�t� et la
d�mocratie fran�aise - et, au-del�, l’Europe du XXIe si�cle aux prises,
une fois de plus, avec sa B�te - le probl�me de la race auquel vient
s’ajouter celui de la religion. Comme on le voit ailleurs, du point de vue
de la loi, la ‘palestinisation � tend g�n�ralement � faire de
l’exception la norme tout en pr�tendant, soit faire na�tre, soit faire r�gner
l’ordre et la justice par la terreur. Ce faisant, cette logique finit
toujours par faire de la loi l’instrument d’un semblant d’ � ordre � et
d’une pseudo-justice caract�ristiques de � l’�tat d’exception �,
c’est-�-dire productrices d’un �tat de non-droit pour les plus vuln�rables et
d’un �tat de d�sordre et d’ins�curit� g�n�ralis�e pour tous.
Est-ce vraiment la direction que veut prendre ce vieux pays qui a tant
apport� au monde sur le plan de la philosophie, de la culture, des arts
et de l’esth�tique et qui, ce faisant, en a tant enrichi l’esprit ?

*Professeur d’histoire et de science politique � l’universit� du
Witwatersrand, Johannesbourg, Afrique du Sud

Posted at 11:56 PM · Comments (0)

From: Jacob Weisberg
Subject: My Favorite Bookstore
Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2005, at 7:03 AM ET

The best bookshop in the world is Tindley and Chapman at 4 Cecil Court, an all-antiquarian pedestrian lane in the West End, just off Charing Cross Road, the old center of the London book trade. There are some other fine shops nearby, including the well-known Bertram Rota and Peter Ellis (as well as some that cater to people who collect things that aren’t worth collecting, like Stephen King novels). Let me try to explain why James Tindley’s little store is the best.

The shop is a small square room filled with first editions (plus a basement filled with odds and ends). Sitting at the desk will be James Tindley, cocking an owlish eyebrow while smoking, reading, or kibitzing with a steady procession of oddball potential buyers and bedraggled would-be sellers. The subject of his acerbic comments might be the admirable orneriness of Evelyn Waugh’s letters, the neglect of some forgotten poet, or the inflated price of early Martin Amis. Tindley seems to have soaked up not only the modern literary corpus but its biographies and bibliographies as well. He disgorges tidbits from behind a haze of bluish smoke in a series of smirking and curmudgeonly asides. The general themes of this elliptical banter are that famous writers are nasty, books are overpriced, and few things are really worth reading.

Atmosphere will get you nowhere without selection, and it is here that Tindley really excels. His shop is small, but the stock is extremely well-chosen, without being excessively curated or fussy. James and his charming assistant Sophie don’t seem to have any books in the shop that they don’t at least respect. As a result, you can browse pretty much everything in the place in well under an hour, including Tindley’s unsalable collection of the minor late-Edwardian poet and playwright John Drinkwater, which reposes in a seldom-touched glass-front bookcase in the basement. Over the years, I have found more books I’ve wanted�including several of the otherwise nearly unobtainable prewar first editions of George Orwell�in Tindley’s little store than anywhere else. I have never walked out�or gotten through one of his increasingly infrequent catalogs�without buying something.

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When you find something you want in Tindley’s store, you should buy it without haggling, because his prices are consistently half�or less�of what any of his neighbors would charge. Tindley likes to sell books, not sit on them, and he doesn’t check prices against the Internet as a matter of principle. Last time I was in, I bought the American first of Pale Fire for �35 ($63). Around the corner, I saw the same book in the window of Simon Finch, a fancy Mayfair dealer, in a slightly cleaner dust jacket, for �1,000 ($1,800).

James leaves Sophie in charge, and we adjourn to his regular wine bar, where we lunch on rabbit kidneys, fries, and a bottle of C�tes de Provence. (Despite the much-touted improvement of British cuisine, you still do best with a Hogarthian diet�offal, cheese, apples, and ale.) We chat about the Internet, which Tindley naturally deplores. His view is that the Web takes the magic and mystery out of the book business. Using Abebooks.com, which scours listings for 70 million books from 13,000 dealers around the world, you can find almost anything you are looking for with unimaginable ease. But on the Web, you never find what you’re not looking for, which is what invariably happens when you walk into Tindley and Chapman.

After lunch, we return to the shop and Tindley proves his point by emerging from the basement with a full run�eight issues�of a magazine called Polemic, which was published in England between 1945 and 1947. Little intellectual magazines, such as Partisan Review and Horizon are a special interest of mine, and Polemic, with covers designed by the British artist Ben Nicholson, is one I’ve never seen before. Almost every issue has the first publication of one of Orwell’s essays, including “The Prevention of Literature” and “Second Thoughts on James Burnham.” This is something I would have never thought to look for on Abebooks and probably wouldn’t have found if I had. The price? James makes a gesture that indicates he has no idea and says �40 ($70). I leave with that, an early V.S. Naipaul first, and the first collected edition of Hart Crane’s poems.

After lunch, I pay a call on the bookshop that immediately becomes my second-favorite. Situated on Berkeley Square in Mayfair, in an even grander townhouse than Shapero’s, Maggs Bros. has been run by the same family since Dickens’ day, when it was founded by Uriah Maggs. Ed Maggs, who is as beloved within the fraternity as Shapero is disliked, is the eighth member of his family to run the shop, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2003. Portraits of his mutton-chopped and waistcoated forebears line the staircase.

Maggs, who greets me in the modern department on the second floor, is himself a rather Dickensian character. Shambling, kinetic, and mustachioed, he is also a near-ringer for Basil Fawlty. His conversation is a steady barrage of self-deprecating puns and wisecracks. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” he tells me, apologizing for the mess of volumes, papers, and junk covering every available surface in his office, including the floor. “But a bookshop really abhors a vacuum.” Now in his 50s, Maggs tells me he got “sucked back in” to book-dealing in the late 1970s, following a halfhearted attempt to escape by becoming a rock ‘n’ roll star. A recent reminiscence he wrote of the shop is titled “Forgetting to Change the Filter in the Gene Pool.”

Maggs Bros. is as high-end as a bookshop gets. You will find Maggs’ “by appointment to her majesty” sales slips tucked into volumes in the best collections around the world, and the store is famous for�among other things�buying, on behalf of the late Paul Getty, the most expensive book ever sold�Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, printed by William Caxton in 1476, for �4.6 million ($8.3 million). But Maggs Bros. defies the stereotype of fusty antiquarianism in every way. This might be the jolliest bookstore I’ve ever been in, more like a comedy sketch on four levels than a proper business. As soon as I arrive, Ed�probably the most Internet-savvy of British book dealers�forwards the day’s Slate “Explainer” on why corpses float facedown to his colleagues. As he introduces me around the various departments�military history, natural history, maps, autographs, English books, etc.�further speculation on the topic ensues. Carl Williams, who specializes in 1960s literature and psychedelic drugs (books about them, that is), tells me he’s a fan of David Edelstein’s. You expect to find Slate readers in many places these days, but not in a tableau vivant from Queen Victoria’s reign.

“Come, let’s have a look at the Black Cupboard!” Maggs exclaims, bounding up the stairs from his office. The cupboard, which is, in fact, a white nook under the stairs, is the archive of the company’s disasters, including a series of badly forged Oscar Wilde manuscripts it bought and sold in the 1920s and records relating to the notorious Edwardian thief and forger T.J. Edwards (a Maggs unwittingly laundered some of his excellent fake literary pamphlets). Ed has played detective on both these cases and is not shy about castigating his forebears for greed and gullibility. But what, he wonders, would those ancestors think of him for “having sunk hundreds of pounds of their capital in Gershon Legman’s first book, the privately printed Oragenitalism, or indeed of investing several thousands in John and Yoko’s typescript poem that comprised several dozen iterations of what I should really call the F-word.

Maggs had a number of items I coveted, but his books are priced not to move too quickly. Ed speaks with pride of his willingness to provide shelf space for rare items for 15 or 20 years before selling them. I have a feeling that they might still be available if I change my mind.

Posted at 11:18 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright - The South China Morning Post

In Japanese, gosurori means GothLoli, or Gothic Lolita. At comic book fairs and youth shopping malls in Hong Kong, it is not unusual nowadays to come upon such “Lolitas”, young girls or women dressed in Victorian-style clothing to look like porcelain dolls.

Others put on Japanese schoolgirl uniforms, kimonos or various cartoonish outfits - popularised by famous characters in Japanese manga comics - to simulate the appearance of an under-aged nymph.

Mainstream boutiques and department stores in main Japanese cities were apparently already selling Lolita clothes in 2000. As a youth sub-culture, it must have been entrenched well before then in Japan - so we in Hong Kong are more than half a decade behind.

Local pop star Kelly Chen Wai-lam recently dressed as one at a Halloween bash at Ocean Park. It was rather embarrassing: it doesn’t matter how old Chen is, she is clearly past the age limit on posing as a fake Lolita.

It’s depressing to think how we are always playing catch-up to the latest in Japanese (sub) culture, from youth fads and high cuisine to underground porn and social pathology.

While Japan’s gangsters are busy producing high-quality pornographic VCDs and DVDs, our triads can do nothing better than pirate their Japanese counterparts. If the Japanese porn industry were to collapse today, triad gangsters in Hong Kong would have to go on welfare.

We are even behind when it comes to depression and mass psychology. For years, Japanese media and health-care professionals have been writing and warning about the growing hikikomori phenomenon. Reports are only now surfacing in local papers that we, too, have our own reclusive adolescents and young adults who live in abject isolation and shun all human contact.

The Hong Kong Christian Service released in July what is believed to be the first local hikikomori study of its kind, estimating there are about 6,000 such troubled youths among us. I would bet the problem has been there all along, but we only now recognise this social malaise in our midst.

In the past, local social workers, educators, parents and media pundits had bemoaned youths who spent all their waking hours on games and computers in their own room, interrupting their cyber-routine only when they had to eat or go to the toilet.

What did we think their problems were?

Because we were late - as usual - to the internet craze, we were paying more attention to the games rather than the gamers - the symptoms and not the disease. Hikikomori can mean both the social phenomenon and the people who suffer from it.

In a sense, it’s nothing new: what can be more ordinary than for lonely, misunderstood and confused youths, under intense pressure from family and school, to withdraw into a cocoon of their own making?

The much-hyped Japanese film Train Man, which did well last month at the local box office, underlines the public interest in this trend. It tells the story of one such recluse who rescues a girl and wins her heart, with help and advice from fellow hikikomori on the Net.

There is no shortage of experts, in Hong Kong and elsewhere, to explain the hikikomori phenomenon. But why some young people are caught up in it while others outgrow it is ultimately as perplexing and unexplainable as many other social diseases.

It is serious food for thought. Perhaps Japanese culture, even with all its malaise, malice and dysfunctions, has a lot more to offer than the meagre, imitative “culture” of our “world city”.

Alex Lo is a columnist and senior reporter at the Post

Posted at 11:08 PM · Comments (0)

Tuesday, November 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural “understanding” of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country’s grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France’s economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The European Dream,” and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity.

Since the ’70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.

To make matters worse, the elaborate French welfare state—government spending accounts for roughly half of GDP compared with 36% in the U.S.—also forces high tax burdens on younger workers lucky enough to have a job, largely to pay for an escalating number of pensioners and benefit recipients. In this system, the incentives are to take it easy, live well and then retire. The bloat of privileged aging blocks out opportunity for the young.

Luckily, better-educated young Frenchmen and other Continental Europeans can opt out of the system by emigrating to more open economies in Ireland, the U.K. and, particularly, the U.S. This is clearly true in technological fields, where Europe’s best brains leave in droves. Some 400,000 European Union science graduates currently reside in the U.S. Barely one in seven, according to a recent poll, intends to return. Driven by the ambitious young, European immigration to the U.S. jumped by 16% during the ’90s. Visa applications dropped after 9/11, but then increased last year by 10%. The total number of Europe-born immigrants increased by roughly 700,000 during the last three years, with a heavy inflow from the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and Romania—as well as France. These new immigrants have been particularly drawn to the metropolitan centers of California, Florida and New York.

The Big Apple offers a lesson for France. An analysis of recent census numbers indicates that immigrants to New York are the biggest contributors to the net growth of educated young people in the city. Without the disproportionate contributions of young European immigrants, New York would have suffered a net outflow of educated people under 35 in the late ’90s. Overall, there are now 500,000 New York residents who were born in Europe (not to mention the numerous non-European immigrants who live, and prosper, in the city).

Contrast this with Paris, where the central city is largely off-limits to immigrants, in some ways due to the dirigiste planning that so many professional American urbanists find appealing. Since Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, uprooting many existing working-class communities, the intention of the French elites has been to preserve the central parts of the city—often with massive public investment—for the affluent. This has consigned the proletariat, first white and now increasingly Muslim, to the proximate suburbs—into what some French sociologists call “territorial stigma.” In these communities, immigrants are effectively isolated from the overpriced, elegant central core and the ever-expanding outer suburban grand couronne. The outer suburbs, usually not on the maps of tourists and new urbanist sojourners, now are home to a growing percentage of French middle-class families, and are the locale for many high-tech companies and business service firms.

The contrast with America’s immigrants, including those from developing countries, could not be more dramatic, both in geographic and economic terms. The U.S. still faces great problems with a portion of blacks and American Indians. But for the most part immigrants, white and nonwhite, have been making considerable progress. Particularly telling, immigrant business ownership has been surging far faster than among native-born Americans. Ironically, some of the highest rates for ethnic entrepreneurship in the U.S. belong to Muslim immigrants, along with Russians, Indians, Israelis and Koreans.

Perhaps nothing confirms immigrant upward mobility more than the fact that the majority have joined the white middle class in the suburbs—a geography properly associated here mostly with upward mobility. These newcomers and their businesses have carved out a powerful presence in suburban areas that now count among the nation’s most diverse regions. Prime examples include what demographer Bill Frey calls “melting pot suburbs”: the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles; Arlington County, Va.; Essex County, N.J.; and Fort Bend County in suburban Houston. The connection between this spreading geography and immigrant opportunity is not coincidental. Like other Americans, immigrants often dramatically improve their quality of life and economic prospects by moving out to less dense, faster growing areas. They can also take advantage of more business-friendly government. Perhaps the most extreme case is Houston, a low-cost, low-tax haven where immigrant entrepreneurship has exploded in recent decades. Much of this has taken place in the city itself. Looser regulations and a lack of zoning lower land and rental costs, providing opportunities to build businesses and acquire property.

It is almost inconceivable to see such flowerings of ethnic entrepreneurship in Continental Europe. Economic and regulatory policy plays a central role in stifling enterprise. Heavy-handed central planning tends to make property markets expensive and difficult to penetrate. Add to this an overall regulatory regime that makes it hard for small business to start or expand, and you have a recipe for economic stagnation and social turmoil. What would help France most now would be to stimulate economic growth and lessen onerous regulation. Most critically, this would also open up entrepreneurial and employment opportunity for those now suffering more of a nightmare of closed options than anything resembling a European dream.

Mr. Kotkin, Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of “The City: A Global History” (Modern Library, 2005)

Copyright The Wall Street Journal

Posted at 3:14 PM · Comments (0)

Ken Wiwa
November 9 2005 - Copyright The Financial Times

Ten years ago tomorrow my father and eight Ogoni men were hanged by Nigeria’s military regime. The news of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s murder sent shock waves around the world, not least because the executions were carried out in the face of mounting international pressure for justice to prevail. The world vowed that Ken’s death must not be in vain.

My father and many others in the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (Mosop) had been campaigning for years against the destruction of the environment of the Niger Delta by the working practices of western oil companies - in particular, Shell.

Our protests were equally directed at the Nigerian government, which for nearly 40 years had accrued a vast income from oil revenues yet returned a pitiful amount in the form of development to the impoverished communities from whose lands the oil was extracted.

Mosop was expressly committed to non-violence, yet my father was executed on false charges of murder and remains a convicted murderer on Nigeria’s statute books, in spite of widespread international condemnation of the judicial process that sent them to the gallows, including a United Nations resolution following a fact finding mission.

Despite all the anger, despite the trauma that the families have endured and despite UN resolution that the convictions be reviewed and compensation paid to the families of the deceased, Ken Saro-Wiwa remains criminalised and estranged by a country that has since made the transition from military dictatorship to a civilian administration.

It is tempting to conclude that the more things change the more they remain the same, but things have changed in Nigeria - for one, the issue of resource control and greater consciousness of the environmental impacts of resource extraction is now at the front and centre of the political debate in Nigeria. If nothing else, the death of thousands of Ogoni reconfigured the country’s politics.

The administration of Olusegun Obasanjo, the president, is working hard to tackle the country’s ills. Through the work of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, substantial efforts have been made to combat the corruption for which Nigeria has become famous. The only concern is that anti-corruption measures can be selective, primarily aimed at Nigerians and ignoring the individuals and companies that are known to have perpetrated the largest frauds against the Nigerian people.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a trenchant and unremitting critic of waste and corruption and his ghost continues to stalk Nigeria. His trial and execution sent a clear message that the international order impoverishes people who are unfortunate enough to live on rich natural resources. Over the past 10 years there has been a disturbing upsurge in violence; a vicious cycle of oil theft, the arming of gangs, repression, killings and the destruction of communities. Last week, Amnesty International published a report that concluded that: “The exploitation of oil in the Niger Delta continues to result in injustice, violence and deprivation.”

As the Niger Delta assumes greater strategic importance in the energy sector, the US has increased military aid to the region in response to the flood of small arms. My father saw this coming. “I predict,” he wrote in a final statement that the tribunal prevented him from making, “that the denouement of the riddle of the Niger Delta will soon come. The agenda is being set at this trial. Whether the peaceful way I have favoured will prevail depends on what the oppressor decides, what signals it sends out to the waiting public.”

If the situation in the Niger Delta is to improve there must be greater political accountability concerning the needs of the people, but that process will have to be accompanied by a �?­genuine attempt to make companies responsible to those communities and not just their shareholders and beneficiaries.

There is no better place to demonstrate that globalisation can be a mutually beneficial system than in Ogoni, a place that has become synonymous with everything that is morally wrong with the global economy. Resolving the Ogoni question will not be easy, but it would be a marvellously humane story, not to mention a public relations coup, that can provide genuine hope for the future. I know that Mr Obasanjo is committed to the cause and Dr Peter Odili, my state governor, has conveyed his hopes for a better future. Where better to start the process in earnest than to clear Ken Saro-Wiwa’s name as a gesture of good faith?

The writer is an author and journalist

Posted at 3:09 PM · Comments (0)

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Copyright The International Herald Tribune

SEOUL.
Divided yet booming, East Asia is experiencing an epic reconfiguration.
Increasingly, a new organization of East Asian countries is seen as the best way
to manage the profound social and economic changes sweeping the region.

To its proponents, an East Asian Community, created in the mold of the European
Union, promises a great uplift of the region — a strong mechanism for stability
and for constraining and transforming China. By promoting an East Asian
identity, an EAC would help to shift paradigms, heal old wounds and resolve
explosive disputes like the Taiwan issue and the Korean division.

Championed by many in Japan, South Korea and especially the 40 year-old
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EAC idea has begun to arouse
significant enthusiasm in China and even Australia and India. It commonly refers
to an entity with varying degrees of economic, cultural, political and security
cooperation among East and Southeast Asian nations and perhaps Oceania too.

An EAC is both desirable and feasible for many reasons. The people of East Asia
share much in common: a cultural heritage featuring Confucian ideology and a
legalist political tradition; the use of Chinese characters; and the belief in
Chinese medicine and feng shui.

Furthermore, the whole region has had record-shattering economic booms and
stronger economic ties have resulted. Today, a ”Made in East Asia” label would
better describe the true origin and contents of most ”Made in China” goods.

Yet an East Asia Community is still an ideal without a road map. The
goal is complicated by the great differences between nations of the
region: We see some of the richest, most open and highly-advanced
democracies coexisting with some of the poorest, most isolated and most backward
societies.

Disagreements about the nature and scope of an EAC also exist. Tokyo, which
often considers itself more Western than Asian, has been mainly interested in
economic cooperation, while many in Seoul are justifiably more concerned about
security and peace. Many in Beijing tend to view an EAC as a useful way to fend
off America’s hegemonic power. Support from the United States for an EAC is at
best uncertain.

And unlike Western Europeans in the 1950s, the East Asians have no common enemy,
nor a common ally, to bind them. There is no common arrangement, like NATO, to
address the complex security problems in the region. While the Western Europeans
had a dwindled sense of nationalism 50 years ago, after the devastation of two
world wars, East Asians in all corners are experiencing a rapid surge in
conflicting nationalisms. There seems to be a strong desire for settling scores.

Lack of leadership is another critical problem. Asean lacks the
necessary weight and internal cohesion. A united East Asia led by Japan, the
most developed nation in the region, often automatically rekindles the terrible
memory of Imperial Japan’s brutal effort to create a Greater East Asia 60 years
ago. Japan’s frustrating experience of seeking a permanent seat on the UN
Security Council shows how hard it is for Tokyo to assume real political
leadership without a sea change in Japan to shed its unrepentant, macho mask.
Chinese leadership, given Beijing’s political system and the great uncertainty
about its stability and intentions, is simply too frightening for too many. The
chance for the two giants, China and Japan, to join hands for the founding of an
EAC seems slimmer every day.

But concerted efforts could still make a difference. The similarly
endowed East Asian Tigers — South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan —
could first form a union starting with narrow cooperation and integration in
areas like energy or technology, to serve as the core of a possible EAC
snowball, much like the 1948 Benelux Union by Belgium, the Netherlands and
Luxembourg (assuming, of course, Beijing somehow miraculously allows such
a union). In just four years, the Benelux Union grew into the European Coal and
Steel Community that brought France and West Germany together. The rest is EU
history.

It took 50 years for the EU to expand so much that it now seems to be suffering
serious indigestion. East Asians may take a longer time to just bring their
region peacefully together as equal partners. An East Asian ”Four Tigers
Union,” small and however unlikely it may seem, may help to create an EAC and
rewrite the history of East Asia and beyond.

***
Fei - Ling Wang is professor of international affairs at the Georgia
Institute of Technology and international affairs fellow of the Council on
Foreign Relations.

Posted at 12:11 PM · Comments (0)

Howard W. French - Copyright The International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2005

SHANGHAI In its early years, globalization often seemed like something handed down from above. The rich countries of the world, led by the United States, foisted their rules and their advice on the poor, and their products were sure to follow. Who was globalized and who was not could be judged with a quick scan of the horizon for McDonalds and Starbucks signs, Levis jeans, Windows-equipped computers, or for that matter, American banks and insurance companies.

With the rise of China and India, however, old patterns are giving way to new ones. Until recently, the world’s two most populous countries had stood back to back, their gazes locked firmly on the United States for just about everything, from the direction of the global economy, to the creation of standards, to the enforcement of a certain order. Above all, they looked to America as a source of technology, capital and profits. Both clearly saw their links to the United States’ economy, the world’s largest and richest, as the secret to their own growth.

In its next incarnation, globalization will be more about interpenetration. China selling an endless flotilla of its manufactures to the rich countries, or Indian outsourcers winning jobs in everything from customer service to tax accounting to online help with homework, is hardly news any more. In its most momentous form, however, interpenetration means that the world’s emerging economic powers will begin to globalize each other, creating new sectors in each other’s markets, infusing each other with capital, and drawing on each other’s giant pools of talent.

Recent word of huge new investments by India and China in each other’s booming economies - most specifically in their red-hot information technology sectors - may just presage the dawn of this moment, one in which the giants of the developing world finally and truly discover each other.

The harbinger of this trend is Infosys Technologies, the Indian software and business service outsourcing giant that made waves in China recently with a $65 million investment to build large new research and training campuses in Shanghai and Hangzhou. Immediate plans call for the company to hire 2,000 Chinese engineers to begin writing business application software and providing back office consulting services in the Chinese market. But in this case, to focus on the short term is clearly only to see the tip of the iceberg.

Infosys is ramping up in China for the medium term when it already foresees the possibility of tens of thousands of employees, not just servicing the big Western corporations that are its mainstay at present, but introducing many thousands of Chinese companies to the benefits of outsourcing. “We are going to use China as a global development center, as much as we do India,” said Saikumar Shamanna, head of human resources development for China at Infosys.

And in this, Infosys is anything but alone. Suddenly, many Indian companies, from large, well known ones like Tata and Wipro to much smaller outfits, are scrambling to establish a foothold in China, where they aim to tap this country’s rich engineering talent to write software or get into the market for other computer services.

The Indian thrust is being matched by a newfound Chinese interest in India’s market, as well. One of China’s leading companies, Huawei, a big networking equipment manufacturer, for one, has set up a campus in Bangalore to tap Indian software talent and more broadly to study how India has become a force in software development in such a short period of time.

Regional business analysts say the obvious appeal of specific sectors, like information technology, in which each Asian giant has clear strengths, should not obscure a general background of rich opportunity. Together, the two countries boast a middle class of perhaps 400 million people that is growing fast. Already, China has over 100 million Internet users and 350 million cellphone users. No slouch itself, India’s mobile phone market has recently been increasing at a clip of 2.5 million users per month.

In a new report, “How India, China Redefine the Tech World Order,” Forrester Research, a technology consulting group says, “Over the next five years, nearly 40 percent of all PCs and a significant share of all cellphones sold worldwide will be in India and China.” The report claims that immature markets in consumer hardware, software and services “have room for double-digit growth for the next 20 years.”

Indeed, once the process of discovery is consolidated, it is hard to imagine it doing anything but picking up pace. India’s need for engineers today is pulling it into the Chinese economy. With its fast-aging population, believe it or not, China may need labor tomorrow, and the country’s emerging industrial giants may find India, with its younger workforce, irresistible.

If one places any stock in the notion of creative destruction, what could be more disruptive to the global status quo? With more than 2.3 billion people between them, agreement between India and China on almost any standard makes that item an instant contender for global standard status.

What does this mean in practical terms? That the successor to a ubiquitous product like Microsoft Office could very well be Chinese. (Indeed, a company called Wuxi Evermore Software recently sent me an advanced prototype.) It could mean that the mobile phone standards of the future are decided jointly in Asia, and not in Europe or the United States.

It could mean Indian employees in the back offices of rising Chinese corporations, implementing business systems devised not by Oracle or IBM, but by Indian companies like Wipro or Satyam. And it could also soon mean Chinese managers running production lines in factories in an India that will need far more industry than it has at present in order to lift hundreds of millions of people out of dire poverty.

What it clearly means already is the day when a cozy club of the rich - the United States, the strongest economies of Western Europe, and Japan - sets the pace for the rest of the world, passing out instructions and assigning grades, is fast drawing to a close.

Posted at 11:26 AM · Comments (0)

——————————————————————————-

November 2005

___________________________________________________________

China is now Japan’s leading trade partner and Chinese companies
are buying up small and medium-sized Japanese businesses in the
pursuit of technology and brand names.

___________________________________________________________

BEIJING’S largest shopping centre, in the Zhongguancun
district, specialises in computer products. On 26 April this
year the atmosphere there was peculiar. Elsewhere in the
capital thousands of young people were demonstrating against
Japan and its interpretation of history (1), and calling for
a boycott of Japanese goods. But just as many were crowding
around Zhongguancun’s stands, gazing longingly at the
computers and game consoles imported from the land of the
rising sun.

Private security guards prevented the disorder outside
disturbing the faithful as they worshipped at the shrines of
Sony and Toshiba. But a few youngsters managed to slip in,
wearing T-shirts with slogans in Chinese and English:
“Boycott Japanese goods, support China”; “Fuck the Japanese,
China is strong”.

Sales staff representing IBM, whose personal computer
division had been bought by Lenovo, China’s leading PC
manufacturer, in January 2005, seemed to approve the slogans.
Some tried to use them as a pretext to interest potential
customers in their products.

“Our computers are just as good as theirs,” a salesman told a
westerner who seemed interested in the latest Sony. “Wait and
see, it’s just a matter of time until a Chinese company buys
them up. Lenovo had no problem taking over IBM.”

He may have been encouraged by the demonstrations taking
place outside and across China, but he wasn’t far from the
truth. Sony may not be under threat, but it is clear that
Chinese businesses are eyeing up Japan and its technology.
“One of their driving ambitions is to get their hands on the
production technologies for which Japanese small and medium
enterprises are famous throughout the world,” confirms Tanaka
Shigeaki, deputy director general of the Japan External Trade
Organisation.

This ambition worries Japanese public opinion, which is less
than delighted to see Chinese companies buying up local
businesses while Japan continues to be the main provider of
state aid to China (2), especially when China has overtaken
the United States as Japan’s leading trade partner (3).

Appropriating new technologies

It began in 2001 when Shanghai Electric, an industrial group
that already owns 300 companies and employs some 210,000
people, took over Akiyama, a small specialist printer
manufacturer. Rescued from bankruptcy and re-christened
Akiyama International, the company saw business increase
tenfold, particularly with China where the printer market was
booming. Three years later it had increased its workforce
from 79 to 160, maintained its system of seniority-based
salaries and reinstated bonuses that had been forgotten for
years.

But although Akiyama International’s employees are happy with
their working conditions, sceptics are suspicious of Shanghai
Electric’s real motives. “China has acquired Japanese
technologies in the past,” Tanaka points out, “but they
weren’t cutting-edge. Chinese businessmen have realised that
if they want to get hold of them and develop their own
technological capacities they have to take over Japanese
companies. To avoid making waves they tend to go for failing
businesses.”

This strategy of infiltrating the Japanese market to secure
technological benefits is further exemplified by Shanghai
Electric’s acquisition a year ago of the machine tool pioneer
firm Ikegai, founded in 1889.

“When people talk about takeovers or acquiring a stake in a
company, they tend to think in terms of western practice
which generally involves restructuring,” points out Zhang
Chunhua, chief executive officer of Shanghai Electric’s
subsidiary SEC Japan.

“We take a different approach. Since China is a still a
developing country we prefer to concentrate on building up
commercial ties with the businesses we acquire, rather than
looking for a crude return on investment. Machine tools and
printing equipment fit perfectly into our corporate strategy,
especially since China is desperately short of these
products.”

Despite political and economic tensions between the
countries, experts expect this trend will become more
pronounced in the immediate future (4). Over the past four
years investment in Japan by Chinese firms has increased from
$260,000 to almost $100m, although this remains a drop in the
ocean compared with the billions of dollars that Daimler and
Renault have had to lay out to secure major stakes in the
firms Mitsubishi Motors and Nissan (5).

Tanaka notes how resentment of the arrival of western
investors in Japanese markets, in the mid-1990s, has now
given way to acceptance. He expects the same to happen with
Chinese investors, even if many Japanese balk at the idea
that China might one day become the dominant economic power
in Asia.

Chinese entrepreneurs, aware that an unfortunate historical
legacy and recent political difficulties have fed distrust,
are doing their best not to offend sensitivities (6). Tanaka
says: “I remember an official from the Shanghai chamber of
commerce asking members to avoid doing anything that might be
misinterpreted by the people of Japan, to allow mergers with
local companies to go as smoothly as possible.”

A difficult pill to swallow

His optimism is validated by the Chinese company Sanjiu’s
takeover of Toa Seiyaku, a middle-sized pharmaceutical
company based in Toyama on the western coast of Japan. Fierce
competition within the Japanese market meant that Toa no
longer possessed the necessary means to develop its business,
threatening its longterm survival. Its takeover by Sanjiu,
more familiar in the West under its 999 brand name, offered
it a lifeline: the Chinese giant, with its network of more
than 10,000 stores, was able to guarantee better distribution
of Toa’s products.

For the small Japanese company, too weak to crack new markets
on its own, this was a welcome opportunity. For Sanjiu, a
modest outlay secured access to a market where Chinese
remedies are popular. As a Toa executive points out: “The
Sanjiu deal is a clear demonstration that everyone can
benefit and that Chinese investment in Japan doesn’t have to
be seen as a humiliation for the Japanese.”

But this sentiment is not universally shared. Many Japanese
resent the Chinese presence. And the arrival of China’s
feared triad criminal organisations, which are buying up
property in areas of Tokyo that locals struggle to afford,
has helped reinforce prejudices.

A poll published by Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s leading daily
newspaper, presents a clear picture of Japanese resentment of
Chinese neighbours (7). Recent anti-Japanese demonstrations
in China no doubt confirmed their suspicions. The success of
a manga publication by Hirokane Kenshi (8), dealing with the
difficulties that Chinese and Japanese businessmen have
understanding one another, will have done nothing to change
public opinion.

Nevertheless the regional balance of power demands that the
countries move closer economically. Given their shared
history, neither can accept the other’s domination. The
danger that nationalist passions may cause long-lasting
wounds makes the development of business links all the more
necessary.

“In the long term,” Tanaka concludes, “increased Chinese
investment in Japan is a good thing, since it will be in the
interest of Chinese businessmen to secure stable relations
between the countries.” Unfortunately, some of the visitors
to Beijing’s electronics marketplace don’t seem to be
listening yet.
________________________________________________________

Odaira Namihei is a journalist

(1) See Claude Leblanc, “Unfriendly neighbours”, Le Monde
diplomatique, English language edition, October 2004.

(2) According to a report in June from the Japanese ministry
of foreign affairs, Japanese aid to China has amounted to a
total of more than $28bn since it was first offered in 1979.

(3) Jetro Sensa, Jetro journal, Tokyo, May 2005.

(4) Mo Bangfu, Nichich�wa naze wakariaenainoka (Why Japan and
China are unable to understand each other), Heibonsha
Publishers, Tokyo, 2005.

(5) In 1999 Renault paid $5.4bn for a 36.8% stake in Nissan.
By March 2002 it owned 44.4% of the company.

(6) A poll published on 24 November 2004 by Zhongguo
Qingnianbao (Youth Daily), Beijing, indicated that 53.6% of
those interviewed had a high opinion of Japan.

(7) In the poll, published on 16 December 2004, 71% of those
interviewed stated that they did not trust China. Another
poll, which had been published 10 days earlier in the
conservative daily Sankei Shimbun (Tokyo) showed that more
than 57% of Japanese wanted their country to halt aid to
China.

(8) Hirokane Kenshi’s Jomu Shima Kosaku (Shima Kosaku,
manager), has appeared every week since February in Shukan
Morning, Kodansha, Tokyo. The strip, which depicts the
difficulties experienced by a Japanese company setting up in
China, straddles reality and fiction, responding to the
developing relationship between the countries. Recent
episodes reflected the anti-Japanese demonstrations that
shook China during the spring of 2005.

Translated by Donald Hounam

________________________________________________________

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED � 1997-2005 Le Monde diplomatique

Posted at 9:32 AM · Comments (0)

Nov. 7, 2005 - Copyright Slate

It looks as if the realists have won the day in the matter of Darfur. Or, to phrase it in another way, it looks as if the ethnic cleansers of that province have made good use of the “negotiation” and “mediation” period to complete their self-appointed task. As my friend Johann Hari put it recently in the London Independent: “At last, some good news from Darfur: the genocide in western Sudan is nearly over. There’s only one problem�it’s drawing to an end only because there are no black people left to cleanse or kill.”

By some reliable estimates, the Sudanese government or “National Islamic Front” has slain as many as 400,000 of its black co-religionists�known contemptuously as zurga (“niggers”)�and expelled perhaps 2 million more. This appalling achievement has been made possible by a very simple tactic: The actual killers and cleansers, the Arab janjaweed militias, are a “deniable” arm of the Sudanese authorities. Those authorities pretend to negotiate with the United Nations, the United States, and the African Union, and their negotiating “card” is the control that they can or might exercise over said militias. While this tap is turned on and off, according to different applications of carrot and stick, the militias pretend to go out of control and carry on with their slaughter and deportation. By the time the clock has been run out, the job is done.

If it were not for the efforts of a few brave journalists and humanitarian workers, and at least one American soldier attached to the African Union “peacekeepers” who went public in disgust at what he had seen, the Sudanese government might have gotten away with the whole thing. But we have more than enough filmed and photographic evidence of Sudanese planes and helicopters, flying close support to janjaweed operations, to say with certainty that the relationship between the two is the same as between the Rwandan authorities and the “Hutu Power” mobs who destroyed the Tutsi population. In other words, a Rwanda in slow motion, and in front of the cameras and the diplomats. What was all that garbage about “never again”? What was the meaning of Clinton’s apology to the Rwandans? What did Colin Powell mean when he finally used the word “genocide” to describe the events in Darfur, just before resigning as secretary of state and becoming an advocate for more realism all round?

Continue Article

And what on earth was I thinking when I employed that “carrot and stick” clich� a couple of paragraphs above? Carrots there have been. Only the other day, according to the New York Times, the Bush administration granted a waiver to the sanctions ostensibly in place against the Khartoum government in order to allow it to spend $530,000 on a lobbyist in Washington. Well, one would not want to deny a government indicted for genocide the right to make its case. That would hardly be fair. Meanwhile, the State Department has upgraded Sudan’s status on the chart that shows “cooperation” in the matter of slave-trafficking. Apparently, you can be on this list and still be awarded points for good behavior. A hundred-plus congressmen recently signed a statement accusing the administration of “appeasement,” which seems the only appropriate word for it.

But that’s about the extent of the protest. How can this be? Surely the administration did everything that could have been asked of it. Abandoning any sort of “unilateralism,” it pedantically followed the Kofi Annan script of multiparty negotiations and patient diplomacy. It allowed the inspectors more time. It exhausted all avenues short of war and never even threatened the use of force. By the use of sanctions, it kept Sudan “in its box.” And it has got exactly what anyone might have predicted for such a strategy. Perhaps that’s why there is so little protest. After all, we know that “war is not the answer.” And now Sudan has Darfur province in its box. It has taken the land and gotten rid of the people.

Any critique of realism has to begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace. Everybody now wishes, or at least says they wish, that we had not made ourselves complicit spectators in Rwanda. But what if it had been decided to take action? Only one member state of the U.N. Security Council would have had the capacity to act with speed to deploy pre-emptive force (and that would have been very necessary, given the weight of the French state, and the French veto, on the side of the genocidaires). It is a certainty that at some stage, American troops would have had to open fire on the “Hutu Power” mobs and militias, actually killing people and very probably getting killed in return. Body bags would have been involved. It is not an absolute certainty that all detained members of those militias would have been treated with unfailing tenderness. It is probable that some of the military contractors would have overcharged, and that some locals would have engaged in profiteering and even in tribal politics. It is impossible that any child of any member of the Clinton administration would have been an enlisted soldier. But we never had to suffer any of these wrenching experiences, so that we can continue to wish, in some parallel Utopian universe, that we had done something instead of nothing.

Or not exactly nothing. The United States ended up supporting the French military intervention in Rwanda, which was mounted in an attempt not to remove the genocidaires but to save them. Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens. Our policy in Darfur has not just failed to rescue a stricken black African population: It has actually assisted the Sudanese Islamists in completing their policy of racist murder. Thank heaven that we are tough enough to bear the shame of this, and strong enough to forgive ourselves.

In 2004 Lee Smith wondered if the Sudanese government would blow off a U.N. security council resolution calling for Sudan to “disarm and persecute” the janjaweed militia. No surprises here: They did. Click here for a Dispatch from Jennifer Abrahamson’s two-month stay in Sudan setting up a public information/press office for the United Nations. Brendan I. Koerner explained the origins of the janjaweed militia. Click here for a slide show of pictures drawn by child refugees from the genocidal conflict in Sudan.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. His most recent collection of essays is titled Love, Poverty, and War.
Photograph of rebels by Desirey Minkoh/AFP/Getty Images.

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En el monte, senores, yo tengo ma guajira… Papi!

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I’m back from a quick visit to the States, with some exciting trips in prospect, and some new plans for the website, including, one hopes soon, some occasional video files.
During a busy few days in New York, I attended ceremonies of the Hurston Wright Foundation’s book awards, and “A Continent for the Taking” was honored with second place in the non-fiction category (http://www.hurston-wright.org/). There’s an interesting contrarian take on prizes and awards in the Snippets feature on this page. Click to see the piece
I also spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, passing through on Halloween weekend. Pix are posted in the Abroad in the States gallery Click to see the photos.
Last stop was the Walker Art Museum, in Minneapolis, which says it is posting video on its website: Click to visit the museum’s site.
I didn’t travel with any of my “serious” camera gear to the US, and quickly regretted it, particularly on a weekend afternoon walking around midtown Manhattan (Broadway in the lower 30s) with a friend. The previous night, said friend dropped my trusty Casio Z-55 in her cup of coffee, as she admired it. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.
Another link to pass along is the “greatest hits photoblog at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalledaphotoproject/. Check out the stuff depicting daily life by kids in rural India. It was put together by Abby Stone, a high school student from St. Louis. Some of the photography is stunning, like this:
Click to see the photo.
Finally, I get a fair amount of email to the Globetrotter address, but few comments posted on the web page itself (below). I’m always happy to respond to people individually, but some comments are best shared with others, and this could include anything from suggestions of things to read, to reactions to Snippets items or to pictures or music, etc.
88 for now.

Posted at 8:41 AM · Comments (0)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2005
Copyright The Boston Globe

BOSTON The indictment of the vice president’s chief of staff for perjury and obstruction of justice is an occasion to consider just how damaging the long public career of Richard Cheney has been to the United States. He began as a political scientist devoted to caring for the elbow of Donald Rumsfeld. As a congressman, Rumsfeld had reliably voted against programs to help the nation’s poor, so (as I recalled in reading James Mann’s “Rise of the Vulcans”) it was with more than usual cynicism that Richard Nixon appointed him head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the antipoverty agency. Rumsfeld named Cheney as his deputy, and the two set out to gut the program - the beginning of the Republican rollback of the Great Society, what we saw in New Orleans this fall.
When Rumsfeld became Gerald Ford’s White House chief of staff, he again tapped Cheney as his deputy. Now they set out to destroy d�tente, the fragile new relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dismissing d�tente as moral relativism, Cheney so believed in Cold War bipolarity that when it began to melt in the late 1980s, he tried to refreeze it. As George H.W. Bush’s secretary of defense, Cheney was key to America’s refusal to accommodate the hopeful new spirit of the age. Violence was in retreat, with peace breaking out across the globe, from the Philippines to South Africa, Ireland, the Middle East and Central America. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Cheney forged America’s response - which was, little over a month later, to wage an illegal war against Panama.
As Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the nonviolent dismantling of the Soviet Union, Cheney warned Bush not to trust it. When the justification for the huge military machine over which Cheney presided disappeared, he leapt on the next casus belli - Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Hussein, a former ally, was now Hitler.
Against Cheney’s own uniformed advisers (notably including Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell), he forged Washington’s choice of violence over diplomacy. The first Gulf War, remembered by Americans as justified, was in fact an unnecessary affirmation of military might as the ground of international order, just as an historic alternative was opening up. U.S. responses in that period, mainly shaped by Cheney, stand in stark contrast to Gorbachev’s, who, refusing to call on military might even to save the Soviet Union, was ordering his soldiers back to their barracks. The unsentimental Cheney, eschewing human rights rhetoric, was explicit in defining America’s Gulf War interest as all about oil. (The oil industry having made Cheney rich.) Cheney’s initiatives, more than any other’s, defined the insult to the Arab world that spawned Al Qaeda.
With all of this as prelude, it seems as tragic as it was inevitable that Cheney was behind the wheel again when the next fork in the road appeared before the nation. When the World Trade Center towers were hit in New York, it was Cheney who told a shaken President George W. Bush to flee. The true nature of their relationship (Cheney, not Bush, having shaped the national security team; Cheney, not Bush, having appointed himself as vice president) showed itself for a moment.
The 9/11 Commission found that, from the White House situation room, Cheney warned the president that a “specific threat” had targeted Air Force One, prompting Bush to spend the day hiding in the bunker at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska. There was no specific threat. In Bush’s absence, Cheney, implying an authorizing telephone call from the president, took command of the nation’s response to the crisis. There was no authorizing telephone call. The 9/11 Commission declined to make an issue of Cheney’s usurpation of powers, but the record shows it.
At world-shaping moments across a generation, Cheney reacted with an instinctive, This is war! He helped turn the War on Poverty into a war on the poor. He helped keep the Cold War going longer than it had to, and when it ended (because of initiatives taken by the other side), Cheney refused to believe it. To keep the U.S. war machine up and running, he found a new justification just in time. With Gulf War I, Cheney ignited Osama bin Laden’s burning purpose. Responding to 9/11, Cheney fulfilled bin Laden’s purpose by joining him in the war of civilizations. Iraq, therefore (including the prewar deceit for which Scooter Libby takes the fall), is simply the last link in the chain of disaster that is the public career of Richard Cheney.
(James Carroll’s column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.)

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Tuesday, November 8, 2005 at 12:40 JST
NEW YORK � Japan should clearly adopt national legislation to combat racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, and exercise a greater political will to fight them, a U.N special rapporteur said Monday.

“I will propose that in Japan, as elsewhere, that national legislation should be adopted clearly against racism and racial discrimination and xenophobia,” said Doudou Diene of Senegal, who was appointed by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to investigate contemporary forms of racism and discrimination in various countries.

In his presentation, Diene highlighted the situation in Japan where the Ainu, an indigenous people from Hokkaido and those who were originally outcasts from the feudal era continue to face problems.

Also of concern to Diene is the treatment of Korean and Chinese minorities living in Japan, as well as the new immigrants originating from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

“I am going to ask for the strengthening of the expression of political will to combat racism,” Diene said, noting that although his nine-day visit to the country in July was a sign of political will, he thought it should be expressed in a stronger way.

As the special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Diene traveled to Japan where he met with governmental officials and members of civil society in various areas, including Hokkaido, Tokyo and Osaka.

“Japan, both through the national inheritance of its society and its relations with neighboring countries, as well as the insularity of its peoples, is still marked by real racism and xenophobia,” he noted in his presentation before the General Assembly’s committee that addresses human rights issues.

Representatives from China, North and South Korea also publicly spoke out in favor of Diene’s report, reiterating their calls on Japan to address discrimination.

“We tend to concur with the findings of Mr Diene that racist discrimination and xenophobia are a reality in Japanese society that has been verified both by media exposure and also repeated complaints my government has received,” said La Yifan, a Chinese counselor.

“We believe that there may be few countries in the world, if any, where some form of racial discrimination does not exist,” said Yasushi Takase, a minister with the Japanese mission at the United Nations. “In this regard Japan has made an effort to improve the situation with its own country.”

Diene is currently awaiting a response from the Japanese government to his initial findings and plans to submit a finalized report to the Commission of Human Rights next year.

In speaking of the response by officials to his earlier visit, Diene noted that the Japanese authorities he met with were extremely positive and facilitated his visit.

The special rapporteur also added that he had a special interest in visiting Japan to better understand the situation in the country that is historically marked by an “island oriented approach,” yet is considered to be international from a scientific and technological point of view.

“Clearly Japan as a country is committed to a long and deep and complex process of multiculturalism, and it was important for me to see where this process was at,” Diene said.

� 2005 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

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Saturday, November 5, 2005 at 07:57 JST
WASHINGTON � Tokyo Gov Shintaro Ishihara used a speech in the U.S. capital Thursday to convey his views on China, arguing that economic containment is the best strategy because the United States would “certainly” lose a war with China, which he said would not hesitate to sacrifice its people on a massive scale when fighting against an enemy.

“In any case, if tension between the United States and China heightens, if each side pulls the trigger, though it may not be stretched to nuclear weapons, and the wider hostilities expand, I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives,” Ishihara said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that was primarily focused on China.

The governor, an outspoken politician known for his nationalistic views, also said U.S. ground forces, with the exception of the Marines, are “extremely incompetent.”

“Therefore, we need to consider other means to counter China,” he said. “The step we should be taking against China, I believe, is economic containment.”

Ishihara said while China would begin a war without hesitation at the cost of massive human casualties, the United States has found that the deaths of only 2,000 troops in Iraq has created major domestic problems.

“I believe we are placed in a high degree of tension that poses greater danger than the Cold War structure between the United States and Russia posed,” he said.

Ishihara said China would be unlikely to use the conventional nuclear tactic of pinpointing attacks on nuclear facilities instead of cities out of fear of retaliatory strikes.

China would attack major cities even at the cost of retaliatory U.S. nuclear strikes on such cities as Shanghai, which would entail a huge loss of civilian lives, Ishihara said.

Noting some American politicians believe China will move toward democracy and that some people say there will be elections in the near future, Ishihara said, “I believe such predictions are totally wrong.”

As for Japan building up its own defense capability, Ishihara said the United States is the country most opposed to such a move, while China is next in opposition.

Ishihara also said the security treaty between Japan and the United States is “so undependable.”

Later in the day, Ishihara held talks with U.S. Defense Deputy Undersecretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless to discuss the realignment of the U.S. military presence in Japan.

The governor has been calling for civilian use of Yokota Air Base in Tokyo.

Ishihara, who arrived in Washington on Wednesday, will move to New York on Friday to watch Sunday’s New York City Marathon to prepare for a large-scale marathon in Tokyo in February 2007.

� 2005 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

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By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Copyright The New York Times
Published: November 8, 2005

SHANGHAI, Nov. 7 - For years, the rapid growth of China and India has been based on business with the developed world, and has often meant taking business away from Western industries. Now, companies in the two largest emerging economies in the world are beginning to hunt intensively for business in each other’s markets.

In recent months, a giant company in one country has announced ambitious expansion plans in the other. India-China trade had already been growing at a phenomenal rate, reaching $13.6 billion last year - a sevenfold increase from 1998. Companies have said their new investments are critical strategic moves aimed at profiting from the other country’s rapid rise.

But also driving the boom in investment has been the shortage of talent in crucial sectors in both countries. The strengths of each are remarkably different: China is an industrial powerhouse in the making, while India has placed its bets more heavily on services.

Nowhere can this trend be seen more clearly than in information technology, where India is already perceived as a global leader. China is vowing to catch up.

Infosys Technologies, the software and information services giant in India, for example, recently announced plans to invest $65 million to expand its business in China. Infosys plans to hire 2,000 computer specialists over the next two years and to construct corporate campuses in Shanghai and Hangzhou to accommodate even more workers. Infosys has not previously made an investment in China of that size and scope and, experts say, it presages similar moves by other Indian technology companies.

“We are going to use China as a global development center, as much as we do India,” said Saikumar Shamanna, head of human resources development for Infosys in China. He said the company would seek business with multinational corporations in China and also with China’s own emerging multinationals.

“Today, options for people are increasing in India so rapidly,” Mr. Shamanna said, “that hiring has become a matter of who’s willing to overpay the most. When you look at the numbers of engineering graduates coming out of the Chinese universities, this becomes a very attractive place for us.”

India’s information technology sector is growing so quickly that wages in some areas are increasing by 25 percent a year, making qualified graduates from the country’s best schools scarce. China produces 400,000 engineering graduates each year, many of them in computer studies, and expansion by Indian companies into China is aimed, in part, at wooing them.

Infosys, based in Bangalore, the capital of India’s computer services industry, has risen from obscurity in the last few years to become one of the world’s top computer outsourcing companies, mostly by providing software services to large corporations in the United States and elsewhere in the West.

Infosys’s plans to expand in China have been mirrored by those of several other big Indian companies that also specialize in computer services and outsourcing, like Tata Consulting, Wipro and Satyam Computer Services. This year, Satyam announced its plans to build a major campus in Beijing. Another Indian company, NIIT, has recently expanded in China, creating more than 125 centers around the country where it teaches programming and other computing skills.

On the Chinese side, the drive to explore the Indian market is being led by corporate giants, like Huawei Technologies, a networking equipment manufacturer that competes with Cisco Systems of San Jose, Calif.

“Since we are a company whose business is based largely on globalization, we felt we had to be in India,” said Huang Ji, the chief executive of Huawei’s operations in India; Huawei has recently hired 700 Indian software specialists. “In recent years, Chinese companies have been doing research on software on a small scale, and things are still not very standardized. In India, lots of companies have reached a very high level already, and we would like to learn from them.”

The Chinese government still plays an important role in the creation of companies, and as the value of the computer services and software sectors rises, Chinese officials have been searching for training and investment opportunities in India. As a result, Infosys, for example, recently accepted 100 interns from China at a corporate campus in Mysore, India. The Chinese province of Jiangsu also recently announced plans to recruit as many as 400 software engineers from India to help it start a provincial information technology industry.

Since starting modestly in China in 2003, Infosys has outgrown three office buildings in Pudong. It is constructing a new campus in Pudong. An official with Infosys said he expected rapid expansion with the potential for tens of thousands of employees spread around China in the near future.

On a recent visit to Infosys’s headquarters, many of the new hires from China - most of them recruited from its best universities - could be seen taking training classes in English.

For now, Indian companies enjoy a lead in cross-border investments. A stiff challenge for them remains, however: how to break into the Chinese corporate market, where outsourcing of information services is less established than in most developed economies, and where a strong bias in favor of working with Chinese partners remains in force.

Goods manufactured in China have become ubiquitous in the Indian marketplace, bringing down the prices of many products and forcing some Indian producers out of business. The future of the economic relationship of the two nations will depend in part on the openness of the Chinese.

“Chinese companies are not really used to business-process outsourcing,” said James Lin, chief executive of Infosys China. “It’s going to take a little more time. We tell them that if you want to be a truly globalized business, we can help you.”

Posted at 4:54 PM · Comments (0)

John Fowles
(Filed: 08/11/2005)

John Fowles, the novelist who died on Saturday aged 79, combined a rare narrative instinct with a scholar’s interest in literary form; as a result he enjoyed the unusual distinction of both professorial attention and enormous sales.

A solitary man who shunned both the London literati and the society of his neighbours at Lyme Regis, Fowles was concerned, above all, with the existential freedom of the individual, with his scope for choice and the energy with which he wrestled with the mysteries of existence.

He provided few solutions in his work, preferring to allow the answer to a question to be itself another question. For he believed that “Mankind needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution.” His own work, sometimes labyrinthine in its complexity, rarely deviated in style or content from this maxim.

But Fowles’s fiction was never merely dry, intellectual sparring. He was a writer possessed of an expansive imagination, whose gifts as a storyteller meant that his dramas were played out beyond the conflicts of the inner self. His narrative genius led to three of his novels being filmed, two of them to critical acclaim.

Fowles had no specific writing routine; working when the mood took him, he would write the first draft of a novel in a couple of weeks before laying it aside, continuing with another project and then developing the original draft over a period of months or years. This method revealed the singular nature and range of his interests and the quixotic nature of his mind, qualities which enabled him to fashion one of the most interesting bodies of work in modern fiction.

John Fowles was born in Essex on March 31 1926. His father, Robert, was a suburban cigar importer and his upbringing in “a small town dominated by conformism - the pursuit of respectability” fostered in him “an intense and continuing dislike of mankind en masse”. He was educated at Bedford School where, in addition to being Head Boy, he excelled both as a scholar and as a cricketer.

He trained for two years in the Royal Marines, but never saw active service, after which he read Modern Languages at New College, Oxford. His studies in French literature profoundly influenced his intellectual development, for he devoured the existentialists Sartre and Camus, and perceived Gallic medieval myth as the font of modern fiction.

After graduation Fowles taught English at the University of Poitiers before moving to Anargyrios College on the Greek island of Spetsai. Inspired by the beauty of the landscape and the proud individualism of the Greeks, he began writing creatively, completing and reworking novels - specifically The Magus (1965) - which he felt were of insufficient quality to be published.

Returning to England in 1952, he lived and taught in London, constantly working to hone his fictional technique, analysing and imitating those he considered masters of the art - Defoe, Flaubert, Hemingway and Lawrence.

The Collector (1963) was the first manuscript he sent to a publisher, deeming it to be satisfactorily completed. Narrated successively by its two central characters, the novel told the story of a sad, lonely psychopath who abducts a beautiful girl with whom he has become obsessed, and whom he holds in a cellar in a desperate attempt to win her love.

A tortuously realistic portrayal of obsession, the book introduced themes that were to remain central to Fowles’s work - the individual’s struggle for physical, psychological or artistic freedom and the author’s hatred of timid convention. It also explored the divide between the existential “Us” and the mind-numbed “Them,” an antithesis expressed by the richness or poverty of his protagonists’ language.

The book became an instant bestseller and was rapturously received by the critics, although Fowles took exception to those who portrayed it simply as a sex-and-crime thriller; he described it as an allegory, with the victim representing intelligence and culture, and the kidnapper symbolising a moral bankruptcy born of materialism. Inevitably this invited the charge of elitism, yet Fowles had endeavoured to attach sympathy to both characters, a point he made clearly in his second work, The Aristos (1964), in which he stated that one cause of all crime is “maleducation”.

The enormous success of The Collector, which was made into a film starring Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar, freed Fowles from financial concerns. He gave up teaching and moved to Lyme Regis. He had always believed that a writer needed to live in exile, and Lyme Regis allowed him to be both part of English culture and isolated from it.

His success also removed him from the constraints of commerciality. Indeed, when writing The Aristos he deliberately set out not to produce another best-seller or to become falsely pigeon-holed as a thriller-writer. Subtitled “A Self-portrait in Ideas”, the book explored the author’s views on a wide range of subjects, his idea being that: “If you put down all the ideas you hold it would amount to a kind of painter’s frank self-portrait.” The book was quizzically received, critics being surprised by Fowles’s switch from fiction to a statement of personal philosophy.

In 1965 Fowles finally published The Magus, the novel on which he had been variously engaged since 1952, and on which he continued to work after its publication, ultimately producing a revised version a decade later.

This book, which became required reading for students, describes an English teacher in Greece who becomes involved with a fabulously wealthy magician, the “Magus” of the title, who draws him into a “godgame” psychodrama involving the construction of a parallel fantasy universe. Elaborate, complex and often criticised for being pretentious, Fowles’s novel drew heavily on Shakespearean and Homeric allusions which gave the work the aura of myth. Fowles’s intention was no less than to create a fable by which his protagonist - and implicitly the reader - might impose some order on the meaningless cosmos in which he exists.

The book was moderately received by the critics, who all agreed that, even if the novel did not quite come off, there could be no doubt about the scope of Fowles’s ambition. He adapted it himself for the screen, but later attacked the film (starring Anthony Quinn and Michael Caine) as “a disaster” and vowed never to adapt another of his own works.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) was successfully filmed, albeit adapted by Harold Pinter without assistance from the author. In the novel, a triangular love story, Fowles convincingly evoked the Victorian world with remarkable acuity. Highly experimental both in its form and its erudition, the book won the WH Smith literary award and the International Association of Poets, Playwrights and Novelists Silver Pen Award. It was an unexpected (to Fowles) commercial success.

After the self-conscious artifice of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles published a collection of his poems in 1973 which were strikingly spare by comparison with the richness of his fiction.

The Ebony Tower (1974), a collection of long, short stories and a translation of Eliduc, a French medieval romantic poem, sifted themes of art and literature. In the stories Fowles developed his ideas about the primacy of language, the centrality of ideas as a condition of human freedom and the eternal mystery at the core of an individual’s existence.

The book, which was televised in 1984, betrayed Fowles’s love of French culture and landscape. Although he rarely travelled, when he did it was invariably to France. At Lyme Regis, Fowles had all that he needed - tranquillity, the countryside, the sea, wildlife, his library and his jazz collection. His was not a temperament that demanded society. But it was one of his rare excursions, to Hollywood to discuss a screenplay, that inspired Daniel Martin (1977).

He described this novel as “emotionally autobiographical”, and it concerned the quest of the eponymous screenwriter to discover his true self by recapturing his past and assessing his relationships during a trip to England to visit a dying friend. In so doing, Martin discovers “what had gone wrong, not only with Daniel Martin, but his generation, age, century; the unique selfishness of it, the futility, the ubiquitous addiction to wrong ends”.

Fowles was an omnivorous reader whose fertile mind required wide-ranging stimulation. This was reflected in his own work, not only in his fiction but also in the variety of his published material. His love of the natural world and its importance in his writing were reflected both in his assertion that he “came to writing through nature” and in four books of photographs for which he provided an introductory text: Shipwrecks (1974), Islands (1978), The Tree (1979) and The Enigma of Stonehenge (1980).

Throughout the next decade Fowles continued to publish at his usual unhurried pace. Two novels, Mantissa (1982) and the historical drama A Maggot (1985), were well received, in addition to his works of local interest, A Short History of Lyme Regis (1982) and Lyme Regis Camera (1990).

In 1998 Fowles announced that he was setting up a trust in order to leave Belmont, his 18th-century house at Lyme Regis, to a group of academic institutions to be run as a writing centre for students.

In his last work, Wormholes (1999), a collection of essays, Fowles indicated why he so often left his characters at a fork in the road. A passionate lover of nature, he explained that he described human life as an ecologist might describe a patch of ground - not to control its diverse complexity, but to appreciate it as poetry can be appreciated.

The first volume of his memoirs, called simply Journals, was published in 2003, but not everyone was impressed - Robert Nye described them as “often boringly self-involved and self-important, even repulsive in what [they reveal] about him”. The second volume is due for publication next year.

John Fowles married Elizabeth Whitton in 1954. She died in 1990, and he married secondly, in 1998, Sarah Smith.

Posted at 4:43 PM · Comments (0)

Monday, November 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

I am all for literary and cultural prizes, and, uncomplicated truth to tell, I only wish that more of them came to me. Thus far too few have. I don’t see many more in my future either, unless, like Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and Frank Lloyd Wright, I acquire a fair amount of flowing white hair and live well into my 80s, at which point, I gather, what are considered reactionary and even stupid opinions are no longer held against you.

Such prizes as I have won have brought me little monetary improvement and no social prestige whatsoever. I have a single honorary degree, as opposed to the more than 200 possessed by John Hope Franklin. I was presented with a National Medal for the Humanities, but lots of people I know took the occasion to say that it was a shame that I had to be given it by George W. Bush. I responded by saying that I myself would have preferred that it had been presented by Abraham Lincoln, but then one can’t have everything.

I once won a fiction prize of $250 that required me to write a speech and spend a weekend in Hartford, Conn., to collect it. I turned it down, which earned me the lifelong enmity of the Jewish couple who bestow the prize. In the realm of honors, mine has been a varied if not a rich career.

Some—by now perhaps all—cultural prizes have had the shine rubbed off them by having been given to undeserving people, an ample number of serious jackasses among them. Everyone knows that the list of writers who did not win the Nobel Prize—Tolstoy, Proust, Henry James, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, W.H. Auden—is much more impressive than the list of those who have. Moreover, there is something about winning the Nobel Prize in literature that makes one posthumous no matter how much longer one goes on to live. Since he won his Nobel Prize, for example, I no longer feel the need to read V.S. Naipaul.

A sociology of cultural prize-giving has now been written by James F. English, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and it contains a great deal of useful information. Mr. English knows everything there is to know about the mechanics of prize-giving, from the appointing of judges to the globalizing of cultural prizes to the exploiting of prizes for further self-aggrandizement. As “The Economy of Prestige” makes clear, Mr. English has mastered the subject in little and large, and it is one full of interest about the way cultural life operates in our day.

Pity that Mr. English is an almost entirely arrhythmical writer who indites endlessly lengthy sentences in long shapeless paragraphs that make reading his book considerably less than a d�jeuner sur l’herbe. If Harvard University Press gives an award for the best-written book it has published in 2005, Mr. English’s probably shouldn’t be in the running.

In a characteristically barbed-wire sentence, he writes: “What has transformed society since the 1970s is not the rise of a new class per se but the rise of a formidable institutional system of credentialing and consecrating which has increasingly monopolized the production and distribution of symbolic capital, especially but not exclusively of educational honors and degrees, while at the same time making the accumulation of control of such capital more and more necessary to any exercise of power.” Translation: Prizes, however superfluous and foolish, can still be made to pay off for those who win them and those who award them.

Mr. English understands that the phenomenon of prizes for cultural attainment—from the Nobel Prize and the Oscars on down—is ultimately one of those jokes available to insiders, even as prizes continue to work their magic on the large majority of people not in the know. (“Gee, Dad, it’s a Pulitzer!”) And everyone connected with such prizes, as he shows, has a more or less obvious agenda. Their point, and the larger point of Mr. English’s book, is that the awarding, the judging and the accepting of prizes for cultural achievement is, at bottom, about one form or another of self-promotion.

Still, prizes and honors multiply for all sorts of reasons. Setting up a poetry or local theatrical award can be a way to memorialize a dead relative on the cheap; prizes are also useful to corporations hoping to make white sheep of themselves by appearing simultaneously culture-minded and philanthropic.

In an appendix, Mr. English lists the awards and honors currently given in the various fields of cultural achievement, and it is extensive. In the category of prizes not given, I have long thought that there ought to be a Nobel Prize for marriage. This would be awarded to long-suffering mates in famously difficult pairs. In the past, some of the winners might have been Countess Sophia Tolstoy, Mrs. Dostoyevsky, Leonard Woolf (husband of Virginia), Lionel Trilling, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, though which of the two Clintons is more deserving isn’t all that easy to determine.

Meanwhile every ethnic group has its hall of fame, and so does every craft and sport. I went to high school with a man who is currently president of the Ping-Pong Hall of Fame; in his prime he was said to be able to beat quite good players using his shoe instead of a paddle. Search hard enough and you may be able to find an award for an unpublished non-Jewish lesbian poet under five feet tall. All this prize-giving has made the field of culture rather like one of those progressive preschools where, on graduation day, even the most hopeless child is given a prize for not actually maiming his classmates.

Mr. English touches upon but does not give quite enough room in his book to the political impulses behind prize-giving. The Nobel Prize in literature is often—and fairly persuasively—accused of being awarded on the basis of a writer’s politics. This year’s award to Harold Pinter, who is quite out of control in his hatred of America, is a vivid example; since Mr. Pinter has done little of note in recent years, his Nobel seems aimed less at honoring him than at attacking the U.S. for being in Iraq. But politics plays a role domestically too. Because so many of the important American prizes are controlled by liberals, which means that they are given only to people with the correct politics, conservative institutions have begun to award their own prizes, given to people with correctly conservative politics.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Winning is everything, whatever the agenda. In the economy of prestige, awards are good for publicity, for getting better jobs and for shutting up one’s wary relatives. As for the prizes themselves, I was once told that if anyone tells you that you are the best at anything you do, ask that person who is the second-best. Learning who it is should take most of the air out of the accolade.

Very nice to win prizes, I’d say, so long as you understand that they don’t mean anything serious about the true quality of your achievement. Take the money, wisdom suggests, and walk all the way to the bank, suppressing as best you are able the silly smile that threatens to break out at the thought that you have really gotten away with it yet again.

Mr. Epstein is the author of “Ambition” and “Envy,” among many other books.

Posted at 4:38 PM · Comments (0)

By Der Spiegel staff

Nov. 07, 2005 | Mayor Claude Dilain sits on the edge of his chair in his community’s wedding-banquet hall. His hands are folded on the table in front of him, and his face is a tortured reflection of the doubts and fears inside him.

For the past 10 years, Dilain, 57, has been the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb in northeastern Paris with 28,100 inhabitants, mostly immigrants. Dilain calls it “a powder keg.” He slightly resembles French author Michel Houellebecq, but today he is paler than even the author normally is. The strain of the last few nights is no doubt part of it. But so too is a growing suspicion that the modern welfare state may be fully incapable of addressing some of his community’s most pressing problems.

Dilain is a socialist and the vice president of the French Convention of Municipal Authorities. He has been a proactive mayor, setting up free soccer training for local youth, appointing youth leaders as mediators and making sure that the community’s waste collection service functions properly. Clichy-sous-Bois is an amalgam of schools, day-care centers, welfare offices, parks and a college that looks like something out of an architecture competition. The community library is currently sponsoring a writing contest themed “I come from afar, I like my country.”

By any measure, Dilain has done everything right. But these days he is filled with an ominous sense that doing things right may not be good enough. What good is education without enough jobs?

Television news programs portray Clichy essentially as a Ramallah-sous-Bois, a place where young people in sneakers and hooded sweatshirts are trying their hand at revolution. They depict riot police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas patrolling streets lined with burning vehicles and garbage cans. A spokesman for the police officers’ union is calling for the government to bring in the military. And all this against the backdrop of concrete walls covered in brightly painted murals, the work of local children in a program sponsored by the mayor’s office.

Clichy-sous-Bois serves as evidence that the French route of soft integration has failed miserably. And when French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has ambitions of becoming France’s president, called the youth gangs “scum” and “riffraff” who must be dealt with severely, he only added fuel to the fire.

The French capital has an intifada unfolding on its doorstep. For 11 nights running, garbage containers and vehicles have been burning in Departement Seine-Saint-Denis. Night after night, gangs of teenagers storm through their neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails into carpet shops and nursery schools, turning vehicles into bonfires — 250 in one night, then 315 the next night, and 500 the next.

On Oct. 27, two local teenagers died in circumstances that have yet to be clarified. They had reportedly been running from the police — although officials have since denied this was the case — and ended up in an alley at the end of which was an electricity substation. The warning sign Mayor Dilain had had affixed to the building’s entrance — featuring comic book characters for the area’s youth — was no deterrent to 15-year-old Banou from Mali and his 17-year-old Tunisian friend, Ziad. They were electrocuted to death. A third boy survived but was seriously injured.

A rumor that the police had driven the two boys to their deaths quickly began to spread. There have been street riots every night since, and the French government is in a state of crisis.

The authorities have had trouble catching these urban guerrillas. The number of arrests — 230 by last Friday, with even fewer convictions — has been small compared with the scope of the violence and destruction. On Sunday night, fully 190 people were taken into custody by French police after they were fired on by demonstrators in Grigny just south of Paris.

French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin remained silent on the matter for five days, creating the impression that they were passively looking on as the violence threatened to vaporize Sarkozy’s political ambitions. But then they recognized that the dramatic events in Clichy-sous-Bois could in fact pose a grave danger for the entire republic.

President Chirac was urged to speak directly to the French public in a televised address, which he finally did on Sunday evening. “Law and order must have the last word,” insisted de Villepin. Sarkozy canceled all foreign trips, as did de Villepin. There is now the growing sense that integration � la fran�aise — which has transformed newcomers into citizens since the French Revolution — has failed.

The rioters are the children of immigrants from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Schools have been on holiday in France, giving these youths even more time on their hands. It’s also the end of the Ramadan fasting period, a time when nerves are already on edge. The rebellion is directed against anything that even remotely reminds the rioters of state authority — even the mailman. They are beyond reason, and no one, not their parents, not their teachers and least of all the authorities, can get through to them.

Social divisions in France today run along ethnic and religious lines, signifying deep cultural rifts. The ideal of the French republic — the nation as a community of the willing, of citizens who enjoy equal rights, regardless of their ethnic origins or religious beliefs — is giving way to a volatile coexistence among communities that want to retain their identities and live according to their own rules. The official French position has always been to condemn multiculturalism — and yet the state must now deal with the consequences.

The strict separation of church and state, a sacrosanct pillar of French government, has become an illusion. Jihad may not be what’s inspiring the rioters, but Islam is undeniably an inseparable component of their identity. Islam strengthens their sense of solidarity, gives them the appearance of legitimacy and draws an unmistakable line between them and the others, the “French.”

Suddenly “big brothers” — devout bearded men from the mosques, who wear long traditional robes — are positioning themselves between the authorities and the rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois, calling for order in the name of Allah. As thousands of voices shout “Allahu Akbar” from the windows of high-rise apartment buildings, shivers run down the spines of television viewers in their seemingly safe living rooms.

As welcome as these self-appointed keepers of the peace may be, worried authorities think they have detected something akin to a Muslim law enforcement group — perhaps even the beginnings of an Islamic militia. “The logic behind this unrest,” says one police officer, “is secession.” If he’s right, that could mean a nightmare scenario of entire neighborhoods separating themselves from the state and essentially declaring their independence, creating zones with their own laws, areas to which the authorities no longer have access unless they wish to be perceived as hostile intruders.

For the past 25 years, France has had special programs, plans and suburban ministries for its troubled neighborhoods. Indeed, the French have almost become accustomed to the sight of burning garbage cans in the poverty-stricken suburbs of cities like Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg and Marseille. But the problems have now escalated, with authorities registering 70,000 cases of vandalism, arson and gang violence this year alone. No fewer than than 28,000 vehicles — mostly belonging to the poor — have been set on fire.

The Molotov cocktails, the stone throwers and the fanaticism are all reminiscent of the student riots of 1968. But this time the rioters are not the avant-garde, their leaders not leftist intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre or Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

What is shaking the public order in Europe’s cities today is seething desperation that has erupted in directionless violence. The rioters’ targets can just as easily be the government in Paris as other members of the underclass, as was recently the case in Birmingham. And the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London are also fresh in people’s minds.

It was merely a coincidence that Queen Elizabeth and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with the family members of the 52 victims of the London subway and bus bombings last Tuesday to officially mourn their deaths on July 7. And it was also nothing but a coincidence that last Wednesday was the anniversary of the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist. But these highly symbolic coincidences have not gone unnoticed, as evidenced by a recent story in Time magazine that describes a “Generation Jihad” forming in old Europe.

The events in Birmingham and the Paris suburbs are unrelated to terrorism. The riots are not about jihad, Iran or Palestine. But they have given rise to concerns that this urban violence could easily become a breeding ground for terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and other extremist groups.

According to official figures, France is home to a little over 5 million Muslims, the largest per capita concentration of Muslims in any country in the European Union. However, the official count is viewed as unreliable; religious affiliation is not recorded in the French census. France’s Muslims feel marginalized, as do millions of other immigrants from former colonies throughout Europe, many of whom are unemployed. They live in suburban ghettos, unable to afford better neighborhoods. Now, with the ghettos turning into battlefields, the notion that immigrants will voluntarily assimilate is proving questionable.

Of course, part of the problem lies in the sheer numbers of immigrants — and the fact that they tend to live in the same place. Metropolitan Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, has a population of about a million, and just under a third are of African or Asian descent. Statisticians believe that Birmingham’s traditional white majority could become a minority in the next decade. And the same holds true for Amsterdam, now home to about 150 nationalities.

Some are calling this new Europe “Eurabia,” a reference to the growing influence of Islam and Arabic culture, despite Europe’s political and cultural roots in Christianity. Indeed, one out of 10 Dutch citizens was born abroad. Disneyland near Paris offers prayer rooms for French Muslims. And in Britain, immigrants from former colonies have mostly slipped into the poverty of ghettos.

How can the members of this “desperate and dangerous new underclass,” as social workers in Leeds call them, become responsible citizens? Who is preventing them from attacking one another, as was the case two weeks ago in Birmingham?

It doesn’t take much for violence to erupt. The recent unrest in Lozells, one of Birmingham’s poorest neighborhoods, claimed two lives, 20 injured and a large number of smashed windows and torched vehicles. The violence erupted when young Asians, most of whose parents came from Pakistan and India, clashed with the children of immigrants from the Caribbean.

In Birmingham, the violence was triggered by a rumor that Ajaib Hussein, the owner of a successful cosmetics business, had caught a 14-year-old Jamaican girl shoplifting and then, joined by up to 25 acquaintances and employees, raped the girl. There is no evidence that the incident occurred, nor that the alleged victim exists. But the suspicion alone — just as in Clichy-sous-Bois — was enough to ignite the worst violence in Birmingham in more than 20 years, evidence of the enormous tensions in suburbs with a similar social makeup.

In Lozells, home to about 30,000 people, more than half of residents are of Asian origin and 20 percent are Caribbean. The district’s 22 percent unemployment rate is almost three times as high as that in the entire Birmingham region. “People here have to fight for every crumb that falls from the tables of the wealthy,” says Bishop Joe Aldred.

The violence is fed by street gangs like the “Muslim Birmingham Panthers” and the “Burger Bar Boys,” groups that originally formed to protect residents against racist attacks. They have since turned into crime syndicates, and Lozells has become a metaphor for Britain’s failed integration and immigration policies, a community that the government can only control through tough policing. Large ghettos have appeared, say experts, and the anger of those who live there is directed at neighbors with different skin colors and bigger television sets — and not at the “infidels of the West.”

Britain’s white establishment, warns Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, is “sleepwalking” into a future where cities will be full of “black holes.” Recent surveys conclude that 95 percent of all white Britons have exclusively white friends, that 37 percent of nonwhite residents also prefer to socialize with their own, and that this trend is on the rise, especially among young people. In places like Lozells, only one in 15 children succeeds in climbing the social ladder.

Such neighborhoods are fertile recruiting grounds for fundamentalists because “the majority of Muslims in Great Britain are frustrated but cannot talk about it,” says Sayid Sharif, 37, an immigrant and construction engineer from north London. “They would never publicly express approval of the London attacks, but they secretly believe that Great Britain got what it deserved.”

Britain officially mourned the victims of the July 7 bombings just last week. A few days later on the other side of the channel, the Netherlands marked the first anniversary of the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed by an unemployed Moroccan extremist.

The Dutch also face the ruins of their integration policy, long considered exemplary. Indeed, for American terrorism expert Jessica Stern, the Netherlands is “a laboratory that’s especially well suited for studying the development of fear.” Stern is astonished at how the murder of a single individual can affect an entire country. “How can a nation suddenly become so consumed by self-doubt? And how can it be that not just the Muslims, but also the native Dutch, find themselves in such an identity crisis?”

Sixty percent of the Netherlands’ 1 million Muslims see themselves as Moroccans or Turks first, are often proud of their cultural norms and values and seek comfort in their own communities. This creates parallel worlds so disparate that immigrant children speak of “the Dutch” as enemies. Their siblings attend Koran schools, and more and more Muslim women now wear head scarves in public. Interactions between Muslims and native Dutch are becoming increasingly abrasive, especially in public places like Amsterdam’s shopping streets.

The country’s journalists, attorneys and politicians of every stripe have been receiving anonymous threats. Even Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen, named one of Time magazine’s “European heroes” of 2005 because of his conciliatory stance, now needs bodyguards. And Dutch authorities are installing more surveillance cameras in the country’s most volatile urban neighborhoods.

“We were too soft. The days of drinking tea are over,” says Dutch Minister of Immigration Rita Verdonk, who has adopted a hard-line approach toward troublemakers. Her officials have increasingly taken to deporting rejected asylum seekers, including those who were previously tolerated and whose children even attended Dutch schools.

According to statistics compiled by the Anne Frank Foundation, there have been 106 reciprocal acts of revenge since the Van Gogh murder, including the firebombing of the Muslim Bedir Elementary School in the tranquil town of Uden by a youth gang that left behind a clear message to the country’s Muslims: “White Power.”

The combat zone is expanding, mirroring the scenario pale author Michel Houellebecq described in his latest bestseller. And it seems as if Europe’s rootless immigrants are changing life on the Continent in dramatic ways, with Birmingham and the Paris suburbs providing a taste of what may well be in Europe’s future.

This story was reported and written by R�diger Falksohn, Thomas H�etlin, Romain Leick, Alexander Smoltczyk and Gerald Traufetter.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Copyright Der Spiegel

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Posted at 3:25 PM · Comments (0)

July 18, 2005, Copyright The National Review.

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, by Nicholas Ostler (HarperCollins, 640 pp., $29.95)

Most of us have, at one time or another, puzzled over such historical-linguistic conundrums as: Why did only Britain, of all the Roman provinces overrun by Germans, end up speaking a Germanic language? Why did the Portuguese language �take� in Brazil, but not in Africa, while Dutch �took� in Africa but not in Indonesia? If the Phoenicians were so important in Mediterranean history, how is it that they left not a single work of literature behind? Since we know of no nation named Aramaia, whence came Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth? What actually happened to Sumerian? Or Mongolian, the language of a vast medieval empire?

Plainly, what we have been needing is an account of world history written from the linguistic point of view. Well, here it is. Nicholas Ostler is a professional linguist and currently chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages. His loving fascination with languages is plain on every page of Empires of the Word, and in the many careful transcriptions � each with a brief pronunciation guide and a translation � of passages from Nahuatl, Chinese, Akkadian, and a host of other tongues. Ostler actually has a feel for languages that, he has convinced me, goes into something beyond the merely subjective. He speaks of �some of the distinctive traits of the various traditions: Arabic�s austere grandeur and egalitarianism; Chinese and Egyptian�s unshakeable self-regard; Sanskrit�s luxuriating classifications and hierarchies; Greek�s self-confident innovation leading to self-obsession and pedantry; Latin�s civic sense; Spanish rigidity, cupidity, and fidelity; French admiration for rationality; and English admiration for business acumen.�

The story he tells � the story of the languages of human civilization � is illustrated with dozens of maps, as a book of this sort ought to be, as well as a scattering of drawings and photographs. After a brief introductory section, the narrative divides into three parts. The first describes the spread of languages, mainly by land, from the remotest past up to the Middle Ages. The second covers the last half-millennium, when European languages planted themselves all over the world, carried mainly by sea (Russian being the chief exception here). In a short final section, Ostler surveys the current language map, and offers some speculations about the future.

The first section is the longest and contains much material likely to be unfamiliar to the average reader. It begins with the story of the Semitic languages, from Akkadian through Aramaic and Phoenician to Hebrew and Arabic. The main points of interest here are the odd lingering prestige of Sumerian long after Sumer as a political force had ceased to exist; the replacement of Akkadian, a firmly established bureaucratic-imperial language, by Aramaic, a nomad dialect from the desert fringes; and the dramatically different fortunes of sister-languages Phoenician and Hebrew. From the second of those points, Ostler extracts the surprising but true principle that �the life and death of languages are in principle detached from the political fortunes of their associated states.� He confronts, and refutes, the theory that Aramaic won out over Akkadian because of its superior, alphabetic, writing system, assigning the true cause to Assyrian population policy.

We then get an illuminating comparative study of two great introverted imperial systems, Egypt and China, and their languages, with the startling conclusion � the supporting argument is too complex to summarize � that �the long-term future of the Chinese language may be hanging in the balance.� On to Sanskrit, for which the author nurses a particular affection, and which he describes as �eminently learnable,� though this is not the impression one gets from glimpses of the grammar. (For example, the Sanskrit verb has a benedictive mood, used only when blessing.) Greek, says Ostler, is �an instructive example of what can happen to a prestige language when its community ceases to innovate, and the rest of the world catches up.� Celts, Romans, Germans, and Slavs in turn then march across the historico-linguistic stage, before the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish embark in leaky wooden carracks to spread their languages to the remotest regions of the earth.

The author is naturally tempted to try to extract from all this history some general principles about the spread of languages. This proves difficult, though, beyond a few truisms, such as that a language genealogically related to one�s own is much easier to pick up. �Despite 1,200 years of practice, the phonetic distinctions in Arabic which Westerners find hard to master … are difficult for Persian speakers too.�

Languages enlarge their numbers of speakers in various ways: through trade, conquest, migration, imperial consolidation, or religious proselytizing. The latter two � Spanish in the Americas and Sanskrit in Southeast Asia are instances � seem to be the most efficacious. Trade is an especially poor bet, as the examples of Phoenician, Sogdian (on the Silk Route), and Arabic (in the Indian Ocean) illustrate. Ostler comes to one of his few definitive conclusions on this point: �No community famous for specialization in trade has passed its language on permanently as a vernacular, or even as a lingua franca, to its customers.� The customer, you see, is always right, and the customer�s language is therefore to be preferred.

In general, though, any attempt to lay down rules here is at once swamped by counterexamples. Surveying the languages currently dominant in the world, Ostler says: �Grossly, then, one could claim that, in the political economy of languages, it pays to be the dialect of a city that becomes a national capital; it pays to be in a tropical plain, especially if it grows rice; and above all it pays to be in East or South Asia. But all these criteria have exceptions: indeed, English started out with none of these advantages.�

It is likewise difficult to see into the linguistic future with any clarity. Of a few cases, we can entertain some confidence: Russian will decline, Japanese hold its own. All else is speculation. Will the different varieties of English diverge, as post-Imperial Latin split up into the Romance languages? (Some Jamaicans hired to work on my house last year conversed with me in flawless Queen�s English, but with each other in impenetrable island patois.) Conversely, will the Turkic languages of Central Asia merge, with Anatolian Turkish, into a single language? Will Chinese attain major international status at last? What will be the influence of the Internet? Of demography? Of migration? Of Islam? The variables are so many, and the historical precedents so contradictory, one can do little more than pose the questions. This Ostler does, with all the clarity and humility of true scholarship. A marvelous book, learned and instructive.

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Washington, November 7, 2005

US President George W Bush has said that it will be easier for people in the western hemisphere to compete with countries like China and India if they adhere to free trade.

“By working for free, and I repeat, fair trade across this hemisphere, we will bring all our people into the expanding circle of development — we’ll make it easier for those of us who live in this hemisphere to compete with countries like China and India — but most importantly, trade means jobs for people”, Bush said.

The President made the remarks on Sunday during the course of his speech on democracy in the Western Hemisphere at the Brazillian capital, Brasilia.

Bush stopped for an official visit in Brazil after the Summit of Americas in Argentina, from where he returned empty handed on his push for a Free Trade Area for the Americas.

In Brazil, the US President focussed on the World Trade Organisation’s negotiations and the need for the Doha Round to succeed.

“A successful Doha Round will open up markets for farm products, and services, and industrial goods across this hemisphere and across the globe.

“Under Doha, every nation will gain — and the developing world stands to gain the most. The World Bank estimates that if the Doha Round passes, 300 million people will be lifted from poverty”, Bush said.

“My administration has offered a bold proposal for Doha that would substantially reduce agricultural tariffs and trade-distorting subsidies in a first stage — and over a period of fifteen years, eliminate them altogether,” he said.

Bush said the greatest obstacles to a successful Doha Round are the countries that stand firm in the way of dismantling the tariffs, and barriers, and trade-distorting subsidies that isolate the poor on this continent from the “great opportunities of the 21st century”.

“Only an ambitious reform agenda in agriculture, and manufactured goods, and services can ensure that the benefits of free and fair trade are enjoyed by all people in all countries”, he said.

Bush said he agreed with the criticism of the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that trade distorting agricultural subsidies in the developed world were undercutting farmers in the developing world.

“Leaders who are concerned about the harmful effects of high tariffs and farm subsidies must move the Doha Round forward,” Bush said.

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Rong Yiren, a Chinese billionaire, died on October 26th, aged 89

SEVERAL mysteries surrounded the career of Rong Yiren. One was how he could have been vice-chairman of the 5th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, vice-chairman of the standing committee of the 6th and 7th National People’s Congress, and vice-president of the People’s Republic, without ever (to anyone’s certain knowledge) joining the Communist Party. Another was how, despite ceding many of his family’s business holdings after the 1949 revolution, and losing the rest during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, he emerged within a decade as one of the 50 most charismatic businessmen in the world, by Fortune’s reckoning, and by 1999, by Forbes’s, as China’s richest.

The answer to both these mysteries is that he played a very clever and very Chinese game. First, when most of his family, including his brothers, fled from China to Taiwan or the United States after 1949, Mr Rong stayed. He had 24 flour mills to run, besides dyeing, printing and textile factories, employing in all some 80,000 people; his family’s business empire, started in 1902, had been among the biggest in the country.

The decision not to flee was brave, and made him nervous: he was “like an ant on a hot pan”, he said later, but stayed calm in front of the workforce. He also presented himself, from the first, as one of those “national” or “patriotic” capitalists who had remained not to enrich himself (far from it!) but to help China end its poverty. His dogged conviction that his country would eventually find capitalism necessary was to be proved right in spades.

Mr Rong’s communism, if official at all, was subtle. He supported the Communists, he admitted, with only “one hand” at first. But when he realised this would not do, he raised two, with implicit conditions. If he gave the party what it wanted, he would try to make sure the favour was returned. After 1956, when he handed over large stakes in his family’s businesses to the government, he was given 30m yuan ($12m) compensation, as well as the posts of vice-mayor of Shanghai and, in 1959, vice-minister for the textile industry.

Having gained political ties from canny surrenders, Mr Rong made sure he used them. Guanxi, or personal connections, the grease of all commerce and politics in China, helped him survive the Cultural Revolution, more or less. Though his companies were confiscated, his mansions ransacked and he himself reduced to menial work, top members of the party shielded him from further terrors. As a patriotic capitalist, he then confirmed the official account that he had spent the years of Mao Zedong’s brutal re-education of “capitalist-roaders” quietly at home, studying and planting flowers.

In 1978, all the years of careful positioning bore fruit. Deng Xiaoping decided that China would experiment with capitalism, opening windows to the world, and brought in Mr Rong to find “boldly creative” ways of doing so. He could have picked no one better: urbane, beautifully turned out, educated under the British system at St John’s University in Shanghai, a man impeccably loyal to China and to Deng, but also a raging capitalist to his very marrow. (Mr Rong preferred “entrepreneur” to the “red capitalist” tag Deng gave him, but “entrepreneur” hardly caught the force of it.)

Mr Rong, now in his dream job, did not have to look far to find versions of capitalism he liked. In 1979, at the party’s behest, he founded CITIC, ostensibly as the investment arm of the Chinese state but also, in effect, his own company. From its very beginnings it was in clover, a state-licensed predator in a land empty of private rivals. Telecoms, utilities and highways were swept up. When Deng in the 1980s set up the Special Economic Zones in southern China, where capitalist forays were permitted, CITIC was first there to exploit the property boom. Mr Rong, roving extensively, found foreign concerns for China to invest in, and foreign investors were in turn lured back to China. Mr Rong’s conglomerate now boasts global assets of more than 51 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) and 200 affiliated enterprises, including airlines, Hong Kong banks, timber operations and Australian aluminium smelting.

He himself did nicely, too, as far as anyone could tell. In its 2001 listing Forbes backtracked a bit, saying that his wealth ($1.9 billion in 2000) should really be attributed to his son, Larry Yung, head of CITIC-Pacific in Hong Kong. But there was still his mansion in Beijing, his spread in Shanghai and his semi-palace beside a lake in Jiangsu province, near where he was born. Cadillacs were mentioned. Mr Rong even had enough to give $180,000, just before the knife-edge election of 1992, to Britain’s Conservative Party.

To what extent public assets leached into private income was something the Chinese government could never quite find out. Certainly it had no system of rules to stop it. Once the dragon of capitalism, even in the safe and suave form of Mr Rong, was let in through the door, government and markets mingled. Some observers outside China wondered why he stayed, but there was no puzzle about it: in China he could not only be rich as Croesus, but vice-president too.

Posted at 5:23 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune and Yale Global
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2005

BERKELEY, California The media have been all agog over the rise of China and India in the international economy. But while there is no doubt about the great potential of these two economies, severe structural and institutional problems will hobble them for years to come.

Both China and India are still desperately poor. Of the total of 2.3 billion people in these two countries, nearly 1.5 billion earn less than $2 a day, according to World Bank calculations.

Of course, the lifting of hundreds of millions of people above the poverty line in China is a historic achievement. Conventional wisdom now suggests that globalization is responsible for this feat. Yet a substantial part of China’s decline in poverty since 1980 already happened by mid-1980s largely as a result of agricultural growth - and before the big strides in foreign trade and investment in the 1990s.

Assertions about Indian poverty reduction through trade liberalization are even shakier. In the 1990’s, the decade of major trade liberalization, the rate of decline in poverty by some aggregative estimates has, if anything, slowed down. In any case, India is as yet a minor player in world trade, contributing less than one percent of world exports (China’s share is about 6 percent).

What about the hordes of Indian software engineers, call-center operators and back-room programmers? The total number of workers in all forms of IT-related jobs in India comes to less than a million workers - one-quarter of one percent of the Indian labor force. India is the largest single-country contributor to the pool of illiterate people in the world.

Even in China - now considered the manufacturing workshop of the world, though China’s share in the worldwide manufacturing value-added is below 9 percent, less than half that of Japan or the United States - less than one-fifth of the labor force is employed in manufacturing, mining and construction combined. In fact, China has lost tens of millions of manufacturing jobs since the mid-1990s. Nearly half of the country’s labor force remains in agriculture (about 60 percent in India).

Domestic private enterprise in China, while active and growing, is relatively weak, and Chinese banks are burdened with bad loans. Commercial regulatory structures in both China and India are still slow and heavy-handed. According to the World Bank, to start a business requires 71 days in India, and 48 days in China (compared to 6 days in Singapore).

In the economic reform process, the Chinese leadership has often made bold decisions and implemented them relatively quickly and decisively, whereas in India, reform has been halting and hesitant. This is usually attributed to the inevitably slow processes of democracy in India. And though this may be the case, other factors are involved.

For example, the major disruptions and hardships of restructuring in the Chinese economy were rendered somewhat tolerable by a minimum rural safety net, made possible to a large extent by land reforms in 1978. In most parts of India, no similar rural safety net exists for the poor.

But inequalities (particularly rural-urban) have been increasing in China, and those left behind are getting restive. With massive layoffs in the rust-belt provinces, arbitrary local levies on farmers, pervasive corruption and toxic industrial dumping, many in the countryside are highly agitated. Chinese police records indicate a sevenfold increase in the number of incidents of social unrest in the last decade.

China’s authoritarian system of government will likely be a major economic liability in the long run. China is far behind India in the ability to politically manage conflicts. Over the last 50 years, India’s heterogeneous society has been riddled with conflicts, but the system has by and large managed these.

In China, there is a certain pre-occupation with order and stability (and not just in the Party); a tendency to over-react to difficult situations and a quickness to brand dissenting movements and local autonomy efforts as seditious.

We should not lose our sense of proportion in thinking about the rise of China and India. There are many severe pitfalls and roadblocks which India and China have to overcome before they can become significant players in the international economic scene on a sustained basis.

(Pranab Bardhan is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, chief editor of the Journal of Development Economics. Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online, (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu).)

Posted at 11:36 AM · Comments (0)

See the review in Snippets.

This is fantastic stuff, the mythic American West, wasted and corrupt. The story lines here are all familiar, in this page-turner by the old master — only the good guys don’t ever win. Reminds me a bit of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, by Peckinpah, both in terms of plot and in terms of sheer violence.

If you are in a book store and undecided, open it up to Chapter 8 and read the first few pages of dialogue. It’s some of the most brilliant I can recall.

Posted at 8:14 PM · Comments (0)

Japan has a reputation for being a shoppers paradise, but while Japanese consumers are considered savvy and discriminating, they aren’t necessarily safe from those who would want to take advantage of them.
It’s the government’s job to protect consumers from improper business practices, but it’s the media’s job to educate them on how not to fall victim to such practices. One of the frustrating aspects of the recent Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance scandal is how little practical advice it yielded for people who are thinking about buying insurance.

On Oct. 21, three Meiji Yasuda executives resigned to take responsibility for their company’s failure to pay insurance claims totaling 5.2 billion yen between 2000 and 2004. Prior to its consolidation with Yasuda, Meiji Life Insurance devised a 3.9 billion yen “action plan” whose main component was maximizing shisaeki, a term that describes the “profit” realized when the amount of benefits paid on life insurance policies in a given year is less than the amount projected.

It did this by involving the legal department in the strategy. The people who evaluate and adjust claims were made aware of the profit target and told to act accordingly by a newly established team whose job was to check benefits. Meiji Yasuda’s in-house investigation reported that the company did not pay benefits on 1,053 claims that it should have. The Financial Services Agency has punished the company, and similar irregularities have been found in other insurance companies.

The media has relied on the investigation report and the government for information. What we know is that salespeople told policy holders they didn’t have to reveal medical conditions, and later, when the policy holders or their beneficiaries filed claims, the company refused to pay because of undisclosed medical conditions that may have had something to do with the death or disability covered by the policy. Other methods to avoid payment were more subtle — or creative, depending on how you look at it. In one of the few cases that was explained in detail, a man suffered a stroke, after which the only thing he could say was “hai (yes).” Meiji Yasuda refused to pay on his claim because it decided that being able to utter this one word meant he could “communicate,” and thus he did not qualify for disability benefits.

The amorphous quality of the product — you buy insurance in the hope that you’ll never need it — lends itself to interpretation, and thus it becomes easy to fool people. However, the media has not been aggressive in seeking out victims and having them explain why they took out policies, what they thought they were getting, and how insurance companies justified not paying. Maybe they don’t want to discourage consumers, since insurance companies spend a great deal of money on advertising.

Japanese people buy a lot of insurance. And it’s questionable if they need all of it. Japan’s public health insurance system, for example, is one of the broadest in the world, and it’s mandatory. And yet people still take out supplementary health insurance. Part of the reason is a general mistrust of the public sector, but it also has to do with effective advertising that convinces consumers they will need extra money if they are hospitalized. People pay several thousand yen a month in order to receive several thousand yen a day for a limited time if they need hospital care. The hospitalization itself and any necessary operations are covered by public insurance , but not all of it, and the media is adept at scaring people into believing that major illnesses will bankrupt the average person.

The main reason people buy supplementary insurance is that they are sure they will use it: Most of us probably think that someday we will have to be hospitalized for one reason or another. But what about life insurance? We all know we’re going to die, but there’s no way insurance companies are going to insure everyone, much less pay out to them. That’s why they ask about existing medical conditions.

So why do they pay benefits for suicides? It doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint, and recently there is much evidence of people killing themselves so that their families can collect on policies to pay off debts. In most countries people who do that sort of thing usually have to make their death look like an accident, but in Japan the payment of benefits for deaths that are clearly suicides appears to be something of an unspoken selling point. Traditionally, beneficiaries could collect on suicides that occurred at least one year after the policy was taken out. In 2000, a number of major companies extended the period to two years, and in 2004 to three years, apparently at the urging of foreign investors.

These foreign interests may not have been comfortable with the idea of paying out for suicides, or they may simply have looked at the bottom line. According to the Mainichi Shimbun, for the past 10 years there’s been a 50 percent increase in payments of benefits for suicides, which account for one out of every 10 claims that are paid on life insurance policies. If it’s still permissible at all, it can only mean one thing: insurance companies think that more policies can be sold as things stand.

And that is the real bottom line, getting people to take out policies. Once they’ve started paying, you can do anything you want as long as they don’t really know what they’re paying for. If the Meiji Yasuda scandal made anything clear, it’s that insurance companies are money-making concerns that will do anything to not pay benefits. Once you understand that basic fact of life you are better prepared when the salesperson knocks on your door.

The Japan Times: Nov. 6, 2005
(C) All rights reserved

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Published: November 4 2005 15:32

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
by Cormac McCarthy
Picador �16.99, 310 pages

Like so many of his readers, I was first smitten by Cormac McCarthy when I tore through All the Pretty Horses, which justly won America�s National Book Award for 1992. Terse and elegiac, this coming-of-age fable cum road-novel told the story of two boys on horseback crossing from Texas to Mexico in 1948. Its voice was distinctively rich and mournful.

Further exploration turned up a voice a bit too distinctive. A quick scroll through Amazon.com reviews confirms that I am not alone in having found his 1985 western Blood Meridian, for example, unendurable. Its neo-biblical cadences (�The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off�) seemed pretentious, its ceaseless run-on sentences connected by �ands� affected and faux-Falknerian.

Fans of the turgid prose in Blood Meridian will be as disappointed by McCarthy�s eighth novel as I was delighted. No Country For Old Men is pared down and sparse, and even more plot-driven than Pretty Horses. The new novel may not be the equal of his NBA-winner, but it�s a fast, powerful read, steeped with a deep sorrow about the moral degradation of the legendary American West.

In McCarthy�s familiar territory of southern Texas in 1980, the working-class welder Llewelyn Moss trips over the detritus of a drug-deal gone wrong: a boot-full of unprocessed brown heroin, a smattering of dead bodies, and $2.4m in cash. In availing himself of what fate has thrown in his path, Moss seems fully aware that taking the money will have terrible consequences, and he takes it anyway. �There is no description of a fool,� he says to himself, �that you fail to satisfy. Now you�re goin to die.� But if Moss didn�t lift the money, he�d feel a coward - and we�d have no book.

Moss is immediately a fugitive from his once-happy home life, pursued by a posse of three: an ex-special forces agent, the hireling of a drug cartel; a murderous psychopath named Anton Chigurh, who personifies the new brutality of the contemporary Wild West; and a sheriff named Bell, who personifies the solid, churchgoing virtues that are vanishing from McCarthy�s rugged landscape like puddles on hot Tarmac. I don�t think it gives anything away that isn�t apparent in the set-up to allow that our friend Llewelyn Moss doesn�t end up merrily blowing his $2.4m on wine, women and song in Las Vegas.

The thriller pacing is agreeably cut with reflective passages in the first person by Sheriff Bell. In the main Bell�s homespun wisdom is resonant.

With the border between Mexico and the US hopelessly porous, evils seep from the impoverished south into the States: women kidnapped into sexual slavery, drugs of every sort. But Sheriff Bell recognises that the sickness is mutual, for Mexican drug-runners are feeding an appetite on the other side of the border that is equally corrupt. �We�re bein bought with our own money… Money that can buy whole countries. It done has. Can it buy this one? I dont think so. But it will put you in bed with people you ought not to be there with. It�s not even a law enforcement problem. I doubt that it ever was. There�s always been narcotics. But people dont just up and decide to dope theirselves for no reason. By the millions.�

Parenthetically: I�m sorry to be a pedant, and I�m fond of that passage. But what is the logic in keeping the apostrophe in it�s and omitting it in dont? For that matter, why does McCarthy award Texas the upper case, and english the lower? Capturing the colloquialisms of speech is one thing; inconsistent fiddles with punctuation and capitalisation seem like messing for its own sake.

A quibble. Otherwise, the prose is effectively penetrated by Bell�s lost mystification at the rapid transformation of his country. McCarthy himself seems to be one of the �old men� of the title, no longer suited to a nation more dominated by its cut-throat underworld than most middle-class Americans can imagine. As counterpoint, McCarthy�s stark and gritty narrative style is wickedly well adapted to describing the vicious doings of Chigurh.

Dressed in the uniform of a patrolman he has just murdered, Chigurh politely requests of the driver of the Ford sedan he intends to hijack, �Sir would you mind stepping out of the vehicle?� When the driver does so, the ersatz patrolman asks, �Would you step away from the vehicle please.�

�The man stepped away from the vehicle… [Chigurh] placed his hand on the man�s head like a faith healer. The pneumatic hiss and click of the plunger sounded like a door closing. The man slid soundlessly to the ground, a round hole in his forehead… Chigurh wiped his hand with his handkerchief.� The killer explains, �I just didnt want you to get blood on the car.�

Lionel Shriver won the Orange Prize for fiction with �We Need To Talk About Kevin� (Serpent�s Tail).

Posted at 12:19 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: November 3, 2005
BEIJING - For the author of one of China’s best-selling novels of recent years, and moreover, one about rugged life among wolves on the Mongolian plains, Jiang Rong makes a surprisingly timid introduction.

“I am sorry, I have no name cards,” said the man meekly as he entered the living room of his home here, where a foreigner was waiting to see him recently. Having no cards, at least, seemed appropriate, for much about Mr. Jiang, beginning with his real name, is a mystery.

When asked who he is, the writer demurred, embarking on a halting defense of his efforts to remain anonymous from behind the screen of his heavy-framed, somewhat antiquated eyeglasses. “This is the first time I’ve received anyone in my home,” he said. “You must understand, my situation is a bit complicated.”

This much is known: Mr. Jiang, a 59-year-old political scientist at a Beijing university, has written his first novel, “Wolf Totem,” a stirring allegorical critique of Chinese civilization, which he calls soft and lacking in individuality and freedom. He volunteered for farm work on the prairie of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution and became versed in the ways of China’s northern hinterland. And although he will not comment, it is rumored that he was in political trouble in China in the late 1980’s, perhaps spending time in prison.

There are also these much happier facts: The legally published version of Mr. Jiang’s book has sold at least one million copies in China since its release last year, along with perhaps six million black market copies and other knockoffs. The novel was also recently bought by Penguin for $100,000, a record for the overseas rights for a contemporary Chinese writer. And Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director, a specialist in dark fantasies like “The Lord of the Rings,” has bought the story rights to the novel and plans to produce a film based on it, recounting how a young Han Chinese man and his friends steal a young wolf from its pit and raise it in their tent.

The main character, clearly drawn from Mr. Jiang’s own experience, watches with mounting dread as the Han population and cultural influence on the plains rise, leading to the killing off of the wolves and the desertification of the grasslands.

One might assume that the delicacy of Mr. Jiang’s situation lies in the novel’s criticism of China’s Han majority and its Confucian-inspired culture, which he repeatedly called autocratic and sheeplike. The author insists this is not so, however, and the evidence seems to support him. “Wolf Totem” vaunts the cultural merits of Mongolian nomads, which the author lists as “freedom, independence, respect, unyielding before hardship, teamwork and competition.” It has been talked up abundantly on television programs, handed out by corporate executives as a motivational tool and, it is said, praised among the officer corps of the People’s Liberation Army.

There is another mystery at work besides Mr. Jiang’s identity, however: how could a book that is heavy on anthropology and philosophy, concerned with obscure rituals and Mongolian folk tradition, and lacking in traditional plot lines have captured the attention of so many readers?

The appeal, Mr. Jiang says, lies partly in the book’s explanations of one of history’s great riddles: “How could Genghis Khan have conquered the world with so few people?”

“The answer lies in something shared between East and West, and that is the nomadic culture,” Mr. Jiang said, chain smoking in his austere living room, his face lighted sharply by the crisp rays of autumn light that filtered in from his garden. “The nomadism that people always talk about is full of killing and violence, but what it is really about is freedom. This wolf totem culture began earlier in Mongolia and is more sophisticated than anywhere else.”

According to Mr. Jiang, Chinese civilization is the product of two strains, nomadic and agricultural, and each has its symbols, the wolf and the dragon. For the author, the wolf is akin to the soul of the Mongolian grasslands, a worthy rival to man as well as a symbol of heaven itself. “You can look at the wolf and dragon as opposites,” he said. “The dragon represents autocratic emperors. The wolf means freedom, the mother of democracy, and China opposes freedom more than anything else.”

He said the gradual demise of China’s wolf heritage helps explain how the country was surpassed by the West. “As long as most people are lambs, the dragon has no problem,” he said in what seemed like a thinly veiled comment about China’s politics. “But the more wolves there are, the more interesting things become.”

Mr. Jiang’s iconoclasm is the product of an unusual upbringing. His parents fought in China’s war against Japan on the side of the Communists and were seriously injured. They became government officials after the Communist takeover in 1949, leading to a relatively privileged life for their son, an avid reader and lover of foreign culture from an early age.

“I was deeply influenced by my mother, who took the family out traveling on the weekends,” he said. “Before 1964, when controls on everything tightened, I could find movies from India, the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union. I could read foreign news reports from my father’s copies of Reference News,” a news digest circulated only among party cadres.

On the eve of the Cultural Revolution, a period of extreme radicalism that lasted from 1966 to 1976, Mr. Jiang volunteered to do agricultural work in Inner Mongolia, he said, preferring it to the other, far more popular volunteer destination of the day, the far northeastern province of Heilongjiang. “Everywhere I looked people were confiscating books, and I was collecting them,” he said. “I brought two big cases of hundreds of books with me: Balzac, Tolstoy, Jack London and Jane Austen. If I had gone to Heilongjiang, I would have been living with the army, and they would have been confiscated.”

Mr. Jiang said he chose the most remote place he could for his 11 years on the plains, the Elun grasslands, so close to the border that he could see Mongolia’s mountain ranges. The story he wrote had been with him, he said, for more than 20 years, and was forged in friendships on the plains and an appreciation for the Mongolian reverence for the wolf and for the environment.

The book was six years in the writing, during which time the author shared it with no one, including his wife, who is a well-known novelist herself.

Today, Mr. Jiang says, laughing slyly, friends who know of his past in the grasslands contact him to talk about the book. They ask, “Do you know the writer?” he said. “Can you help me with an introduction?”

Posted at 12:35 PM · Comments (0)

Volume 52, Number 9 � May 26, 2005

Review: William Pfaff

The Bullet’s Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia
by William Pfaff
Simon and Schuster, 368 pp., $27.95

In the early 1920s, during the first of his long spells in prison, Mohandas Gandhi read The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Many of his British friends had recommended it to him; they probably thought it a useful book for Gandhi to read while confronting a powerful empire. But Gandhi was only partly impressed by Gibbon. He admired Gibbon’s marshaling of “vast masses of facts.” But, as he put it, “facts are after all opinions.” He claimed that his Indian ancestors had done well to ignore history and seek philosophical wisdom in the Mahabharata, the account of a terrible war that apparently occurred in India in the first century BC. For, as he wrote, “that which is permanent and therefore necessary eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history.”[1]

What was this permanent and necessary truth of the Mahabharata? Certainly it had little to do with affirming the greatness of extinct empires and civilizations or even with historical facts�the epic, as Gandhi emphasized, was full of supernatural events. The truth lay in the Mahabharata’s portrait of the elemental human forces of greed and hatred: how they disguise themselves as self-righteousness and lead to a destructive war in which there are no victors, only survivors inheriting an immense wasteland.

As Gandhi saw it, there was no clear-cut good or evil fighting for supremacy in the Mahabharata. The epic depicted a world full of ambiguities, where the battle between good and evil actually went on within individual souls, and where human beings had to make their own moral choices and strive for virtue. Though unconcerned with facts, the Mahabharata taught the importance of an ethical life based upon individual self-examination. History, Gandhi claimed, couldn’t do this, certainly not “history” as it is understood today, “as an aid to the evolution of our race.”

Gandhi was right to suspect that history in the twentieth century meant something more than how the first great historians Herodotus and Thucydides had seen it: as a record of events worth remembering or commemorating.[2] Many people in Western Europe, which had known a period of extraordinary dynamism in the nineteenth century, had concluded that history described humanity’s progress to a higher state of evolution�a rational process whose specific laws could be known and mastered just as accurately as processes in the natural sciences, and which backward natives in colonized societies could be persuaded or forced to duplicate.

The notion that history is a meaningful narrative of progress shaped by human beings existed in no major traditions of Asia or Africa. As William Pfaff pointed out almost four decades ago, modern Western culture had first “practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man.” It was the faith in rational manipulation that had powered the political, scientific, and technological revolutions of the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; it had also been used to explain and justify Western domination of the world.

Though not an intellectual, Gandhi had a shrewd underdog’s awareness of how powerful men from the world-conquering nations and empires of the West often obscured their worst excesses�slavery, massacres, despotism, and the destruction of traditional arts, crafts, and languages�by presenting themselves as the avant-garde of humanity’s march to a glorious future. He could sense that a quasi-scientific theory of history, which justified dishonorable means by pointing to noble ends, could, as Camus wrote in 1951, “be used for anything, even for transforming murderers into judges.”

1.

Writing during the cold war, Camus denounced Soviet Communists and their Western supporters for their blind faith in the ideology of history, which he held largely responsible for the great and peculiar violence of the twentieth century�”slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy.”[3] But Camus failed to point out how a mode of reasoning that retrospectively justified past crimes and legitimized present ones for the sake of an unknown and unknowable future had been embraced by even those political elites that claimed to represent the “free world” or “Western civilization.”

As William Pfaff wrote in The Politics of Hysteria: The Sources of Twentieth-Century Conflict (1964), an original and provocative book he coauthored with Edmund Stillman, “The West does not like to admit this fact about itself”: that it “has been capable of violence on an appalling scale, and has justified that violence as indispensable to a heroic reform of society or of mankind.” He pointed out that “the atomic bomb, napalm, phosphorus raids, and indiscriminate area bombing were American and British techniques, used in a “mission of bringing liberty to the world.”

He asserted that the “passion to change history and the world” which admits “none of the compromise and quietism of certain other civilizations” has resulted in disasters on an unprecedented scale: how while shaping the extraordinary success of the West, this Faustian passion had also incited the West’s often brutal conquest of the world, and caused Europe itself in the twentieth century to degenerate, after the relatively peaceful nineteenth century, into two world wars, totalitarianism, and genocide. “To be a man of the modern West,” he wrote, “is to belong to a culture of incomparable originality and power; it is also to be implicated in incomparable crimes.”

Pfaff has continued to describe unsentimentally the full implications of the great material success of the West in his columns on international affairs for the International Herald Tribune, and such books as Condemned to Freedom (1971), The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism (1993), and Barbarian Sentiments: America in the New Century (2000). Before turning to intellectual journalism, Pfaff had served in the Korean War, and helped American “political warfare” against Soviet communism during the early years of the cold war. This experience appears to have made him particularly alert to the trauma and resentments of societies conquered or manipulated by the modern West.

His broad-ranging intellectual and emotional sympathies distinguish him from most foreign policy commentators who tend to serve what they see, usually narrowly, as their “national interest.” Pfaff is also indifferent to, and often brusquely dismissive of, the modish theories that describe how and why dominoes fall, history ends, and civilizations clash�”theoretical formulations” that Pfaff believes policymakers periodically come up with in order to legitimize “the huge material and intellectual investment American society has made in the apparatus of national defense and international engagement.”

In his new book, The Bullet’s Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia, a long essay on utopian violence, Pfaff returns to examining many of his themes �the Western faith in progress, the individual and national fantasies of changing history and the world. He reiterates his conviction that “the idea of total and redemptive transformation of human society through political means” is the “most influential myth of modern western political society from 1789 to the present days.” Pfaff is especially wary of its “naive American version,” which “although rarely recognized as such, survives, consisting in the belief that generalizing American-style political institutions and economic practices to the world at large will bring history (or at least historical progress) to its fulfillment.”

Some years before the Bush administration decided to spread democracy and freedom around the world, Pfaff had warned that although the “totalitarian utopian movements of the past ended with the collapse of Nazism and Marxism,” the “utopian impulse is not exhausted in the United States, where it has always been an element in the national sense of self.” “Americans,” Pfaff wrote in a recent column in the International Herald Tribune, “do not conceive of themselves as inheritors of a Western legacy of Promethean violence.” This may be because, as Pfaff asserts in his new book, “America largely excluded itself from the inner history of the twentieth century, which was written in Europe, and mostly at Europe’s expense.” Few Americans experienced the trauma of the destructive wars and totalitarian regimes that forced such European writers and thinkers as Paul Val�ry, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Karl Jaspers, and Albert Camus to examine the larger assumptions of their compatriots, their hitherto unchallenged confidence that science or communism or free trade would create a bright future for humanity.

Pfaff, who has lived in Paris for many years, often writes in his columns about why Europeans, who have not forgotten their own disastrous experiments with utopia, are wary of the Bush administration’s mission to remake the world. Much of his new book reads as a cautionary tale for Americans in the new century, which, he notes, “has begun in futile manipulations of the intellectual remnants of progressive thought.” Its discursive, essayistic form combines memoirs and reflections on war with brief biographies of men and women who “saw in violence or its intellectual counterpart, manipulation, means to redemptive political change and the possibility to impose through action as well as art significant form upon historical materials and experience.”

Pfaff writes admiringly about Simone Weil, whose political activism and intellectual work flowed out of her spiritual ideals of self-examination, empathy, and compassion. But most of his biographical subjects are writers and artists with a craving for large-scale drama and publicity�people who wished to and often did change the world, if only for the worse. They include T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), who as a British intelligence officer during the First World War encouraged Arabs to revolt against their Ottoman overlords in Turkey; Ernst J�nger, the German author of the World War I memoir Storm of Steel and a former Nazi; Gabriele D’Annunzio, the nationalist Italian poet with a weakness for political drama; Willi M�nzenberg, the Communist propagandist; Andr� Malraux, the French novelist with a gift for self-fabrication; and Arthur Koestler, the Hungarian-English writer who embraced communism and anticommunism with equal fervor.

His tormented inner life makes T.E. Lawrence seem the most complex of Pfaff’ subjects. Lawrence spent four hard years imagining that he was bringing politica independence to Arabs suffering from Ottoman misrule. As it turned out, Britain an France divided up the Ottoman Empire into zones of influence after the First Worl War, leaving a mortified Lawrence to realize that he had been part of a British effort t secure the “corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia.

Pfaff seems right to claim that Lawrence, though a self-confessed failure, has had a “very large and very strange” influence on the “Western mind.” His own early readings in Lawrence’s memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom led Pfaff to join the military and US Special Forces, and then work as a “political warfare operator” during the early years of the cold war. In the 1940s and 1950s, the upper-class, Anglophilic members of the OSS and CIA seem to have had Lawrence of Arabia on their minds as they undermined governments they saw as unfriendly to the United States. Even as late as 2001, in an era of high-tech weapons, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared vulnerable to the myth of the brave white warrior leading barbaric tribes when, at a press conference during the war in Afghanistan, he proudly displayed blown-up pictures of Special Forces men on horseback helping Abdul Rashid Dostum, the brutal Afghan warlord, emerge from exile.[4]

Pfaff is less interested in the romantic role Lawrence created for himself as a British secret agent in the Middle East than in how he saw his own actions and their consequences. In Pfaff’s subtle reading, Lawrence was trying to live by Edwardian standards of “rectitude, honor, and chastity” that were growing obsolete as big commercial empires fought each other for control of the world. As Pfaff puts it, “The realities of guerrilla war among an Islamic people…were beyond the moral resources of that English conception of life and conduct by which he had set out to live.”

Pfaff shows how Lawrence stayed loyal to his high ethical standards even as the business as usual of empire came to mock his personal commitment to the Arabs. Instead of blaming his superiors or the political system he served, Lawrence assumed personal responsibility for his failure, and led a self-consciously “penitential life.” “Self-degradation is my aim,” he wrote. He wished “to make me impossible for anyone to suggest for a responsible position.” Lawrence seems to have realized that the era of chivalry and individual heroism was past, and that it was merely a form of self-deception to have imagined himself making history while working as a replaceable cog in the ruthless economic and military machines of the modern era�a bitter lesson that the latter-day imitators and versions of Lawrence�the CIA and Special Forces officers looking for their own private Arabia in Afghanistan and Iraq�may yet learn.

2.

Pfaff believes that “the moral function of war” has been to “recall humans to the reality at the core of existence: the violence that is part of our nature and is responsible for the fact that human history is a chronicle of tragedies.” He writes perceptively about Vladimir Peniakoff, a restless, literary-minded Belgian, who found great happiness and contentment in running a private army in the North African desert during the Second World War. Boldly venturing behind enemy lines, Peniakoff seemed almost self-consciously to reject the impersonal ways of modern warfare, which, waged by machines, is mostly about efficient slaughter.

However, Andr� Malraux believed that while it degraded human beings, technology also opened up fresh opportunities for existential heroism. “Man,” he asserted, can “build his greatness, without religion, on the nothingness that crushes him” and the sense of meaninglessness and lack of conviction could drive him to “extreme action.” Upholding Lawrence’s bold mission (“of hustling into form, while I lived, the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing upon us”) Malraux claimed to have helped the Communist revolution in China. He also claimed to have been wounded while fighting in the Spanish civil war, and then was largely an absentee member of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France, before becoming, in his strangest career move, Charles de Gaulle’s cultural minister and emissary to Mao and Nehru.

With his many little deceptions, Malraux resembles the totalitarian thinker whose most significant quality, as Hannah Arendt once defined it, is “extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.” Although, as Pfaff points out, Malraux lied mostly about himself, this engag� intellectual now appears a prototype of the ambitious ideologues of our time who busily create virtual realities for the rest of us, the “reality-based community,” to inhabit�even as the Asia they wish to hustle into form becomes ever more intractable.

It is sobering to think that, as Pfaff says, “the disordered and morally catastrophi century in which the persons in my book live might represent our future and not onl our past.” Toward the end of The Bullet’s Song, Pfaff reconsiders the idea that history is a narrative of progress shaped by human will. He points out that most of the intellectually powerful figures of the last two centuries�Alexis de Tocqueville, Edmund Burke, Jacob Burckhardt, Lord Acton, Reinhold Niebuhr, Raymond Aron, Hannah Arendt, George Kennan�were “hostile to the progressive view of history.” Pfaff believes that there is actual progress only in technology, and he remains skeptical about what it amounts or leads to:

Man has improved in competence, knowledge, and manners. He eats with a fork, uses the computers he has invented to spare him myriad boring tasks, and conducts his wars, when he can, in a way that allows him to avoid the distress of a direct encounter with the pain he inflicts on his victims. This is a form of progress from the axe-wielding and pelt-wearing human past. Western man also today assumes that gadgetry and industry will continue to leap forward in near-geometric progressions. He is beckoned by technology toward a future in which human consciousness is superseded by a more accommodating virtual reality, and invited by economists to a seamless global marketplace that creates ruinous disruptions in the short term allegedly to provide universal happiness in the long term. Where all this will really end, only God would know, should He (She) still exist.
Pfaff notes that despite the ample evidence against them provided by the barbarisms of the twentieth century, “na�ve and desiccated versions of the theory of historical progress provide a vocabulary in which the declarations of governments are still phrased, editorials written, and a good deal of the routine work of the academy is conducted.” This may be because what he calls “the myth of secular salvation” had “generally replaced religion in Western high culture” in the nineteenth century. Certainly the current version of this myth�that democracy, free enterprise, globalization, and technology will save humanity from violence and chaos�is now commonplace among powerful elites around the world, invisibly shaping the prejudices and assumptions that an average issue of The Economist, or a column by Thomas Friedman, contains. But as Pfaff put it in Condemned to Freedom,

A faith that the free play of market forces will eventually end in Good is, in fact, more “absurd” than religious belief, for there, at least, there is a presumption of an intelligent Agent Who writes straight with His crooked lines.
Many writers nearing the end of their careers tend to grow pessimistic about th state of the world. But then Pfaff has seen events that grimly vindicate much of wha he has written over the previous four decades, particularly in The Politics of Hysteria, which, though published at the height of the cold war, as a warning against its paranoia and delusion, remains a marvel of intellectual vigor and moral subtlety. Pfaff described in it how “our tangled Western accomplishments of technology, mass movement, popular wealth, and individualism�and of ideology and total war�dominate the contemporary world.” Such extraordinary success provoked foreboding rather than self-congratulation:

In the modern world there is no real alternative to the purposive and aggressive culture of the West. All the other ways by which men have organized their existence and sensibility have been shattered in the past three hundred years by the dual impact upon the world of Western industrialism and political philosophy. The consequence is that the modern West can no longer be quite distinguished from its victims�in short, from the larger modern world.
Such views immediately set Pfaff apart from many Western scholars and writers who try to define what is wrong with Islam, the Middle East, or Muslims by taking the modern West as a superior and largely unquestionable standard�as a culture and civilization existing in splendid isolation from the rest of the world. But then, as Pfaff once wrote about Asia, “the radical and disruptive remaking of its life and society�the challenge to Asians’ understanding of existence itself, made by the West’s four-century-long intrusion�is ignored or simply not understood by Western policymakers and observers.”

Pfaff has not only been aware of the profound social and psychological effects of Western colonialism upon the older societies of Asia and Africa; he also knows how the postcolonial attempt to Westernize these societies, usually seen benignly as a process of “development and progress” in the West itself, is often experienced by its presumed beneficiaries. Writing after September 11, he once again challenged the widely held Western assumption that

everybody must eventually become like us…. Westernization, to westerners, means liberation…. For people in other societies, westernization frequently means destruction, social and moral crisis, with individuals cast adrift in a destructured and literally demoralized world. Cultural and political disorientation, violent resistance to the intruder, and attempts to recapture a lost golden age are natural reactions to this. We see all of this today.
Pfaff has always insisted that “really to understand the contemporary political crisis it is necessary to understand the West; it is the Western world which has made the modern crisis, because it is the West which has made the modern world.” In his complex view, radical Islam in the Middle East and religious-political fundamentalism in America appear not so much as eruptions of a medieval religiosity as deeply materialist ideologies that strive for secular rather than spiritual power in the modern world that the West made. Pfaff doesn’t think it likely that “the non-western world, its own traditions pulverized, [will] cope any better than we with the destructive impulses of the modern political and industrial life that we ourselves originated.” As he wrote in The Politics of Hysteria, four decades before September 11:

If it is true that the West has characteristic crimes in its past, as well as those manifest virtues we are quick to acknowledge, then we must face the possibility that a disposition to these crimes�primarily a crime of ideological violence �is neither burned out in our West itself nor precluded in those vaster regions of the world now being swept into the ambiguous experiences of our own disordered Western past.
Almost half a century after Pfaff wrote this, the non-Western world appears full o botched experiments in Western-style nation-states, with millions of people uproote from tradition but still far from the benefits of modern society and increasingl susceptible to political and religious extremism. However, neither the so-called faile states nor radical Islam-ists threaten the West in the long term as much as the ol countries that are widely perceived as successes of Westernization: India and China

As they make themselves over in the image of Western consumer societies, these populous nations seek a progressively larger share of the world’s energy resources that the West, particularly the United States, has monopolized for so long.[5] Rising American demand for oil imports after the Second World War deepened US involvement in the Middle East; the growing energy needs of India and China will no doubt make them assertive beyond South and East Asia. And just as a newly Westernized and ambitious Japan in the early twentieth century had challenged the West, so India and China are likely to become more aggressive with the nations they emulate at present. Pfaff had warned in Barbarian Sentiments that continued American military presence in Asia is likely to lead to a conflict with China. More Asian nations armed with nuclear weapons may also seek to undermine the long supremacy of the West.

Alarmed at this prospect, many policymakers and pundits in the West find consoling the American neoconservative vision of a “United States whose military power was so awesome that it no longer needed to make compromises or accommodations (unless it chose to do so) with any other nation or groups of countries.”[6] No amount of awesome military power seems likely to realize this dangerously naive vision of a “unipolar world.” But, as Andrew Bacevich, a foreign policy analyst who, like Pfaff, served in the US military, writes in his new book, The New American Militarism, the “collision between American requirements and a non-compliant world…may well doom the United States to fight perpetual wars.”

Bacevich thinks that these wars will be justified to the American public and the larger world “in terms of ideals rather than interests.” Pfaff also sees a future of “totally self-interested power struggles,” which are disguised by the rhetoric of democracy and free enterprise. It makes him more partial to a politics that looks for “solutions within, rather than without, in experienced reality rather than imagination about the future.” He believes that a society’s first task is to attend to its own imperfections: “The only thing we can remake is ourselves.” On the next-to-last pages of The Bullet’s Song, he quotes George Kennan: “Any message we try to bring to others will be effective only if it is in accord with what we are to ourselves.” Pfaff agrees with Kennan that “despite all its material difficulties,” the world is still ready to recognize and respect “spiritual distinction” in a nation.

“Spiritual distinction” may not appear to advance the national interest, such as it is defined these days. And Pfaff’s belief that “the pursuit of virtue” is “the only proper pursuit for a human being” is likely to look quaint to foreign policy analysts�closer to the truth of the Mahabharata, as Gandhi saw it, or to the wisdom of the classical Greeks, than to the imperatives of US foreign policy. But it explains why he has remained, for over four decades, immune to the delusions that power as great as America’s invariably creates �what now makes him a persuasive, if melancholy, guide to the new politics of hysteria that threatens to make the new century even bloodier than the one just past.

Notes

[1] “My Jail Experiences�XI,” Young India, September 11, 1924, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting), Vol. 29, pp. 134�135; available at www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html.

[2] For a stimulating account of the many perceptions of history see R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford University Press, revised 1993). See also Hannah Arendt, “The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern,” in Between Past and Future (Viking, 1961).

[3] The Rebel, translated by Anthony Bower (Penguin, 1971), p. 11.

[4] The best-selling book by Robin Moore, The Hunt for Bin Laden: Task Force Dagger (Random House, 2003), celebrates some of the CIA and Special Forces officers and their Afghan beneficiaries. But the book seems to have required drastic revision since last year when one of its heroes, Jack Idema, was caught while torturing Afghan civilians in Kabul. Idema is presently serving eight years in a Kabul prison. See Mariah Blake, “Tin Soldier: An American Vigilante in Afghanistan, Using the Press for Profit and Glory,” Columbia Journalism Review, January�February 2005.

[5] The United States now consumes one out of four barrels of oil produced worldwide. In the period up to 2020, China is likely to match America’s demand for oil. With its growing middle class, India is unlikely to be very far behind. See “Rivals and Partners,” The Economist, March 5, 2005.

[6] James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (Viking, 2004), p. xii.

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PAGE ONE

Copyright THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 1, 2005; Page A1
As the murky waters swelled in his New Orleans bungalow, Niyi Osundare’s first instinct wasn’t to preserve himself. Instead, he frantically moved his manuscripts from file cabinets and bedside table to higher bookshelves until his wife, Kemi, warned, “Niyi, we’ll drown trying to save the poems. Let’s go to the attic.”

After 26 hours trapped in the attic, the couple was rescued. But Mr. Osundare, widely considered Nigeria’s leading poet, still mourns his lost “babies” — 300 unpublished poems, written in longhand over 20 years, ranging from satires on Nigerian political corruption to a meditation on the beauty of Mt. Monadnock in southern New Hampshire.

Mr. Osundare, who writes in both English and his native Yoruba, often wakes in the middle of the night, remembering an isolated line or image. “I was typing them when the storm hit, trying to get them ready for publication,” he says. “My house is insured, but my manuscripts are not. There are certain things for which monetary compensation cannot atone.”

He’s just one of several New Orleans authors who lost poems, stories and novels in Hurricane Katrina. Technology limited the literary toll because many writers backed up their works on central computer servers or emailed copies to friends and relatives. But other storm victims had only a home computer or notebooks. Now they’re wracking their brains to recall their lost words, paying firms to try to salvage text from waterlogged disks and taking greater precautions with post-Katrina compositions.

Like New Orleans itself, these writers face a daunting task of reconstruction. Some are determined to emulate British historian Thomas Carlyle, who rewrote the entire manuscript of “The French Revolution” (1837) after a friend’s maid accidentally burned it. Others, including Mr. Osundare, say their creations were rooted in a bygone time and place, and cannot be resurrected.

Pre-Katrina New Orleans was a literary haven that nurtured playwright Tennessee Williams and novelists Kate Chopin, Walker Percy, John Kennedy Toole, Richard Ford and Anne Rice. Poets and authors read their work at coffeehouses and found inspiration in the city’s street festivals, jazz music and Cajun culture.

POEMS

Read two poems from Mona Lisa Saloy’s poetry collection “Red Beans and Ricely Yours,” which won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize.
Mona Lisa Saloy, author of a poetry collection, “Red Beans and Ricely Yours,” that won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize, had ridden out many a storm in her one-story, shotgun-style home in the Seventh Ward. Although her cousins persuaded her to flee on Aug. 28, the day before the hurricane hit, she expected to be away only a few days. She drove to Baton Rouge, taking her dog, an elderly neighbor, and changes of clothes — but not her notebooks, filled with half of a book-length poem about her grandfather, Frank Fitch. Born a slave, Mr. Fitch walked from Alabama to New Orleans to be free and lived to 110.

Ms. Saloy’s poem recounted how her grandfather as a boy watched a plantation overseer dye his mother’s white hair black with shoe polish so she would look younger and fetch a higher price at a slave auction. It quoted much of the folk wisdom Ms. Saloy’s grandfather imparted to her before his death in 1963. Now the notebooks are lost and she remembers only snippets, such as, “Sleep is the cousin of death. Keep moving.”

“I was really proud of it, which is why I took my time,” says Ms. Saloy, a visiting associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. “I was really crafting metaphors to tell the story and leave the reader with a sense of this heroic spirit.”

Kris Lackey, an English professor at the University of New Orleans who has published stories in several literary magazines, thought he had hurricane-proofed his fiction. He saved manuscripts four ways — paper, hard drive, diskettes and a flash drive — and boarded his home against the wind. But when he evacuated, he left his papers and computer equipment on tables and bookshelves, not nearly high enough to withstand the 11 feet of water that engulfed his house near the west breach in the London Avenue canal.

Gone were several short stories and the first 40 pages of a novel called “Haymaker,” about an Oklahoma student who is torn between studying the French horn and playing high-school football. Mr. Lackey says he “hated most to lose my central supporting character — a comical, fiery, fanatical Italian high-school band director in a small 1970s Oklahoma panhandle school.” In Mr. Lackey’s favorite scene, the director, realizing that most Oklahoma kids “don’t know the cha-cha from a bagel, dances the cha-cha himself, clapping out the syncopated rhythm.”

In early October, Mr. Lackey donned respirator, goggles, headlamp, elbow-length gloves and steel-shank boots to inspect his house. He found “manuscripts floating in muck” that were unreadable as well as his corroded flash and hard drives. He sent the flash drive to a Florida data-recovery firm, but it was unable to recapture his prose.

Now staying in Oklahoma himself, Mr. Lackey doesn’t plan to rewrite anything for two years. “Like everyone else, I’m stunned,” he says.

Thomas Bonner, chairman of the English department at Xavier University of Louisiana, and his wife, Judith, an artist, left New Orleans on Aug. 26 to celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary in a Mississippi inn. By the time they realized they needed to batten down their home adjacent to City Park and the New Orleans Museum of Art, they couldn’t return, because all roads had been redirected outward. Seven feet of water flooded the sun room and destroyed his manuscripts and her canvases. Among Mr. Bonner’s casualties: 50 poems and a murder mystery set in Taos, N.M., in which a former New Orleans crime reporter stumbles onto the beheading of a ruthless real-estate developer.

He plans to rewrite the story. “My father was an army officer,” he says. “He taught me a great deal about resolve. I’m just not going to let the hurricane beat me.” The Bonners are staying with their daughter in Georgia.

Kay Murphy despairs of recreating the short stories that she left on computer disks in her flooded apartment. Ms. Murphy, an associate professor at the University of New Orleans, says reinventing lost fiction is harder for her than for most authors because she doesn’t rely on conventional narrative but writes “from one consciousness” and experiments with language and syntax. “If I was just writing a story, I could rewrite the story,” says Ms. Murphy, now in Illinois.

Niyi Osundare’s mother warned him not to play near water. After a diviner told her that Niyi was a gift from the Yoruba river goddess, Osun — after whom the family was named — his mother worried that the deity might snatch him back. As an English professor at the University of New Orleans, Mr. Osundare disregarded her cautions, often composing his poems on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. Then, he says, “the lake I love so much came to my bedroom and nearly took my life.”

After climbing to the attic, the Osundares crouched there without food or ventilation, in darkness except for a flashlight. Mr. Osundare bruised his knuckles trying to punch a hole in the roof. Fortunately, a neighbor heard their shouts. Wearing life preservers the neighbor had handed out earlier, the couple swam through their front door to his boat. Without shoes or identification, they shuttled through five evacuation centers until Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, N.H., which had given Mr. Osundare an honorary degree in 2001, traced him to a Red Cross shelter in Birmingham, Ala.

Now a visiting professor at Franklin Pierce, Mr. Osundare carries his latest verses with him, stored in a flash-drive memory device that hangs from a cord around his neck. One poem, “The Weeping Book,” begins, “There is a weeping book in my flooded room,” and ends, “A whole life’s labour is washed away/By the murderous madness of Katrina’s sway.”

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Copyright The Economist

DEMOCRACY is a word that gets bandied about. George Bush likes to remind voters of the pressing need to “secure freedom and democracy” in Iraq. Afghanistan’s recent elections signal that it is on the “road toward a stable democracy”. The United Nations has lately (at America’s urging) started up a “Democracy Fund” as a bulwark for fragile democracies. And so it goes.

Yet democracy is a fluid concept. No one knows this better than the world’soldest continuous democracy. Minority rights, which Mr Bush says are among the “common principles” of democracies, were non-existent when America began. Its founders held slaves. They excluded blacks, women and many landless white men from voting. Free speech was often elusive, and even the much-feted system of checks and balances got off to a rocky start as early presidents simply ignoredSupreme Court rulings.

In a new book, Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University, contends that despite some promising principles, at the outset “the republic was not democratic”. Nor did those in power wish it to be. Thomas Jefferson was in a distinct minority when he declared, “I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.” Jefferson’s planter friends regarded democracy as a blindalley: in Mr Wilentz’s phrasing, it wasdangerous to hand power to the “impassioned, unenlightened masses”.

When reform came, it was a halting process, and largely the result of the new economic and social realities of the expanding republic. The profusion of religions also played a role, as did the aggressiveness of party organisations. Mr Wilentz gets incensed by Federalist “mossbacks”, who despaired at the extension of voting rights to landless whites in the early 19th century.

This is a dense, authoritative and well-written study. It has been ten years in the making, and brings together an impressive accrual of detail. From the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Missouri Compromise to the election of Abraham Lincoln, everydevelopment is given careful study.

The book also contains many analytical nuggets. Why, the author asks, are not more federal officials impeached (or at least seriously threatened with impeachment), given the stark partisanship of politics today? The answer, Mr Wilentz says, harks back to 1804-05, when Samuel Chase, a Supreme Court justice, was impeached by the House of Representatives. His misdeeds largely consisted of being a staunch Federalist and crossing President Thomas Jefferson, a Republican. But the Republican-majority Senate broke with Jefferson and voted to acquit, signalling that the standard must be greater than mere ideology. Chase remains the only Supreme Court justice ever impeached.

Much of the narrative, of course, is taken up with the slave battles. Mr Wilentz cuts through the myths�even the Missouri Compromise was not a “compromise”, he insists, owing to the way it was constructed. Some of Congress’s fiercest fights were over the admission of new states to the union, and whether they should be slave or free. Often, Mr Wilentz explains, the free staters in places like Kansas were motivated by the ignoble desire to ensure that theirs was a lily-white enclave. Mr Wilentz also shows how slaveholders kept a chokehold on local power in much of the South; one reason they feared northern abolitionist propaganda was that it might generally sow doubts about the system among landless whites as well as among slaves.

A central figure in early American democracy and the evolving north-south rows was Andrew Jackson. Orphaned during the revolutionary war, Jackson rose from nothing to prominence in the fights against the native Indians, and he later became a national hero at the end of the war of 1812. When a large British force threatened New Orleans in 1815, he trounced them, helping to strengthen America’s shaky grasp on the Louisiana territory and promote westward expansion.

From there, the presidency seemed a quite obvious step. But the country had never seen a candidate like Jackson. Most early presidents were intellectuals. Jackson was the first since George Washington to be a military hero. Unlike the austere Washington, he also energetically embraced the masses, who returned the compliment by turning out to vote as never before. (Grumbled one rival, Henry Clay, “I cannot believe that killing 2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult and complicated duties of the Chief Magistrate.”)

Jackson finally attained the presidency in 1829, despite the best efforts of his opponents, who took character assassination to a new level during the campaign, with slurs about his “adulteress” wife and his “prostitute” mother: another, less salubrious step in an evolving democracy.

Jackson and the democratic revolution he swept in form the basis of a new biography by H.W. Brands, a wonderful storyteller who has written eloquently on many topics including Benjamin Franklin, Texas’s revolution and the California gold rush. Mr Brands’s challenge is greater here, for Jackson is an ambiguous figure and the book’s muscular and enthusiastic tone is sometimes a poor fit with its subject.

Commonly known as “Old Hickory”, Jackson turns out to have been on the wrong side of history on many issues. He was an unabashed slaveholder who needlessly slaughtered Indians, and even went so far as to cut out tribes who fought as his allies from land deals. His policies as president led to the “Trail of Tears”, in which tribes were forced from the lands they had obtained by treaty from the federal government. Thousands of Cherokees died on the trek from the south to Oklahoma so that whites could till the rich Georgia soil.

Jackson also instigated financial turmoil. Having lived through a period of boom-and-bust land speculation, he distrusted paper money and banks. During his second term, he vetoed the renewal of the charter for the independent Second Bank of the United States, a private institution that kept the federal government’s deposits interest-free, and issued uniform paper currency. Jackson had some legitimate concerns about the bank, which he also viewed as unconstitutional�but in waging his struggle, he hurt not just the bankers, but also the ordinary citizens that Jacksonian democracy was meant to support. That Jackson’s visage remains on the $20, America’s second-most widely circulated bill, is both curious and ironic.

So why does the myth of Jackson persist? Besides giving voice to the common man, Jackson was above all a committed unionist, argues Mr Brands. The main crisis of his first term was South Carolina’s attempt to nullify a federal law on tariffs that it did not like. This amounted to a constitutional showdown. Jackson’s one-line toast at the moment of crisis�”Our Federal Union: it must be preserved”�helped to carry the day. South Carolina backed off. But, despite Mr Brands’s enthusiasm for his subject, such achievements still leave Jackson, as democrat and statesman, far short of the class of Abraham Lincoln.

Posted at 12:35 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

It’s clear that Nobuyoshi Araki loves the company of women. During his recent visit to London the photographer’s entourage included his agent, two curators, his favourite model, and a PR person; all women, all Japanese. He also flew in two mamasan - bar hostesses - from his favourite Tokyo karaoke bar. At the opening of his new exhibition, Araki: Self. Life. Death, at the Barbican Art Gallery, these two kimono-clad women seemed right at home among Araki’s many photos of women similarly attired. In fact it was the tall western women in latex cheongsams and the naked female news presenter who stood out. Araki’s circus was in town, but it was the locals who seemed to go over the top.

Araki has always attracted controversy, and this show is no exception. Made up of more than 4,000 images, Self. Life. Death - both the exhibition and the book that accompanies it - tracks the 40-year career of Japan’s most celebrated photographer. In the west Araki is notorious for his erotic or pornographic photographs, but at home in Japan he is also known as a sensitive documentarist and a brilliant portraitist. His more than 300 books range from Tokyo Lucky Hole, which reveals the hidden decadence of a society at the peak of economic success, to the moving Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey, which records his honeymoon in 1971 and then the death of his wife Yoko in 1990. The Barbican exhibition displays a cross- section of Araki’s work, but while Self. Life. Death makes it clear there is more to Araki than pornography, it is sex that drives him. And it is the sex that will draw in the crowds.

At lunch he proved his voracious photographic appetite by taking pictures during the meal. “The desire for eating, sexual desire and the desire to take photos are the three things that are important to me,” he says with one eye to the camera. Araki likes to play with immature sexual innuendo: a lump of cod roe looking like a penis, an oyster mistaken for a vagina. As the shutter clicks, the photographer laughs. “When people have started eating and food gets messy on the plate, that is the moment I like to photograph.” His enthusiastic approach to the violated plate of food is that of the practised voyeur. This is “food porn” taken up a notch and his photos of food are among the most sensual in the exhibition. In Araki’s world even the mundane becomes eroticised.

“I have always emphasised the importance of private photography,” he says, “that style of photography really captures human life itself.” He calls this semi-autobiographical approach “I- photography”, a term borrowed from the “I-novels” of Japanese literature. “By definition an ‘I-novel’ is about the writer and is supposed to reveal everything. But it isn’t true,” says Araki. “In order to write, the writer would fabricate something that’s untrue. There is more fiction about the artist himself. So it’s a betrayal, the most interesting thing is the lie, the complete fantasy, the fiction.”

Does this mean Araki’s work is made up of lies? “It’s all mixed,” he says. “The interesting thing is you’re not sure, it’s blurred. It is all about the tales, the mixture of truthfulness and fiction, life and death.”

The I-novelists emerged in the 1920s, consciously separating themselves from western styles of writing. Araki also distinguishes himself from western photographers. “(They) are very conscious about how they are seen, about how their work is seen. They’re very conscious about society and what is going on around them. I don’t care, I’m not interested. I’m only interested in what I want to do.”

Araki does make a statement about what is going on around him occasionally, however. The first exhibition of his work I saw was in the early 1990s at a department store gallery in Tokyo. The photos depicted naked or partially naked women, tied in a form of bondage called kinbaku. Some lay bound on tatami mat floors, others hung from the ceiling. What made the work so shocking, however, was the violence implied by the scratch marks across the photos. Araki had censored the work by scoring the photographic negative, erasing the genitals. This was his attack on censorship laws banning the depiction of genitalia. But Araki says “I was laughing at that, I didn’t want to make it too big a deal.” What he wanted to reveal by damaging the images was that all men have an urge for violence, he says. “Like wanting to rape the neighbour’s wife,” he says laughing, “you don’t do it, but it is actually a basic human instinct.”

There are similar images in this exhibition. In “Colour-Eros” Araki has taken some of his older black and white images, again of women tied-up or nude, and painted across them with lines of acrylic colour. “Black and white photos are kind of dead,” says Araki. “So with the addition of colour paint I add life again.” But he is concerned that people will misinterpret this. “Through that kind of experiment, and painting, the audience and art critics probably think ‘so Araki is doing art now’. But I don’t want that kind of stigma. I don’t want to be misunderstood as a stereotypical artist. I want to explore the possibility of photography, because I am a photographer.”

Araki’s work shows in galleries around the world but Araki says he isn’t interested in international fame. “All that I am doing is what I like, wherever my inclination takes me. I’m not conscious of the international art market and what is the latest thing in the art scene, I just do what I want.”

And the Japanese art scene certainly differs from other countries. Takashi Murakami and other Japanese artists argue that there is no distinction between high and low art in Japan because “art” was a concept introduced from the west. Araki agrees. “In my mind there is absolutely no hierarchy. Just like all women are beautiful. I really don’t like the idea of what is right and what is wrong. What is sacred, what is profane. What is art and what is obscene. I don’t want that kind of categorisation.”

This apparent lack of hierarchy is often spoken of when Japanese art is discussed, but largely refers to the artists themselves rather than patrons of art. Artists such as Hokusai, famous for his landscapes and his “Great Wave”, would produce work for everybody - including pornographic books called shunga. It’s no surprise that Araki chooses to compare himself to Hokusai. Araki explains the similarities: “In his later years Hokusai started calling himself gakyojin which means ‘art maniac’ and in response to that I started calling myself shakyojin (photo maniac)… Hokusai draws absolutely everything he can see. Ranging from the sky, to animals, landscapes, flowers, genitalia. Absolutely everything. So I have the same kind of feeling. I photograph everything. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not imitating Hokusai, it is a continuation of that kind of tradition, but it is unconscious.”

In one room at the Barbican more than 3,000 Polaroids are stuck to the wall. It is a veritable orgy of food and sex, and the pornographic connotations of the Polaroid adds to the sense of debauchery. Hundreds of images of Japanese women in various sexual poses are mixed with images of the sky, sliced chilli cod roe, and “onsen tamago” - eggs poached in a volcanic hot spring. The women are “passers by”, his “accidental lovers”, he calls them. “Some are models I met through work. Some are housewives. But nevertheless, once photographed, they all become ‘Araki’s lovers’.” He’s lying again, blurring the truth.

In the press advertising for the exhibition, the Barbican uses a portrait of a geisha-like woman and labels Araki “Japan’s most controversial photographer”. But capitalising on stereotypes about Japan and Araki’s sexualised images will do little to dispel orientalist views of the sexually alluring and passive oriental woman. “This is my personal work, in my own world, women are like this,” he says. And although his work puts women in sexually compromising situations, he is often approached by volunteers to be photographed.

Araki has a way of normalising the pornography in his work. By juxtaposing everyday images of Tokyo streets, flowers, portraits and food with all these images of women tied up, it’s almost like they’re normal too. “That’s right,” he says. “In a sense photography is magic. So of course the kinbaku and that sort of image may not be ordinary Japanese life but nevertheless by photographing ordinary things and daily life and also kinbaku, everything looks completely normal, part of the big ordinary life.”

So that’s the lie in his work. “Yes, but my lie is the truth,” he says, laughing. “It’s like a Zen kind of picture. Going around in circles. It’s also very Japanese.”

In a documentary, Arakimentari, that accompanies the exhibition we are able to see one of his kinbaku bondage photos being shot. A young woman in a kimono is bound and hangs by ropes from the ceiling. Her legs are apart and her clothes are open to reveal she is naked underneath. The striking thing about this scene, and the interview with the model afterwards, is the sense of collaboration and even fun that occurs during the shoot. It is the same when we see him shooting his housewives series. While the final images may be attacked as misogynistic, the models in Araki’s work are all willing participants in the creation of these images.

He understands some will be shocked, of course. “I don’t think it is a question of nationality or whether you are Japanese or English,” he says. “The same kind of negative response can be found in Japan, too. It is a question of individuality. I expect, and look forward to, English women coming to the Barbican and feeling like they want to be tied up and photographed by me.”

But maybe the result would be different with western women? “Yes, maybe it would be me that is actually tied up.”

“Araki: Self. Life. Death” runs at the Barbican Art Gallery until January 22. “Nobuyoshi Araki: Self. Life. Death” is published by Phaidon (Pounds 39.95).

Posted at 12:33 PM · Comments (0)

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