Asia Cable

Just Say No

2012-01-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

The latest round of economic sanctions is supposed to put pressure on

Iran

, but they may be putting just as much pressure on

America

’s key Asian allies,

Japan

and

South Korea

, both of whom are dependent on Middle East for the vast bulk of their petroleum imports.

In the past, under pressure from Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have reluctantly fallen in line and cut back on doing business with Iran. Just a little more than one year ago, Japan ended its last major investment in Iran. Now Washington is back with more demands, and both countries are balking.

After meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Timothy Geithner earlier this month, Japan’s finance minister, Jun Azumi said Japan would reduce petroleum imports from Iran in line with the American policy. He was almost immediately slapped down by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who he said he was speaking for himself. The government has not formulated a position.

An American delegation arrived in Tokyo Jan. 17 for further talks, which were said to be inconclusive so far. The two sides are haggling over how far Tokyo has to go in meeting demands to receive an exemption from the main enforcing mechanism, a ban on Japanese banks working in the U.S. that do business with Iran’s central bank.

Robert Einhorn, U.S State Department special advisor on arms control, was in Seoul trying to convince South Korea to cut its petroleum imports and unwind their business dealings with the Central Bank of Iran . No immediate agreement was made. Deputy foreign minister Kim Jae shin said many Koreans worry that reducing oil imports will harm the economy.

South Korea

, the world’s fifth largest oil importer, buys roughly 10 percent of its petroleum needs from Iran, or about 200,000 barrels of crude per day. Seoul is currently dealing with Iran’s Central Band to clear payments. Indeed, it has said it would actually increase imports slightly in 2012

Both countries have been down this road before. Azumi noted that Japan once imported about 40 percent of its petroleum supplies from Iran. It is now down to roughly ten percent, or about 260,000 b/d, with the likely hood that, in time, it will be reduced even more.

A little more than a year ago, Japanese oil explorer Inpex, under severe pressure from Washington and from Tokyo, totally divested its minority interest in the huge, new Azadegan oil field in Iran at a considerable loss. It was the cornerstone of Japan’s “hinomaru (rising son flag) oil” policy of securing energy supplies by investing in Japanese owned -energy deposits in the Middle East.

At one time Inpex owned 75 percent of the Azadegan field; it cut its stake to 10 percent in 2006. Company officials argued that their minority stake was a passive investment, not a case of “doing business” with Iran and sought an exemption, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

The pressure on Japan concerning Iran tends to wax and wane depending on how much Washington values Japan’s symbolic support of its Middle East military adventures. It eased up when Japan sent a symbolic battalion of troops to Iraq during the height of the Iraq War and naval oilers to refuel allied ships in the Indian Ocean.

But Washington has hardened its stance in recent years, especially after Mahmoud Ahmadinejan was elected president in 2005. At the same time, it has not needed Japanese cooperation in Middle East adventures. The one battalion was withdrawn a few years ago and refueling operating ended by the new government in 2009.

The latest pressure comes just as Japan is trying to recover from the “triple disaster” of the March 11 Earthquake, tsunami and multiple nuclear power meltdowns. The later naturally spawned concerns over safety that have shuttered all but a handful of the country’s nuclear power plants that used to supply more than a quarter of electric power.

This has necessitated some increased petroleum imports, although the main replacement fuel for power generation has been natural gas. Hardly surprising that the affected ministries, especially Economy, Trade and Industry, worried over impact of fuel prices on the economy immediately urged Azumi to move cautiously as they assess Washington’s intentions and explore avenues for replacements imports.

Both Japan and South Korea go to great pains to support the abstract goal of pressuring pressure Tehran into seriously negotiating over its suspected nuclear weapons program. However, it is fair to say they do not have the visceral concern over Iran that seems to animate Washington. The concerns really come down to several issues of realpolitik.

How far can Japan go in opposing pressure from Washington without damaging relations with the country on whom they depend for ultimate defense? What would be the damage to the economy by reducing oil imports weighed against the damage to banking interests if the country’s banks are locked out of the U.S.? “If the law is implemented the effect on Japan’s banks would be quite severe,” says Azumi

And of course, looming in the background is the remote chance that the that the current shadow war now being waged against Iran might explode into open war fare, which would obviously hurt countries so dependent on steady and secure Middle East supplies.

Given stakes involved neither country can afford to just say no to the American pressure. But it is equally clear that neither is going to easily bend to Washington’s demands. The negotiations will go on for some extended period. In the end they will probably reduce imports to some extent. Washington will declare it satisfied and grant the necessary waivers.

To Boldly Go ...

2011-12-08T22:15:00.000-08:00

Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, 47, was carried out of his Russian-made Soyuz space capsule on the plains of Kazakhstan last week with a big grin on his face. After spending five and a half weightless months at the International Space Station without feeling the pull of gravity, he was, understandably a little unsteady on his feet after landing.

Furukawa got his few hours of local fame, but the notion of Japanese astronauts – and other Asians for that matter – piggybacking on American or Russian space vehicles is hardly big news any more. Nevertheless, Asians are doing more than begging rides. They are making many often unheralded strides in developing independent space programs of their own.

The two Asian nations with their own space programs are, of course, the two biggest and richest among them, China and Japan. But both countries have gone their own different ways, China focused overwhelmingly on manned space travel, Japan going in mainly for unmanned probes to distant corners of the solar system, such as asteroids.

Only a few weeks before Furukawa returned to earth, the Chinese successfully docked two unmanned space craft about 200 miles above the Earth, an important step in China’s unofficial goal of establishing a space station by 2020 and eventually landing a man on the moon .

What the Chinese call the Shenzhou-8 space capsule docked with the Tiangon-1 module that had been launched from Earth a few weeks earlier. In the coming year, if all goes well, the Chinese plan to repeat the exercise with manned space craft, leading to the establishment of an orbiting space station about the time that International Space Station goes into retirement.

The Chinese have, in fact, now placed six taikongnauts into Earth orbit since Yang Liwei orbited the earth in 2003 on the Shenzhou-5, thus making China only the third country in the world to place a man in orbit through its own indigenous program. Since then it has successfully launched three manned mission into Earth orbit, including one that involved a extravehicular space walk.

China

is following a path blazed 40 years ago by the U.S. and Russian space programs that culminated in the first Apollo moon flight in 1968. Yet it has relied entirely on its own aerospace engineering in the face of some restrictions Washington placed on scientific exchanges and exports of space-related technology in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident.

This success made through own engineering efforts hasn’t been lost on strategic planners in Washington, who were shocked when in 2007 Beijing successfully tested an anti-satellite missile which destroyed an aging orbiting Chinese weather satellite, proving a capability to render other country’s satellites useless.

Japan

has taken a different path into space from China eschewing manned flight in favor of deep-space probes. Their biggest accomplishment came in 2010 when the space probe Hayabusa landed in the wastes of Western Australia following a seven-year, 300 million km voyage to the asteroid Itokawa – and back.

It is not certain if even the Japanese, much less the rest of the non-scientific world, fully appreciated the what their space probe had accomplished It was, after all, the first space vehicle to voyage to another world and return to earth since the Apollo moon flights of the 1970s. It was also the deepest round-trip space voyage by any country.

Hayabusa’s main mission was to land on the asteroid, a peanut shaped world no bigger than downtown Hibiya Park in Tokyo (500 meters long and 200 wide), retrieve some of the asteroid rocks and return them to earth to be examined by scientists seeking clues to the origin of the solar system. Itokawa was born more than 6 billion year ago, making it older than the Earth.

Unfortunately, the mechanism for gathering asteroid rocks failed in this mission, although the landing and lift off stirred up enough asteroid dust to give the scientists a t the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other laboratories something to study.

Technicians had to overcome numerous other set-backs during the long voyage of Hayabusa. Three of the four ion thrusters stopped working during the trip, a fuel leak rendered the chemical engine inoperable two of the three attitude control antennas broke down and communication was lost for 50 days after the landing.

Despite this, JAXA is planning a Hayabusa-2 mission scheduled to lift off next May, assuming budgetary approval. This probe is aimed at an object simply known as 1999JU3. With a host of technologies that were not aboard the original space craft but developed to answer many of the problems the original probe experienced, scientists hope to gather much more material to examine when the probe returns to earth in 2018.

That of course assumes that the mission isn’t overshadowed by an American mission to the asteroid belt. The US NASA space agency us planning to send one in 2016, which is a strong indication that even though the Space Shuttles flew their last missions this year and were farmed out to museums, the U.S. too is still very much in the space game.

In November the Americans launched an enormous space probe to Mars carrying a vehicle as big as an SUV. It is specifically equipped and targeted to uncover any evidence of life on the red planet. It would not be the first probe to land on Mars. Russia and the U.S. between them have sent 13 probes to Mars, about half of them successfully. The current “Curiosity” probe is the most sophisticated one yet.

But as the Martian score card indicates, not every space initiative meets with success. The U.S. has had its failures, and just a few weeks ago a Russian probe aimed at one of Mar’s two planets failed to break out of the earth orbit.

Japan too has had its share of misadventures. Last year Japan launched Akatsuki on a voyage to Venus specifically to study its turbulent climate to understand global warming better, but it failed to enter the plants orbit.

The Game Changer

2011-11-15T22:11:00.000-08:00

The most common phrase used to describe the new fuel-efficient Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” is “Game Changer.” The phrase was repeated endlessly by Boeing company officials during the long gestation period that finally came to an end this month, when the first operational Dreamliner, belonging to All Nippon Airways, began making scheduled flights.

ANA president Shinichiro Ito happily repeated the “game changer” phrase during the aircraft’s first “revenue” flight (most of the tickets were actually sold through a bidding process at very high prices) flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong on Oct. 26. The airline began regularly scheduled flights within Japan on Nov. 1.

The Dreamliner is considered a game changers (some have said it is the most significant advance in commercial aviation since the Concorde or even the Boeing 707) primarily because of the special carbon fiber materials used to make the wings and fuselage which reduces the weight of the aircraft considerably and thus requires less fuel.

That enables the airline to cover longer distances with fewer paying passengers and still make a profit. That’s because the airline does not have to pack them in like they do with the current long haul workhorses, such as the Boeing 747, requiring more fuel to carry the load. The Dreamliner is capable of flying nonstop from Tokyo to Europe or to the U.S. East Coast. ANA plans to fill only about 160 seats on its long-haul flights.

Yet ANA’s Boeing-787s won’t be making international flights for a few more months. For the time being they are flying the skies to decidedly un-exotic Japanese destinations of Okayama and Hiroshima. It won’t be until January at the earliest, that ANA will start putting the Dreamliner on international routes, starting with Tokyo to Frankfort, Germany.

When it became the launch customer, the airline had hoped, to fly passengers to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games, but like other airlines, ANA was subjected to seven completion dates delays stretching over three years, as the Boeing company worked out the problems of this very complex aircraft with its revolutionary carbon fiber basic structure.

ANA anticipates taking delivery of nine new 787s before the end of the fiscal year in March, 2012. Present plans call for putting the first seven aircraft on domestic routes where fuel efficiency is less a concern, and the latter two deliveries on international routes. The airline’s utilization plan assumes that the later models coming off the production line they will be lighter than the earliest models.

Boeing has had difficulties keeping the weight of the aircraft down to meet the aircraft’s advertised fuel efficiency. The 787 models gained weight with succeeding models due in part of perceived structural weaknesses that had to be addressed with additional titanium fittings (ANA’s Dreamliner is the 8^th model to roll off the assembly line.)

The first aircraft in service are said exceed the original target weight by a several tons. Boeing officials have pointed out that the stronger structure means that the aircraft can carry more fuel needed for the long distance flights. That prompted Boeing chief project engineer for 787, Mike Delany, to assert that the “Dreamliner will meet its targets on range and payload and still deliver on the original promise of being 20 percent more fuel efficient.”

The lack of promised fuel efficiency is reportedly one of the issues on the table in negotiations between ANA and Boeing for compensation for the delays in delivering the promised aircraft. While the details of the negotiations are governed by a confidentiality clause, they are thought to include such things as loss of anticipated profits and fuel efficiency.

Because of the delays ANA has had to re-jig its routes and alter its plans by putting more emphasis on domestic flights than it had hoped. ANA president Ito told reporters that its large number of 787 orders is aimed at the corporate goal of expanding service throughout the world eventually superseding Japan Airlines as Japan’s premier international carrier.

“With the 787 some previously unprofitable routes become feasible,” Ito said. ANA has been expanding its international coverage, using Tokyo’s Haneda Airport (opened for international traffic one year ago this October) as the hub. It now has 12 international flights from that airport.

The airline was able to work around the delivery delays by postponing the retirement of some aircraft. Boeing also helped ANA to obtain aircraft to help as a bridge during the last three years. ANA broke with tradition of Japanese airlines by choosing to use Rolls Royce engines over General Electric. Ito praised their ruggedness, especially in the wear and tear of shorter domestic routes.

Negotiations with Boeing over compensation for the delays are “close to a decision” Ito told reporters. The aircraft industry in Asia will be watching the outcome, as ANA is not the only airline in Asia that has experienced delivery delays. Will it be for cash or some other compensation, such as steep discounts for other aircraft?

Voicing concerns over the delays, Air New Zealand has said it will seek compensation. On Oct 17, China Eastern Airlines lost its patience and cancelled its order for 24 Dreamliners, raising questions just how Boeing will reallocate the planes.

In recent years as its main competitor JAL went through bankruptcy, closed down routes and laid off thousands, ANA has had it relatively easy but cannot rest on its laurels. This year JAL has had its heavy debt burden lifted after a court-supervised reorganization. With its new found profitability, it is poised for new lines of attack.

It plans to open a new international route linking Tokyo and Boston, the first new airline route out of Narita for nearly a decade; it is linking up with Qantas Airways for its new budget airline JetStar and reportedly talking with JetBlue. And it is scheduled to get five of its own Dreamliners.

ANA is not ignoring the fast-moving trend towards budget carriers in Asia either. It plans to launch two budget airlines in 2012, Peach Airlines, of which it owns a third with Hong Kong investors and Air Asia Japan in partnership with the Kuala Lumpur-based budget airline, Air Asia, the largest of its kind in Asia will operate from Kansai Airport near Osaka with domestic destinations and flights to Korea.

Olympus Shokku

2011-10-28T00:42:00.001-07:00

China's Tortured Century

2011-10-09T22:44:00.000-07:00

On Monday Chinese around the world observed the centennial of the Double Ten, aka October 10, which commemorates the overthrow of the last Imperial Dynasty and the establishment, 100 years ago, of the first Chinese republic.

The Double Ten is the closest thing that many Chinese have to America’s July 4 Independence Day celebration, and this year’ Double Ten, coming 100 years after the events that led to “Last Emperor” Puyi’s abdication, has special meaning.

Sadly, the centennial was not celebrated with equal enthusiasm throughout the Chinese world, which is a reflection of the disunity of the Chinese people and the unfulfilled promise of the Chinese revolution. In recent years the Double Ten was more often observed in Taiwan, where it has essentially become Taiwan’s national day (none dare call it Independence day)..

The communists who run mainland China prefer to celebrate their own particular anniversaries, especially the day on October 1, 1949 when Mao Zedong proclaimed the foundation of the Peoples Republic on from the balcony of the Forbidden City in Beijing, celebrated on the mainland and now in Hong Kong and Macau as China’s National Day.

Nothing this year in either Taiwan or mainland China came close matching the extravaganza that the Chinese communists put on in October 1, 2009, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of “Liberation”, nor for that matter what went on this July for the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

Not that the 1911 revolution was ignored. This year China’s top current and past leaders appeared on the stage of the Great Hall of the People, decked with red Chinese flags and a large portrait of the republic’s founding father Sun Yat-sen, to mark the anniversary. Strangely, it was held on Oct 9 perhaps not to step on a day more honored in Taiwan than China.

President Hu Jintao had some conciliatory words urging both sides to “heal the wounds of the past and work together to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” The words were more than ceremonial boiler plate. They were undoubtedly aimed in part at Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election in January.

China’s leaders would dearly love to see the incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou re-elected for a second term over the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party candidate Tsai Ing-wen, and is doing their best to win hearts and minds with economic gestures, high level visits and other such conciliatory actions.

Beijing has done a few other things to mark the occasion, such as opening a photo-exhibition at the U.N. Headquarters in New York entitled “China in Development, 1911-2011.”, and the authorities have endorsed a historical film, the Xinhai Revolution starring Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan, to be released this year. That is the name – taken from the name for 1911 on the Chinese sixty-year calendar cycle - given to the train of events started in 1911.

So it is not that the communist party leaders in Beijing ban any observance of the Double Ten, but they normally tend to play things down. The communists have a complex relationship with the 1911 and the hero of 1911, Sun Yat-sen, who is seen as being more of a Taiwan father-figure than he is in present-day China.

When I lived in Hong Kong, October was the month when people there showed their true colors. On October 1, China’s National Day, out came the bright red flags of Peoples Republic. They usually graced the front of the Bank of China and its branches and in front of fishing cooperatives subsidized by Bejing.

Ten days later those who sympathized with Taiwan, or at least the old Nationalist Chinese cause, broke out their banners. In the years preceding the handover in 1997, it often seemed as if the flag of the ROC vastly outnumbered those of the PRC. And that was especially true in 1996, the year immediately preceding the handover in 1997.

It was as if to say that by the time the first post-1997 Double Ten rolled around, the flag may not be so visible. Indeed, in present-day Hong Kong the large Taiwan contingent in the territory celebrates the Double Ten quietly in hotel ballrooms, but the police usually confiscate any Nationalist banners that are publicly displayed.

On one level, one could ask: what is there to celebrate on this year’s centennial Double Ten? The century that has passed since the Qing Dynasty was overthrown has been characterized mainly by blood, poverty and oppression. The initial fruits of the Xinhai Revolution were several decades of warlordism, disunity and civil war.

The communist victory in 1949 led directly to the great starvation of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution that stunted a generation and culminated in the Tiananmen blood-letting in 1989, events that Beijing probably doesn’t highlight in the “China in Development 1911-2011” photographic show or any of the other commemorative events.

Of course, the last century hasn’t been all blood and oppression. The Chinese Communists take pride in finally uniting the country (save for Taiwan) and ending the previous century and a half of humiliation by foreign colonialism, symbolized by Mao Zedong’s famous words in 1949 that China’s 400 million (that was the population then) had finally “stood up”

Deng Xiaoping built on this by successfully negotiating the peaceful return of Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese sovereignty near the end of the century. In the last two decades following Deng’ great opening to the rest of the world and market reforms Chinese have enjoyed a prosperity unheard of in earlier epochs.

Meanwhile, Taiwan held the first democratic change of government through free elections for president in 2000 in the country’s 4,000 years as a civilization albeit about 80 years too late to fulfill the dreams of the early revolutionaries. If China can build on these events, the second 100 years will hopefully be a lot better than the first.

Chinaman's Chance

2011-09-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

If there was any country that benefitted from America’s decade-long preoccupation with the Middle East and the larger war on terrorism following the attack on America on 9/11, it was China. Before the attack, Beijing was moving into Washington’s gun sights.

A head of steam was building around the proposition that China was emerging as America’s new rival, the only country left in the world, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, that was big enough and potentially powerful enough to challenge the U.S. on near equal terms.

The new administration led by President George W. Bush telegraphed this apparently new American position by defining China as a “strategic competitor”, rather than a “strategic partner,” which was the term favored by President Bill Clinton.

True, China was not viewed as an imminent threat in the same way that Iraq and other “rogue nations” would be. Rather it was seen as the new Germany, referring to the Germany of one hundred years ago, newly unified, newly prosperous, ready to take its place on the world stage, needing to be watched, tamed and if necessary contained.

Much attention was devoted to China’s growing military budget and whether it signaled war-like intentions. Every purchase of modern weaponry, such as fighter-bombers or destroyers from Russia, was noted and commented on. Books with titles such as The Coming Conflict with China rolled off the presses.

In many ways China does represent a theoretical threat in a way that Osama bin Laden never could. For one thing, China really does possess weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, even on the American continent. Bin Laden could only dream. During a time of tensions over the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese general wondered out loud whether Los Angeles was worth a war with China over Taiwan independence.

Yet, these days China has dropped off the radar screen. Very occasionally the editors of prominent opinion journals, especially those supporting the neo-conservatives movement in America, abandon their obsession with the Middle East to complain about President Barack Obama’s policies toward Taiwan. But these days when China appears in the news it is usually on the business pages

As one consequence of 9/11, China has morphed into an economic story, not a strategic one. The main points of conflict seem to revolve around such things as the strength of the renminbi against the U.S. dollar, the burgeoning trade deficit, and the awful question: what if the Chinese stopped underwriting the budget deficit by recycling its huge dollar reserves into U.S. Treasury bonds?

Opinon writers could easily pull their old clippings of a couple decades ago and by simply substituting the word “China,” for “Japan,” republish them almost word for word. This development must be highly satisfying to China leaders. It means that China has moved from being perceived as the “new Germany” to being the “new Japan” -- the economic powerhouse of today, of course, not the expansive, militaristic Japan of the 1930s. That is a more comfortable place to be.

The decade since 9/11 were mainly good times for China, as it has been allowed to pursue its much ballyhooed “peaceful rise” without much interference from either the U.S. or, for that matter, from Japan, which was obsessed with its own internal problems, especially since this year’s massive earthquake/tsunami/ nuclear meltdown (Japan’s own “3/11”).

During the post 9/11 decade China racked up successive years of nine percent growth; the country put a man in space and hosted the Olympic Games. It accumulated some $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and a trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds. It surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy and expanded its influence throughout Southeast Asia.

Many Southeast Asian nations complained bitterly that in the years immediately aftermath of 9/11 U.S. leader either ignored their important conferences or, if they attended, spent the time lecturing them on dangers of terrorism (for whom few needed lectures).

To some extent the Obama administration has tried to make up for this and to refocus on concerns of the region, such as conflicting South China Sea claims. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended two regional meetings in Hanoi in 2010.But in the decade since 9/11 the U.S. has lost influence it may never recover.

Of course, economic conflict is still conflict and Beijing is right to worry about potential backlash from protectionism in its most important market over such issues as the strength of the currency, the value of the dollar and even whether Washington might renege on its debts. But this is all familiar ground, more easily manageable than if China were viewed as a strategic opponent.

The longer America’s attention was riveted on the Middle East, the more the perception took hold that China is an economic rival, not a strategic competitor. That is better for both countries. This is not to argue that China should or would use this respite to build up its military beyond normal modernization or that it has been granted a freehand in Asia. It merely states that it is better not to conjure an unneeded confrontation. We’ve already learned from the Iraq adventure, the consequences of doing that.

.

_____________________________________

Chinaman’s Chance

By Todd Crowell

TOKYO - If there was any country that benefitted from America’s decade-long preoccupation with the Middle East and the larger war on terrorism following the attack on America on 9/11, it was China. Before the attack, Beijing was moving into Washington’s gun sights.

A head of steam was building around the proposition that China was emerging as America’s new rival, the only country left in the world, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, that was big enough and potentially powerful enough to challenge the U.S. on near equal terms.

The new administration led by President George W. Bush telegraphed this apparently new American position by defining China as a “strategic competitor”, rather than a “strategic partner,” which was the term favored by President Bill Clinton.

True, China was not viewed as an imminent threat in the same way that Iraq and other “rogue nations” would be. Rather it was seen as the new Germany, referring to the Germany of one hundred years ago, newly unified, newly prosperous, ready to take its place on the world stage, needing to be watched, tamed and if necessary contained.

Much attention was devoted to China’s growing military budget and whether it signaled war-like intentions. Every purchase of modern weaponry, such as fighter-bombers or destroyers from Russia, was noted and commented on. Books with titles such as The Coming Conflict with China rolled off the presses.

In many ways China does represent a theoretical threat in a way that Osama bin Laden never could. For one thing, China really does possess weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, even on the American continent. Bin Laden could only dream. During a time of tensions over the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese general wondered out loud whether Los Angeles was worth a war with China over Taiwan independence.

Yet, these days China has dropped off the radar screen. Very occasionally the editors of prominent opinion journals, especially those supporting the neo-conservatives movement in America, abandon their obsession with the Middle East to complain about President Barack Obama’s policies toward Taiwan. But these days when China appears in the news it is usually on the business pages

As one consequence of 9/11, China has morphed into an economic story, not a strategic one. The main points of conflict seem to revolve around such things as the strength of the renminbi against the U.S. dollar, the burgeoning trade deficit, and the awful question: what if the Chinese stopped underwriting the budget deficit by recycling its huge dollar reserves into U.S. Treasury bonds?

Opinon writers could easily pull their old clippings of a couple decades ago and by simply substituting the word “China,” for “Japan,” republish them almost word for word. This development must be highly satisfying to China leaders. It means that China has moved from being perceived as the “new Germany” to being the “new Japan” -- the economic powerhouse of today, of course, not the expansive, militaristic Japan of the 1930s. That is a more comfortable place to be.

The decade since 9/11 were mainly good times for China, as it has been allowed to pursue its much ballyhooed “peaceful rise” without much interference from either the U.S. or, for that matter, from Japan, which was obsessed with its own internal problems, especially since this year’s massive earthquake/tsunami/ nuclear meltdown (Japan’s own “3/11”).

During the post 9/11 decade China racked up successive years of nine percent growth; the country put a man in space and hosted the Olympic Games. It accumulated some $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and a trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds. It surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy and expanded its influence throughout Southeast Asia.

Many Southeast Asian nations complained bitterly that in the years immediately aftermath of 9/11 U.S. leader either ignored their important conferences or, if they attended, spent the time lecturing them on dangers of terrorism (for whom few needed lectures).

To some extent the Obama administration has tried to make up for this and to refocus on concerns of the region, such as conflicting South China Sea claims. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended two regional meetings in Hanoi in 2010.But in the decade since 9/11 the U.S. has lost influence it may never recover.

Of course, economic conflict is still conflict and Beijing is right to worry about potential backlash from protectionism in its most important market over such issues as the strength of the currency, the value of the dollar and even whether Washington might renege on its debts. But this is all familiar ground, more easily manageable than if China were viewed as a strategic opponent.

The longer America’s attention was riveted on the Middle East, the more the perception took hold that China is an economic rival, not a strategic competitor. That is better for both countries. This is not to argue that China should or would use this respite to build up its military beyond normal modernization or that it has been granted a freehand in Asia. It merely states that it is better not to conjure an unneeded confrontation. We’ve already learned from the Iraq adventure, the consequences of doing that.

.

________________________________________

Chinaman’s Chance

By Todd Crowell

TOKYO - If there was any country that benefitted from America’s decade-long preoccupation with the Middle East and the larger war on terrorism following the attack on America on 9/11, it was China. Before the attack, Beijing was moving into Washington’s gun sights.

A head of steam was building around the proposition that China was emerging as America’s new rival, the only country left in the world, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, that was big enough and potentially powerful enough to challenge the U.S. on near equal terms.

The new administration led by President George W. Bush telegraphed this apparently new American position by defining China as a “strategic competitor”, rather than a “strategic partner,” which was the term favored by President Bill Clinton.

True, China was not viewed as an imminent threat in the same way that Iraq and other “rogue nations” would be. Rather it was seen as the new Germany, referring to the Germany of one hundred years ago, newly unified, newly prosperous, ready to take its place on the world stage, needing to be watched, tamed and if necessary contained.

Much attention was devoted to China’s growing military budget and whether it signaled war-like intentions. Every purchase of modern weaponry, such as fighter-bombers or destroyers from Russia, was noted and commented on. Books with titles such as The Coming Conflict with China rolled off the presses.

In many ways China does represent a theoretical threat in a way that Osama bin Laden never could. For one thing, China really does possess weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, even on the American continent. Bin Laden could only dream. During a time of tensions over the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese general wondered out loud whether Los Angeles was worth a war with China over Taiwan independence.

Yet, these days China has dropped off the radar screen. Very occasionally the editors of prominent opinion journals, especially those supporting the neo-conservatives movement in America, abandon their obsession with the Middle East to complain about President Barack Obama’s policies toward Taiwan. But these days when China appears in the news it is usually on the business pages

As one consequence of 9/11, China has morphed into an economic story, not a strategic one. The main points of conflict seem to revolve around such things as the strength of the renminbi against the U.S. dollar, the burgeoning trade deficit, and the awful question: what if the Chinese stopped underwriting the budget deficit by recycling its huge dollar reserves into U.S. Treasury bonds?

Opinon writers could easily pull their old clippings of a couple decades ago and by simply substituting the word “China,” for “Japan,” republish them almost word for word. This development must be highly satisfying to China leaders. It means that China has moved from being perceived as the “new Germany” to being the “new Japan” -- the economic powerhouse of today, of course, not the expansive, militaristic Japan of the 1930s. That is a more comfortable place to be.

The decade since 9/11 were mainly good times for China, as it has been allowed to pursue its much ballyhooed “peaceful rise” without much interference from either the U.S. or, for that matter, from Japan, which was obsessed with its own internal problems, especially since this year’s massive earthquake/tsunami/ nuclear meltdown (Japan’s own “3/11”).

During the post 9/11 decade China racked up successive years of nine percent growth; the country put a man in space and hosted the Olympic Games. It accumulated some $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and a trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds. It surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy and expanded its influence throughout Southeast Asia.

Many Southeast Asian nations complained bitterly that in the years immediately aftermath of 9/11 U.S. leader either ignored their important conferences or, if they attended, spent the time lecturing them on dangers of terrorism (for whom few needed lectures).

To some extent the Obama administration has tried to make up for this and to refocus on concerns of the region, such as conflicting South China Sea claims. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended two regional meetings in Hanoi in 2010.But in the decade since 9/11 the U.S. has lost influence it may never recover.

Of course, economic conflict is still conflict and Beijing is right to worry about potential backlash from protectionism in its most important market over such issues as the strength of the currency, the value of the dollar and even whether Washington might renege on its debts. But this is all familiar ground, more easily manageable than if China were viewed as a strategic opponent.

The longer America’s attention was riveted on the Middle East, the more the perception took hold that China is an economic rival, not a strategic competitor. That is better for both countries. This is not to argue that China should or would use this respite to build up its military beyond normal modernization or that it has been granted a freehand in Asia. It merely states that it is better not to conjure an unneeded confrontation. We’ve already learned from the Iraq adventure, the consequences of doing that.

.

________________________________________

___

Modern-day Gandhis

2011-08-23T18:17:00.001-07:00

It has been more than 100 years since Mohandas Gandhi proclaimed the principles of Satyagrahya, literally the path to truth, or what the rest of the world chooses to call non-violent resistance. It has been more than 60 years since Gandhi’s death by an assassin, but his principles of civil disobedience are still relevant, and pertinent.

This is nowhere truer than in Gandhi’s own country, which has been convulsed for weeks by a mild-mannered but steely-eyed modern-day Gandhi known as Anna Hazare, who last week began a fast at a public open space in the middle of New Delhi, his second this year, to force the Indian parliament to pass an anti-corruption bill with teeth in it.

But Hazare isn’t the only latter-day Gandhi causing headaches for entrenched leaders in Asia. In Malaysia a 54-year-old woman lawyer named Ambiga Sreenevason, is the leader of a popular movement to force the government to reform the electoral process. Called Bersih, meaning “clean” in Malay, it defied a government ban on holding a mass protest in Kuala Lumpur last month and faced down police using water cannon; more than a thousand were arrested.

With the deadly riots in London still fresh in everyone’s memory, it is worth remembering that non-violent resistance still has a place in the modern world, just as it did back on September 11, 1906, when a proper British barrister named Mohandas Gandhi chaired a meeting in the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The 3,000 or so people gathered there were protesting against the Transvaal Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance, which required them to carry internal passports and live and work under segregated conditions. The people at the meeting resolved to refuse to observe the terms of the ordinance even to the extent of going to prison.

Gandhi later said: “I had to choose between allying myself to violence or finding out some other method of meeting the crisis and stopping the rot, and it came to me that we should refuse to obey the legislation that was degrading and let them put us in jail if they liked.

India’s current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, paid an official visit to South Africa in 2006 to observe the 100th anniversary of Satyagraha and visited many placed associated with Gandhi’s early life. But with the shoe on the other foot, Singh recently complained that Hazare’s hunger strike was “misconceived.” He maintains that the difference between what Hazare wants and what the government proposes are not so far apart and should not be decided through fasting.

Hazare looks a lot like the Mahatma. A short, bespectacled pensioner of 74, he appears in public wearing a white pointed cap and a simple, white cotton gown similar to the one Gandhi wore. Ambiga, a former chairman of the Malaysian Bar Council, looks more like the barrister of Gandhi’s South African days.

Some have likened the Hazare-inspired and the Bersih protests to the “Arab Spring” that swept through the Middle East this year toppling several dictators. However, neither of these two latter-day Gandhi’s is seeking regime change. Indeed, their demands are relatively modest.

Hazare and his followers are demanding that the government adopt their version of legislation to create a national anti-corruption ombudsman and do so by the end of August. To drive their point home, Hazare began to fast “to the death” last week. Bersih seeks what appear to be some fairly minor changes to the election laws.

Some have criticized Hazare as being essentially undemocratic and that his fasting is a kind of moral blackmailing of a popularly elected government. But then just because India is a democracy doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be deaf to popular feelings or beholden to special interests.

After all, an ombudsman bill such as the one Hazare wants to see passed was first introduced into parliament in 1968 and has been re-introduced and defeated nine times since then. The changes that Bersih demands for the Malaysian electoral system would weaken the political machine that has run Malaysia since independence in 1957.

Not everyone in India appreciates Hazare’s assuming the mantel of a saint. Aruna Roy, a famed social activist in her own right, heaps scorn on his anti-corruption legislative proposal, calling it naive and tending to concentrate too much power and oversight in one giant government bureaucracy

Gandhi, of course, is remembered or his non-violent resistance to British rule in India, but the principles of nonviolent opposition are not limited to overthrowing colonial regimes or dictatorships. Indeed the very first applications in South Africa were aimed at overcoming oppressive laws and local conditions. For that matter, so too was civil disobedience in the Civil rights movement in the United States.

Both movements got an enormous boost from ham-fisted reactions by leaders of both countries. When Hazare threatened a second fast in April, the government threw him in jail, which, of course, only turned hat had begun as a relatively modest protest movement into a national crusade.

Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, was hugely embarrassed both by the government’s over reaction to the July protests and later by a ham-fisted public relations campaign meant to discredit Bersih. He recently announced formation of a “non-partisan” commission to study electoral reforms

For many younger Indians, obsessed with making money and with India’s rise as an economic superpower, Gandhi has been a distant and dour figure, someone they probably read about only in dusty textbooks at school but not relevant to their life in the 21st century.

Hazare seems to have awakened an important though dormant part of India’s heritage while at the same time tapping into a seething anger over endemic corruption in India and a growing gap between the rising middle class and the millions who are left behind.

The Lessons of Minamata

2011-08-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

Before Fukushima the greatest environmental disaster in Japan, indeed, one of the greatest in the entire world, was Minamata disease, a neurological affliction caused by severe mercury poisoning which can cause limb paralysis, difficulties in walking, mental confusion and death.

It is named after Minamata Bay on the southern island of Kyushu. The Chisso chemical company, had been dumping mercury-contaminated waste water in the bay for decades. In the 1950s and 160s, many people living in the vicinity came down with strange illnesses tied to eating the mercury-contaminated fish caught in the bay.

Minamata disease was first suspected in 1956 and was officially pronounced a pollution-linked disease in 1968. That makes it all sound like ancient history. Yet Minamata disease is extremely current, both on its own terms and because it provides lessons, often discouraging lessons, to the most current environmental disaster stemming from the multiple nuclear meltdowns.

In March, about a week after the Great East Japan Earthquake, a group of previously unrecognized victims settled a long-standing damage suit, paving the way to finally end the lengthy struggle to bail out victims. Under the terms, the chemical company will pay each of more than 2,000 plaintiffs (94 have died) about $25,000 while the prefectural government will cover monthly medical expenses.

The settlement made Toshiyuki Kawakami 86, and his wife, 84, finally eligible to collect damages – 38 years after they originally filed their complaint. ‘I am relieved that we were recognized while I am still alive,” he said after the settlement was pronounced.

The settlement was especially sweet for Kawakami in that he was one of the leaders in a group, who had on 2004 won a landmark ruling from Japan’s Supreme Court, holding the national and prefectural governments liable for the spread of the disease. Throughout most of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the government had denied any culpability and left it to Chisso to handle any compensation payments alone.

The executives at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), owner of the four disabled nuclear power plants at Fukushima, must look on the Chisso Company and see themselves 50 years from now. Yet Tepco faces much greater demands for compensation, although it does have larger resources, now including government backing, to pay them down,

Chisso is a private company in a competitive field of liquid chrystal displays and other modern chemicals. Tepco is in a different league in that it enjoys a major regional monopoly in selling electricity. Still, like Chisso, it will be obligated to pay out compensation for the next 50 to 60 years or more.

Tepco’s share price plunged after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami as investors were understandably spooked about the prospects of the company paying out large sums in compensation to those impacted, by the radiation leaks.

Shares did rebound when, a couple weeks ago, the Japanese parliament passed a law to help the electric power company shoulder some of its damage demands, which are likely to run into the trillions of yen. It sets up a mechanism to provide Tepco with some assistance if the utility cannot meet the payment demands. But Tepco still bears the main burden for making payments.

The government chose not to place any cap on damages, which leaves them open-ended, and the liabilities are likely to be a drag on the company for years if not decades to come, much like Chisso, which over the years has booked about $3 billion in cumulative losses from the mercury poisoning debacle.

The government is navigating a fine line, not wanting to shift the entire burden on to the taxpayer, but also mindful that Tepco is the sole supplier of electricity to the world’s largest city. Moreover, it would not be too hard for future law suits to find the government culpable or inadequate oversight of the afflicted nuclear power plants.

Chisso chose not to file for bankruptcy or seek to nationalize its liabilities (two options that have been bruited for Tepco but discarded for now). Instead, Chisso creditors waived some of their loans or accepted delayed payments. The price Chisso paid for not going bankrupt was a negative net worth that has lingered for the past 50 years.

Even so, Chisso is still in business. It even issues shares of stock, although on the unlisted Green Sheet Market rather than the regular Tokyo Stock Exchange. Latest figures valued the company at 13 yen (about one US cent) a share with a market capitalization of about $80 million.

Earlier this year, Chisso split itself into two main companies. One, a holding company, inherits all of the liabilities stemming from the mercury poisoning. Another company, called the JNC Corp, will handle the business end of things. Eventually, it will go public, and the profits the holding company earns from stocks sales or dividends will be used to pay damages.

It is likely that Tepco will share with Chisso the difficulty of identifying legitimate future claims. Of course, it may be relatively easy to tote up the economic losses stemming from the nuclear disaster, but the cumulative effects of mercury poisoning and long term effects of radiation are similarly difficult to define, especially as symptoms tend to develop more in advanced age..

Something like an additional 40,000 uncertified victims have applied for damages under a 2010 law that gives suffers three years to come forward and establish their claims. Some of them are in their 40s and 50s which means they were born after Minamata disease was recognized yet will claims that they were actually injured while in the womb.

Said one doctor involved in the Minamata disease claims, it may be necessary to make a list now of those who have been affected with radiation at Fukushima, so that the authorities can keep track of their health conditions over a long period of time. That is one lesson of Minamata for Fukushima.

.

South Korea's Blue Water Ambitions

2011-08-01T17:52:00.000-07:00

A southern island with long-standing issues with the mainland; local residents up in arms over the construction of a new, large military base; environmentalists concerned that these plans will disrupt sensitive under sea coral formations. Another chapter in the unending Okinawa Marine base saga?

No. In this instance the island is Jeju-do off the southern coast of South Korea. The issue is Seoul’s desire to build a major naval base in Gangjeong village on the southern part of the island to serve as a home port for South Korea’s growing fleet of large and sophisticated warships.

Much is made about China’s rapidly expanding navy and ambition to create a fleet capable of projecting power globally. Not so well known is South Korea’s decade-long project to build its own “blue water navy.” There is nothing particularly secret about South Korea’s naval build up, it just doesn’t get the kind of attention that China gets.

This ocean-going force is built around an arsenal of sophisticated guided missile destroyers, including most recently, two 7,600-ton Aegis-equipped monster destroyers with one more building, half a dozen 4,500-ton destroyers, submarines and amphibious assault ships.

The flagship of this new strategic fleet is an 18,000 ton, flat-topped amphibious assault ship with the pregnant name of Dokdo, after the tiny island in the Sea of Japan that is claimed by Korea and Japan and which is a frequent source of tensions between the two countries.

The Dokdo is currently larger than anything in the Japanese navy or even the rapidly expanding Chinese navy – or at least until Beijing finally launches its much-talked about aircraft carrier. Indeed, it is the largest warship belonging to any Asian navy east of India.

Although its main armament would be helicopters and marines, it would also be capable of supporting unmanned aircraft in some future conflict. The South Koreans are planning to build several more of this type of vessels, although probably not as large.

The official purpose of this naval buildup by South Korea is, much as China, to project power beyond its coastline plus being able to participate in international peacekeeping operations and disaster recovery and relief efforts. Several South Korean destroyers participate in the anti-piracy patrols off Somalia’s coast, along with warships from China and Japan.

A more logical explanation would be that, as in China, the expansion and modernization of the fleet is a natural and inevitable growing process of a nation’s armed forces proportional to the rapidly growing size of its economy. Rationales for the expansion are found later.

A naval base on the south side of Jeju is an obvious step in South Korea’s blue water ambitions, as it allows direct access to the open sea. But it is also located about as far away from the sensitive border with North Korea, supposedly South Korea’s true enemy, as one can be and still be in the country.

When completed in 2014, the base will accommodate about 20 of the country’s most modern surface warships and submarines. There is also proposed space to dock two large cruise ships, an apparent sop to locals as it could be argued the new port boosts tourism.

Growing numbers of Chinese are visiting Jeju and would likely formed the bulk of the passengers on the tourist vessels. Seoul probably is not unhappy that thousands of ordinary Chinese will get a good look at Korea’s growing naval might while enjoying beaches and sampling kimchi.

South Korea’s blue water naval strategy developed in the late 1990s, during a period of relatively relaxed relations with North Korea. This was the time of the Sunshine policy of President Kim Dae-jung and his successor.

But unlike China, which has few if any threats along its coastline, North Korea does pose a real menace. That was driven home last year when a North Korean submarine put a torpedo into the South Korean Corvette Choenan, sending her to the bottom along with more than 40 of her crew.

While Seoul was dreaming of grandiose deep sea ambitions, it had taken its eye off the ball and become somewhat lackadaisical about protecting its sensitive northern coastline. And if the events of last year proved anything, it is that one cannot be lackadaisical about the dangerous provocations from the North.

This sobering experience has not immediately altered Seoul’s naval procurement plans, which of course, were longstanding. But one hears less and less about blue water power projection. Last May the government withdrew “Ocean Navy Strategy” as an official rationale for the Jeju naval base (though work proceeds).

Unlike Okinawa, which is mainly a three-cornered dispute between Tokyo, Washington and the people of Okinawa, the Jeju base dispute has attracted more attention from international peace groups, Catholic organizations and other NGOs. Unlike Okinawa, which bristles with military bases there are no major installations on Jeju. Indeed, it likes to bill itself as an “island of peace.”

But like Okinawa, which still harbors resentments toward the mainland, Jeju has its own issues. For Okinawans it was the way they were used as cannon fodder during the last battle of World War II. For Jeju people it is the “4.3 Incident”.

The date refers to a rebellion, probably stoked by the communist Workers’ Party (now the rulers of North Korea but banned in the South, that broke out in April 3, 1948. The army put the rebellion down but it is estimated that 14,000 to 60,000 were killed. Since then South Korea’s military has not been particularly welcome on Jeju.

Uncertainty Lies Ahead

2011-06-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

Thailand has had a pretty good year since the demonstrations of April and May, 2010, culminated in a bloody crackdown on May 19 in which 91 people died. The country is largely peaceful, the economy is thriving, unemployment is low, the currency is strong. All are usually good omens for success at the ballot box.

But the national election, which will be held Sunday (July 3) is more likely to muddy than clarify the long-running political drama that has divided the country for more than a decade.. The only thing certain about the election, and more importantly what happens after the votes are counted, is uncertainty, says Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij.

This election represents another turn in the long-running political cycle drama in Thailand that pits supporters of ex-prime minister, now fugitive, Thaksin Shinawatra, and opponents who are determined that the former premier will never wield power in Thailand again – or set foot in the country if they can help it.

It is an article of faith that elections in a democracy are necessary to clear the air. That may be true when the losing side accepts the legitimacy of the outcome and contents itself with serving as a loyal opposition until the next polling comes around. That has not been the case in Thailand in recent years.

The Bangkok Post described the long-running political stalemate this way: “In Thailand’s electoral democracy election winners cannot rule; [but] those who rule cannot win elections.”

Whenever Thai people have been asked choose, they have unambiguously sided with the party of Thaksin or his proxy. That was true in the last election held in December 2007 and won by the Thaksin-backed People’s Progress Party (PPP), which formed a government under Thaksin surrogate Samak Sundaravej.

Opponents who go by the shorthand name of “yellow shirts” took to the streets of Bangkok in massive demonstration culminating in the occupation of the government house and the capital’s two main international airports, which brought transportation into and out of the country to a half.

The courts eventually disqualified enough PPP members of parliament on various charges (the first prime minister because he had hosted a cooking show on television), so that the government lost its majority in the lower house and was replace by one led by the Democrat Party. That plus some horse trading among minor parties led to the current government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Soon the capital was flooded with supporters of the former government, who by then had earned the nickname “red shirts”, and who occupied the commercial center of Bangkok for better part of two months before the police and allegedly the army moved in to suppress the movement and arrest its leaders.

Since it is widely assumed that Thaksin won the hearts and loyalty of so many Thai’s by a boldly populist agenda that included the beginnings of rudimentary health care, development loans to rural areas among other things the current Abhisit government has been, in essence, trying to out-Thaksin, Thaksin.

The government has undertaken several initiatives aimed directly at Thaksin’s constituency, such as land reform, income boosting measures, subsidizing food and diesel oil. In some respects the government has expanded on the Thaksin playbook, such as with programs that probably exceed anything the former government tried.

Minister Korn, speaking recently in Japan, freely admitted that many of these programs have a political dimension. “We don’t want the Thaksin folks to have a [political] weapon,” he said. But he also maintained that there were programs that any government concerned with the people’s welfare should undertake.

And yet none of this seems to have done much to loosen the iron grip that Thaksin has on a significant portion of the Thai people. The Pheu Thai party, the latest political vehicle for Thaksin, is reportedly leading in most opinion polls. The main political divide between the Thaksin-supporting north and northeast and the Abhisit’s strength in the south and middle is largely unchanged.

In previous elections, since he was exiled in 2006, Thaksin has been represented in parliament by surrogates (the courts keep disqualifying his party; loyalists simply regroup under a new name – hence Pheu Thai [for Thai] Party). This time the leader and potential prime minister is his 44-year-old sister Yingluck Shinawatra, who has worked in her brother business empire but never been in politics before.

To have the Thaksin party headed by a genuine member of the family is about as in-your-face as you can get. She is happy to be described as a “clone” of her elder brother. “I understand hum, how he handles politics. That will be the one thing I’ve cloned from his logical thinking and vision,” she has said.

If the “red shirts” return to power one might expect that the opposition will hold mass demonstrations. There may be more investigations into the shadowy elements in the armed forces that are believed to have been behind the killings a year ago. It is possible that the judiciary will intervene to disqualify Yingluck, possibly for alleged financial misdeeds.

If Abhisit is able to form a government, expect more street demonstrations by the red shirts. The new government might be more aggressive in persecuting those on the red side who are believed to have torched many of the commercial buildings in Bangkok during last spring’s uprising confident that they will be in power for a long time.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the situation is how, despite all of the political uncertainty, despite the potential for disrupting post-election chaos, the Thai economy seems to just tick along as if the political disputes were taking place on a different planet.

Singapore's Gold-plated Ministers

2011-06-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

America’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who oversees a budget of about $700 billion, makes approximately $157,000 a year. His counterpart in Singapore, Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen, who supervises a budget of about $15 billion and roughly 70,000 troops, earns the equivalent of $1.2 million a year. Is something askew here?

It is no secret in Asia that Singapore’s government ministers make outrageously generous salaries. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pulls in the equivalent of $2.4 million annually, or six times the $400,000 salary of President Barack Obama. Cabinet ministers earn in excess of $1 million, with equally generous retirement benefits.

These imposing salaries have long been a source of disquiet among the island republic’s five million citizens, but it was a disquiet that the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which held every one but two seats in the 87-seat parliament, could safely ignore. As a result of last May’s watershed general election, which saw the opposition triple its strength in parliament, that may no longer be the case.

Singapore’s government salaries have been rising fast since 2007, when parliament adopted new guidelines, which peg the salaries of Singapore’s ministers and top civil servants at two-thirds of a composite of the top professionals in the republic, including lawyers, bankers and multinational corporate CEOs.

Since it is not uncommon in the United States for salaries of major CEOs or the heads of major financial houses to earn $30 million or more a year, President Obama would be paid about $20 million a year if the United States operated under the payment parameters that Singapore has set for itself.

Singapore’s founding father and long-time prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, has justified Singapore’s generous salaries as necessary to attract honest and competent leaders. Indeed, in his view, Singapore needs more than just competent leaders to guide a small republic with no obvious resources other than its own people to independence and prosperity.

He brushes aside comparisons with other countries, saying there is, no such thing as an international standard for setting ministers’ salaries, although almost every other democracy in the world from Britain to Australia pays their leaders far less than does Singapore. Some of them, such as Denmark or Switzerland, actually score better on international rankings of governmental corruption. That is irrelevant, he argues. Singapore exists in that sea of corruption called Southeast Asia; Denmark and Switzerland do not.

“Ministers who deal with billions [of dollars] cannot be paid low salaries without risking system malfunction” argued Lee Kuan Yew in the past. “Low salaries draw in hypocrites, who ‘sweet talk’ their way into power in the name of public service.”

But are the ancient Confucian values of honesty and efficiency enough in themselves in a modern democracy? Is the PAP’s ideology of authoritarian meritocracy fully justified? What about empathy, a sense of public duty or even a sense of sacrifice? Are these foreign values that are not suitable or necessary for a properly working Asian democracy?

Workers’ Party parliamentarian Shirley Lim addressed these questions head on when the current system of adjusting ministerial salaries was first tabled in 2007. She argued that the exorbitant salaries widened the gap between government and average citizen it served, undercut the concept of public service as a noble calling and actually failed to attract the brightest and best into government service.

“Can we say that each and every minister in the cabinet would become a top earning banker, accountant or CEO [if he left office]?” she asked. “Other countries favor a more moderate use of taxpayers’ money for salaries, and they do not seem to have run their countries into the ground.”

She noted that Singapore is a beneficiary of globalization, but she added that globalization tends to favor the top wage earners while depressing average earnings. If this trend continues and if the current salary review system remains in place, she argued, Singapore could be seeing ministers earning $3, $4 or even 5 million dollars a year.

Lim was then speaking as a Nominated Member of parliament. That is a curious position, unique to Singapore, in which the top three losing opposition candidates are appointed to parliament but have no vote. Ironically, it was Lee himself who first proposed the nominated members, worried that his own younger party members lacked street smarts and debating skills.

However, Lim is now speaking as a full-fledged voting member of parliament. She was part of the five-member Worker’s Party slate that captured the Aljunied Group Representative Constituency, in the May 7 general election, the first time that any opposition party had won a GRC since they were created in 1988. One other Workers Party candidate took one of the few remaining single-member seats.

The GRC is another dubious Singaporean contribution to democracy. The GRCs ostensibly ensure minority representation in parliament as one candidate on the slate must be from a minority, usually Malay or Indian. Critics maintained that it was a device to perpetuate the PAP lock by making it harder to recruit candidates and pay deposits, while minimizing the chances that weaker PAP candidates losing in head-to-head races.

For the opposition, winning one of the GRCs was like scaling Mt. Everest. It will get easier next time. Meanwhile, opposition members of parliament will no longer feel so lonely. Adding three new no-voting members, the opposition now has a sizeable bloc.

The PAP sought to boost its electoral chances by sprinkling famous party leaders and senior ministers in different slates. This backfired when Foreign Minister George Yeo went down to defeat in Aljunied, the first cabinet minister ever to lose an election in Singapore (the pain may have been ameliorated by a $2 million annual pension.)

Singapore may be virtually a one-party state, but the government takes election results seriously. When the PAP vote total falls below about two-thirds (last month it was 60, a record low in 18 consecutive elections) it is usually an occasion for soul searching. This election was no different.

Prime Minister Lee reshuffled the cabinet, trying to bring in new faces more appealing to the younger voters. Two famous old-timers, Lee Kuan Yew and former prime minister Goh Chok Tong, resigned from the cabinet where they had served as “Mentor Ministers” without portfolios.

Lee acknowledged the public unease with ministerial salaries by immediately appointing a new committee to review the present method of setting salaries. “You can expect that in all probability, salaries will be cut,” said the committee’s new head Gerard Ee, who is chairman of Changi Hospital.

The opposition to high ministerial salaries is more than just a reflection of public envy. It is a manifestation of a deeper malaise over widening gap in wealth between the people at the top and the average Singaporean workers, a situation that is by no means unique to Singapore.

Naoto Kan's "Annus Horribilis"

2011-06-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

When Naoto Kan looks back on his year as prime minister of Japan – and it probably won’t be long before he is looking back on it – he would well use the term popularized by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth after a stressful twelve months and call it his “Annus Horribilis” (Latin for horrible year).

Of course, Queen Elizabeth never had to survive a vote of no confidence like Kan did by vaguely promising to resign. Kan tried to keep his resignation open ended, but many leaders of his Democratic Party of Japan are already busy, metaphorically, measuring the curtains of the prime minister’s residence for when one of them moves in.

The next person occupying the prime minister’s office may not even be a member of Kan’s own party. Ever since the March 11 combined earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster, there has been loose talk of a coalition between the two main and possibly smaller parties. Though still unlikely, that possibility is looming larger

It has gained renewed currency as one means of breaking the parliamentary gridlock and passing necessary legislation to fund the budget and repair the damage wrought by the March 11 earthquake. One might think that the two sides might come together to pass legislation obviously needed to relieve suffering, but that might be asking too much of Japan’s dysfunctional government.

In any case, parliamentary democracies think in terms of coalitions not bipartisanship. In one scenario, LDP leader Sadakazu Tanigaki assumes the prime minister’s position at least temporarily in order to have the Diet pass needed legislation then calls a general election. That the new ministers may hold office for only a few months would hardly be novel in Japan.

Naoto Kan recently passed the one year in office milestone, a dangerous time for Japanese premiers. His four predecessors, Yukio Hatoyama. Taro Aso, Yasuo Fukuda and Shinzo Abe, all held office for one year or less (in Aso’s case he resigned after losing the 2009 general election). Kan had hopes of breaking this pattern that has been embarrassing to Japan.

Kan’s “Annus Horribilis” year got off to a bad start, and he never really recovered. Within weeks of assuming office on June 4, 2010, the Japanese went to the polls to choose half of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of Japan’s bicameral parliament. Kan’s party lost enough seats to hand the chamber over to the opposition, resulting once again into a divided Diet.

The July upper house election was scarcely over before Kan was fighting for his political life in an election for president of the DPJ against his nemesis Ichiro Ozawa. Although he won a comfortable majority among party rank-and file, he only narrowly carried the party’s parliamentary members. The narrowness of that vote would portend trouble throughout the year.

A former party president, Ozawa has been like a ball-and-chain on Kan’s leadership. Kan’s dilemma is that Ozawa is viewed as corrupt by the general population and a drag on the party in general, but because of his electioneering skills he is popular with the members of parliament, including about 100 freshmen members he personally recruited, groomed and placed in the Diet.

Ozawa was stripped of his party privileges last February after he was indicted on suspicion in an illegal financial transaction; in retaliation many of his supporters did not show up for a vote on the 2011 fiscal budget and 16 openly threatened to leave the party. Kan has never felt strong enough to expel Ozawa from the party.

The recent no-confidence vote may have been submitted by the formal opposition, but it’s only chance of actually passing had depended on significant numbers of Ozawa followers actually voting against their own government, which or a while seemed very possible. This failed to happen only after Kan’s last minute promise to resign sometime in the near future.

The prime minister spent much of his time between the party election last September and the massive quake in March trying, mostly without success, trying to find some combination of votes that would permit him to pass important spending bills, including the authority to issue bonds that under write 40 percent of the budget, against an opposition promising to block any such move to force a new election.

Even now, despite the extraordinary circumstances of what has been called Japan’s greatest post-war disaster, the opposition is willing to hold the budget hostage, in a move similar to Republican objections to raising the debt ceiling in the U.S., unless Kan resigns or perhaps a “grand coalition” government is formed.

The earthquake and subsequent nuclear power plant meltdowns did give Kan a temporary reprieve from relentless opposition in parliament and in his own party and perhaps a chance to demonstrate leadership in a crisis. But while it is difficult to find serious fault with his government’s response, it is equally difficult to pinpoint any genuine successes either.

He rather impulsively flew to the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant complex the day after the earthquake to personally assess the situation, but all it earned him was criticism for getting in the way of the plant operators struggling to contain the nuclear meltdown; when he returned to the earthquake region three weeks later, he was criticized for not appearing sooner.

When he entered office a year ago, he had two main goals. One was to fix the social security system, which like many similar entitlement programs is suffering from an aging workforce, by raising the sales tax from current five to ten percent. Another was to enter into more free trade agreements, an area where Japan is losing ground to regional neighbors such as South Korea.

His authority weakened at first by defeat in the upper house elections and by subsequent events including a no confidence motion, has delayed any real progress social security reform, certainly under a Kan administration. Meanwhile, the need to refocus attention on rebuilding the devastated northeast, has swept any real thought to pushing more free-trade zones off of the table, at least for now.

Mystery Man

2011-06-03T15:27:00.001-07:00

In May in 1794 an unknown artist with no known qualifications walked into the woodblock print publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo in what was then called Edo, now Tokyo, and somehow persuaded him to commission a series of portraits of leading actors in the hugely popular Kabuki theater.

Although Juzaburo had already published the work of other famous woodblock artists, such as Utamaro, he must have detected some spark of artistic talent in the young man (one imagines he was young, as his age is just one of the many things not known about him).

Within weeks he had produced more than two dozen portraits of startling originality and beauty, images that are among the most instantly recognizable images of Japan extant. He went on to produce about a hundred more woodblock prints. Then, ten months after he had emerged, seemingly from nowhere, he disappeared.

Who was Sharaku is probably the most intriguing mystery in the Japanese art world, or, for that matter, anywhere in the art world. Aside from possibly his real name, and that is disputed, almost nothing is known about this mysterious genius. All that is left is his work, and that speaks for itself.

The recent exhibition of Sharaku’s work at the Tokyo National Museum, ending Sunday (June 12) takes a conservative stance on the identity of the mystery artist, saying only that it accepts that there really was such an individual. (There are theories that Sharaku was not one artist, but a committee of artists.) Beyond that it declines to speculate.

The mystery of who Sharaku was is somewhat similar to that of Shakespeare, where there are still some who doubt that the plays written in his name were actually written by the real person named Shakespeare rather then somebody else. Similar theories assert that the artist named Sharaku was another famous woodblock print artist, under a different name.

The German art critic an scholar Julius Kurth, who “discovered” Sharaku in the early part of the last century and popularized his art, maintained that Sharaku was actually a Noh play actor named Jurobei Saito, but the name really tells us nothing, and his status as Noh actor only a little more.

Noh drama is a highly refined, rarified kind of religious drama. Modern Japanese have trouble understanding it. By contrast Kabuki is earthy, popular, plebian entertainment. Kabuki actors were as popular as Hollywood stars today. The prints were the pinup posters of the day.

Kabuki actors were the subject of literally thousands of prints, from pedestrian playbills to artistic masterpieces. But none of the woodblock print artists of the day bothered to depict Noh actors, not even Sharaku. It’s been more than 100 years since Kurth published his 1910 book Sharaku, but no scholar has yet been able to advance on his findings.

If Sharaku’s real identity is unknown, not so his subjects. They were the most popular actors of the day, and one of the fascinating things about the exhibition was its decision to juxtapose portraits of the same actor by Sharaku and drawings by contemporary artists such as Toyukuni and Choki.

Yet it is impossible, even for an untrained eye, not to see the differences immediately. The first two dozen portraits by Sharaku are relatively large prints, showing the actor in half profile. Each portrait has three main elements: At the top a black hairpiece (a more elaborate coiffure for those male actors portraying women).

The face is basically a blank spot with two piercing black dots for eyes under a heavy eyebrow. The rest of the facial features are barely visible, with only a hint of a nose and a thin slit for a mouth usually curved down in a frown. The final element is the richly colored and detailed costume (sometimes the hands show an expressive fourth element).

Together, this first batch of work seems to have emerged fully developed and not the work of an apprentice artist struggling to find his style while copying and improving on the style of his contemporaries. It almost seems as if the artist got things backward, a dramatic debut with a revolutionary style and then a turn to more prosaic portraits.

After producing about 28 of these large half portraits, Sharaku suddenly switched to more conventional full sized portraits in a smaller format, which, though often charming in themselves, do not seem all that different from the many portraits being churned out by other woodblock artists and publishing houses.

It is speculated that the subjects of his work were not all that pleased with how they were depicted and that his publisher prevailed on him to tone things down. It is tempting to think that he eventually decided to quit rather than see his art corrupted in this fashion, although there is no evidence to support this romantic notion.

It is a testament to the confidence of the Tokyo Museum of Art and many other museums around the world that Tokyo could even hold this exhibition. It was originally to open around April 1, about three weeks after the mammoth earthquake and numerous recurring aftershocks set people on edge.

The museum delayed the opening for a month as it sent queries to museums around the world as to whether they were comfortable lending their treasures to Tokyo. Most of them were. As a consequence, the museum was able to put together an exhibit, displaying almost every one of the 140 or so known Sharaku prints, the first such comprehensive exhibit and maybe the last.

The world of the floating world was as fleeting as the name implies. It flared up for a few brief decades with Sharaku at the pinnacle and then died. But the Kabuki theater still thrives in Japan, and men still play the women’s parts. But the young people now hang posters of rock stars and film actors.

Is the Pope Italian?

2011-05-30T21:48:00.001-07:00

Is the managing director of the International Monetary Fund French? One might just as well have asked in the not too distant past: Is the Pope Italian? Actually, the Italian lock on the Papacy ended with the elevation of the Polish cleric Pope John Paul II, but one can bet money that the next IMF managing director will be French.

A head of steam is building to choose France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to replace another Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned in the middle of his term after being arrested in New York on sex charges.

But there is more than mere sentiment behind the Lagarde push, and that is the tradition that the post must go to, if not a French citizen, then at least a European. Since the IMF was founded in 1947, the post of managing director has always been held by European in an unwritten tradition that the U.S. hold the World Bank Presidency and a European the IMF leadership.

This long-lasting “deal” between the Americans and the Europeans “is no longer tenable,” maintains Thailand Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij who argues that an Asian, coming from the world’s engine of growth, should hold post of managing director.

Asian and other emerging nations have had better luck in breaking the U.S.-European lock that third organ of global economic management, the World Trading Organization. The WTO is also currently led by the Frenchman, Pascal Lamay, but once was headed by Supachai Panitdhpakdi of Thailand.

Supachai was the first Asian, indeed the first person from any developing nation, to head the WTO, but he had to share the post with New Zealand’s former prime minister Michael Moore due to an election impasse. Nominations to succeed Strauss-Kahn close on June 10, and so far no credible alternative candidate has emerged save for Mexico’s Central Bank Governor, Agustin Carstens.

So far no Asian candidate has yet put him or herself forward for the rest of Asia to rally behind. “We’re not used to organizing as a bloc,” said Thailand’s Korn, speaking in Tokyo recently the Nikkei Forum. But, he added , it is not for any dearth of plausible Asian candidates.

Among those who could easily fill the bill include Indonesia’s former finance minister Mulyani Indrawati, who was tapped to become one of the three managing directors of the World Bank, raking immediately below the American president Robert Zoellick.

During her tenure as Indonesia’s finance minister she earne considerable international praise for her work in reforming the country’s tax system, increasing Indonesia’s foreign reserves, and, the hot topic of the moment, reducing the nation’s debt ratio. And, of course, she is a woman and a Muslim.

Another serious Asian candidate might be Singapore’s finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, although he recently took on the additional duty as the republic’s deputy minister after last month’s general election, which would indicate that he is not eager to move to Washington, headquarters of the IMF.

It is argued by some that a European at the head of the IMF is especially needed now so as to bring a necessary European perspective in helping to resolve the debt crises in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. Yet it was not considered necessary to have an Asian at the head of the IMF to bring any local perspective to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.

Japan and China do not have horses in this race, for the moment, but the two nations, Japan, in particular, will be worth courting by any candidate. Nor has Tokyo has taken sides in the contest so far, except to support a transparent and merit-based election process.

Japan has long held one of the three IMF deputy director posts (currently held by former vice finance minister Haoyuki Shinobara), and is eager to keep it. China might wish to supplant Japan at this level, but may settle for creation of a fourth deputy post for one of its citizens..

The Lagarde steam roller may have too much momentum to stop before nominations close in a week, especially has there may be strong sentiment to choose a French person to fill the unexpired term of Strauss-Kahn, but it could also develop into one of the more interesting East-West, developing-world –versus-developed-world contests.

No Confidence

2011-05-19T08:23:00.001-07:00

Politics in Japan went into the deep freeze in the immediate aftermath of the March 11 “triple disaster” of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Slowly the old political standoff that had threatened to bring the government to a halt is reasserting itself.

In a way, the disaster saved Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s bacon, at least temporarily. Before the tragedy, Kan was a dead man walking. The only question seemed to be how many more weeks could he hold on to the job before he became another short-lived Japanese premier.

It is not as if Kan’s handling of the disaster and its aftermath really boosted his flagging popularity. Support for the Kan cabinet still languishes at around 20 percent approval, not much different from before the earthquake struck. Huge pluralities, reaching 70 percent or more, say they disapprove of the government’s handling of the crisis.

Perhaps that is not surprising when one considers that more than two months after the quake struck, thousands of people in the impacted region are still camping out in high school gymnasiums and the four damaged nuclear power plants that have yet to be brought under control.

Kan has kept a relatively low profile during the ensuing weeks to the point of being virtually invisible, to quote his rival Ichiro Ozawa. The day after the quake he flew to Fukushima to gauge the nuclear threat at first hand, but all he earned for this effort was criticism for getting in the way of people struggling to contain the meltdown..

He didn’t return to the disaster area until three weeks later, and thus was criticized for neglecting the population. This seems to be a no-win situation, except that a sense of proper timing for such things is a basic attribute of a well attuned politician.

Kan’s absence from the public light means that the public face of the government during the crisis has devolved on the Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yukio Edano, who acts as the government spokesman as Japan’s premier does not have his own press secretary. He had held daily briefings, though he has changed from wearing his disaster jump suit to an ordinary coat and tie.

By most accounts the political “truce” ended on April 10, when Japanese went to the polls in local elections. Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (PJ) failed to secure any of the six prefectural governorships at stake, and their numbers in local assemblies also fell (elections were postponed in the impacted region.)

Since that election the reluctance to criticize the government that was apparent in the weeks immediately after earthquake, has receded. Sharp questioning from the main opposition the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is to be expected, but Kan has had to endure criticism from his arch rival in the DPJ, former party president Ichiro Ozawa.

Ozawa berated Kan publically for the “irresponsible way the cabinet is dealing with the crisis” and what he called his “invisible leadership.” Ozawa continues to command a strong following among the ordinary members of parliament, many of whom he personally recruited and advanced.

Ever since the earthquake there has been loose talk about forming a grand, cross-party coalition with the LDP and other parties, possibly with LDP president Sadakau Tanigaki as prime minister and Kan serving as a deputy. There is a precedent; indeed, Kan served in such a “grand coalition” in 1990s as health minister.

Shortly after the earthquake, Kan himself made just such a suggestion, albeit with himself serving as prime minister and the opposition leader as deputy; Tanigaki rejected the overture, and there seems little prospect that the DPJ rank and file, with more than 100 majority in parliament, would accept such a deal.

There is some talk of the opposition tabling a vote of no confidence sometime before July. To succeed this would require a substantial number of DPJ members, to join forces with the opposition to vote against their own party.

This is not impossible – a sizeable faction of the DPJ backbenchers are dissatisfied with Kan’s leadership, or lack thereof, or are beholden to Ozawa - although it seems unlikely that they can muster enough votes to support such a motion. Ironically, Ozawa masterminded of the last successful no confidence vote in 1993.

A third possibility might be a censure motion against Kan filed in the House of Councillors, the upper house of Japan’s bicameral parliament, where the combined opposition holds a majority. Such a vote has relatively little practical clout but would embarrass the government and hamper Kan in speaking to upper house committees.

The Japanese public seems to be of two minds about the situation; they are unhappy with the government’s response to the crisis, yet equally reluctant to switch leaders at this critical time. They are also unhappy with the return of political gamesmanship at such a critical time and not eager for holding a general election at this time.

For his part, Kan disavows any intention of stepping down.”It would be wrong to shirk my responsibilities,” he has said. He seems to have more personal stamina in bucking the recent trend of short-term premiers, including his own predecessor Yukio Hatoyama, who resigned last year under far less demanding circumstances.

Nevertheless, Kan may not be able to resist pressure. Even before the earthquake struck, the opposition had been threatening to use its upper house majority to deny passage of crucial money bills in hopes of forcing a general election.

Coming soon are action on several supplementary budgets and potential tax increases necessary to raise the revenue needed to begin the long and expensive recovery of the devastated northeast. Yet the parliament has not yet even got around to giving the government authority to sell the bonds that cover 40 percent of the budget, sort of equivalent to the US raising the debt ceiling.

So there remain many hurdles for Kan to overcome which may force his resignation even if it goes strongly against the grain. Waiting in the wings are several possible younger replacements such as Edano and former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, who resigned a couple weeks before the quake over a trivial political fund raising violation.

Maehara has not been heard from much since the crisis began. But he is energetic – and telegenic – and was the star of the administration in the heady days following its 2009 landslide electoral triumph. He may be the only one equipped to provide the leadership that Japan now requires.

The Legend of Kim Jong-un

2011-04-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

In North Korea it isn’t enough for the supreme ruler to enjoy the support of the communist party apparatus, the army or even to be a member of the Kim family. He must be a person of heroic stature. And if there isn’t enough his real heroism in his life story, then the Kim propaganda machine will invent some.

This was true for the current supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, whose official biography proclaims that he was born in a secret military base camp located somewhere on the slopes of Mt Paektu, the crater lake along the northern border which is sacred to Koreans even though most of it is in China. His birth 69 (or is it 70?) years ago was, everyone is taught, foretold by a swallow and heralded by a double rainbow.

This anyway is the myth pedaled to North Korea’s population. Most scholars believe that Kim Jong-il was actually born in a grubby Siberian village called Vyatkoye, near Kharbarovsk, where his father, North Korea’s founder and currently “eternal president”, commanded a mixed big battalion of Korean exiles and ethnic Chinese Koreans.

Enter now the third member of the Kim dynasty, one Kim Jong-un, the twenty-something third son of North Korea’s supreme ruler. He was publicly unveiled to the world as Kim Jong-il’s anointed successor at several public events in Pyongyang in 2010.

Many details about Kim Jong-un’s young life, including even his date of birth and place of birth are obscure. He was born in Wonson in Kangwon province or maybe in Chagang province, His birthday is said to be January 8, but the year is unclear: 1982? 1983? Or1984? He is known to have studied in Switzerland.

One undisputed fact is that his mother, Ko Young-hee, was a dancer in the Mansudae Art Troupe, with whom King Jong-il was smitten and whom he married. She died of cancer in 2004 at the relatively young age of 51. All of this is probably to the good, but there is one major blot on her and therefore on her son for North Korea’s mythmakers.

She was born in Japan.

She was ethnic Korean, of course. Her father, Ko Tae-mun had emigrated to Japan in the 1930s, when Korea was a colony of Japan. He settled in the Tsuruhashi district of Osaka, which even today holds probably the largest concentration of ethnic Koreans in Japan, some third or fourth generation. Tsuruhashi is filled with businesses and restaurants run by Koreans.

This is not a detail that the Korean mythmakers will likely dwell on. Don’t look for a Kim Jong-un’s mother-was-born-here plaque. When reporters for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper began poking around in Osaka not long after Kim junior was introduced to the world last year, they discovered that his mother’s actual birthplace was now an empty lot.

The Ko family moved to North Korea in 1961 as part of a Japanese government-sponsored program in the late 1950s and 1960s to repatriate many of the ethnic Koreans then living in Japan. Some 90,000 people, the Kos among them, are said to have relocated to the North.

Many of the returnees, some of whom never before had set foot in Korea, no doubt were disappointed that the streets of North Korean cities were not paved with gold, but not the family of Ko Tae-mun, who prospered in North Korea, eventually becoming part of the intimate inner leadership circle.

In Japan Ko Tae-mun had learned judo and, for a time he formed a touring wrestling group, although he did not prosper in his wrestling career as much as some other ethnic Koreas, and in 1961 he bundled his family aboard a ship in Niigata and sailed to Korea.

If the Japanese public had not fully appreciated Ko’s wrestling skills, the supreme leader, Kim Il-sung, did know of them and recruited him to come and help establish a national judo and wrestling group which he did with considerably more success than he had had in Japan, becoming known as the “father of Korean Judo.”

But Ko Tae-mun had another attribute that may be even more useful for the mythmakers. He was born on the island of Jeju, just off the southern coast of South Korea. For most Americans and other foreigners Korean history begins in 1950 with the invasion from the North. Little is known of the bloody insurrection on Jeju that began in April, 1948, and known to South Koreans from the date as the “4.3 Incident.”

In that year many of Jeju’s 300,000 people rebelled against local authorities. The rebellion was reportedly led by the [communist] Worker’s Party of South Korea (since outlawed) and was suppressed by troops from the mainland. Estimates of deaths range from 14,000 to 60,000. Many people on the island fled to, where else, Tsuruhashi in Osaka.

The whole of the southern Korean coastline was then a hotbed of intrigue and insurrection in the years immediately before the Korean War. Former president and Nobel laureate Kim Dae-jung was a newspaper editor in the southern town of Mokpo then, which may be why conservatives never fully trusted him.

Ko Tae-mun emigrated to Japan well before the Jeju “Peoples’ Uprising” (North Korea’s term) and was not a part of the insurrection. No matter. That inconvenient fact should provide few difficulties for the mythmakers. They can elide or obscure the details to turn Kim’s grandfather into a revolutionary hero in much the same way that his other grandfather, Kim Il-sung, is deified as the liberator of North Korea. It won’t be necessary to dwell on where his mother was born.

Time to Play Ball

2011-04-17T15:52:00.001-07:00

The opening game of the 2011 base ball season in Japan pitted the Rakuten Golden Eagles against the Chiba Lotte Marines in the Marines’ home park near Tokyo. All the familiar opening day rituals were on display, cheerleaders in pink satin dresses and hawkers selling hotdogs on a stick and soba noodles.

Still, there were a few discordant notes because of the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The national flag was flying at half mast, honoring the tens of thousands killed or missing in the earthquake/tsunami. Play was also halted for a short while during the fourth inning because one of the frequent aftershocks.

Although the earthquake in northeastern Japan left most of Tokyo mostly undamaged, it did cause considerable structural damage to this suburban city of Urayasu because much of it is built on reclaimed land subject to “liquefaction” during a severe quake.

The parking lot was closed because the concrete buckled in many places. The same problem kept the nearby Tokyo Disneyland closed for a month, costing its owner about $250 million in lost revenue. It only recently reopened, but other theme parks along this stretch of Tokyo Bay remain closed.

Back to baseball. The opening game was supposed to have been played two weeks earlier on the Eagle’s home field. But the team’s stadium near the city of Sendai was damaged during the quake and is not expected to be fully repaired for patrons until the end of April at the earliest. So the game was moved to Chiba.

The Eagles are the Tohoku team, using the common Japanese term for the northern part of Honchu island centered on Sendai (Japanese baseball teams are usually named after their corporate sponsors, not home cities – Rakuten is Japan’s largest Internet retailer.) As such, they are the sentimental favorite during this coming season.

In the same way, the Orix Blue Wave (with Ichiro still playing for them), based in Kobe was the sentimental favorite following the 1995 quake that destroyed much of that city. Indeed, the Blue Wave went on to win the league title, although it lost the Japanese Series (local equivalent of the World Series).

The Eagles got off to a good start this season, winning their first game against the Marines on a three- run homer by Motohiro Shima. The team was, as of this writing, in first place in the Pacific League with a 3-1 record, although, of course, the season is still only about a week old.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9-point quake and tsunami which devastated the northeast and precipitated multiple feared meltdowns at four nuclear power stations, it was uncertain whether there would even be a baseball season this year. The quake struck only two weeks before the season was officially expected to get underway.

Questions were raised to whether it was proper to hold such games when so many fellow Japanese are suffering, stranded in earthquake shelters or fleeing from radiation leaking from the Fukushima power plants. Indeed, some questioned whether Japanese should enjoy themselves at all during this crisis.

It may be that the high schoolers decided the issue for them. Spring is also the time for another time-honored rite of passage in Japan. It is the time when the best high school baseball teams meet in their traditional venue, the Koshien Stadium near Osaka for national championships.

High school baseball is to Japan what high school football is to Texas, a national obsession. The games have been played every year since 1924, except for a couple years during World War II, and were not to be canceled this year because of a mere earthquake. If the high schoolers could play, then how could the professionals not play also?

The decision was made to simply delay the season opening two weeks from March 25 to April 15. The time was needed to rearrange schedules and the logistics of moving teams around Japan and accommodating them. After all, travel to the impacted region is still problematic, and much of Tokyo is suffering from electric power shortages.

Most night games are out in order to save on electricity. The Yomiuri Giants will use open stadiums for the time being, instead of the enclosed Tokyo Dome, which is their usual venue. Baseball unions are being asked to bend on their normal opposition to double-headers (two games played by the same teams on the same day) to help complete a 144-game season.

The Eagles are still hoping to play their first home games in the 22,000-seat Kleenex Miyagi Stadium during the Golden Week national holiday, which begins in early May. By that time transportation links and accommodations for the out-of-town teams may have been worked out. .

Meanwhile, there was some debate about whether it was proper to observe another tradition-bound spring rite of passage, the annual cherry blossom viewing parties, which is a time when friends gather together to sit on plastic sheets in city parks to look at the cherry blossoms, eat barbecues and drink sake, Japanese rice wine.

That supreme kill-joy, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, 78, had urged Tokyo folks to forego the traditional hanami festival this year out of solidarity with fellow Japanese struggling in the northeast.”Just because the cherry trees are blooming doesn’t mean we should be drinking and chatting,” The governor said.

But the Tohoku sake brewers complained that self-restraint could go too far, and they urged everyone in Japan to eat, drink, be merry – and buy more sake. The Tohoku region happens to be a major center for brewing Japanese sake, and many of the brewers were hurt by both the tsunami and the falloff in sales of any products coming from the impacted prefectures.

In the end Japanese in the capital flocked to the parks. The weather suddenly turned mild and spring-like, perfect for viewing cherry blossoms and baseball games. The warming weather had the added advantage of lessening the demand for electricity, which allowed the local utility to suspend rolling blackouts. And that was really something to celebrate.

Relevant Again

2011-04-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

There was a time when it was easy to discount Japan’s importance to the world economy. The economy was supposedly mired in two-decades of economic stagnation, it had surrendered its second-place as a global economic power to China where all of the action seemed to be taking place. Japan was sliding into irrelevance.

No longer. The impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake last month and the on-going crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant complex has, if nothing else, exposed the important position that Japan still holds in the world economy, especially in making of key components for cars, telephones and electronic products of all kinds.

“Japan is more global than we thought,” remarked Eisuke Sakakibara, a former vice minister for international affairs at the Finance Ministry and a well-known commentator on finances, which earned him the nickname “Mr. Yen.”

Most people in the U.S., for example, have probably learned that foreign-owned and domestic automakers have had to curtail production until the supply chain of critical parts could resume normal operations. But there are many crucial industries in which Japan has monopolies or near monopolies which will disrupt global production for months. Take Xirallic.

Never heard of Xirallic? It is a paint pigment that gives automobiles, especially expensive up market brands, their shiny, metallic look. This product is made by the German chemical company Merck in one factory, which happens to be in the town of Onahama, about 40 km from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plants.

The company estimates that it will be out of commission for at least six to eight weeks, and that assumes that the government does not have to extend the radiation evacuation zone, now set at 30 km (12 miles), another 10 kilometers. Unusually high radiation levels have been observed (though later declining) in at least one other town 40 km away from the stricken plants.

Well, maybe the automobile industry can manage with cars with a duller finish, but can the high tech industries do without semiconductor-grade silicon wafers? Most are made by two Japan-based companies, the Shin-Etsu Chemical Co and Sumco Phoenix Company.

Shin-Etsu has two factories, one of which is located in Nishio village, Fukushima prefecture; the other is in Ibaraki prefecture north of Tokyo. The latter was not badly damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, but is in the Tokyo Electric Power Co. Service and thus subject to rolling power blackouts. It is uncertain when either will restart.

The Sumco company is better off as most of its plants are in the undamaged Kansai region west and south of the capital. It also has a plant in Taiwan, which after the quake issued a message saying it would make an “all out effort” to meet worldwide demand for the wafers without raising prices. Even so prices for silicon wafers were double that of 2008.

Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co. manufactures roughly half of world’s supply of hydrogen peroxide, used in making of many paper products. Its Kashima plant was knocked out by the earthquake. It has another in the Tokyo metropolitan area, but its operation is severely impacted by the blackouts.

In a way, the situation is similar last summer’s big blowup with China over the disputed Senkaku islands, when Beijing allegedly threatened to embargo rare earths. The world woke up to the fact that China controlled more than 90 percent of these minerals that most people never heard of but are crucial to making of modern electronic products and televisions.

Something similar is happening now. During Japan’s so-called stagnant years, manufacturing companies moved much of their routine assembly to Southeast Asia and the U.S., but during those years it kept an iron grip on its monopolies of dozens of critical but little-known (except to affected industries) components.

The northeast coast of Japan, known locally as the Tohoku region, is not usually considered a major manufacturing center. The quake and tsunami-impacted prefectures account for only about 6-7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

That is not the case with Tokyo, which alone has a GDP roughly equal to Canada or Italy. There was little serious damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in the capital itself, but the impact of rolling blackouts caused by dire electricity shortages is an increasing factor in a pessimism over the economic recovery.

“The planned blackout is as bad as the earthquake itself,” in its impact on the economy says Kyohei Morita, chief economist for Barclays Capital Japan Ltd. He estimated that the blackouts alone will shave as much as one percent off of Japan’s projected GDP growth.

The quake/tsunami is estimated to have cut about 12 percent of Japan’s electric power production. More importantly, it has cut nearly a quarter off the power for the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), which has a monopoly of power production and distribution in the capital and its environs, serving about 45 million people in total.

Faced with a 10 million kilowatt shortfall, Tepco announced planned rolling blackouts within days of the earthquake. The utility owns 17 nuclear reactors, including the four badly damaged Fukushima reactors with 13 out of service. That doesn’t count the several coal and gas-fired plants that were also damaged in the quake.

Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata last week announced that Tepco planned to scrap Units 1-4. No big surprise here. That has been foreordained from the first day of the. Surprisingly, he made no mention of Units 5-6. Maybe some at Tepco think they will reopen. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano flatly stated they will be closed. Tepco will be lucky to keep the four other Fukushima Daini Plants currently in cold shutdown.

Tepco’s more immediate financial situation was eased temporarily at the end of March with a 1.86 trillion yen working capital loan secured through Japan’s seven largest banks. Combined with the approximately 400 billion yen cash on hand, it will see the company through the immediate crisis. But it faces huge problems.

Even as Tepco’s workers struggle to keep stricken reactor cores cool, the company is working feverishly to get more thermal power plants in operation to meet summer air conditioning demand. Last summer was the hottest in Japan on record; officials are hoping thatr things cool down this summer, in more ways than one.

Welcome to the Third World

2011-03-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

The people of Tokyo, the world’s largest and in many ways richest city, are learning how the other half lives, that half of the developing world that is used to brownouts and blackout power shortages, a kind of Baghdad without bombs or bullets.

Unlike in the tsunami devastated northeast coast of Japan, there is no real hardship here but many little accommodations to what might be called a post-3/11 (the devastating earthquake hit on March 11) world. After all, Tokyo is like a giant, superbly calibrated machine that runs on electricity.

The glittering neon signs that lit up busy districts such as the Ginza and Shinjuku and were in a way an icon of Japan are mostly dark now. The lights have also been turned off other monuments such as the Tokyo Tower and Rainbow Bridge because of the imperative to conserve.

Tokyo and surrounding communities such as Yokohama get their electricity from the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), which is the snake-bit owner of the four stricken Fukushima nuclear power plants, not to mention six others nuclear plants nearby which are relatively safe now but shutdown for how long? Nobody knows.

Shortly after the earthquake struck – and gave Tokyo itself a pretty good rocking – Tepco announced it was forced to institute rolling power blackouts lasting four hours or so because it could not supply total electricity demand without further conservation.

In fact most of Tokyo has responded with a lot of little conservation. Building lobbies are dark and cold. Where a building might have four elevators, it has two working. For mid-rise buildings, use the fire escape. Escalators which run on electricity at railroad stations have been shut. You can use the stairs

Another Japanese icon affected are the ubiquitous vending machines, which are on virtually every corner shining like glow worms at night. There are an estimated 5 million of them in Tokyo and by some accounts soak up the electrical output of a nuclear power plant.

Whether that is true or not, they use a lot of energy. Under pressure, the vending machine companies are turning off the night lights but say their livelihood depends on serving heated drinks, so that they need some power. All of these little measures do add up, and Tepco has been able to cancel some of the power outages.

Tepco is in dire straits, its stock hammered, its ratings lowered, its sources of power damaged or destroyed. The utility owns 17 nuclear power plants, of which 13 are shutdown because of earthquakes. That doesn’t even take into account the 17 coal and gas fired power plants that were also damaged in the quake and out of operation.

Three years ago another earthquake impacted Tepco’s seven nuclear plants on the Sea of Japan taking all seven out of commission (three are still down). But then the utility could draw power by firing up more coal plants and drawing power from utilities further north. But those utilities have their own problems now.

The utility will face enormous costs for cleaning up and liability. The six reactors at Fukushima will never operate again. A government hand in Tepco’s rehabilitation will be needed. If there ever was a entity too big, or more accurately, too important to fail it is the company that supplies electricity to 45 million people in the capital and environs.

Tokyo’s train system, which moves literally millions of commuters each day, has been operating on reduced schedules to save energy. The main trunk lines into downtown are running fairly normally but service in many outlying areas have been curtailed. During the past week department stores and other establishments cut back hours to save on energy and commuting.

Shortly after the earthquake hit on a Friday afternoon the entire train system came to a halt. It forced not a few people working down town to walk in their dress shoes back home, not a few of them arriving home almost as dawn was breaking.

France – home of “vive l’nuclear” - was the first foreign embassy here to advise its nationals to leave Tokyo. It was followed by other nations such as Austrlia. Germany and a few other countries have moved their embassy operations to Osaka in the south.

The stricken reactors are 170 miles or (240 km) from Tokyo. The official evacuation zone is 20 km around the Fukushima plants and people living 30 km away are advised to stay indoors. The zones have not been expanded since they were first established more than a week ago. Most people have left the zones.

The United States has advised people living within 50 miles or 80 km of the plant to move out. But Washington also has a delicate problem. It’s one thing for other European governments to tell their citizens to leave, but the U.S. maintains three major military bases in the Tokyo area (and one north of the disaster zone).

If the U.S. were to pull its forces out now it would send a very strong message to Japan that they can’t be relied on in times of crisis, thus endangering the Japan-U.S. alliance, which had already been strained by disputes over bases on Okinawa.

The U.S, has responded for help, although the help is mostly limited to helping those victims of the quake/tsunami, not the nuclear plant. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is sailing off shore, along with other vessels, serving mainly as a refueling platform for helicopters.

In latter part of the week, concern arose over food safety as some milk at dairy farms in the prefecture surrounding the reactors were found to have trace elements of radioactive iodine and cesium. Also contaminated was some spinach from the farms to the north.

Among the expatriate community, people are asking each other: “are you a ‘runner’ or a ‘stay-putter’?” Quite a few are heeding their embassies advice and leaving Japan, or finding they always wanted to take a vacation in beautiful downtown Osaka.

The head of one English language school, which employs many expatriate instructors, said that by the end of the first week of the disaster he had lost 40 percent of his expat staff to the bug out. The Japanese employees left behind to pick up the load are not impressed, he says.

Can Nukes and Quakes Co-exist?

2011-03-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

The operators at the Fukushima Unit 1 Nuclear power plant in northern Japan must have realized that a bad day was about to turn into a very bad day when they turned on the emergency core cooling system – and it failed to start. They tried to start the second backup generator, and it failed to start too.

That set off a mad scramble to try to keep ahead of falling water levels, hydrogen explosions, radiation venting and a multitude of other obstacles in hopes of preventing a complete collapse of the reactors ‘ over heated cores, a race which, as of this writing, they are losing.

When the Great Miyagi Earthquake with an intensity of 9 on the Richter Scale hit the coast of northern Japan, Unit 1 and its two sister reactors were up and running and producing electricity. They automatically shut down, as is customary in all such cases even when there is a relatively minor tremor.

(Three other units in the complex were already down for serving and refueling and had not figured strongly in this episode. However, a fire broke out Tuesday morning in Unit-4. The core is said to be empty, but spent fuel is stored on site).

So far so good. But it is necessary to keep cooling water circulating through the core even in shut down mode; otherwise, the fuel will begin to overheat from the decay of the numerous strongly radioactive elements that are created by the nuclear chain reaction. If heating continues, the fuel might melt.

Electricity is the Achilles heel of nuclear power. It is needed to run the pumps that keep the cooling water through the core. Normally, the plant would simply take power off of the regional power grid. But because of the earthquake there was a regional blackout.

That contingency had been foreseen, which is why nuclear power stations have backup diesel generators and backups to those generators, sometimes as many as four per plant. What planners failed to account for was that the resulting tsunami would take out the generators needed to run the back up generators. Next move? Improvise.

The government has been rushing generators of all kinds to Fukushima in order to keep pumping water into the core. Some of them have proved to be too weak to be of much use. One apparently was destroyed in a hydrogen explosion at a neighboring plant. The situation complicated by the fact that airports are under water, rail lines are twisted and some roads are impassable.

Everyone understands that Japan, sitting right on the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire, is very prone to earthquakes. The country has made a huge bet that it can build nuclear reactors that are strong enough to withstand even the strongest shaking. It has 54 nuclear power plants supplying roughly 30 percent of the nation’s electrical energy.

In fairness it can hardly be argued that Japan has been cavalier about the prospects of an earthquake (some anti-nuclear groups might beg to differ). Indeed, even before last Friday’s tremor, Japan had experienced a two recent major quakes that severely impacted its nuclear program though not causing any radiation leakage.

In July 2007 a major quake struck of the coast of the Sea of Japan near where the Tokyo Electric Power Co. has seven huge reactors (largest concentration of civilian plants in the world). Although only slightly damaged, the regional authorities have been very cautious about restarting them. Three units are still out of commission, nearly four years after the quake.

Then in August 2009 another large quake struck in Suruga Bay south of Tokyo near where the Chubu Electric Power Co. has five nuclear power plants. One plant, which experienced unusually high shaking, has only recently returned to service. At one time about 12 nuclear power plants were out of service contributing to Japan’s miserable capacity factor(the percentage of time a reactor is operating).

The event on the Sea of Japan resulted in a general strengthening of seismic standards and some refitting. Chubu decided to decommission two of its older plants near Suruga Bay because they deemed it uneconomical to bring them up to current seismic standards.

But all of this attention was focused on ground movement and protecting the containment. That a tsunami might take out the entire emergency core cooling system at half a dozen plants at once apparently was not a contingency that received much attention..

Masashio Goto, a former engineer who worked on containment designs for Toshiba before he became more critical of nuclear power, says he believes it is possible to design a containment system that can withstand even the most severe earthquake. But, as everyone is now learning, an earthquake-related hugely increases the problems and ability to recover.

Consider some of the problems that the operators at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1984, the two previous most severe nuclear incidents, did not have to contend with: total electric power blackout, airports submerged, rail and highway systems severely damaged or totally destroyed, ports closed.

About 170,000 people living within 20 kilometers of the stricken reactors were advised to evacuate. As the situation worsened Tuesday the government extended the evacuation area to 30 km and advised residents to at least stay indoors and “hang up laundry inside.”

Should a meltdown at any one or all six Fukushima Daiichi plants spew out more radiation, then the imperative to move people will be greater. Already about half of the Japanese armed forces have been mobilized to help in the quake-nuclear relief. The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier has moved to the vicinity and presumably can help as the navy did during the Indonesian tsunami.

The reactors at Fukushima are very old. Unit-1 was commission exactly 40 years ago this month, and by modern standards employs horse-and-buggy technology (though, of course, upgraded). There are new reactor designs being implemented that eliminate the need for generators to keep the core cooled by using natural convection to circulate cooling water.

In theory, these advances in reactor design should make them safer and more earthquake resistant. Intellectually, it should be possible for nukes and quakes to coexist. Whether the Japanese, not to mention other people in the world, buy into this argument, however, remains to be seen.

The Rebirth of Japan Inc.

2011-02-28T15:14:00.000-08:00

Considering that last quarter’s GDP figures were a minus .3 percent, the first negative reporting in the last five quarters, there is a surprising amount or optimism about the Japanese economy these days. The stock market is rebounding, and economists are looking past the negative last quarter toward gradual but sustained growth.

This is not just wishful thinking. Japan’s corporations are regaining much of the self confidence and footing that they lost during the downturn, the result of many adjustments and strategic moves that Japanese businesses have made to expand to emerging mrkets. Japan Inc. is going global again.

One might think that Japan has always been global. Are not the skylines of cities from Beijing to Bangkok festooned with electronic advertisements for such familiar giants as Panasonic, Sony or Toyota? Is Japan not an exporting powerhouse now and always has been?

Well, yes and no.

For one thing, Japan is not the exporting powerhouse of popular imagination. About 13 percent of the country’s GDP is earned from exports, not that much higher than the 11 percent earned by the United States, which is the least export-dependent developed country. That compares with 50 percent earned by South Korea and 41 percent for Germany.

It is true, of course, that many Japanese brands are household words in every corner of the globe. But many important sectors of Japan’s industry have been content to limit themselves to the domestic market, and many of the global brands have moved so much of their production abroad that the products are Japanese in name only.

The trend was best illustrated by the recent agreement between Nippon Steel Corp. and Sumitomo Metal to enter into merger talks. Should the merger be completed, it would create the world’s second-largest steel producing conglomerate just after ArcelorMittal of Luxembourg.

Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest producer, and Sumitomo are currently rank 6th and 23rd respectively in the world steel market. The as yet unnamed Nippon-Sumitomo entity would automatically vault over such worldwide power houses as South Korea’s Posco and China’s Hebei Iron and Steel Corp.

The merger of the two steel producers is meant to give them more heft in competing for global infrastructure contracts, especially in emerging markets, and to better compete with the iron ore mining conglomerates, which have had their own mergers. Indeed, the press announcements are dotted with the words “global” and “emerging markets”.

Nippon Steel president Shoji Muneoka said that the merged company would “aim to globalize at a faster speed than either Nippon Steel or Sumitomo metal could have done on its own.” Or as Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in the context of another such alliance last year: “Once again we have to reinvent Japan Inc.”

Even though the new combination will control about 40 percent of the Japanese steel market, the merger is expected to easily get the green light from the Japan Fair Trade Commission, which polices potential monopolies. In recent years, the trade commission has been more flexible in approving such mergers, even when they appear to restrain trade locally. It is more inclined to factor global market share rather than just domestic.

Like the trade commission the government-run Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC) is going global too. Former premier Junichiro Koizumi had merged JBIC with other government financial institutions concerned with domestic projects. The new Democratic Party of Japan government wants to turn it back into an independent bank with a focus on exports.

The bank is already mulling whether to lend billions of dollars to help finance a nuclear power plant project in Texas. Two private corporations, Toshiba and the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) have also invested heavily in the plant.

Faced with declining demand for electricity in Japan, Tepco, which supplies electricity to the capital, is becoming increasingly dependent on overseas projects, Its investment in the South Texas Project was the first time that a Japanese utility, as opposed to a builder, had invested in an overseas nuclear power plant project

Tepco’s president, Masataka Shimizu, in early fall of last year outlined a corporate plan to spend as much as one trillion yen ($10 billion) over the next ten years to expand into overseas markets, including in addition to nuclear power plants, new thermal power and other “new energy” sources in developing countries.

Japan’s major nuclear power vendors, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi all have international alliances of different degrees (Toshiba owns Westinghouse, for example), but they found that not even that is enough to compete globally when South Korea shocked the industry by snatching the contract to build five large nuclear power plants in Dubai.

The reaction was to form a new entity called the Japan International Nuclear Development Corp., incorporated in October, which is made up of the three major nuclear power vendors and ten utilities in Japan to gain added clout in competing for foreign nuclear plant projects.

Recognizing that they are often competing as much with foreign governments as much as with foreign corporations, (the Russians secured two new plant projects in Vietnam by promising to supply that country with submarines) the government has been attempting to hawk its famous bullet-trains round to secure orders.

Meanwhile, strong overseas demand, especially in emerging markets such as Central and South America has boosted the bottom lines of all seven Japanese automobile makers, helping to offset shrinking domestic sales and what Toyota hopes is a temporary downturn for its cars in North America.

The higher sales have also helped the automakers ride out the effects of the strengthening yen. In the past when the yen rose above 100, the newspapers were full of pictures of grim-faced currency traders and columns filled with doom. Last August it rose to nearly 80 to the dollar, yet there were hardly any remarks, and the stock market scarcely skipped a beat.

Toyota is even hoping that North American sales will begin to pickup in the new fiscal year, now that the memory of massive recalls that began in the fall of 2009 are fading. Toyota was buoyed when on February 8 the US government declared that no evidence pointed toward engine electronics playing a part in the mysterious acceleration.

In February too, Toyota announced that it was opening a new factory in a rural part of northern Honshu. It was the first assembly plant that the company has built in Japan in 18 years. Incorporating many cost-saving managerial techniques learned over the years, it will produce 150,000cars annually. It is part of the company’s promise to keep at least 40 percent of cr production in Japan proper.

.

Shutdown!

2011-02-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

If you think that President Barack Obama has trouble with gridlock in Congress, consider the position of Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan. All the elements of gridlock are in place: a divided legislature, an opposition bent on obstruction, falling approval ratings a stagnant economy.

If Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan cannot pass the fiscal 2011 budget and related money bills by March 31, specifically if it cannot pass legislation enabling the government to issue bonds needed to finance the government, Tokyo could be looking at a $400 billion revenue shortfall. Roughly half of the budget is covered through borrowing.

One might wonder how a government with a more than 150-seat majority in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Japan’s bicameral parliament, could have trouble getting its way. If Japan were Britain with its weak upper chamber the House of Lords, this wouldn’t be the case.

Unfortunately for Kan, Japan is saddled with a constitution (written by Americans) that gives the House of Councillors, Japan’s upper house, virtually equal powers. It is true that the lower house can pass a budget by itself, but it would be an empty victory. Kan needs upper house concurrence to pass the related money bills, and it is now in opposition control.

The main opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has apparently settled on a policy of pure obstruction in the hope of forcing Kan to call a general election this spring, a couple years before the current Diet’s electoral term expires in fall of 2013.

“This year’s goal is to drive the Democratic Party of Japan into a snap lower house and to re-establish an LDP –led government,” said the party’s leader, Sadakazu Tanigaki, at a party conference. Consequently, the LDP has also spurned overtures from Kan to enter into discussions for a compromise on the budget.

The premier has spent a lot of time trying to persuade some members to vote on an issue-by-issue basis, but this kind of American-style “nonpartisanship” is basically foreign to Japan, indeed to most parliaments around the world. Parliaments act on the basis of coalitions, not on shifting nonpartisan majorities.

Almost since he took office last June, and especially since his party lost control of the upper house last July, Kan has tried to cultivate expanding the government’s coalition, which now includes only the tiny People’s New Party. There are plenty of partners to choose from. Seven parties hold at least a few seats in the lower house, but looked at more closely there are few choices.

The Buddhist-based Komeito, has rebuffed any attempts to form a coalition. The PNP is already part of the coalition. That leaves only the Communists, who never join coalitions as a matter of policy, and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). At the moment, Kan is concentrating on its former partner the SDP.

Put together the SDP’s seven members and add a couple independents, and Kan just might get the 321 votes, or a two-thirds majority, which under the constitution would allow him to override any defeat in the upper chamber.

That assumes that all 311 DPJ members of parliament vote together. This is not a foregone conclusion, as many hold their seats because of efforts of Kan’s interparty rival Ichiro Ozawa. He was recently indicted for allegedly breaking political fund raising laws, though still a Diet member. He has many supporters, some of whom might vote against the government to protest the way he has been treated.

If Kan fails to put together the votes to pass the budget and associated money bills, he will be under enormous pressure to resign, never mind his party’s huge majority and his own pledge to hang on even if his public approval rating falls to just one percent. In parliamentary democracies, governments that can’t pass their budgets usually do resign.

The main opposition has an incentive to make Kan’s life miserable. Unlike in the U.S., where the Republicans are saddled with Obama for two more years because he has a fixed four-year term, the prime minister can call an election at anytime. Whether a new election will benefit the LDP is a question. It’s true the government is unpopular, but the LDP isn’t any more popular.

Kan may be banking that the opposition’s tactic of opposing everything will cost votes, or at least make them wary of facing the voters anytime soon. Many important issues are bound up in the parliamentary deadlock. The government tax commission has recommended boosting the sales tax to sustain the pension system, cutting the corporate tax to boost the economy and raising the estate tax to raise revenue.

Beyond the immediate and pressing financial issues, the government is eager to turn attention to the country’s faltering agricultural sector in such a way as to neutralize their traditional opposition to allowing Japan joining free trade zones. Japan is falling far behind regional competitors in this arena, especially South Korea.

Virtually all top-level diplomacy has come to a halt. Kan has postponed his planned trip to Washington to meet with Obama (just as well, as he may be a lame duck in a couple months) while a projected visit by Korea’s president Lee Myung-bak keeps getting set back while Kan focuses entirely on passing the budget..

Kan’s need to get the tiny Social Democratic Party back on his side might require him to change his party’ss support for implementing the planned relocation of American bases on Okinawa, which would annoy Washington. The SDP left the governing coalition over this issue.

The next few weeks will test Kan’s skills as a politician and leader to the limit. It is not impossible that he might pull something out of the hat. Party big wig Yoshito Sengoku hinted as much recently when he told people close to him, later reported in the Japanese press, “Late February will see an electrifying development.” He did not elaborate.

A kind of grand coalition with the LDP cannot be ruled out. Kan indeed first made a name for himself as a hard-charging health minister in a previous all-party coalition under the socialist prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, 1994-96. Ironic if he would end his career in another such coalition.

Indonesia's Lessons for the Arabs

2011-02-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

A foreign dictator, leader of a large Muslim nation with radical Islamist elements, an ally and client state of the United States despite a horrible record for human rights abuses sitting astride a strategic waterway, critical to the passage of oil tankers. Egypt 2011? No, Indonesia, 1998.

Almost everything one sees unfolding in Cairo day-by-day took place thirteen years ago in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, as street protests and riots that killed more than 1,000 forced strongman Suharto (like many Indonesians he went by one name) to resign as president after 32 years in power.

Would that the events taking place in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East work out as well as they did in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto. Since 1998 Indonesia has become a working democracy, an increasingly important friend of the U.S. an ally in the war on terror and a linchpin in a developing arch of democracies to contain any ambitions of China in Asia.

Of course in 1998 there was less concern that Indonesia was going to turn into an Islamic state. Suharto’s downfall came during a kind of window of more than usual American indifference to Asia’s most populous Muslim nation. The Cold War had ended and Suharto was no longer seen as an unsavory but needed bulwark against Communism’s spread in Asia.

At the same time, it took place well before the attack on America on September, 11, 2001 which overnight propelled fear of Islamic fundamentalism into the forefront of America’s national agenda and foreign policy and military concerns.

The main catalyst for Suharto’s eventual downfall was the Asian Financial Crisis that broke out in 1997. Indonesia was particularly hard hit by the precipitous fall in its currency, resulting in painful adjustments mandated by the International Monetary Fund, rising food and gasoline prices

One of the main lessons from Indonesia’s experience that can apply elsewhere is that democratic reforms don’t always have to come immediately. It is possible to open the system in an orderly fashion. It was only in 2004, six years after Suharto was deposed, that Indonesians were able to choose their president through direct elections.

Unlike Egypt (until recently) Suharto had always filled the post of vice president, so when he did resign, there was a figure, in his veep, B.J. Habbibie, a technocrat who had served as a minister for science and development, who seemed a tolerable replacement, at least temporarily. His two immediate successors were chosen in the old-fashioned way by an electoral college.

But all during this time there was a steady procession of reforms pointing toward more open democracy. The press was freed to report on political developments, more parties were allowed to contest seats in parliament, the army, which previously had a guaranteed block of seats in parliament, was moved totally out of politics.

All of this culminated in the first direct presidential election held in 2004, when 150 million Indonesians went to the polls to elect an army general, Susilo Banbang Yudhoyono, president after defeating the incumbent, the daughter of the country’s founder Sukarno. He was easily re-elected in 2008.

Did the democratization of the world’s largest Muslim state turn Indonesia into an Islamic state or hotbed of terrorism? The country does have an Islamist terror group known as Jemmah Islamiya, often referred to as the Southeast Asia branch of al-Qaeda. There have been terror bombings, most spectacularly in Bali October, 2002.

But Jakarta has been remarkably successful in suppressing terror groups. Its special anti-terrorism group Detachment 88, partly funded by Washington, has successfully tracked down terrorists and broken up their networks. Only last week it charged the country’s most senior radical Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, with terrorism.

It is true that the fall of Suharto has been accompanied by a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. They and other conservatives were successful in enacting a very stiff anti-pornography law in 2008. However, fundamentalists have never won a majority in parliament, and in 2002 parliament rejected a proposal to declare Indonesia an Islamic state.

Meanwhile, Indonesia is once again becoming more and more important to the U.S. as a key link in a new ‘arc of democracies” stretching from India through Southeast Asia to Japan and South Korea. Among other things, it sits astride the Strait of Malacca, which is as important a waterway as the Suez Canal.

President Barack visit to Indonesia last year was more than a nostalgic return to a place where he spent part of his boyhood. It underscored how much Washington recognizes how vital this Muslim-majority nation has become to protecting and enhancing American interests in Asia, and an example that other Arab nations could follow.

China Boosts North Korean Export Zone

2011-01-26T16:56:00.001-08:00

The Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone in the extreme northeast corner of North Korea was always something of a joke. The zone was created in 1991 by the late North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung when the North was in one of its periodic flirtations with Chinese-style free markets. But nothing much came of it.

That may be changing as a Chinese state-run investment firm has signed a deal with Pyongyang to pump big money into the enclave to develop infrastructure, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other projects to help exploit the natural resources in this corner of the country.

The original zone was obviously modeled on China’s pioneering free trade zones, in which certain communist export restrictions were relaxed in a bid to attract foreign investment. The zone’s prime location, close to where the Chinese, Russian and North Korean borders come together was assumed to be a draw.

It is also about as far away from Pyongyang as one can get in North Korea, thus keeping any capitalist contamination isolated in one remote corner of the country far from the rest of the population as one can get and still be in the Stalinist country.

In the two decades of its existence, however, Rajin-Sonbong languished, neglected by the impoverished government in Pyongyang and generally ignored by potential foreign investors. Michael Rank of the British Guardian newspaper visited the site only last September and described it as being “desolate.”

“The main square turns into a sea of mud when it rains . . . there are no street lights”. The only connection with the nearest Chinese city is over a winding, mountainous gravel road, offering little incentive to turn the grubby little town (Rajin and Sonbong were merged into one city, renamed Rason) into an export entrepot.

The only real foreign investment that the zone ever attracted was a casino-hotel called the Emperor, funded by a Hong Kong gambling magnate and evidently designed to attract Chinese punters from the Northeast, who may not have the wherewithal to go to Macau.

The Emperor Hotel supposedly closed in 2005 in the aftermath of a scandal involving a senior Chinese cadre, who gambled away about 3 million yuan in public money, but the Guardian’s reporter, visiting Rason in September, saw a couple dozen Chinese punters still playing in what must be the world’s most forlorn gambling establishment.

There are multiple signs, however, that Pyongyang is getting serious about making something of Rason. One important sign of things to some was a personal visit a year ago by Kim Jong-il, the first time he had toured this remote corner of his bailiwick.

Possibly tied in to this was Kim’s several visits last year to China, including the city of Dalian, Northeast China’s main export portal. The Chinese would like to see Rason turned into a serious competitor for Chinese exports and imports because they are putting a strain on Dalian’s facilities.

Shortly after Kim’s tour, the local leadership was replaced with cadres with more experience in international trade, headed by no less than by a former minister of foreign trade, Rim Kyung-man, by far the senior most communist official to take charge of the zone and municipality.

There are reports too that work is finally getting underway to improve and pave the gravel highway that connects between Rason and the Chinese border about 50 km away. It is assumed that the Chinese are paying for this and a new customs facility on the North Korean side of the border at the Tumen River.

Of course, the most significant sign came earlier this month (January) when the Chinese state-run Shangdi Guanqun Investment Co. Ltd, signed a memorandum of understanding with Pyongyang’s Investment and Development Group to invest $2 billion in the zone to turn it into “the biggest industrial zone in Northeast Asia,” as the MOU reportedly stated.

The project calls for basic infrastructure such as roads, modern piers, coal-fired electric power plants and oil refineries, using Rason as an export base for China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The first project apparently will be the coal plant plus ancillary roads, rail and piers.

Shangdi Guanqun Investment was founded in 1995as a government-owned trading arm specializing in oil processing, and natural resources development. An official was quoted in the South Korean press as saying that the company will build a plant to refine crude imported from the Middle East and Russia to sell to China and other customers.

The revival of investment interest the free trade zone appears to be one with other Chinese moves to help develop North Korea’s abundant natural resources to feed its economy. North Korea has considerable amounts of coal, gold, iron ore, copper, zinc and other minerals which China needs to feed its economy and which it is actively helping develop.

The Rason zone is close by the huge Musan Iron ore mine, which is is said to have seven billion tons of iron ore reserves, making it potentially one of the world’s largest iron mines. It has attracted Chinese interest as well as some other foreign investment such as India’s Global Steel.

Russia reportedly has also invested some $200 million equivalent in Rason, mainly in infrastructure. It would seem, however, that Russia has less interest in the zone as it already has ice-free major ports at nearby at Nadhodka and Vladivostok.

On the other hand, the Chinese Northeast is landlocked to the east and has to send its goods by rail and truck overland to the port of Dalian. Development of the Rason free trade zone would effectively give the Chinese an outlet on the Sea of Japan that they presently lack.

It is just another sign of China’s growing economic ties with its neighbor. The two sides signed an economic cooperation treaty in Pyongyang on Nov. 23, the very day the north bombarded the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong. The value of two-way trade increased more than 30 percent in 2010.

The Chinese have long advised Pyongyang to embrace its market-oriented measures, including free trade zones, with the aim of improving North Korea economy and thus reducing the potential for instability. Until now Pyongyang’s response has been half hearted at best –witness how Rason languished for so many years. It may be that now it is taking things to heart..

Toward a Triple Alliance

2011-01-14T15:37:00.001-08:00

Is it time to junk the security architecture of Northeast Asia, which has been in place for nearly 60 years, with a new and genuinely mutual “triple alliance” between Japan, South Korea and the United States? The three nations have been making tentative but unmistakable steps in that direction.

Last month, for the first time, South Korea sent military observers to take part in joint U.S.-Japan military exercises held at several places off Japan’s coast. Earlier, members of Japan’s Self Defense Forces observed similar exercises between the South Korean and U.S. Navies held in response to the sinking of a Korean naval corvette.

Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs, has called on the two Asian nations to take things farther by hosting three-nation exercises in the future with the United States. Japan’s hawkish foreign minister Seiji Maehara has said that his nation’s military ties with South Korea will slowly increase in response to provocations from North Korea.

The first concrete steps were taken in early July when Tokyo and Seoul negotiated their first military agreement following talks between the two nation’s defense ministers. The accords covered mutual cooperation and assistance in gathering intelligence, especially on North Korea, and sharing supplies on peacekeeping missions abroad.

These steps are far, far from being a mutual defense alliance, but they show the direction things are moving and how concerned the three potential “allies” are about the provocations by North Korea last year, including November’s murderous shelling of an offshore island, not to mention North’s growing nuclear arsenal. Add to that, growing concerns about the expanding and modernizing Chinese navy.

But one might ask: are not South Korea and Japan already allies of the U.S.? The answer would be yes and no. Washington has formal security arrangements with both countries on a bilateral basis, but a closer look shows that the two arrangements are very different, reflecting the security situations as they have developed since the end of World War II.

The Treaty of Mutual Defense between South Korea and the U.S. was signed in 1953 only a few months after the end of the Korean War when the northern invasion was fresh in everybody’s minds. It is a true alliance in that both sides promise to come to the aid of the other in the event of an attack.

The U.S. still bases approximately 28,000 troops and other military assets in Korea. An American four-star general heads the Combined Forces Command and would, in an attack, assume direct command of both the American and Korean forces (this is set to change in 2012 after which a Korean general would be placed in charge.)

Since 2005 the official mission of American forces based in Korea has changed. The forces are no longer there just to serve as a “trip-wire” in the event of a North Korean invasion (in other words, ensuring American help as they would be in the thick of fighting from the beginning). Under a policy known as “strategic flexibility,” they could be deployed outside of Korea to meet other contingencies – such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The so-called alliance with Japan is not really an alliance at all; it is basically a deal: the U.S promises to defend Japan if attacked, with nuclear weapons if necessary (the so-called nuclear umbrella); in return Japan grants American forces bases on its territory to use pretty much as Washington sees fit in advancing U.S. national interests.

One could see how this works this last fall when the aircraft carrier George Washington and its escorts, based at Yokosuka near Tokyo, deployed in the Yellow Sea for joint exercises with South Korea, showing that, unlike Japan’s indigenous “Self-Defense” forces, the American forces are not deployed strictly to defend Japan.

On the other hand, Japan has no treaty obligation to help the U.S. defend itself. Thus should North Korea launch a ballistic missile over Japan toward the U.S., as it has done twice in the recent past, the Japanese would not be obliged to try to shoot it down. Indeed, it would be technically illegal under its constitution.

This scenario is not just a theory. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself has warned that North Korea could possess a ballistic missile capable of reaching Alaska in the next five years. It is not clear whether the North has the technical ability to fashion nuclear war heads on them as opposed to exploding bombs in simple underground tests.

Japan’s pacifistic constitution (written by American occupiers) has been interpreted to preclude “collective defense.” That means the document would have to be amended or reinterpreted in for Japan to enter into a full-fledged alliance with either South Korea, the U.S. or both..

Far from being integrated into a single command as in Korea (or Europe under NATO), the Americans in Japan and the Japanese armed forces might as well have inhabited different planets for most of the past 50 years. It is only recently that the two countries have gradually moved to integrate their forces and hold exercises together.

There are obvious barriers in Japan allying itself with South Korea, not the least being lingering memories Koreans have of Japan’s long occupation of the Korean peninsula. The two countries also dispute ownership of a small group of rocky islets in the Sea of Japan (East Sea to Koreans) called the Dokdo by Koreas and Takeshima by the Japanese.

The Japanese too are puzzled and vaguely threatened by South Korea’s apparent desire to build a “blue-water” navy. In 2007 South Korea commissioned its largest warship, a helicopter amphibious assault ship with the pregnant name of Dokdo. What use are these amphibious ships in defending against a northern invasion, they wonder? (The Koreans say they are useful in peace-keeping and disaster relief).

Shortly after assuming office last June Japan’s prime minister Naoto Kan, issued a formal Japanese apology on the 100th anniversary of Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, which may help ease Korean suspicions. It may be his most useful foreign policy initiative since taking office to date.

The American-backed defense and security architecture of Northeast Asia is now more than 50 years old and was conceived in a different time for different contingencies. Then the main threat, obviously, was the Soviet Union and a fear of a conventional invasion by North Korea.

The threat from Russia has receded while worries over China’s rapidly modernizing military have accelerated, especially in the past year. Meanwhile, North Korea has acquired the ability to build atomic bombs and is working on the means to deliver them.

.

The Party Means to Stay

2011-01-07T15:53:00.000-08:00

It is easy to forget that China is a communist country. The leaders wear business suits instead of Mao jackets and give speeches at Davos. The business pages of newspapers are full of admiring stories about initial public offerings of giant conglomerates. People seem to go about their business making money without interference from the state.

Of course, everyone knows that China is some kind of an authoritarian, “one-party” state, and we’re reminded from time to time of the state’s ability to repress dissident voices, such as its behavior after the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Prize for Peace last year. There is a vague notion that Deng Xiaoping with his market opening moves set the communist party on the road to history.

Every few years when the Chinese Communist Party holds its regular congress in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, it is almost a shock to see the vivid backdrop of massed red flags and a huge hammer and cycle emblem looming over the proceedings, but it is easy to dismiss it as meaningless stagecraft.

I’ve found myself falling into this trap, blithely writing about China as being “nominally” communist. I was quickly and firmly disabused of that comforting notion by reading Richard McGregor’s new book: The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers (HarperCollins, 302 pages).

McGregor, formerly the Financial Times bureau chief in Beijing, couldn’t put his basic thesis more baldly than this: “If Vladimir Lenin were reincarnated in the 21st century Beijing . . . he would instantly recognize in the ruling Chinese Communist Party a replica of a system he designed nearly a century ago.”

China’s leaders are happy enough to play this down, both to the world at large and, to a lesser degree, to its own people. The principal means of communist control fall under such shadowy groups as the Central Organization Department headquartered in anonymous building with no name over the entrance, not even a listed telephone number.

Yet it is largely through this bureau, which has its tentacles spread throughout the country down to the smallest village, that the party extends its control. This is true even in nominally capitalist enterprises, where somebody, not usually the CEO, is answerable to the party and ultimately the party headquarters. Another element of party control is through the more aptly named Propaganda Department, which issues daily directives to the country’s media on what to cover and what not to cover.

Of course, McGregor would concede the contemporary Chinese Communist Party does not function as it did in the bad old days of the cult of Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward (dark episodes that the party is happy to ignore or white wash in approved history texts). Deng’s market reforms are not a figment of imagination; the command economy has been dismantled and replaced with a kind of state-guided capitalism.

The author is also happy to concede that the party has retreated in significant ways from its almost total supervision of individual lives. As many have noted, the average Chinese has more personal freedom in his private life than ever before – so long as he keeps out of politics and doesn’t directly challenge the levers of the communist state.

The party has also found it convenient, for example, to allow relatively uninhibited reporting in certain spheres such as natural disasters or exposes into corruption (particularly of foreign-owned firms). But nothing that transpires behind the walls of the Zhongnanhai government compound in Beijing is ever reported that the party doesn’t want reported.

Many in the West have been seduced by the comforting notion that as China prospers, it will become even more liberal and eventually evolve into a democracy. There is such a thing as an Asian path to democracy which goes like this: As a country prospers, and as more people enter the middle class, they will press for greater freedom and democracy. Not gonna happen in China, says McGregor.

That seems to be the path followed in such former military dictatorships as Taiwan, South Korea, and perhaps Indonesia. Many of these elements are in place in China. The country is undeniably prospering and creating an incipient middle class, although, because of its sheer size, the average per capita income is still low.

In point of fact, this new emerging “middle class” is, for the moment, highly supportive of the communist party. After all, it created the conditions on which they built their prosperity. None of the dictatorships in South Korea Taiwan or Suharto’s Indonesia had anything like the institutional architecture, going back 60 years and farther, that China’s communist party leaders have to support their rule.

One of those instruments of power, of course, is the People’s Liberation Army, which in 1989 showed that when push comes to shove the army will defend the party. That should not be a surprise, as McGregor reminds us, China’s armed forces are an instrument of the party, not of the state, in keeping with Mao’s maxim that the party commands the gun.

In 2008, the year America was holding its presidential primaries, China held its own “presidential primary” and elevated Xi Jinping to the inner sanctum of party the Politburo Standing Committee and signaled that he is the likely successor to President Hu Jintau, though he won’t take office until Hu’s second five-year term expires in 2012.

One of Deng Xiaoping’s reform goals was to inculcate the notion of term limits for China’s leaders, so that China’s rulers did not cling to power to their death beds (like Deng). This has generally been followed for the past two decades. Assuming things run according to plan, China’s leadership is already set until 2022, or after Barack Obama leaves office in America and after his successor leaves office.

So while it is true that the Chinese Communist party has evolved in many ways since Liberation in 1949 and especially since the market opening reforms of the late 1970s, it still remains all powerful. In Marxist terms, the party is not going to wither away.

.

Asia, an Oasis of Peace?

2011-01-03T17:03:00.001-08:00

In late December Foreign Policy magazine published a slide show listing of “Next Year’s Wars” laying out the conflicts that it sees coming in 2011. The magazine listed 16 possible trouble spots, seven in Africa, five in Central and South America and four in the Middle East – none in Asia.

How is that again? Has Asia suddenly become an oasis of peace? Are there no potential conflicts in the region to worry about? Indeed, in an earlier listing published in the February issue called “Planet Wars” the magazine had a more expanded list of 33 conflicts around the globe, a half dozen or so in the region.

In some ways it is true that peace has broken out in Asia. In the past couple years the long Sri Lankan civil war came to a bloody conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless. Mediation pushed along by a tsunami helped to finally end the insurgency in Indonesia’s province of Aceh, both showing that “intractable” conflicts sometimes are tractable.

Some of the conflicts in Asia are old stories, very old stories. The communist New People’s Army has been waging an insurgency on the northern island of Luzon for more than 50 years. Of similar vintage are the various separatist movements and wars in Myanmar. India has a deadly Maoist insurgency still running.

There is no reason to believe that 2011 will alter this picture very much. It is unlikely that the Philippines or Myanmar will score any significant victories in the coming year; it is equally unlikely that any of these movements will threaten to bring down the current regimes. That may be why they are not on FP list.

But while these local conflicts mainly concern the host countries, they do have some geopolitical implications. The communist insurgency may not impact any but the Philippines, but this year Manila turned to China for the first time for military aid, which might be considered a point for China in its rivalry with the U.S. for influence in Southeast Asia.

Similarly, as separatist movements peter out in Indonesia (save for a low key insurgency in Papua), memories of the atrocities that the army committed in putting them are fading. This means that Indonesia has become a more acceptable partner for the U.S in balancing against China expansion. The fact that it is a democracy now helps too.

It is not impossible that civil war could break out in Thailand this year. Last year’s bloody crackdown on “red shirt” demonstrators in Bangkok could be a curtain riser for even bloodier confrontation this year. Elections will likely be held this year. What happens if the “red shirt” faction regains a majority in parliament? Will the “yellow shirts” gracefully accept the verdict of the voters? They haven’t in the past.

Adding to this is one eventuality that nobody wants to think about, the royal succession. King Bhumibol, now 83, is living more or less permanently in a Bangkok hospital. He could die this year, and the succession is not so clear cut as it is in other monarchies. There could be rival claimants, especially as the Crown Prince is unpopular.

For a moment after the murderous shelling of a South Korean island off the coast of North Korea in November one might have thought that the two Koreas were on the verge of Korean War II. At year’s end, however, Pyongyang had ramped down the strident rhetoric.

So was FP wise to exclude the Koreas from its list of Next Year’s Wars? Perhaps. There is always a considerable amount of bluffing on the peninsula. North Korea has been threatening to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” for so long that the words, as opposed to the reality of massed artillery across the border, no longer raise many fears.

If it is impossible to predict what might take place this year with the two Koreas, one can forecast with almost absolute certainty that there will be one or more clashes in the East and South China Seas. There are too many big power interests in this region to predict any serious warfare breaking out, but the potential for “incidents” is very high.

The East China Sea is an area where the Chinese, American and Japanese navies grind together, sometimes literally as in the case last September when a Chinese fishing boat rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel. The Chinese are reinforcing their paramilitary fishery patrol boats around disputed islands and increasing the number of military over flights along the periphery, so the potential for more such incidents is very high.

These incidents may not develop into full scale clashes much less all out war, but they do involve considerable diplomatic wear and tear. Rookie Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has never really recovered politically from the island dispute, which took place when he was fighting for his political life in a party election. It also shows that “incidents” don’t happen at convenient times.

The Year 2010 in Asia

2010-12-26T14:42:00.001-08:00

For a country seemingly on the verge of bankruptcy and starvation, North Korea certainly showed how to manipulate the world’s attention in 2010. It started in March with the sinking of the South Korean corvette Choenan, attributed to a North Korean submarine; it culminated with the murderous shelling in November of an offshore island inhabited by South Korean civilians, killing four. Amid all this sound and fury, two other events, which are notable by themselves, happened. The North showed off a surprisingly sophisticated gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant and publicly displayed twenty-something Kim Jong-un, third son of the current dictator Kim Jong- il, as his chosen successor. Other notable events in Asia in 2010:

2. East China Sea Showdown

3. Bloody Crackdown on Thai “Red Shirts”

4. Flight of the Space Craft Hayabusa

5. Labor Strikes in South China

6. Release of Aung San Suu Kyi

7. Natural Disasters

8. Chinese Dissident wins Nobel Peace Prize

9. Botched Hostage Situation in Manila

10. World’s First Mass-Produced Electric Car Unveiled

It was hard to pick the precise moment. Was it China’s declaration that the South China Sea was one of its “core interests”? Was it Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks in Hanoi that a peaceful resolution of disputes in the South China Sea was a US national interest? Or, was it the standoff between Japan and China over the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea? In either case there was a palpable shift in how the region perceived that China’s “peaceful rise” might not be so benign as they previously had thought.

Weeks of demonstrations by anti-government “red shirts” in the commercial heart of Bangkok during April and May ended when the army moved in with guns blazing. Retreating demonstrators retaliated by setting fires to shopping malls and banks. At year’s end, however, the remarkable thing was how little permanent damage had been done. Tourists returned to Thailand in large numbers, international corporations announced new projects and the economy steamed ahead as if nothing had happened. The damage to the country’s political psyche was harder to asses but may become clearer in elections scheduled for 2011.

An otherwise dreary and depressing year in Japan was relieved by the epic flight of the space vehicle Hayabusa. The space probe returned to earth in June after having travelled millions of kilometers to the asteroid Itokawa and back, the first such round trip to another planetary body since the Apollo moon flights of the 1970s. As an added bonus the probe brought back at least some tiny samples of the asteroid allowing scientists to view debris from another planetary body. Some of the gloss on Japan’s space program was worn off when at year’s end a Venus probe failed to go into orbit.

When workers at the Honda transmission plant went on strike for higher wages and more independent unions, the action rippled through southern China’s manufacturing heartland. Almost as remarkable was the central government’s relaxed attitude toward the strikes. It seems to signal a shift in thinking that such labor disputes were just that and not counter revolutionary acts to be quashed. Beijing is not unhappy seeing wages rise as it helps to narrow the widening income gap that the party sees as a possible threat. That most of the struck factories were foreign-owned didn’t hurt either.

Ecstatic crowds greeted Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi when she was released from house arrest in mid-November where she has been incarcerated for the better part of the last 21 years. Her release (technically non-renewal of a detention order) came only a week after Myanmar conducted its first general election in nearly two decades, in which the party representing the military junta won. After the joy comes what may be a major battle of wills with the generals, with nobody certain that the person everyone calls “The Lady” might not be detained once again.

It’s a rare year when Asia is spared deadly natural disasters and 2010 was no different. The worst flooding in decades hit Thailand over a period of two weeks in October, impacting a wide swath of the country and literally cutting a percentage point off projected GDP growth for the year. That same month super typhoon Megi, one of the most intense tropical cyclones ever recorded, caused havoc the northern Philippines and Taiwan. And Mt. Merapi erupted in Indonesia killing more than 300 people in central Java.

Beijing went ballistic when the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo. Not only did Beijing refuse to allow Liu or any of his family to attend the awards ceremony in Oslo, Norway, but pressured other countries with ambassadors to Norway to boycott the ceremony. About a dozen countries, including incongruously the Philippines, stayed away rather than offend China. Liu was a member of Charter 8 an organization that promoted democracy in the one-party state.

A botched hostage-taking situation in Manila in August caused diplomatic ripples that extended far beyond the Philippines and were still being felt at year’s end. A Manila policeman disgruntled over being passed over for promotion, took over a van filled with about 20 Hong Kong tourists. The long siege, played out on television, ended when police stormed the van resulting in eight dead. Hong Kong went into deep mourning and advised against traveling to the Philippines, an advisory still in effect when the year came to a close.

In late December the Nissan Motor Corp unveiled the Leaf, which it confidently expects will be the first mass-produced all-electric passenger car. A flash in the pan, or the harbinger of things to come? Its modest goal to sell 6,000 cars by March has already been matched by pre-orders. But the company has set a much more ambitious target to sell 250,000 Leafs in Japan, Britain and the USA by 2013, becoming the world’s premier electric car builder. Its main rival in Japan, Toyota, has its own all-electric model but plans to rely mainly on hybrids, of which is it the world leader.

Kan He Hold On?

2010-12-19T16:06:00.001-08:00

Just as President Barack Obama is nearing the half-way mark of his first term in office, Japan’s Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, recently passed the half-way mark of his premiership, six-months after succeeding ex-premier Yukio Hatoyama.

Okay, that was kind of snarky. Unlike Obama, Kan does not have a fixed term, save that of parliament, itself which has about three more years left to run barring a snap general election. Buts none of his four predecessors as premier lasted more than one year in office.

And it looks increasingly like the old pattern will reassert itself – namely, falling public approval reflected in the polls, intraparty unease and strife, constant newspaper speculation and finally resignation. Will Kan be another Japanese premier who leaves office before anyone outside Japan learned his name?

Kan recently told Hatoyama, that he would not quit, even if his approval rating in the public opinion polls fell to one percent. Unfortunately for him, they are moving in that direction. The public approval rating for his cabinet recently fell to 21 percent, according to an Asahi Shimbun newspaper survey.

For the first time, more respondents – 27 percent – said they would vote for the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) than the 23 percent who would vote for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) now in power, although neither figure was exactly a whole-hearted vote of confidence.

Kan got behind the power curve early on, partly through his own mistakes and partly because of circumstances. The first hurdle coming scarcely a month after taking office, was the election to the House of Councillors, the upper house of Japan’s bicameral parliament,

His party was not exactly crushed ala the Democrats in America, but the DPJ did lose seats when it needed to win some to maintain a majority. Now with the upper house in the hands of the opposition, Kan must deal with a divided Diet, without having the lower house votes needed to override the upper body’s decisions.

Premier Kan has tried to cultivate new coalition partners among the numerous minor parties in the Diet, but so far without much success. His remaining coalition partner, the People’s New Party, is small, and his predecessor, Hatoyama, kicked the Social Democrats (also a very small party), out of the coalition earlier this year.

The upper house election was scarcely behind him before Kan was fighting for his political life in the party presidential election against political heavy weight Ichiro Ozawa. He won handily in total party primary vote but just barely carried a majority of his parliamentary colleagues.

In the middle of this, of course, came the confrontation with China over the arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain for ramming Japanese coast guard vessels near the disputed Senkaku islands (called Daioyutai by the Chinese).

At first, the government detained the captain with the aim of bringing charges against him; then it abruptly returned him to a hero’s welcome back in China. Polls indicate by a wide margin that Japanese condemned the government’s handling in the affair. Kan emerged from both contests as damaged goods

The aftermath of the Senkaku affair lingered on into the fall when powerful Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku and transport minister Sumio Mabuchi were censured by the upper house for allowing a coast guard officer to leak videos of the confrontation to the media (even though they pretty plainly showed the Chinese fishing boat ramming the coast guard vessels.)

Meanwhile, after a surprisingly healthy third quarter, most economists are predicting a much smaller growth rate in Japan for the final quarter of the year. “Kan Can’t Seem to Catch a Break” ran the headline in the Nikkei Weekly reporting the possible downturn.

Well, in politics you play the cards you are dealt, and Kan hasn’t had many good cards during his six months in office. And truth be told, he hasn’t played the ones he did get very well either. His vague talk of raising the sales tax in the lead up to the July election, which many observers considered a pretty bizarre election ploy, probably cost him seats.

Kan has always been mainly a domestic policies man – he made his name in the 1990s as Minister of Health in the fusion government of prime minister Tomiichi Murayama exposing a bureaucratic cover up. For a while he was the most popular political figure in Japan. Alas, little of that former popularity seems to stick to him now.

So it has been his misfortune that foreign policy and security issues have dominated the public discussion for the past three months, especially following North Korea’s murderous shelling of an offshore island in November. Kan’s one solid foreign policy achievement was his government’s official apology to South Korea on the 100th anniversary of the Japanese takeover of Korea. That should stand Japan in good stead as it is drawn closer to Korean affairs.

Kan was fortunate that the issue of relocating the American Futenma Marine Corps base on Okinawa was quiescent during his first six months in office, thereby avoiding a debilitating confrontation with Washington and the people on Okinawa. But the issue will raise its head again now that the island’s gubernatorial election has been held.

As the new year approaches, the question is whether Kan can turn his winter of discontent into glorious summer. Many feel he must make some Big Move to rescue his leadership. One idea might be to grab onto some major policy issue, such as joining the Trans Pacific Trade Community, and use it like former premier Junichiro Koizumi used postal privatization to win a popular election.

Or, he might initiate some major political shake up, such as a “grand coalition” with the LDP (once considered from his side during the Fukuda administration) or possibly by calling for a snap general election sometime next year, although it is hard to see how that benefits him, considering the DPJ would probably lose seats.

He has one major source of strength in his party’s huge majority in the House of Representatives gained in last year’s historic general election. There is no possibility of the DPJ losing its majority through a vote of no confidence. Kan’s main problem as he approaches the “second half” of his term is losing the confidence of his own party and the Japanese people.

Why Manila Snubbed Liu Xiaobo

2010-12-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

Among the dozen or so nations that heeded Beijing’s call to boycott the ceremony in Oslo, Norway awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo last week was the Philippines.

The Philippines?

Is this not the home of the famous “people power” revolution in 1986 which overthew the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in 1986. Is the current president, Benigno Aquino III, not the grandson of the martyred democracy icon Benigno Aquino?

What is the Philippines doing in the company of such exemplars of democracy as Cuba, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? Why is it the only Asian country besides Vietnam and Sri Lanka to snub the awards ceremony for China’s most famous advocate of multi-party democracy and human rights?

The Philippine Foreign Ministry maintained that the country’s ambassador to Norway, Elizabeth Buescuceso, was out of the country attending to “counselor business” and that her absence from the ceremony did not constitute a deliberate boycott. That answer wasn’t very persuasive, especially to human rights organizations, which heaped criticism on the government..

One person close to the presidential palace said that “We did not want to further annoy China.” What would he mean by that? True, Manila is in the doghouse with the Chinese world because of the fallout of a botched hostage taking incident in Manila last August that left eight visitors dead.

A dismissed police officer took over a tour bus filled with more than 20 Hong Kong tourists, holding the tourists hostage for hours demanding to be reinstated. When the police finally attempted to storm the minibus, the hostage taker let loose, killing eight of the Hong Kong passengers.

Hong Kong went into a frenzy of mourning – flags were lowered to half staff, black borders were placed around newspaper headlines, people protested outside of the Philippine consulate-general, some of the thousands of Filipina maids working in the territory were ostracized. The Hong Kong government temporarily banned further visits and ordered those already in the Philippines to return home.

Beijing, being Hong Kong’s protector in matters relating to foreign affairs, felt compelled to enter the fray too. Its foreign minister loudly denounced the Philippines and demanded an investigation. President Aquino ordered the investigation and promised to share the results.

The Chinese were further irritated when at the hostage taker, Ronaldo Mendoza’s funeral, his coffin was draped with the Philippine national flag, as if he were some kind of hero.

However, the hostage incident probably was not the main reason for Manila’s avoiding the Nobel Prize Ceremony. It so happened that Gen. Ricardo David, chief of staff of the Philippine Armed Forces, was in Beijing at this time negotiating a major arms deal, the first such deal between the Philippines and China.

The exact type of weapons and the total value of the sale, assuming there was a price tag, were not immediately known, but it was said to be “very substantial.” The Philippine military chief was thus holding talks with his Chinese counterpart at roughly the same time America’s Admiral Mike Mullen was speaking with his South Korean counterpart.

The Philippine armed forces are poorly equipped and overextended fighting both a longtime communist insurgency on Luzon island and a Muslim separatist insurgency on the big southern island of Mindanao. The country is a formal ally of the United States, but military aid had been skimpy, especially since the Americans withdrew from the Subic Bay Naval Station and Clark air base.

“This will start an influx of logistics coming to us from mainland China,” said a Philippine army spokesman. “The Philippine Armed Forces really lack funds and equipment, and it ready and willing to accept equipment and much needed resources from any donor country. This includes China.”

The irony of the arms sales were not lost on many in the country since the weapons and logistic supplies provided by Communist China will be used partly to fight the Communist New People’s Army. But then China today is into making money not making revolution.

It was, of course just one more example of the quiet struggle between the US and China over influence in Southeast Asia, and shows that even countries like the Philippines, with its close historic ties and formal treaty, are not immune to Beijing’s “soft power” blandishments.

Nuke for Nuke

2010-11-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

Just before he was forced to resign over the recent North Korean shelling, South Korea’s defense minister, Kim Tea-young, made an intriguing statement when, in answer to a question in parliament he implied that it might be a good idea for Seoul to invite the Americans to reintroduce tactical nuclear weapons into his country.

The minister quickly backtracked, and his deputy was dispatched to say that he didn’t really mean it. Any introduction of nuclear weapons would “cross the line of the denuclearization policy on the Korean peninsula,” he said. That is, of course, as if North Korea hasn’t been crossing numerous lines in its quest for nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War the United States deployed tactical nuclear weapons at American air bases in South Korea such as Osan and Kunsan. My own air force unit, the 347th Tactical Fighter Wing based in Japan, rotated one of its three squadrons of Phantom jets to Korea to stand round –the-clock nuclear alert at Osan AFB.

Soon after the Berlin Wall fell in 1991, President George H.W. Bush ordered their removal from Korean bases and also from aircraft carriers and other U.S. Navy ships that ply the waters off East Asia. So for two and a half decades, East Asia (minus China) was, until the North’s first nuclear test, a nuclear-free zone. Looked at from the point of view of the U.S. and South Korea, it still is.

The former defense minister’s remarks came before the recent North Korean shelling of an offshore South Korean islands that cost him his job, but, more to the point, and far more ominous, after an American was given a personal tour of North Korea’s surprisingly sophisticated gas-centrifuge uranium enrichment plant at Yongbyon, the North’s nuclear complex.

The plant is designed, the visitor was told, to enrichment uranium to the minimum needed – about 4-5 percent U-235 – to fuel what it termed an “experimental” light water reactor at the same site. Just what was experimental about it was not revealed except that it must be some kind of an advance on the primitive, 1950s technology on which the North has previously based its weapons program.

The show and tell in Yongbyon and perhaps the more recent off shore shelling may be Pyongyang’s way to getting attention and possibly restarting the six-party talks, which have been suspended for two years. But if that is the case, the U.S. and its allies and friend might think hard about what they want to talk about should the meeting, resume.

For the past fifteen years the negotiations either through six-party format (the parties are North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States) or bilaterally between the U.S. and North Korea have been predicated on the idea that Pyongyang views its nuclear weapons program as a chip to be bargained away in return for aid, normal relations, lifting of sanctions, and other Inducements.

By now it should have become clear that Pyongyang is indifferent to inducements, unappreciative of aid and impervious (with help from China) to sanctions. It is increasingly clear that the country does not see its nuclear program as a bargaining chip and has no intention of giving it away just for an embassy in Washington.

The North wants its nuclear weapons for what they are, a deterrent from invasion and a sign that they are a power to be reckoned with. They see the program as their crown jewel, something that they can point to with pride when there isn’t much else to be proud about. The fact that they are making a quantitative advance in their technology only enhances this.

So if the talks reconvene, what is there to talk about? Will the U.S. and its allies go down the same fruitless path? What inducements can we offer that they haven’t tried before? The North is hurting economically, but it has been hurting for a long time and won’t be allowed to fully collapse by the Chinese.

The U.S. side needs some new bargaining chips, and they could be provided by reintroducing some tactical nuclear weapons into South Korea from their storage vaults in Europe. Such a move could be a game changer, turning the six-party talks into what are in effect nuclear disarmament negotiations. It may even play to the Dear Leader’s ego – Kim Jong-il as Gorbachev and Barack Obama as Reagan.

It is said that North Korea possesses enough separated plutonium to make about 8-12 atomic bombs. So the U.S. should insert perhaps a dozen tactical nukes into the South. Then for every bomb the North turns over we remove (maybe even destroy) one of ours. It doesn’t cost us anything – the weapons are not there now.

It could be fairly argued that there is sufficient power to deter a North Korean invasion represented by ballistic missile submarines. They provide the protection of the “nuclear umbrella” for South Korea as well as Japan. But for most of Korean and Japanese the nuclear umbrella is an abstraction.

Presumably, an American ballistic missile submarine is prowling somewhere submerged in the north Pacific with a full complement of Trident missiles. But it is literally out of sight and thus out of mind for most of the region. Moreover it is beside the point of tactical redeployment. Deterrent power isn’t the aim; bargaining power is.

Such a proposal obviously would go against the grain of many, not the least the Obama administration, which wants to see as one of its legacies a reduction of nuclear weapons, not an expansion. But it may be the only way to persuade the North Koreans to really disarm.

From the Ashes

2010-11-16T18:02:00.001-08:00

Only six months ago images of red-shirted protestors battling with green-clad soldiers and burning shopping malls in the commercial heart of Bangkok dominated the news coming out of Thailand. Many foreign countries, including the U.S., advised citizens to stay away. One would have thought that the deadly disturbances would set the country back years.

The amazing thing is that what amounted to an attempted revolution in tense months of April and May this year caused so little lasting damage, to the economy at least. “Thailand is very resilient,” said Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, speaking in Tokyo last week.

One could say that again. The Thai economy expects to record 8-9 percent growth in gross domestic product when the third quarter is tabulated. The fourth quarter may be down slightly but only because of the damage caused by the worst flooding throughout the country in decades. These figures put Thailand in the growth league of China.

Looking back it appears that the disturbances, the bloodiest in Thailand since 1991, had virtually no impact on the manufacturing economy, the supply chain or even tourism. Thailand is on track to attract 15 million tourists this year equal to the highest number from previous years.

Other economic indicators are looking impressive. Unemployment, never more than 4 percent even as the global financial crisis washed over the country two years ago is now at an astonishing 1 percent. In many parts of the economy there are labor shortages. The baht, the Thai currency, has been appreciating.

Like other countries in Asia, Thailand suffered from the onset of the global financial crisis, which many were afraid would plunge the country into a deep recession similar to the one in 1997-98. It met the challenge through a major stimulus program, with income support for elderly and rural sectors. It still raised the total debt to GDP ratio by less than a percentage point.

The Abhisit government is contemplating a second major stimulus aimed this time mainly at improving the country’s infrastructure, transportation and education sectors. Meanwhile, Toyota Motor Co. has expressed confidence in the country by announcing plans to build a new Prius hybrid automobile factory in Thailand.

The government has lifted the state-of-emergency it imposed during the spring riots in 21 provinces, although it is still in effect in Bangkok and three surrounding provinces. Abhisit said this was necessary for certain incidents such as a spate of mysterious postal bombings that have unnerved the capital but not caused casualties. He said he uses the special power sparingly to avoid unneeded detentions.

This is a sensitive time in Thailand as the six-month anniversaries of key events in the struggle last spring approach. Despite the state of emergency, Red shirted demonstrators paid tribute on Nov. 13 to one of their heroes, Khattoya Sawasdopol better known as She Doeng, a ex-general and red shirt leader killed by sniper on that date.

There was some concern whether the demonstrators would to move to Ratchaprasong Intersection Nov 19 for the anniversary of the bloody military crackdown. But it says something about security situation that the prime minister felt confident enough to travel to Japan for the annual APEC meeting.

Meanwhile, the government’s nemesis, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, chimed in from exile, twitting the government for still holding what he termed “political prisoners” in contrast to the generals in Myanmar who released Aug San Suu Kyi from house arrest after 15 years detention.

Abhisit said that he had a “target” of holding a general election early next year. His party is doing well in the public opinion polls, he maintained, but added he wasn’t timing his call to take advantage of the polling data. “I’d rather have a peaceful election and lose than a violent one that I win,” he said..

One would think that the positive news on the economic front, allied with initiatives to help alleviate some of the grievances from poorer parts of the country would bode well for his coalition. It should be remembered, however that the opposition, under various political banners, have won the previous elections, only to face massive demonstrations from the folks now in the government.

“I want to prove that the events of the last three years [from the Sept. 2007 coup d ‘etat] were an aberration,” said the prime minister..

Japan Gets No Respect

2010-11-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

The American comedian Rodney Dangerfield made a career and established a national catchword from his phrase, “I get no respect.” There are many in Japan who think Japan’s political and diplomatic leaders are turning their country into one that “gets no respect.”
“Everything is a mess,” says Takashi Kawakami, a professor of security matters at Takushoku University. “I think Japanese diplomacy may be the worst in postwar history.” Most lay the blame squarely with Prime Minister Naoto Kan and to his inexperienced party, which took office a little more than a year ago.

In recent weeks it seems like Japan has become a punching bag between its two largest near neighbors, China and Russia. The first stems, of course, from the incident surrounding the detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain last September and China’s reaction, a dispute that which still reverberates through Japan.

Japan’s decision first to detain the captain of the fishing boat that reportedly rammed coast guard vessels and then to release him to return home in the face of unprecedented pressure from China, may have been a practical move, but it was taken as a major diplomatic defeat by the most of the Japanese people. (YouTube video of the collision was leaked and has been running daily on Japanese television).

Since then Kan has been scrambling in a rather unseemly way to meet with China’s Premier Wen Jiabao to open dialogue on this and other issues. He flew to a European meeting he was planning to skip just to engage in a brief corridor meeting. His efforts to corral Wen in Hanoi made him look like a supplicant. The Chinese premier abruptly cancelled a meeting with Kan on the sidelines of the recent East Asia Summit in Hanoi, reportedly only after giving a half-hour’s notice.

Meanwhile, Russia has thrown Tokyo into turmoil because of the recent visit by President Dmitry Medvedev to Kunashiri, one of the four islands in the southern Kuril chain that were occupied by Russia after World War II but are still claimed by Japan. It was the first time a Russian leader had ever visited any of the disputed islands

The Russian president’s visit had been announced and was expected, but it still came as a shock to Tokyo that it would come so soon before Medvedev is scheduled to visit Japan to attend the mid-November APEC meeting in Yokohama.

The rainy windswept islands are known as the Southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan. The Kuril chain stretches from the tip of Hokkaido to the large island of Sakhalin. Before the war, Japan occupied all of the Kurils and half of Sakhalin.

Kan described the visit as “regrettable” in a dozen different ways and ordered Japan’s ambassador to Moscow, Masaharu Kono, to come back to Tokyo. Officials were careful to stress that Kono was not being “recalled” a serious diplomatic move, only asked to personally brief the premier and foreign minister Seiji Maehara.

Medvedev’s visit is usually attributed to domestic posturing (though some suspect some kind of hidden Chinese-Russia pincer move). That may or may not be true, but it is also the case that the Russian president didn’t seem to care how the visit it might impact Russo-Japanese relations.

As of this writing, the issue is by no means over, as Medvedev has said he wants to visit other disputed islands in the chain. A stopover at Shitokan or the Habumai islets would put a new dimension to the dispute since these are two territories that in the past Russia has expressed a willingness to return in exchange for a peace treaty.

In a larger sense, Japanese diplomacy has been unsteady ever since the Democratic Party of Japan took over the government after winning a smashing victory in 2009. The DPJ came into power focused mainly on domestic issues and a vague idea of pursuing a foreign policy more independent of that of its ally, the United States.

Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama squandered the early months of his administration in an unproductive and futile effort to reopen the question relocating the U.S. Marine Corps airfield at Futenma outside of Okinawa. The effort only served to irritate Washington, alienate Okinawa and cost Hatoyama his job.

The Okinawa matter was given a rest following Hatoyama’s announcement in May that he would honor the base realignment agreement as negotiated by the preceding government with only technical modifications. However, the issue will likely raise its head again following the Nov. 28 gubernatorial election. Both candidates oppose moving the base to another part of the island..

If nothing else, the imbroglio with China and now with Russia has sobered Tokyo and probably enhanced the value of the U.S. alliance in the government’s mind. One hears very little any more about Japan pursuing a foreign policy more independent of the U.S.

This past summer Tokyo acted quickly to fall in line with the more stringent sanctions against Iran demanded by Washington of its allies with the threat that they might be sanctioned too if they didn’t stop all business dealings with Iran. This was despite the fact that Japan maintains diplomatic relations with Tehran and tries to cultivate good will because of Iran’s importance as a current and future source of petroleum.

Meanwhile, it is fair to say that Beijing’s ambiguous threat to embargo rare earths, of which it currently enjoys a near monopoly, has severely shaken Japan’s business community and punctured the complacent idea that the large and growing economic ties between Japan and China would somehow trump diplomacy in any future crisis.

As the usually pro-China business daily the Nikkei opined: “Now is the time for Japanese business to extricate itself from excessive reliance on China in order to be protected from the ‘China risk’ of unexpected and unfathomable regulations.”

Fighting Back

2010-10-29T15:49:00.001-07:00

Every Japanese house has its genkan or entryway. There was no mistaking where one sheds his outdoor shoes and slips into something more comfortable before entering the house. For three decades Japan has had as its primary aviation genkan a less than world-class airport serving a world-class city and located way out in the countryside.

Visitors from Asia, Europe and America landing at Narita knew that after stumbling bleary-eyed off the aircraft following, say, a ten hour transPacific flight that they would have to cram their bodies back into another bucket for a two hour bus or train ride into the city center – the only real choices as a taxi ride would bankrupt an Arab prince.

While the airport authority feuded – ultimately unsuccessfully - with local landowners for permission to build even a second, parallel runway, while Tokyo’s traditional genkan, Haneda stuck stubbornly to domestic flights. Meanwhile, other, sleeker Asian portals, especially South Korea’s Incheon stole Japan’s coveted role as aviation hub for East Asia.

That is changing with this month’s opening of a fourth runway at Haneda and the inauguration of a spanking new terminal designed to serve the airport’s new crop of international flights. The airport will add 13 international flights, linking such cities as Bangkok, New York, Paris and Honolulu, to the 48 domestic flights it now serves.

The genesis of this division of labor, Narita serving international and Haneda domestic flights, can be traced back to the 1970s, when the government of Japan, anticipating that the main aviation portal, then known as Tokyo International Airport, would become saturated, proposed building a new international airport in the countryside north of Tokyo.

It proved a serious miscalculation. The government did not anticipate the tenacity with which local farmers would cling to their ancestral rice fields. Something like open warfare existed between the government and the farmers, supported by Japanese students, then more radical than their counterparts of today.

Well into the 1990s it was not unusual to see reels of barbed wire spread round the airport and riot police lolling around their buses anticipating violent demonstrations. Tokyo managed to build a second parallel runway in time to handle traffic for the 2002 World Cup, share by Japan and South Korea. And this month it was extended to make it long enough to handle wide-bodied jets, permitting more “slots” at the overworked airport. Meanwhile, work began on a fourth runway at Haneda. As it was built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, there were no farmers or any other local property owners to stand in the way.

Recently, the U.S, Transportation Department gave its approval for three U.S. carriers to fly directly to Haneda, the first American airlines to use the portal since the 1970s. Delta Air Lines will connect with Los Angeles and Detroit, American Airlines will fly between New York and Tokyo and Hawaiian Airlines will make its first schedule flights to Japan. Air Asia X, the long haul arm of Malaysia’s Air Asia, the regional’s largest budget carrier, will begin flights to Haneda in December.

Annual takeoff and landings at Haneda are expected to gradually increase to about 407,000 from roughly 303,000 at present, once the new runway opens October 31. Of these, 27,000 have been allocated to domestic flights, 30,000 for international flights and 47,000 to be allocated later. Together with new slots at Narita, the expansion projects should increase landing and takeoff opportunities more than 200,000.

Haneda will be a particular boon to business travelers as it is located near the downtown, which is only about a twenty-minute monorail ride away, compared with distant Narita Airport, which involves either a two-hour bus ride or an hour train ride. (Rather than standing pat in the face of new competition, Narita is opening another, faster rail line to downtown.)

The former Liberal Democratic Party government stubbornly clung to the outdated division of labor between domestic Haneda and international Narita, even as it okayed charter flights from Haneda to nearby markets such as Seoul or Shanghai. That changed under the new government elected last year.

The new Lands, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism Minister, Seiji Maehara, strongly supported turning Haneda-Narita into a new Asian hub. Since after his promotion to foreign minister, he was replaced as transport minister by his parliamentary deputy, it can be assumed that Tokyo will press on with this policy and with the rationalization of Japan’s airport network.

Internal competition between redundant airports has hampered Japan’s efforts to turn one of them into a real hub. A prime example is in western Japan, where the new Kansai International Airport sits cheek-by-jowl with Osaka and Kobe airports. The government would like to close one but such a move meets resistance from local authorities.

Another aviation policy driver is the Open Skies agreement with the U.S., the first negotiated by Japan. It was approved last December and went into effect this month when Haneda’s fourth runway opens. The agreement allows for new routes without having to negotiate government-to-government or strict reciprocity.

Turning the two into a single hub will not be easy, as they are far apart with limited land transportation between them. South Korea’s Incheon currently serves 140 international destinations, or more than the two Tokyo-area airports combined. There are other hurdles to cross including Japan’s exorbitant landing fees. Those at Incheon are about one-sixth those of Japan’s international airports.

Another imponderable is the fate of Japan Airlines, which has been under the supervision of the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation of Japan since its filing for creditor protection in January. In the wake of the bankruptcy filing, the ETIC dumped the old management and brought in Kazuo Inamori, formerly was innovative chairman of Kyocera Company, to run the disabled company.

The airline has announced repeated layoffs, cut back on unprofitable domestic and some international routes, sold off non-core businesses, such as hotels and sought ways to trim legacy costs associated with generous pensions and is trying to bring down its jet fuel costs by 30 percent over three years, but it is still losing a reported JPY 20 billion a month.

Maehara made it clear soon after taking office that he considered JAL too big, or more accurately, too important to fail, although he has occasionally questioned Japan’s need for two mega-carriers and hinted that it might like to combine JAL’s and All Nippon Airways’s international routes. It remains to be seen how it will divide the four ne daily slots for Japanese flights to the U.S. from Haneda. ANA is lobbying for all four, arguing that it is unfair to have to compete with an airline under state-backed rehabilitation.

Sink the Senkakus!

2010-10-08T19:04:00.001-07:00

If the leaders of Japan and China could act on their private feelings, they would probably both pool their money and buy a 20 megaton thermonuclear bomb from the Russians and use it to blow the Senkaku islands of the East China Sea to smithereens.

Since this is not going to happen, one can only surmise that this disputed territory of three rocky, uninhabited and essentially useless islands will continue to be a festering sore in relations between Japan and China, one that has the potential to drag the United States, as Japan’s ally, unwillingly into the dispute.

The Senkakus were the focus of a major diplomatic imbroglio between Japan and China that flared up a month ago and is now slowly subsiding. The Japanese, who control access to the islets and their territorial waters, detained the crew of a Chinese fishing boat which had rammed two of their coast guard cutters.

The Chinese crew was quickly released, but the Japanese kept the captain under arrest for two weeks and seemed intent on indicting him for interfering with the duties of public officials until Beijing went ballistic. It arrested four Japanese for allegedly taking photographs in a restricted military area which looked suspiciously like taking hostages in a rapidly enlarging exercise in diplomatic shock and awe.

Japan backed down and released the skipper, Zhan Qixiong, (to a hero’s welcome t home), while the Chinese released three of the four detained Japanese (it was not clear why it retained the fourth). Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who had planned to skip a meeting of Asians and Europeans, changed his mind so he could have a few words with China’s premier Wen Jiabao.

While the current crisis has cooled considerably, “it has the potential to cause more trouble,” says Phil Deans, professor of political science at Temple University. That has more to do with emotion than any coldly calculated interest in the supposed wealth of oil and gas under the nearby seabed. In Deans’ opinion they don’t amount to much.

Rather, the issue is extremely vulnerable to exploitation by what Deans calls rogue elements on both sides. He is referring to nationalists from either Japan or China who sneak past the Japanese coast guard patrols and plant themselves on the islands defying any attempts to evict them and rapidly turning their mere presence on the islands into a major crisis.

I remember a similar expedition to the Senkakus (or Daioyu as the Chinese call them) from Hong Kong in the months just before 1997 handover of sovereignty to China. One local politician named David Chan became an instant martyr/hero when he drowned after jumping into the waters off of the islands.

When two other demonstrators managed to land on the island and raise the banners of China and Taiwan side-by-side, the picture took up the whole front page of the (English language) South China Morning Post under the headline MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

A leading local Chinese-language paper Ming Pao rhapsodized: “The imperishable noble spirit of the Chinese remain on the Daioyu forever.” One would think that it was the greatest landing since the invasion of Normandy. And this was in supposedly nonpolitical Hong Kong!

Deng Xiaoping, architect of modern China, who had cautioned against letting things “left over from history” interfere with China’s economic development and modernization, was still alive then. But he has been dead now for 13 years, and Chinese leaders are increasingly less patient about leaving alone things “left over from history” than they used to be.

Any new confrontation, whether by Chinese or even Japanese sneaking onto the island and raising flags, would likely mobilize China’s armies of ultra-nationalist Internet warriors and bloggers accusing their government of selling out to the Japanese if it didn’t take strong measures. Beijing takes these messages seriously.

China’s rulers are undoubtedly aware of another lesson left over from history. The May 4 Movement of 1919 began as a student movement denouncing Beijing’s supine acceptance of the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, which awarded former German concessions in China to the Japanese. It helped to bring down the empire.

The potential for various “incidents” to escalate into major confrontations over these islands is mind-boggling. On any given day there are literally hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels working the waters near the Senkaku. What if all of them suddenly converged into the territorial waters at once, overwhelming the two or three Japanese coast guard cutters usually on patrol?

Reaction in Japan to the decision to release Zhan was muted. Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s approval ratings fell, and a couple thousand nationalists demonstrated against the step down. But underneath an attitude of smoldering resentment against China is spreading. Wrote Yoichi Funabashi, editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper: “Japan and China now stand on ground zero, and the landscape is a bleak, vast nothingness.”

Could the U.S, be drawn into a confrontation, or worse, war, with China over this parochial dispute? The new foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, fresh from a trip to New York where he conferred with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claimed she assured him that the Senkakus fall under the security treaty which obliges the US to defend Japan if attacked.

The American view, however, is more ambiguous than Maehara might like to portray. Article 5 of the security treaty does oblige the US to defend “territories under the administration of Japan.” However, whether Washington officially views the uninhabited and disputed island as being “under Japanese administration” is an open question.

Generally, Washington has tried to maintain a strict neutrality in these maritime disputes in East Asia between friends and allies or even between allies, as is the case of the Dokto, another bleak group of islands in the Sea of Japan claimed by Japan and the Koreas. It is a neutrality that may be sorely tested in the future.

Islands of the Sun

2010-09-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

The USS Hawaii, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, arrived earlier this month at Yokosuka near here, home port of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, one more asset in America’s naval buildup in Northeast Asia, which can be viewed as a direct result of Chinese assertions of hegemony over the East China and South China Seas.

In July three Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines surfaced more or less simultaneously at Pusan, South Korea, Subic Bay in the Philippines and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The three are converted Trident missile submarines, having been stripped of their intercontinental ballistic missiles and stuffed with Tomahawk cruise missiles - 140 per sub – armed with conventional warheads.

The Hawaii is part of new class of attack submarines that are configured to operate in shallow, near-shore waters. As the submarine’s captain was happy to tell the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper on arrival, the sub has the ability to maintain a “persistent presence off shallow waters.”

Why would it be important to operate in shallow, near-shore waters? Take out an atlas and trace the string of islands that stretch for more than a thousand kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu through Okinawa nearly as far as Taiwan. All are Japanese, although the southern-most is disputed by China.

There is a gap in this island chain between Okinawa and the Japanese island of Miyako known as the Miyako Channel. It is wide enough to provide an avenue of international waters through the island chain and, is the principal gateway through which the Chinese navy can pass through on its way to open sea.

The Miyako Channel is becoming one of the most sensitive maritime flashpoints in the world, along with the Malacca Strait, the Strait of Hormuz or the Taiwan Strait. It may be even more sensitive than the Taiwan Strait, as the U.S. and other navies avoid passing through it unless they are trying to be deliberately provocative.

On the other hand, the Miyako Strait is where the U.S., Chinese and Japanese navies grind together. Last April, a Chinese navy flotilla passed through the channel on the way to open sea. It was shadowed by Japanese destroyers, which in turn, were buzzed by Chinese helicopters, prompting Tokyo to make a formal protest about the harassment of its ships.

Japan is awakening to the fact that their extreme southern flank is basically undefended and open to invasion. For years most of Japan’s ground forces were deployed in the northern island of Hokkaido to guard against a Russian invasion. Gradually, Tokyo has been redeploying its troops to the west and south.

This may accelerate as Beijing is becoming more aggressive in asserting its hegemony over nearby waters, not just traditionally recognized territorial waters but the entire South China, East China and Yellow Seas. The Chinese strongly objected to the presence of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea in joint U.S. and South Korean naval exercises.

Washington and Seoul moved the maneuvers to the Sea of Japan opposite the east coast of South Korea in deference to Beijing, but the ship may enter the Yellow Sea soon for another series of exercises with the South Korean navy.

Currently, China and Japan are embroiled in a growing diplomatic dispute over the southern-most of these islands, which are called the Senkaku by the Japanese and Diaoyu by the Chinese. The two countries dispute ownership. The islands are uninhabited but controlled by the Japanese, whose Coast Guard vessels regularly shoo away intruders.

In a recent incident, The Coast Guard boarded and arrested the crew of one Chinese fishing ship, which it claimed had deliberately rammed their vessels. Tokyo released the crew but still detains the captain. Beijing has protested loudly, postponed meetings aimed at sharing natural gas resources in the East China Sea and cancelled planned diplomatic meetings.

The dispute caught Tokyo at an awkward time as Japan was in the middle of an internal party election to confirm Prime Minister Naoto Kan in office. It will fall into the lap of newly named foreign minister Seiji Maehara, who replaced Katsuya Okada after he was elevated to be the Secretary General of the Democratic Party.

Japan recently extended its ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone), where by aircraft entering must identify themselves, further south almost to Taiwan. The government is considering stationing token forces on Miyako and possibly other islands. “Defending strong points in the Sakishima chain (southern-most islands) is very important,” said Defense Minister Toshima Kitazawa.

In December the Japanese self defense forces will hold their first ever maneuvers simulating recapture remote islands from an occupier. The Japanese navy, in turn, is already well-equipped with amphibious assault ships to bring troops to the battlefield if necessary.

There has even been some discussion of creating a Japanese “Marine Corps”, although not as an elite independent service as it is in the U.S. The defense ministry would designate a regiment or even a division for special training in Marine Corps-like activities, such as amphibious assaults.

These developments put the presence of the U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force on Okinawa in a new light. Who is better equipped or trained to recapture isolated islands? Former premier Yukio Hatoyama came to recognize the deterrent value of the Marines on Okinawa, although too late to save his job.

His successor as prime minister says his government will honor the agreement with Washington to close the Futenma Marine Air station and build a new air base for the Marines at another less crowded location on the island. It is still likely to continue to run into political opposition from the island.

Is the threat of China seizing any of these islands by force realistic? One could equally say how realistic was it to expect the Russians to invade Hokkaido? Militaries plan for contingencies, and who is to say that in the future some Chinese leaders decide that “historical documents” dating back to the Ming Dynasty “prove” that these islands are really Chinese territory and occupy them?

Donnybrook

2010-09-07T19:36:00.001-07:00

Almost exactly one year after the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took office following its historic blowout general election victory, Japanese, a few of them anyway, will vote on September 14 to decide who will be Japan’s next prime minister – and the future direction of the party as well.

The venue will be the election to the president of the party by DPJ members of the Diet (parliament), DPJ prefectural legislators and those of the public who are card-carrying members of the party. The person elected president automatically will assume the post of prime minister.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan won the presidency against one no-hoper last June in a special party election held in the wake of former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama’s resignation. Now he is being challenged Ichiro Ozawa, the party’s backroom powerhouse and a man who would have been prime minister save for a political funding scandal (he is still under investigation).

The country is presented with a battle of titans, perhaps the most watched and interesting intra-party election ever held in Japan. The outcome of the voting could give the dispirited government party a fresh start or possibly set in motion the party’s unraveling and another round of realignment and revolving door premiers.

Some view the race as a simple power grab by a kingmaker who may never have another chance to become king, party and public be damned. Perhaps so, but it is also true that the two contenders have pretty clearly defined opinions on the future direction of the DPJ government, whose term of office is still has three years to run.

Ozawa argues that the party went astray by abandoning or modifying most of its campaign promises, incorporated in the election manifesto (platform) of last year such as full funding of child care. That’s why it lost the election to the House of Councillors last July, he argues. He promises to put the emphasis on the manifesto’s proposals, while delaying any debate on increasing taxes to pay for them.

Kan, for his part, has made it clear that he intends to revise many of the party’s proposals involving social spending that are difficult to fulfill given the national financial realities. He wants to initiate a debate on raising the consumption (sales) tax, now set at 5 percent, to 10 percent.

Ozawa has a point. After getting off to a pretty good start, the new government soon went astray by concentrating on extraneous issues. The key issue for former premier Hatoyama was a promise, one that he failed to keep, to reopen and revise the agreement with Washington to realign American forces on Okinawa.

This was the political equivalent of an own goal. Japan and the U.S. had studied the issue for fifteen years before an agreement was reached. With good reason, Washington considered it a done deal. It was mentioned only in passing during the election. Why Hatoyama reopened this issue, raised hopes on the southern island only to have them dashed, is inexplicable.

After he resigned and turned reins of government over to Kan, the new prime minister hastily brought up the notion of raising the consumption tax from 5 to possibly 10 percent, another issue that was never debated in the 2009 election. Why anyone would propose such a thing with a national election just weeks away was almost equally unexplainable in pure political terms.

It’s not to say these are not important issues. With more than half of the national budget covered by borrowing, the issue of fiscal responsibility is pressing. For his part, Hatoyama might be praised for trying to find a better solution to the bases question to assuage Okinawan concerns. But in politics one doesn’t get many points for trying, and both issues were handled very clumsily.

If it is a mystery why Hatoyama let himself to be side tracked by the Futenma Marine air base issue, it is equally mystifying why Kan was seduced so easily by the clarion call of fiscal responsibility. After all, there is not much in this politician’s long background, starting as a social activist, that points to this new-born concern about fiscal conservatism.

It should be remembered, though, that Kan moved directly to the top job after serving as Minister of Finance, and it is probable that he came under strong influence of the finance ministry mandarins and their concerns. It was also a time when the meltdown of the Greek economy was fresh in people’s minds..

Kan came to his new role with direct and immediate experience in running an important government department. Despite his long career in politics, Ozawa actually has very little administrative experience outside of internal party administration. He hasn’t held a cabinet post for 25 years, when he was Minister of Home Affairs under Yasuhiro Nakasone. You could say Ozawa knows everything about electioneering but little about governing

Ozawa is a brilliant political technician, a maker and breaker of political parties. More than any one individual, he was responsible for the DPJ historic win, and he still commands loyalty among many of the freshmen Diet members whom he personally recruited. That’s why he and Kan are basically running neck-in-neck in the party poll, at least among Diet members.

To the public at large, however, opinion is much less closely divided. Various opinion polls suggest that 70-80 percent of the public oppose Ozawa’s challenge and his becoming the third prime minister of Japan inside one year. He is still seen mainly as a politician of the old school, a man who learned his politics at the knee of Mr. Money Politics himself, Kakuei Tanaka.

Whoever wins the election may not feel it is such a great prize. He will face serious realities: an economy that is sputtering, a currency that is climbing through the roof, a divided Diet as a result of last July’s election to the upper house of Japan’s bicameral parliament. The winner is going to need all of the healing and uniting powers he can muster.

Who's Afraid of Shariah Law?

2010-09-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

To hear some tell it, dark forces are loose in the land of the free determined to impose Islamic Shariah law on an unwilling Christian nation, complete with mandates for women to wear head scarves, stoning of adulterers and public whipping for those who drink alcohol.

Just how this might be accomplished in the United States with a Muslim population less than 1 percent of the total is never made clear. It would be even more ridiculous if people realized how difficult it is to impose Shariah even in Muslim-majority countries especially if they are democratic.

It is worth remembering that there are more than two dozen countries in the world where a majority of the people are Muslims. Only a few of them could be described as Islamic states, defined as one that declares itself to be, such as the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” or one that enforces the strict criminal code known as hudud spelled out in the Koran.
By that definition there are probably only four Islamic states: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Sudan. Two other non-Islamic states, Nigeria and Malaysia, have enacted strict Shariah ordinances in some of their subdivisions. My expertise is in Asia not the Middle East, so I’ll discuss Indonesia and Malaysia in more detail.
Indonesia, though boasting the world’s largest Muslim population, is not an Islamic state. The guiding principle of Indonesia is pancasila which refers to belief in one supreme God, humanism, national unity, democracy and justice. As a philosophy, pancasila is really nothing more than a collection of platitudes, but it has been useful unifying creed.

When Indonesia gained independence in 1948, its founders insisted on a culturally neutral identity rather than defining Indonesia by any one religion. In this way the minority religions and their practitioners are officially on an equal plane with the Muslim majority, not second-class, barely tolerated citizens as in other Islamic states.

The central government has allowed Shariah, to be enacted and enforced in only one province, Aceh, best known to the world at large as the site of the devastating tsunami on late 2004. Aceh is noted as being exceptionally pious and for years mounted an insurgency against the central government in Jakarta. It was allowed to adopt some Shariah as part of the settlement that ended two decades of violence.

But even so, Aceh is not allowed to enforce strict hudud laws, only “traditional Acehnese Islamic practices and values,” such as wearing a headscarf, which most of the women there would probably do anyway. Jakarta keeps a strong grip on the criminal code, so it would be difficult for any subdivision to become an Islamic state unless the whole country became one.

Both Indonesia and Malaysia adopted their constitutions at Independence, which was a time when colonialism and communism were the burning issues, not Islamic fundamentalism. One wonders what kinds of pressures these countries might be under if they had to write them today.

But it is worth noting that as recently as 2002, the People’s Consultative Assembly, the body that at the time had the power to amend Indonesia’s constitution, voted down attempts to enshrine Islam in the preamble. Over the years Muslim groups have sought to establish an Islamic state but the mainstream community has always rejected it.

For the past dozen years Malaysian politics has been roiled by efforts to enact hudud laws in some of the country’s states. Malaysia is a federal union of fourteen states in peninsular Malaya and on the island of Borneo. Only about 60 percent o the population is Muslim, the rest Hindu, Christian or, in the case of Borneo, animist.

The Parti Islam SeMalaysia (better known by its initials PAS) is dedicated to creating an Islamic state in Malaysia through democratic means. PAS has never won more than a handful of seats in the federal parliament, but it controls the state of Kelantan on the east coast and for a while it governed the neighboring state of Terangganu.

In 1993 the Kelantan state assembly enacted the “State Syariah (Shariah) Criminal Bill” The pure hudud code covers such offenses as drinking alcohol, illicit intercourse, theft, blasphemy and apostasy (renouncing Islam) and applies it to all Muslims. The penalties are whipping, amputation of limbs and death (by stoning for adultery).

No one has ever been prosecuted under Kelantan’s hudud code. Malaysia’s constitution makes the criminal code is a federal matter, and the police, answerable to Kuala Lumpur, decline to enforce the code. However, as nobody is prosecuted, there have been no convictions to bring before the Supreme Court. So the issue has never been tested.

Malaysia’s constitution makes religious affairs a matter for individual states, and most have enacted laws and established religious courts to judge personal matters such as marriage and inheritance for Muslims. Some states enforce restrictions on public drinking by Malays too.

But except for Kelantan alcohol is generally available everywhere. Chinese restaurants dish out pork next to Malay restaurants observing halal. Ethnic Chinese women in miniskirts share the pavement with Malay women wearing headscarves. Women are highly emancipated and occupy important posts. Nobody would ever confuse Kuala Lumpur with Riyadh.

Japan as Number three

2010-08-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

The year was 1979, the year Sony introduced the Walkman. China established the first experimental economic zone in Shenzhen, opposite Hong Kong. And Harvard Professor Ezra Vogel published his surprise best-selling book: Japan As Number One.

It is fair to say that of the latter two events, the publishing of Japan as Number One gained considerably more attention in Japan. Everyone likes to be flattered, and no one knew at the time what would become of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s market opening initiative.

The book by an American economist, or the title of the book at least, put the final stamp of approval on Japan Inc. It seemed to validate the Japanese economic juggernaut, and underlined growing anxiety in America that the Japanese were poised to buy up the whole economy.

Fast forward to 2010 and, in retrospect, it is clear that the opening of the special economic zone in Shenzhen and more generally the landmark decision of the communist party (formally approved in December 1978) to eschew class struggle and open the economy to market forces was the truly seminal event.

That was underscored this summer when China displaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy, hurried along, no doubt, by the especially anemic .1 percent growth recorded in the second quarter. During those 30-plus years China’s Gross Domestic Product grew 100-fold to reach $1,335 trillion with Japan’s just behind it at $1,286 trillion.

The reaction in Japan has been fairly muted. “Everyone was resigned to our fate. It just came a little earlier than people expected,” says Takatoshi Ito, professor at the graduate school of economics at the University of Tokyo. “People just shrug and say, shou ga nai,” a popular Japanese phrase that means “it can’t be helped,”

Of course, the Japan of 2010 is not the same Japan that Professor Vogel wrote about. It is a country currently entering its third “lost” decade of low growth. At the moment, the Japanese economy is barely in positive growth territory with an annualized pace of .4 percent (below a modest projection of 2 percent).

Why is reaction in Japan so low-key? According to Professor Ito the Japanese have felt lost because of the endemic low growth of the past and don’t want to take risks. That observation is borne out by statistics that enumerate the career choices graduates make, the age of marriage and even curiosity about the world outside Japan.

The irony is that more and more college graduates are seeking security in life-time employment in large corporations exactly at a time when Japanese corporations are turning away from lifetime employment, have begun cutting back on hiring new recruits and have started replacing them with temporary and part-time workers.

Fewer Japanese young people seem interested in joining or starting new business ventures. The Japan Productivity Center surveyed student attitudes in 2000 and found that a healthy 31 percent would like to start up a business and become independent. A similar survey in 2009 found that this number had been halved to 14 percent.

Fewer and fewer Japanese young adults are going abroad either to study or for pleasure. Last year China sent about 100,000 students to study in the U.S., South Korea sent 70,000 and Japan only about 30,000. It prompted the Asahi newspaper to scold these seemly inward-looking students. “The World is Waiting for You”.

Some forward looking corporations in Japan are trying to buck this inward trend. Rakuten, an Internet shopping mall, recently announced that it would require all of its employees to learn to speak English by 2012. Many of its internal conferences are done using English now whether or not any foreign employees are present.

Of course, China has moved ahead of Japan in just one criterion, albeit a sexy one. This is not surprising considering China is ten times bigger than Japan in terms of population. By many other measurements, such as per capita income ($39,700 versus $3,600), China lags Japan by a wide margin. After all, any figure divided by 1.3 billion people is likely to be small.

“By most indictors, China is where Japan was about 40 years ago,” says Chi Hung Kwan, senior fellow, Nomura Institute of capital markets research. This includes such criterion as life-expectancy, electricity usage and many more, he said.

And China’s growing prosperity is hardly bad news for Japan, as it represents an increasing market for Japanese products. In many ways the two economies complement each other. Where Japan is strong; China is relatively weak and vice versus. “It’s a win-win situation,” said Kwan.

In more intangible ways China is approximately where Japan was 40 years ago. Beijing just hosted the Olympic Games, and Shanghai has a major world’s fair going this summer. Japan held a world’s fair in Osaka in 1970 and hosted the Olympics a few years before. Last year local indifference helped to scuttle the Tokyo governor’s ambition to hold the Games there once more.

In 2000 Vogel wrote a short sequel to his famous book called Is Japan Still Number One? He was still optimistic about Japan’s prospects. Among other things Vogel predicted that the “Japanese will surely structure the economy to meet global demands.” It is questionable whether he could support that view ten years on.

During prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s administration in the early part of the decade, the impulse to reform and open the Japanese economy did seem to be moving forward. But it petered out after Koizumi stepped down and was replaced by a revolving door of premiers. The election of the Democratic Party last summer did not seem to change things either.

Vogel never meant for the title of his book to be taken literally. No economy of 127 million people can overtake one with 300 million people no matter how industrious or well managed it might be. That is not the case with China however.

Estimates as to when China will supplant the United States as the world’s largest economy range from 2026 to 2039 depending on such factors as annual growth rates and how fast the currency appreciates. But it is only a matter of time.

Atomic Minefield

2010-08-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama will have to deftly navigate an atomic minefield, if he decides to visit Hiroshima, the city destroyed by the first atomic bomb sixty-five years ago on August 6, 1945, during his next visit to Japan later this year.The president is bound to step on one or two land mines whether or not he goes to Hiroshima or not. Even if he should do nothing but stand silently, letting himself be photographed looking at Atom Dome, the iconic emblem of the bombing, he might be accused of making a “silent apology”.

This month the Obama administration dispatched the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John Roos, to the annual memorial held every August 6 in Hiroshima. It was the first time that an American ambassador had attended the memorial service, a point widely noted and appreciated in Japan. Ambassador Roos’s visit was short. He placed a wreath at the Cenotaph but did not speak. He did not visit the Dome or the Hiroshima Memorial Museum, with its grim pictures of the victims of the bombing, although he visited those sites during a trip he made shortly after arriving in Tokyo.

The Roos initiative can be seen as a kind of trial balloon for a possible presidential visit in November, when Obama will be in Japan attending the annual gabfest known as APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum) which is being held in Yokohama this year. Obama has been invited – indeed almost implored – to come to Hiroshima by the Mayor of Hiroshima Tadatohi Akiba. During his last visit to Japan in January Obama replied cautiously that he “would like to visit Hiroshima,” which would seem to leave him an out if he wants one.

Nevertheless, a head of steam is building in Japan that Obama should visit the city and perhaps Nagasaki also. A decision not to go would be a major snub. Yet, Obama would open himself up to considerable criticism. It is a political trope among conservatives that he goes around apologizing to everyone. The domestic reaction to the Roos visit seems to have been fairly muted; the conservative and anti-Obama critics may have other priorities for the moment. But then Roos is merely an ambassador. They might react differently to a presidential visit.

The August 6 anniversary usually passes mostly unnoticed in the US, but it is a big deal in Japan. Not only is there a solemn ceremony in Hiroshima, but there are displays of the bombing and its effects all over the country. Newspapers play up the story with articles and interviews with the aging survivors. This year the observations seemed to be an even bigger deal, with Hiroshima residents and other committed to nuclear disarmament perhaps invigorated by the presence, not only of the US ambassador but also in another first the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.

Moreover, expectations have been raised - perhaps unrealistically high - by Obama’s own words; they see him as soul mate. His phrase calling for a “world without nuclear arms” made during a speech in Prague early in his presidency and even his winning the Nobel Prize for Peace are repeated endlessly.

The Mayor felt emboldened to direct some pointed questions at his own government this year, calling for Tokyo to renounced the “nuclear umbrella” that the U.S. provides Japan and demanding that the “Three Nos” -not to use, possess or allow into the country any nuclear weapons, be made a law not just a statement of policy. Prime Minister Naoto Kan deftly sidestepped the demands, reaffirming Tokyo’s commitment to the nuclear umbrella and to the Three Nos, but without promising to turn them into law.

The Japanese press is poised to pounce with questions along the lines of “do you agree with President Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb?” Indeed, they already have during Obama’s earlier visit to Tokyo. Such inevitable questions will tax his speech writers’ abilities to produce creative obfuscation to the limit.Yet any deviation from the accepted view in America that the twin atomic bombings were necessary to end the war and save even more lives, both of Japanese and invading GIs will bring forth a firestorm of criticism at home If he defends the decision to drop the bomb he’ll injure relations with Japan; if he doesn’t, he opens himself to criticism from the right at home.

The Japanese government has never demanded an apology for the atomic bomb attacks and is not doing so now, even though it has made several formal apologies to China and Korea about its actions during World War II. Even at this writing Kan’s cabinet is preparing an apology to South Korea to mark the 100th anniversary of Japan’s annexation of the country in 1910. Japan has never apologized for its attack on Pearl Harbor nor has a leader visited the USS Arizona memorial site. However, the Emperor Akihito has paid his nation’s respects by laying a wreath at the Punch Bowl National Cemetery in Hawaii, and his father, the wartime Emperor Hirohito, did the same at Arlington during a visit to the US in the 1970s.

Though some Japanese (even some Americans) denounce the bombings as a war crime, most Japanese are not unsympathetic to the idea that the bombings brought the war to a quick close. They just wish the Americans were more sensitive to the lives (mostly civilian) lost and didn’t constantly prattle on about the GI lives that were saved. If Obama can keep things on that level – a universal respect for the dead – then a trip to Hiroshima might be a success. But otherwise, he may have cause to wish that the APEC was holding its meeting this year in Bali.

To Boldly Go . . .

2010-08-01T15:43:00.000-07:00

The Japanese are used to having their astronauts piggy back on other nation’s missions into outer space. Several Japanese have flown on American space shuttle missions. Most recently, for example, Naoko Yamazaki flew aboard the Discovery space shuttle.

Their exploits above the Earth are usually good for a day or so of newspaper stories and perhaps a goodwill visit to some school children, but for the most part the Japanese - and the rest of the world - have paid little attention to their country’s space exploration programs or even realized that they had one.

That all came to a flaming end when the space vehicle Hayabusa streaked across the sky in Western Australia, safely jettisoning its payload for scientists to examine, after a seven-year space voyage to the asteroid Itokawa, 300 million kilometers from earth – and back.

Japanese, if not the rest of the world, suddenly woke up to the fact that their country had become just the second country in world history, and the first since the Apollo missions to the Moon in the 1970s, to send a space vehicle to another world and then return it to Earth. Japan is on the cutting edge of space exploration.

If that were not enough, only a few days earlier the Japanese space agency, known as the Japan Aeronautical Exploration Agency (JAXA), launched the Akatsuki, on a voyage to Venus, where it is expected to go into orbit around the planet and obtain information on climate patterns. It carries an array of cameras and other instruments to capture the movement of the atmosphere.

The same rocket carried aloft yet another space vehicle, the Ikaros, which is billed as the world’s first space “yacht.” By that the agency means it will deploy a “sail” made up of an extraordinarily thin polymer membrane designed to catch the solar wind and propel the probe onward.

These remarkable achievements passed almost unnoticed outside of Japan, which is both a pity and entirely predictable. The wider world has more or less settled on the theme of a Japan in decline, and stories of such successes do not fit the theme. Indeed, one reason for the persistence of the Japan-in-decline theme is an almost deliberate obtuseness over its successes.

Many of Japan’s industrial giants contributed parts to the flight. They included NEC which provided the propulsion system, Fujitsu, which provided systems for orbit control; IHI which helped design the payload capsule; Mitsubishi Electronics for the ground antennas used to control the flight, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries; the chemical engines.

These companies could hardly have asked for better advertisement for their cutting edge technologies than that they propelled the Hayabusa for seven years of space travel and brought it back to earth safely.

The asteroid Itokawa, which is only about 500 meters long and 200 wide, or about the size of Hibiya Park in downtown Tokyo, was only discovered in 1998, or about five years before the space probe was launched in May 2003. It was named, at Tokyo’s request, after Hideo Itokawa, generally considered the father of Japanese rocket development.

The mission can be considered a success in that the probe landed on Itokawa and returned to earth with its payload, but it is as yet uncertain whether the probe brought back any “asteroid rocks” to examine. The device that was to shoot metal balls into the asteroid surface to kick up debris to be collected malfunctioned.

The space agency hopes that just by settling on the surface of the planetoid may have stirred up enough collectable dust to learn something. The capsule was recovered in Australia and shipped directly to the JAXA’s laboratory in Kanagawa prefecture.

As of this writing, the technicians have not yet tried to open the capsule and examine what is inside. Preliminary X-rays of the insides were not optimistic that it had collected enough asteroid material for serious analysis, but that remains to be seen.

Scientists were hoping to learn from the dust something about the formation of the solar system estimated to be 4.6 billion years ago. Unlike other planets and the Earth, the asteroid Itokawa is believed to have been unchanged since the beginning of the solar system.

The mission has already profoundly changed the way Japanese, and the Japanese government, look at space exploration. Even Renho, the new cabinet minister charged with identifying wasteful government spending, and a bloodhound on science projects, was impressed.

“It is a feat that all Japanese should be proud of,” she said. “This is a major message to the world.” Editorials in leading Japanese newspapers piled on the praise: “We believe Hayabusa has clearly shown us what Japan can – and should - aim for,” said the Asahi Shimbun. One could speculate that the space agency budget, only about a 10th of the U.S. budget for space exploration, is pretty safe.

Among other things the Hayabusa mission demonstrated conclusively that Japan has the technology for long-distant missions (At 2,592 days it was the longest space voyage on record, eclipsing the 2,542 days of the American “Stardust” mission of 1999-2006), which collected cosmic dust but did not land on another world.

Additionally, the long voyage was accomplished, despite overcoming numerous glitches along the way, using a small-sized high performance ion engine, developed by the NEC Corp., which creates thrust by expelling xenon ions. Although the thrust is weak, the probe gradually gathers speed over time.

JAXA technicians had to overcome numerous setbacks during the seven-year voyage. Three of the four ion thrusters stopped working during the flight, a fuel leak rendered the chemical engine inoperable, two of the three attitude control antennas broke down and communication was lost for 50 days after the second landing on the minor planet.

Regime Change is Not for Amateurs

2010-07-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

Yasith Chhun seemed to have swallowed whole the early 2000s rhetoric about “regime change”. He was the leader of an outfit called the Cambodian Freedom Fighters formed for the express purpose of overthrowing the Cambodian government under Prime Minister Hun Sen.

He was the mastermind – if that is the right word – behind “Operation Volcano”. In November he and his cohorts staged a comic opera putsch in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, attacking buildings housing the Ministry of Defense, Council of Ministers and the army headquarters – comic except that eight people died in the attacks.

Last month Chhun, a naturalized American citizen, learned the hard way that regime change is not something for amateurs. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for violating the Neutrality Act, which makes it a crime to “engage in a military expedition against a nation with which the United States is at peace.”

Chhun had never tried very hard to conceal his activities. When Joshua Kurlantzick , then the foreign editor for the New Republic interviewed him at his Long Beach, California accountants office, he recounted that Chhun openly discussed future attacks on the telephone in front of him.

The amateur conspirator dabbled in Republican Party politics and was a close to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), so he must have thought that his actions were in sync with powerful interests in the U.S. government and that he had their tacit approval and support.

There was certainly some reason for him to believe so. An element in the Republican Party then harbored, and perhaps still does, a virulent animosity to Hun Sen, whom it believes is a communist dictator and participant, as a member of the Khmer Rouge, of the 1975-1979 genocide (Hun Sen formerly with the Khmer Rouge switched sides after the Vietnamese invasion in 1979.)

In the vanguard is a highly influential group called the International Republican Institute (IRI) one of several interest groups formed during the time of president Ronald Reagan and officially dedicated to “advancing democracy, freedom self-government and the rule of law worldwide.”

To hear the IRI tell it, Cambodia is a kind of second-tier member of the Axis of Evil and Hun Sen a kind of Kim Jong-il junior grade without nukes. Cambodia, it argues should be viewed in the same category as Myanmar or Zimbabwe, although these comparisons do not seem to be accepted by the rest of Asia.

This group’s animosity to Hun Sen partly dates back to 1997 when some grenades were tossed into an opposition party rally killing more than a dozen members of the Khmer National Party (now the Sam Rainsy Party). Also wounded was an American who was working for the IRI in Cambodia.

This group is well-connected to conservative think tanks and to Republican Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, who used his influence to block an U.S. participation in the International War Crimes Tribunal convened in Phnom Penh to bring the genocide perpetrators to justice on the idea that no tribunal would be trustworthy under Hun Sen..

(The tribunal was eventually organized and convened in 2009 - no thanks to the U.S.- and is expected to render its first judgment against the alleged torturer known as “Comrade Deuch” by the end of July.)

When Chhun was initially arrested in 2005, his supporters put on a brave face. “Unless these guys have been planning some kind of attacks on civilians [the prosecution] is wrong-headed,” declared Rep. Rohrabacher. But on his being sentenced to life last month, nobody came to his defense save his lawyer and, ironically, the judge.

“I don’t believe Mr. Chhun is an evil man,” said Judge Dean Pregarson, who noted he had led a “tragic” life that included seeing his father beheaded by the Khmer Rouge. But he imposed the maximum sentence saying it was a necessary deterrence to future filibustering operations.

Indeed, Chhun isn’t the only Southeast Asian émigré from the Vietnam War era to run into trouble for violating the Neutrality Act. Gen. Vang Pao, former commander of CIA-supplied Hmong fighters in Laos, was arrested in 2007 for his “Operation Tarnished Eagle” against the current Laotian regime.

Charges were dropped against Vang Pao presumably because of his advanced age, past services and prestige in the Hmong community in the US and the fact that the alleged conspirators didn’t go beyond trying to acquire weapons. However, nearly a dozen others still face charges.

The entire climate has changed since the early part of the decade. With the rise of China, Washington considers it imperative to try to counter Beijing’s intrigues in Southeast Asia. The U.S., maintains diplomatic relations with both Cambodia and Laos and no longer classifies them as “Marxist-Leninist” Later this year, The US will hold its first joint military maneuvers with Cambodia called Angkor Sentinel.

As for Cambodia, Chhun and his merry band simply handed Hun Sen a reasonable excuse to arrest opponents for being coup plotters and to occasional tweak the United States for “harboring terrorists.”

Macau: Another Place, Another time

2009-12-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

As Macau observes the tenth anniversary of its return to China later this week, a recent poll undertaken by the University of Macau showed that 96 percent of the people were “satisfied” with developments since the evening of Dec. 20, 1999, when the Portuguese flag was lowered for the last time after more than 400 years.

Indeed, the enclave’s 500,000 people have good reasons to feel satisfied, for the most part, with their lot. The economy has been in a decade-long boom due to the expansion of the gambling sector. The inaugural chief executive, Edmund Ho provided boringly stable good governance and avoided most of the missteps that accompanied Hong Kong counterpart’s early years in office.

Macau’s last years under Portuguese administration had been a time of strain, partly due to the then faltering economy but also to a spate of gangland murders connected with the casinos, which led many in Macau to cheer the arrival of the People’s Liberation Army garrison on the following day. (In fact, the garrison has stayed mostly invisible).

Recently, I returned to Macau after an absence of six years in order to update my guide book, Explore Macau:A Walking Guide and History, first published in 2002 and now being reissued next month by Blacksmith Books in Hong Kong. One can’t help but be staggered by the physical changes that have taken place..

The Portuguese had scarcely moved out before the American gambling impresarios moved in, bringing with them some of the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas. In a move even more significant even than the handover to China, Macau split the gambling monopoly into three parts and awarded two of them to Wynne Resorts and Sheldon Adelson, respectively owners of the Wynne Resort and Venetian Hotel Casino.

Everyone agreed that Macau’s gambling scene needed a face lift. It had neither the old-world charm of Monte Carlo nor the unbridled exuberance of Las Vegas. Few of the casinos offered any entertainment that could not be found by pulling the lever of slot machine. He casinos were tawdry, the dealers surly.

Tawdry is hardly the word to use for the sumptuous new gambling emporiums in today’s Macau, which among other things, boast a couple of Michelin-starred restaurants on the premises. The gaming rooms are as big as football fields, with hundreds of tables for blackjack, roulette and other games of chance.

One has to wonder if there are enough gamblers in China, indeed all of the world, to fill tables. (In fact I noticed that several of the blackjack tables were empty, the dealers waiting patiently for new punters even though it was the beginning of China’s autumn Golden Week holiday.)

Mine was not just uninformed impression, as representatives of the top gambling enterprises huddled in early October to consider whether the offerings might be outstripping the supply and to put a halt to breakneck expansion. That following on a decision in 2008 by Macau government to freeze new licenses and casino building permits.

The Chinese government too, goes through periods of handwringing over the temptations that the Macau fleshpots hold for cadres interested in taking a big portion of their country’s tax receipts to place on the Macau roulette tables, and it recently restricted residents of neighboring Guangdong province to two trips a year, later reduced to a single visit.

The influx of new casino resorts has certainly boosted the economy, but not without some costs. Foreign workers imported to deal the cards and make the beds in the giant hotels account for about 70,000 people out of a work force of 320,000. Today there are more Filipinos in Macau that Portuguese.

In 2007 police fired their weapons into the air to disperse a May-day demonstration against the importation of cheap labor to run the casinos. It was a rare public display of political disgruntlement in a territory that otherwise seems unexcitable compared with Hong Kong and overly accommodating to the Chinese.

Earlier this year the Macau Legislative Assembly enacted a local law to enforce Article 23 of the Macau Basic Law, which like its nearly identical counterpart charter in Hong Kong mandates that the territory enact laws that prohibit subversion, secessionism and protection of “state secrets” a term that is very flexible on the mainland.

When the Hong Kong Legislative Council sought to enact a similar law in 2003 it prompted biggest demonstration since Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Some 500,000 people marched in opposition. The Legco backed away from the law, and Beijing has not tried to raise the matter again.

All election groups (Macau does not have political parties) in the September election to the Legislative Assembly supported “more democracy” in theory and a gradual move to the direct election of the chief executive (now chosen by an electoral college of 300), but the democratic ethic is still tepid in Macau.

The local legislature comprises 29 seats of which twelve are directly elected (an increase of two in the past ten years), ten from functional constituencies and seven appointed by the chief executive. The proportional voting system in use means that it is extremely difficult for any one faction to gain more than two seats. The “pro-democracy” contingent has two seats, same as ten years ago.

In some ways Macau was ahead of Hong Kong in political development. It introduced directly elected sets in the 1970s, long before Hong Kong first open seats in 1992. On the other hand, Hong Kong eliminated appointed seats years ago, a system which Macau still clings to.

For the entire decade Macau has been governed by its inaugural chief executive, Edmund Ho, scion of a local banking family, whose second five-year term expires on Dec. 20. His administration has lacked the drama that accompanied Hong Kong’s initial chief, Tung Chee-hwa, who eventually resigned midway through his second term.

Macau avoided many of the problems that plagued Tung’s years, although unease about the rapid rise in housing prices mirrors early criticisms directed at Tung. The biggest domestic scandal during the first ten years, involved corruption of Ao Man-long, a former secretary of transportation convicted of taking bribes from construction deals and sentenced to 29 years in prison.
China’s presence always seems to loom much closer in Macau than in neighboring Hong Kong. The mainland or its islands are so close in some places that one could easily swim across the water and touch the shore. Every day people by the tens of thousands cross through the gargantuan immigration building at the old border gateway, into and out of Macau.

That plus the enclave’s tiny size has given Macau a unique outlook. Hong Kong defines itself in political terms, such as democracy and the rule of law. Macau defines itself more in cultural terms especially its rich history and fascinating architecture.

While encouraging the construction of more gambling casinos and playgrounds such as the Fisherman’s Wharf, Macau has not neglected the cultural side. During the past decade it successfully sought World Heritage status for a dozen or so churches, plazas gardens and houses and other monuments..

Save the Tomahawk!

2009-12-03T18:13:00.000-08:00

To listen to disarmament specialists, the country that is raising the most serious obstacles to new moves to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in defense strategy is Japan.
Japan? Is this not the nation with the famous nuclear allergy? Is it not the nation that loudly reminds everyone that it is the only country on the globe to suffer an atomic attack? Is it not the country that loudly proclaims the “Three Nos” (Never to manufacture, possess or allow nuclear weapons onto its soil)?

No country is more vocal in giving verbal support to moves to reduce nuclear weapons inventories in the world. No country has expressed more support for President Barack Obama’s call for the “logic of zero” in his speech earlier this year in Prague where he said, “we will reduce the roll of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy and urge others to do the same.”
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama too has spoken about the necessity to reduce reliance on nuclear arms. He said at the United nations that Japan has the “moral responsibility as the only country that has ever experienced atomic bombings.”

But Japan is caught in a box. On one hand, Tokyo is one of the strongest advocates of nuclear disarmament, while on the other hand it relies on U.S. arms, including nuclear arms, for its own security. Lately, it has come to worry about whether it can count on America’s extended nuclear deterrence, more commonly known as the “nuclear umbrella”.

The main area of concern is Washington’s desire to retire the nuclear version of the Tomahawk cruise missile by 2013. The Tomahawk is a pilotless flying bomb capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads. The conventional version was used in the Gulf War and invasion of Iraq. Tokyo sees the Tomahawk, especially submarine launched cruise missiles, as the most logical weapon of deterrence in the neighborhood, since the last tactical bombs were removed from U.S. bases in South Korea and aboard US. Navy aircraft carriers nearly two decades ago.

This summer Japanese embassy officials in Washington quietly but strongly lobbied against American plans to retire the nuclear version of the Tomahawk cruise missile. in the context of the Congressional Commission on Strategic Posture of the United States. Its recommendation will go into Washington’s forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review, which will determine the basic nuclear defense, disarmament and proliferation policies for the next decade.

The body, headed by two former defense secretaries, was formed in 2008 and issued its first report in May. It said: “One particularly important ally has argued to the commission privately that the credibility of the U.S. extended [nuclear] deterrence depends on the specific capability to hold a variety of targets at risk in a way that is either visible or stealthy as circumstances warrant.”

It went on to elaborate: “In Asia extended deterrence relies heavily on the deployment of nuclear cruise missiles on some Los Angeles-class attack submarines… it has become clear that some allies in Asia would be very concerned about [Tomahawk] retirement.”

For many of the Cold War years, Tokyo didn’t fret about the nuclear umbrella or America’s will to use nuclear weapons should Japan be attacked. But in those years nuclear weapons were more clearly evident in North East Asia. American aircraft carriers were believed to carry nuclear bombs when making port calls, and tactical nuclear weapons were based in South Korea.

President George H. W. Bush ordered that the nuclear bombs be withdrawn from Korea and from aboard U.S. navy ships, excepting ballistic missile submarines, back in 1991. American nuclear attack submarines no longer carry the nuclear tipped Tomahawks as a matter of routine. The weapons are stored on U.S soil.

For all practical purposes, Northeast Asia is a nuclear free zone as far as the United States and Japan is concerned. Except that two nations that adjoin Japan, China and Russia, maintain nuclear arsenals, while a third, North Korea, has exploded two atomic devices. Some Japanese are beginning to feel a little naked.

Americans counter that Japan and other Asian allies can count on the retaliatory strength of ballistic missile submarines which still prowl the Pacific Ocean with their complements of Trident missiles as well as B-2 and B-52 bombers based in Guam.These days America’s ballistic missile submarines sometimes make port calls in Hawaii and other U.S. Pacific coast ports, but they are not likely to show up at, say, Yokusuka Naval Base, for example. And in any case, they would run afoul of Japan’s stated Three Nos, of which one is not to allow nuclear weapons to be brought into its territory.

By contrast it is estimated that more than 400 nuclear bombs – the kind delivered by fighter-bombers – are still in place in Europe and well integrated into NATO nuclear strike plans. They are earmarked for delivery by the air forces of even non-nuclear weapons states such as Germany, and Belgium. Nothing similar exists in Northeast Asia.

The lobby campaign to save the Tomahawk was undertaken by the previous Liberal Democratic Party government under former prime minister Taro Aso. The new government headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has not, so far as is known, made any efforts to block the retirement of the supposedly obsolete weapons systems.

One area where it has been loud and vocal is in its call for full disclosure of so-called secret codicils to the 1960 security treaty in which the Japanese government pledged in advance to permit the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons into its territory and territorial waters without prior consultations. The Japanese press has been flogging this story with almost daily revelations from retired foreign ministry officials that such documents exist, something that the previous government formally denied. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has promised to publish all of the details by January.

In some respects it is something of a tempest in a teapot. Before Bush ordered them removed, it was widely assumed that U.S. carriers brought the weapons into port when making port calls while Tokyo turned a blind eye. After all, there were no floating nuclear weapons receptacles outside the territorial limits where they could unload them like Wild West gunslingers checking their guns at the door before entering the saloon.

So far, the new government has not suggested that it might abrogate the secret documents. It only wants to expose them in the overall interests of governmental transparency. It would have the added advantage, of course, of embarrassing the former LDP government.

Too Big to Fail?

2009-11-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

A national icon teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, dragged down by huge, underfunded legacy costs, a history of mismanagement and a harsh business climate. A new government determined to bail it out because it is “too big to fail”. General Motors in the U.S.? No, Japan Airlines, the country’s premier air carrier.

The situation facing the new government headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was somewhat similar to that presented by General Motors when President Barack Obama took office. Like GM, the Japanese airline is a national icon that has fallen on hard times, not just buffeted by cruel economic circumstances but by its own missteps and generous pensions.

To carry the American analogy further, Japan’s second carrier, All Nippon Airlines, like the Ford Motor Co., is in better financial shape. The airline even had the wherewithal to hire Japanese teen golfing phenom, Ryo Ishikawa, as its official spokesman. JAL has suspended all broadcast advertising. It can’t afford the cost.

Even before the new Japanese government took office in mid-October, the former administration had been taking emergency steps to salvage the airline, which reported a JPY 96 billion operating loss for the first half of 2009. In June the government-owned Development Bank of Japan loaned the airline about JPY100 billion to help keep it afloat to the end of the year, one of several such loans over the past few years.

The Ministry of Lands, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism was orchestrating equity investments from other international airlines, such as Delta, American, and British Airways, while the company itself presented a new plan for cutting costs by layoffs and by cutting back on unprofitable routes. This was the situation when the newly elected government took charge.

The new transport minister, Seiji Maehara took a careful look at the restructuring plan and threw it out. He determined that the airline was in too deep for normal cost-cutting initiatives, not even draconian layoffs. Efforts to involve foreign airlines, especially Delta, were initially rejected as too little and too complicated, given the system if airline alliances.

(However, American Airlines announced late last week that it might team up with private equity firm TPG to invest some $300 million in JAL. The two air lines are members of the Oneworld aviation alliance; teaming with Delta would require JAL switching to SkyTeam, a costly and complicated transition. Meanwhile, Delta and alliaces have come up with their own $1 billion package.)

The new Democratic party of Japan (DPJ) might have decided to let the airline go bankrupt. After all, many American airlines have used bankruptcy protection to get their houses in order, including JAL’s presumed rescuer, Delta in 2005. Instead, it decided to essentially make it a ward of the state. To coin a phrase, it is too big to fail.

Or to put another way, JAL is too important to fail. With approximately 17,000 employees JAL is not quite in the General Motors’ class. Even if every JAL employee were laid off, it would hardly cause a ripple in the unemployment rate. It buys not builds aircraft so there is no widespread network of suppliers to worry about. There are other reasons to prop it up.

“We cannot afford to let JAL go under as its flights account for 60 percent of the total in Japan,” said Maehara. “If its flights stop, the Japanese economy as a whole, local economies and exchange with foreign countries will be seriously hampered.”

Under the new policy, JAL will become, in essence the ward of a new government-private sector Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation, with Maehara and other government officials deeply involved. The government is prepared to guarantee up to JPY 1.6 trillion that the new corporations borrows to give to JAL and other companies.

The rebuilding of JAL will based on a government loan of JPY 300 billion, financial institutions forgiveness of debts and conversion of bonds into company shares, a JPY 180 billion bridge loan to carry the company over next perilous few weeks. The bridge loan is needed because the carrier’s business is deteriorating so fast that there was worry it would not survive past November.

Vast amounts of public money were injected into the major banks during Japan’s financial crisis in the 1990s, but in that case, the government was trying to prop up an entire sector of the economy. The money destined for JAL would be the largest amount spent on an individual, private corporation.

The government is also expected to take aim at JAL’s huge pension liabilities, which the government says need to be cut by about 200 percent if the airline is to recover. If the retirees don’t approve the cuts (and a two-thirds majority is required under current law), the government says it will pass a law mandating it. That would be a big step considering that the DPJ is supported by the unions.

Japan Airlines was the nation’s flag carrier from 1953 to 1987, when it was privatized. I n many ways it set the standard for many other Asian airlines that followed such as Singapore Airlines, Garuda and Thai Airways. There was a time when JAL’s super gracious passenger service was the standard for all airlines to emulate.

Although it was privatized in 1987, in many ways it remained Japan’s flag carriers and that contributed to its current difficulties. The previous government was famous for sprinkling public works projects around the country, including airports for every one-horse town. JAL was obliged to serve those airlines even though many were unprofitable. As part of its reorganization, JAL has been cutting back drastically on both domestic and international routes.

Japan airlines was been buffeted by many of the ill winds that have hurt the bottom lines of all the world’s airlines, such as the global recession, rising petroleum prices and the swine flu epidemic. But it has also suffered from other problems unique to Japan.

Landing fees at Narita International Airport and other international and domestic airports in Japan are among the highest in the world, and they eat into airline profits. The new government is on record as favoring lowering such fees. Similarly, taxes and jet fuel charges in Japan are fairly exorbitant.

Despite its dire straits, JAL has had no trouble attracting foreign companies, such as American and Delta, ready to prop up the company. Changes in aviation policy and the impending reconfiguration of Japan’s main airports make an alliance with JAL still an attractive proposition.

On Oct 26 U.S. and Japanese aviation officials started talks in Tokyo to reach an agreement, perhaps by year’s end, on an open-skies accord. It would allow airlines more flexibility in determining flight routes and numbers at their own discretion rather than government fiat.

Couple that with the expansion of departure and arrival slots at the two main Tokyo area airports, Narita and Haneda. Minister Maehara is on record as wanting to turn Haneda, which now serves mostly domestic flights, into an Asian aviation hub competing with such new aviation portals as Inchon in South Korea and Shanghai for Asian traffic.

Obama Sidesteps Bases Issue

2009-11-13T17:25:00.000-08:00

It might come under the category of something that couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Less than one week before President Barack Obama arrived in Japan for a visit, a U.S. soldier was taken into custody on Okinawa in connection with a hit and run incident in which an elderly Okinawan man was killed.

It is, of course, incidents like this one, rare though they may be, not to mention noise, congestion and other daily irritants, that led Japan and the U.S. to negotiate a complex deal to lower the American military’s large “footprint” on the southern island, an agreement that has ballooned into a major alliance crisis in some minds.

In 2006 the two governments agreed and in early 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed, an agreement under which Washington would withdraw 8,000 Marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam and close the Futenma Air Station in southern part of the island that is now totally surrounded by urban development.

In return, Tokyo agreed to foot a major portion of the estimated $10 billion relocation costs and build, also at Japan’s expense, the Marines a new high tech heliport on reclaimed land at a another, less populated location on Okinawa in the township of Nago.

In October Secretary of Defense Robert Gates laid down a strong marker saying bluntly that a deal is a deal and that Washington could not entertain any but minor adjustments. Move Futenma to another part of Okinawa or the whole deal is off, he said.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power with one main fixed idea: that government ministers, not the civil servants, should be making policy. On the Futenma issue that has led to some confusion. Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa favors implementing the agreement as is. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada wants to merge Futenma with the big U.S. Air force Base at Kadena,

But the final decision will be made by the new prime minister? Yukio Hatoyama, and he has yet to take a position one way or the other, except to say he wants to postpone any decision pending the outcome of a series of national and local elections coming in the new year.

Despite Gates, President Obama and his advisors reluctantly agreed to side step this issue during his visit, which began Saturday and give the new government a little latitude to reach a consensus “It will take several months for the new Japanese administration to become fully functional; we have to be patient,” Said Kurt Campbell, Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

But it is also clear that Washington’s patience will wear thin pretty quickly. Every day that the decision is postponed brings forth more news stories and opinion pieces lamenting the “troubled U.S.-Japanese alliance.” Pretty soon they may become a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. Washington wants to wrap this deal up by year’s end.

Hatoyama says he wants to defer a final decision at least until the election for Mayor of Nago, the host town for the new air base, scheduled for January. Beyond that is the July election for the half of the House of Councillors, the upper house of Japan’s bicameral parliament, and next November for the governor of Okinawa.

It is hard to know what Hatoyama expects to gain from delay. Perhaps he is hoping that incumbent Nago Mayor Yoshikazu Shimabukaru, who supports the new heliport in his town, will win re-election and give him some political cover for implementing the deal.

But public feelings against the relocation plan are rising rapidly on Okinawa, and even the Nago mayor is beginning to back pedal. “My stance remains unchanged, but the best idea would be to relocate it out of [Okinawa] prefecture,” the mayor told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Hatoyama is obviously hoping that the DPJ will gain a clear majority in the July upper house election, so he is no longer dependent on his coalition partners to pass bills. They include the Social Democratic Party, which is even more strongly opposed to relocation. That would give him some added flexibility.

On the other hand, the longer this matter drags on, the more likely it could become a campaign issue in that election. The opposition Liberal Democratic Party, practically prostrate in the aftermath of its pasting in the general election last August, is beginning to perk up, sensing that the new government might be vulnerable on the charge of endangering the alliance.

The new government, in office for less than two-months, is already losing some support in public opinion polls. They are now around 60 percent favorable, albeit from unsustainable high levels of euphoria immediately after the government formally took office in mid-October. Successes in two upper house by-elections, confirms basic public support for the new government.

The proposed halt in Japan’s contribution to the War on Terror through refueling coalition warships in the Indian Ocean, set to expire in January, is another sore point, although it has not been elevated to the position of a “test” of the alliance in the same way that the Okinawan base issue has.

Most of the refueling this year has been for Pakistani naval vessels, so it is hard to maintain that the operation is “vital” to operations in landlocked Afghanistan. On the other hand, a pullback here might encourage other nations with unpopular troop commitments to withdraw also.

Hatoyama will outline his substitute plan to contribute between $4 and $5 billion dollars over the next five years for expanded job training, agricultural development and other civilian support activities, but he is not prepared to send Self Defense force troops to the region to protect the aid workers.

A Deal's a Deal

2009-10-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last week staked out a hard line position over the relocation of the Futenma Marine Air Station in Okinawa to another location on the southern island during his recent trip to Japan to prepare the way for President Barack Obama’s expected visit next month.

As far as Washington is concerned, the elaborate plan to reshuffle troops on Okinawa and lower the island’s overall military “footprint”, which it negotiated with the previous government headed by the Liberal Democratic Party, is a done deal.

The U.S. will entertain only minor changes, such as shifting the proposed new runway a few meters further off shore. Inaction on relocation of the air station would jeopardize the agreed relocation of 8,000 Marines and their families to Guam, Gates said.

Gate’s remarks have elevated what was a fairly obscure technical matter into a major issue between Japan and the United States and the first great test of freshman Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s alliance management skills. Hatoyama entered office last month when his party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won an historic majority.

Futenma has been an American base since the end of World War II and a Marine Corps air station since 1960. It is currently home for about 3,000 Marines and an air group consisting mainly of helicopters. Over the years, the neighboring city of Ginowan has burgeoned from a village into a metropolis, now virtually surrounding the base and its runway.

It took years of negotiations for Washington and Tokyo to agree on a plan to realign the bases on Okinawa, a relatively small island which today supports about three quarters of the US military manpower in the country, so it is not surprising that Washington doesn’t want to start anew with a new government.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, anticipating a possible DPJ election victory as far back as last February, made sure to get the then government of prime minister Taro Aso to sign on the dotted line when she visited Japan in her first swing through Asia. The new government must honor the deal it predecessor made, she says now.

When it was in opposition, the DPJ made some sweeping demands about Okinawa. It opposed the idea of closing Futenma and building a new air station in northern part of the island on reclaimed (mostly coral) land. It wanted to move the air station out of Okinawa entirely. The party also criticized the $6 billion that Tokyo promised to help pay to relocate 8,000 Marines and their families to Guam.

However, as the election approached and prospect of holding power became more and more a reality, the DPJ has softened its position. The party’s official election manifesto merely called vaguely for re-examining future options for American bases in Japan.

In early October, Hatoyama said some things that made it seem that he could be persuaded to accept the agreement reached between Japan and the U.S. including relocating Futemna somewhere within Okinawa prefecture. Almost immediately he had to back pedal in the face of criticism from his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, and others in his own party.

“While bearing in mind the wishes of the people in Okinawa, I will negotiate with the U.S. and come to a final conclusion in the matter,” the PM said. He said his government wanted to look into various unspecified “options” and would not feel obliged to determine its final policy by the time Obama visits.

One of the options might be to move the Marines to the massive Kadena Air Force Base. The base already is crowded, but an intriguing story was floated a month ago suggesting that the U.S. might withdraw the F-16 wing at Misawa air base in northern Japan and part of the F-15 Wing based at Kadena, The latter’s removal might open opportunities to relocate the Marine helicopters there.

The political forces favoring closing Futenma and against building a substitute in Okinawa prefecture are formidable. They include a most of the prefectural assembly, all four Diet members from Okinawa, most of Hatoyama’s large contingent of freshmen back benchers in the Diet, his coalition partner, the SDP and 68 percent of Okinawan people, according to recent polls.

A permanent tent city of protestors has been camped out on the beach at Hinoko township near where the new runway would be built, essentially daring the government to try and move them. How a determined minority, augmented by sympathizers, can frustrate Washington and Tokyo’s plans can be seen from two past examples.

In the 1950s the Americans determined to extend the runway at Tachikawa Air Base in the Tokyo suburbs, a move necessary to accommodate high performance jet aircraft. Protestors camped out at one end of the runway daring anyone to remove them literally for years. Eventually, the Americans gave up and moved out. Tachikawa is now a park dedicated, ironically, to Japan’s wartime emperor, Hirohito.

The dogged opposition of a handful of farmers, supported by outside admirers, permanently crippled Tokyo’s grand plan to build a major international airport in the rice fields of Narita far outside of Tokyo. Only this month has Narita opened an extended second runway, of a projected three runways, more than 40 years after the airport opened.

It may be that Secretary Gates was playing “bad cop” to President Obama’s “good cop” routine when he visits Tokyo on the first leg of his Asian trip in mid-November. That would permit the president to allow the new Japanese government to gain face by graciously reopening the negotiations. Meanwhile, after due reflection, Hatoyama graciously concedes the need to build a replacement air field in Okinawa. Everybody is happy.

That is one possible scenario. It is also possible that the American side will dig in its heels on the proposition that a deal is a deal, and decide that, for the sake of future alliance, it must demonstrate early on who is still the boss.

Early Days

2009-10-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

The new Japanese government, headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was one month old on Friday Oct. 16. His Democratic party of Japan (DPJ) swept into power on a powerful sentiment of change. It is, of course, early days, but it is not too soon to see if it is delivering on this promised change.

The prime minister himself spent much of his first month in office on the road, visiting New York and Pittsburgh for the opening of the United Nations and the G-20 Summit. He flew to Copenhagen to lobby for Tokyo’s unlikely bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games. Then he flew to Seoul and Beijing to meet with leaders of China and South Korea.

His cabinet ministers, however, have been in the news constantly. The cabinet had hardly been sworn in before Lands and Transport Minister Seiji Maehara flew to Gunma prefecture in central Japan to inspect the Yamba Dam project in central Gunma and declare it would be terminated.

The DPJ campaigned on the notion that the old regime spent too much taxpayer money on wasteful public works projects of which the Yamba Dam is the poster child. During the month the minister announced that the government was freezing construction of 48 of the 143 dam projects approved by the previous administration.

The Hatoyama government eventually plans to terminate about 100 dam projects budged at approximately 8 trillion yen in construction costs (some of the saving may be offset by local reimbursements for the disruption and job losses that will accompany these terminations.)

Indeed, Maehara is turning into something of a star of the new government’s first month in office. It seems as if he is on television every day meeting with prefectural officials over dam projects, conferring with Japan Airlines over bailout plans, meeting with local governments over plans to turn Haneda Airport into a major regional aviation hub, meeting, meeting, meeting . . .

Of course, the fact that he has movie-idol good looks doesn’t hurt, but it is also true that many of the new government’s most important initiatives fall under his portfolio, Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. This includes plans to eliminate the tolls on express ways and the “temporary” (in place for the past for past 30 years) gasoline surcharge to fund new road construction.

Maehara also has the Okinawa portfolio, and has made at least one inspection trip to the southern island, where the relocation of American forces is the hot topic. However, as it impacts relations with the U.S., it is likely that Hatoyama himself and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada will take the lead in this sensitive issue.

If Maehara is the star of the month, then Shizuka Kamei, Minister for Postal Reform and Financial Services, is the “bad boy” of the new government. In his latter role, he went off the reservation early on by proposing a blanket debt moratorium on small businesses and some individuals.

The Hatoyama government clearly does not like this proposal, which some estimate could cost the country’s banks trillions of yen in lost interest. But it is not easy to rein him in. Kamei heads his own small party in coalition with the government and is not subject to party discipline. He is a loose cannon.

The government needs the votes, few as they are, of Kamei’s New People’s Party and its other coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SDR) since it is just short of a majority in the House of Councilors, the upper house of Japan’s bicameral parliament. One can assume that the DJP will strive mightily to win a clear majority in July’s election so that can dump its partners.

Another prominent figure in the new government is Yoshito Sengoku. As minister of state for administration he is the man responsible for finding and cutting the “waste” in government spending that it plans to apply to fulfill its campaign promise to provide cash allowances to parents and end tuition for secondary schools.

In the first month in office Sengoku reportedly has axed 2.5 trillion yen from the previous administration’s proposed 14 trillion yen supplementary budget. When finished, the party will be turn attention to cutting fat from the 2010 fiscal budget. The implementation of the child allowances will likely be incorporated into that budget, which goes into effect in April.

In other ways, the new administration is pointing to change, Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, the only woman besides SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima in the cabinet, wants to fulfill a long-time ambition of Japanese feminists to permit married women to keep their maiden name if they choose. She plans to introduce legislation permitting this when the Diet convenes later this month.

During the long period of Liberal Democratic Party government, 20 attempts were made to change the Civil Law to allow women to use their maiden names; all were defeated by conservatives who argued that such a change would impact family unity. The influx of many young freshmen legislators, many of them women, may change this.

It is also possible that Minister Chiba may lead a de facto moratorium capital punishment, as she is a member of the Parliamentary League for the Abolishment of the Death Penalty. The above-mentioned Kamei is also a longtime opponent who happens to head the League; SDP leader Fukushima also opposes the death penalty.

It falls to the justice minister to sign death warrants for convicted murderers after their appeals are exhausted. The number of executions was accelerating under the previous administration (Hatoyama’s brother Kunio signed 11 warrants when he was justice minister). There are about 100 prisoners on Japan’s death rows.

Matters impacting the alliance with the United States are likely to be put off until President Barack Obama’s visit in mid-November. However, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said flatly that Japan’s refueling mission in the Indian Ocean will end in January when the authorization expires.

Washington seems to be taking this expected news equitably. It is more likely to resist any changes in plans agreed to with the previous government to relocate some American marine forces in Okinawa, and there were signs from Hatoyama this past week that the Japanese government may acquiesce in thism matter.

What Alliance?

2009-09-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

There has been considerable handwringing in the Western press, especially among Americans, over the future of the U.S.-Japan military alliance under the new regime. Will Japan’s new masters seek to undermine the security of Asia and American interests by steering a more independent course?

Never mind that the incoming prime minister Yukio Hatoyama has stated that the alliance is fundamental to Japan’s security and that he has no intention of undermining what pundits on both sides of the Pacific persist in calling the “cornerstone” of America’s position in Asia.

A cornerstone, perhaps, but not an alliance. Japan is a close friend, fellow democracy, trading partner and increasingly a collaborator on the world stage. But it is not an ally. That is strictly a courtesy title, and since the health of the “alliance” is going to come under increasing scrutiny in coming months one should have a clearer idea of what it really is.

The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, signed with Japan in 1960 replacing an earlier treaty, is basically a deal. The U.S. promises to defend Japan if it comes under attack, with nuclear weapons if necessary (the nuclear umbrella). In exchange, Japan provides the U.S. with bases which it can use as it sees fit to advance its greater security interests in Asia and as far as the Middle East.

Those bases are not necessarily designed, or at present even configured to merely defend Japan. In the past they have been staging areas for the Vietnam War and now the Afghanistan War. The largest air base near Tokyo, Yokota AFB, for example, hasn’t had a permanent collection attack aircraft or interceptors for decades. Indeed, according to Kyodo News Service, Washington is considering withdrawing the wing of F-16s at Misawa AFB and reducing the number of f-15s at Kadena AFB in Okinawa.

Japan, however, is not obligated to come to the defense of the U.S. if it is attacked. Indeed, it would be illegal for Tokyo to do so under the current liberal interpretation of its American-written constitution, which rather explicitly prohibits Japan from possessing any military force whatsoever.

This provision – Article 9 – has been interpreted broadly enough to permit Japan to build one of the largest and most sophisticated militaries on the globe. But the clause has still been interpreted in such a way as to prevent “collective defense” In other words, Japan can defend itself but not others.

Nobody worried much about collective defense during most of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered the main threat. But it has grown into an issue with the emergence of a bellicose nuclear-armed North Korea and to a lesser extent, the rapid modernization of China’s armed forces.

North Korea’s recent test of a multi-stage rocket in April, which it fired directly over Japan landing in the North Pacific, raised the interesting speculation whether Japan could legally shoot down a North Korean missile headed toward the U.S. that came within range. A strict reading of Japan’s laws would say no.

In another hypothetical, but possibly more realistic, scenario North Korean naval vessels intercept and threaten to sink or capture an unarmed or lightly armed American naval surveillance ship in international waters of the Sea of Japan. A Japanese destroyer happens to be close by. Does it come to the American vessel’s aid?

I would be willing to guess that Tokyo would order the destroyer to resist the North Koreans and let the legal chips fall where they may. The consequences of simply standing by and doing nothing would be politically devastating. The American public would never understand – or care about - the legal nuances “collective defense.”

(In the real U.S.S. Pueblo incident in 1968, the Japanese Self Defense Forces did not figure at all, nor, to my knowledge, were they called on for help. The U.S. had more assets in the region than it does now. That they could not be successfully deployed to defend the Pueblo from humiliating capture is another story).

When I came to Yokota as a junior officer shortly after the Pueblo Incident, U.S. forces in Japan and the Japanese Self Defense Forces might as well have existed on different plants. In all my time there I never once met a SDF officer. There was no liaison or coordination. No contact that I could see. Nothing. I never served in a NATO country, but I have to believe that there would have been much more social or professional intercourse with officers of the Royal Air force or the Belgian Air Force.

That began to change in the 1990s, the catalyst being the1991 Gulf War. Japan ponyed up billions of dollars to support the coalition, but, consistent with its anti-war principles, provided no troops. Tokyo was stunned afterwards at how ungrateful Washington and others were for their generous financial support. The wanted, to use the current vernacular, boots on the ground.

That began a slow evolution in Japan’s use of its military. The Diet (parliament) passed laws that allowed Japanese to participate in international peacekeeping missions in Cambodia and elsewhere. In 1996 Washington and Tokyo inked the Joint Security Declaration in which Japan promised to provide logistical support for U.S. forces stationed in Japan. Joint research in missile defenses was authorized.

In recent years Japanese armed forces have ventured far from Japan. For some years, a naval oiler has replenished ships, including American naval vessels, supporting operations over Afghanistan. But this had nothing to do with any kind of treaty obligation but more a general sense that Japan had to do something more in the War on Terror than write checks.

The defeated Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) made collective defense one of its manifesto planks. The triumphant Democratic part of Japan (DPJ) was silent on the matter. Speaking to journalists a couple months before the election, senior party leader Seiji Maehara dismissed the North Korean missile hypothetical as an “abstraction.”

This year, though, the Diet passed a law to formally authorize the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (navy) to take part in anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia. As part of the legislation, Japanese war ships were specifically authorized to come to the aid of non-Japanese vessels threatened by pirates. That may seem like an obvious thing, but in a sense it was revolutionary. It was the first time that Japan had taken a baby step toward collective defense.

.

Tired Blood: LDP in Opposition

2009-09-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

Spare a moment to reflect on the fate of Japan’s venerable Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as it surveys the wreckage from Sunday’s electoral tsunami that pushed the party from power for the first time since its founding in 1955.

Obviously, the big political story in Japan for the next few months will be whether the new masters, the Democratic Party of Japan (DJP), are up to prime time. Almost of equal importance is another question: Can the LDP survive in opposition?

After all, it has taken years for Japan’s democracy to evolve to the point where it has a two-party system, where two parties of roughly equal power alternate in power. It would be a shame if it turned out that the Sunday’s votes had simply exchanged one longtime one-party rule for that of another.

Not a few political scientists and pundits have wondered whether the LDP might disintegrate without the unifying glue of being in office, being able to hand out cabinet posts, and all of the other perks that come with holding on to power.

Even before all of the votes were counted, Prime Minister Taro Aso announced that he would step down as party president to atone for the defeat. That was hardly a surprise, and most of his fellow members probably are thinking to themselves: Don’t let the door hit you as you leave the room.

Still, it would be hugely unfair to attribute the LDP defeat to the prime minister himself. Aso made mistakes and committed gaffes in his nearly one-year tenure, but this was a vote against his party not Aso. For that matter, his successor, Yukio Hatoyama, isn’t exactly wildly popular either.

The LDP has scheduled an election to find a new party leader on Sept. 28, a week or so after the new government is sworn in, which means that prospective candidates, who just finished weeks of grueling campaigning, will have to criss-cross the country again to win votes from the prefectural party organizations.

As of this writing no, one has thrown his or her hat in the ring, and the post is considered wide open. Some might question who really would want the job? For the first time since 1993, when the LDP fell temporarily from power in a parliamentary maneuver, the post of party president does not automatically bring with it the job of prime minister.

One possible candidate to lead the party in opposition is Hidenao Nakagawa, who tried to foment a short-lived revolt against Aso back in July. Nakagawa was defeated in his constituency, but survived by winning on the proportional voting list (in Japan candidates can file for both single-seats and the PR list.)

In electoral district after electoral district, septuagenarian LDP Diet members, men and women who had been returned in eight, ten, twelve consecutive elections, who had served as cabinet ministers or faction leaders, fell to thirty-something political neophytes, many of them women. (Some, like Nakagawa, got back by being on the proportional list).

Yet many of the LDP old guard managed to survive. These included the last three prime ministers, Aso, Yasuo Fukuda and Shinzo Abe, three men responsible for the party’s steady decline over the last few years. So did former premier Yoshiro Mori, who may hold the world record for the lowest public approval rating of any democratically elected leader during his short term.

It appears that only those stalwart Liberal Democrats Party Diet members were re-elected who were so strongly entrenched in their constituencies that they could withstand the electoral tsunami. Many others did not. The LDP lost 181 seats, including some 66 which were won by “Koizumi’s children” in the 2005 election won by Japan’s last popular premier, Junichiro Koizumi.

Many of the losers were first time Diet members, elected in the Koizumi landslide four years ago, who had not had enough time to make their local political position impregnable. As American political scientist and commentator Tobias Harris put it: “The post-election LDP may be cursed with too many leaders and too few followers.”

If the future of the party depends on bringing in new people, younger, people, people with fresh ideas, then the LDP has a long, long way to go. Only five of the new parliamentary intake are members of the LDP (and one of them was Koizumi’s the son). By contrast, more than 150 Democrats were first-time law makers.

The former ruling party was virtually obliterated in Japan’s major cities. In Tokyo, the Democrats won 20 of the 25 seats, where it previously held only one. In Osaka it won 17 seats, where it had previously held two; Aichi prefecture, centered on Nagoya, gave the Democrats all their seats. But the party also swept the board in some rural prefectures, such as Niigata.

According to exit polls, about 30 percent of normal LDP supporters switched to the Democratic Party for this election. That figure, of course, partly explains the party’s success. But it also raises the intriguing question: Were these one-time protest votes, or will many of them permanently change their allegiance? The future of the LDP may ride on that answer.

Need health Care? Emigrate

2009-08-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

A few years back, when I was between tours as a correspondent in Asia my son asked me what I would do if I got sick, not having at the time an employer or any kind of private health insurance. Almost without thinking, I said I’d fly to Hong Kong, assuming I was well enough to get on an airplane.

On more sober reflection, I decided that this offhand remark had real possibilities. Hong Kong does not have universal health coverage, like many other countries, but it does have an excellent public hospital system. After living there for 16 years I was a permanent resident and thus eligible to use these services.

As Americans wrestle with health care, as the public debate gets more contentious, as the likelihood of the Congress enacting any kind of meaningful public health care fades, people need to think about their options. Here is my modest proposal: emigrate. In other words, move to another country that offers better health care.

Certainly, there are plenty of countries to choose from. Almost every developed country in the planet has some forms of universal coverage. What about New Zealand? It is a nice, green country, about the size of Britain with only 4 million people, very welcoming to immigrants, low crime and stunning views.

It also has a universal health care system generally paid for through taxation. Treatments are usually free or at least subsidized. There is also an option to obtain private medical insurance too. The New Zealand system is, in fact, very similar to that in Britain.

For several years I’ve been living in Japan, where I am covered by Japan’s universal national health insurance policy. All residents are covered without regard to medical preconditions or actuarial risk. The premium is graduated to the ability to pay. I just returned from my annual check-up, which is free, being paid for by the city I live in.

Of course, there is an option closer to home: move to Canada. A few years ago a friend of mine with some serious health problems, told me he was thinking of emigrating to Canada because of its comprehensive health care system. At the time I was rather shocked to hear him; now that I’m older it doesn’t seem so shocking.

One country to avoid is the People’s Republic of China. It seems to me that of the major countries in the world, China most closely resembles the U.S. in its health care policies. This seems counter-intuitive. Aren’t communist countries supposed to provide free health care?

How many times do you hear that Cuba or China or whomever may be repressive but at least the health care is free? The repressive part about China is true, but the medical care is not free.
China used to have a rudimentary free health care system. It was part of what we call the cradle-to-grave welfare and what the Chinese call the “iron rice bowl”. But with the market reforms begun in 1978 the iron rice bowl is broken, and hasn’t really been repaired. Most Chinese have to pay for their health care out of their pocket.

There is, of course, a catch. It isn’t usually enough just to visit these countries to be covered by their national plans. You have to become a citizen, or at least obtain long term residency. That means, at the least, of undergoing the hassle of obtaining a work permit to live in the country long enough to obtain residency.

This of course, does not negate the possibilities of “medical tourism”. That is, flying to another country on a tourist visa and checking into the hospital there. You have to pay the fee up front, but it is often a fraction of the cost of the same kind of care in the U.S. Thailand is a particularly attractive destination for elective surgeries of all kinds. So too are South Korea and even India.

I lived in Hong Kong in the years that led up to the handover of the former British colony to China in 1997. During those years thousands of middle-class Hong Kongers moved to Canada, Australia and to some extent the U.S. to obtain citizenship, denoted by obtaining a Canadian, Australian, etc. passport.

They had no real desire to actually live in those countries, and having obtained the coveted passport, they then returned to Hong Kong and resumed their normal lives. They looked on their shiny new travel documents as a kind of “insurance policy,” insurance that they had a bolt hole to go to should things turn out bad post 1997.

Perhaps one can view Canada, and possibly some other countries, as a new kind of bolt hole for medically disadvantaged Americans. In that case the idea of a foreign passport as a kind of “insurance policy” may take on a different kind of meaning.

Down to the Wire

2009-08-17T17:40:00.000-07:00

Election campaigning for Japan’s general election officially opened Tuesday, but you would hardly know it. The two main and several smaller parties vying for votes have been campaigning furiously since mid-July when Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolved the Diet (parliament) and set August 30 as the day of reckoning.

The leaders of the two main parties, Aso of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Yukio Hatoyama leader and prime minister candidate for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), have already had televised debates with each other and with leaders of several smaller parties.

The sound trucks have been patrolling my neighborhood for the past two weeks. For that matter, posters featuring faces of the local candidates or the party leaders have been plastered on walls and neighborhood houses since I moved to Japan from Thailand nearly two years ago.

The electioneering will reach a frenzy over the next week or so with more sound trucks, more politicians, wearing sashes with their name on it greeting commuters going to and from work at the railroad stations, more election flyers stuffed in mailboxes..

Japanese are at least spared the endless “attack” advertisements on television as is the case in the U.S., since paid advertisements on radio and television are banned. The candidates make their case on unpaid televised public forums and by haranguing voters at railroad stations, the main public space in urban Japan.

The politicians however, have found a loop-hole in the election law that permits them to air what look suspiciously like attack advertisements over the Internet. In a recent YouTube video produced by the LDP, a young man woos his girlfriend with promises about a life free or worries about child care and retirement.

The woman wonders how her suitor is going to pay for all these goodies, while he tells her not to worry. He will sort out the details later after they are married. It is a clever play on the DPJ party manifesto, which calls for generous government benefits childrearing and is generally vague on how to pay for them.

Each party has issued its election platform, or manifesto, as it is called here. It is not certain whether Japanese voters are swayed by these platforms any more than most Americans are persuaded by their party platforms, but it does give the candidates something to talk about. The LDP has zeroed in on the several generous promises made in the DPJ manifesto along with its fairly vague proposals to finance them.

The Democrats propose that the government provide a monthly stipend of about $250 per month per child until graduation from junior high school, providing free high school education and the abolition of highway tolls. The proposals would “bankrupt” Japan, says Hiroyuki Hosoda, secretary general of the LDP.

Some others would argue that these comments are pretty rich coming from the party which has spent its way into the greatest per capital budget deficit of any developed nation on the planet, a public debt that is estimated at about 180 percent of gross domestic product.

Despite all of the sound and fury – not just a metaphor considering the sound trucks patrolling residential neighborhoods blasting out the name of the candidate over and over are the principal means of campaigning in Japan – the public opinion polls showing the LDP headed for defeat have not budged in the past two weeks.

Prime Minister Taro Aso is putting up a brave fight, but a victory in this election would be somewhat akin to former U.S. President Harry Truman’s surprise victory in the 1948 presidential election. But he and his party did catch a break with the first definitive news of impending economic recovery, which might take some of the wind out of the opposition sails.

The country’s gross domestic product grew at nearly one percentage point in April-June, compared with the sickening eleven percentage point drop the previous quarter. It works out to an annualized growth rate of around three percentage points. Aso, of course, was quick to argue that the news vindicated the stimulus measures his government has taken.

It has taken Japan a long time to come to this point where it is on the brink of a genuine two party system, one in which two parties, one a little left of center the other a little to the right, alternate in power. Japan is the only major democracy in the world that has not experienced a change of government through the ballot box.

In a larger sense, Japanese politics have reached that stage already in that two political entities with roughly equal political strength are fighting it out openly, are having policy debates, publishing manifestos and touring the country to try and sell the voters on their point of view.

For the opposition Democrats, there remains the one final hurdle in persuading the conservative Japanese public that they can be trusted with power. Should Japan stick with the known or take a leap into the unknown and turn the keys to government over to another political party? And if they can’t do it now, when can they do it?

Super Agent Clinton

2009-08-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

One should not discount the intelligence value of former president Bill Clinton’s recent visit to North Korea to help secure the release of two American journalists accused of entering the country illegally on a reporting mission.

One of the most burning questions about North Korea is the health of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il, and its impact on the question of succession and ultimately the future stability of North Korea. So far, all speculation concerning Kim’s health has come from studying recent photographs, where he has looked gaunt for several months.

In the recent meeting, however, Clinton and several members of his entourage meet Kim face-to-face over several hours, where they were able to observe him close up and in person. In a country where it is virtually impossible to obtain “humint” - human intelligence - this was no small thing.

True, Clinton is not a trained physician, but it is hard to imagine that he was not thoroughly prepped to look for signs of disability. Did Kim walk with a shuffling motion? Were his words slurred? His eyes blood shot? How firm was his handshake, assuming they shook hands?

There may well have been a physician tucked away somewhere on Clinton’s entourage, even if not formally included in the list of visitors. He might have been included, ostensibly to examine the health of the two journalists after five months of detention. Or, for that matter, to care for Clinton himself – after all, he is a former president.

I imagine U.S. intelligence agents must have welcomed the priceless debriefing and peek into on the state of Kim’s health, mind and regime from America’s most seasoned diplomatic players and master of political psychology.

North Korea faces the real prospect of collapsing into anarchy after the death of the visibly ailing leader Kim Jong-il despite reports emanating from South Korea’s intelligence services, though not officially confirmed in Pyongyang, that Kim had anointed his twenty-something third son, Kim Jong-un, to be his successor.

When Kim Jong-il succeeded his father, the country’s founding president Kim Il-sung, he was dismissed as a lightweight. Compared with his bear of a father, the younger Kim seemed physically unprepossessing. It was thought that he was only interested in making movies and courting starlets. Soon he would fall from power and the country would collapse. All one had to do was sit back and wait.

In fact, Kim Jong-il had been slowly consolidating power for some two decades before he assumed office on his father’s death in 1994. He may well have liked to watch movies, but his father made sure that he was thoroughly grounded in communist party affairs. Soon after graduating from university, for example, he joined the Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Workers’ Party.

In the ensuing years he was a vice director of the party’s central committee, then secretary of the central committee. By 1980, when the senior Kim was 68 – about the same age as Kim Jong-il is now – the younger Kim was already being addressed as the “Dear Leader” and designated the official heir apparent. From then on he and his father were often photographed together.

Moreover, Kim Il-sung had fourteen more years of life in which to groom his successor. During that time the younger Kim was appointed supreme commander of the armed forces, though he had little or no military experience. Pictures of Kim with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter taken during the latter’s visit in 1994 show a seemingly robust man, of 82 (though he would die of a heart attack one month later).

It seems highly unlikely that Kim Jong-il will live into his 80s as he is reputed to be suffering from (depending on sources) diabetes, strokes or pancreatic cancer. So he is far behind the power curve in preserving the Kim family dynasty on two counts: He has done little or nothing, it appears, to groom his chosen successor, assuming he has one, and he may not live long enough to make up for lost time.

Almost nothing is known about Kim Jong-un. There are no photographs with his father, indeed no current photographs at all. By some sources he was appointed to the party’s Organization Guidance Department for some seasoning, like his father. Other sources claim it is the National Defense Council.

The Korean propaganda apparatus are beginning to build up the youth they have dubbed the “brilliant comrade”, but we are still left with reality a callow youth in his twenties, who’s only known accomplishment was to attend a boarding school in Switzerland.

Do the tough generals in North Korea who run nuclear and other programs have enough loyalty to the Kim family to fall behind him? Or, as is likely, can we expect more uncertainty and turbulence and possibly descent into anarchy?

Those are questions not easily discerned from the usual “North Korea watching” methods of studying official pronouncements and mulling over official photographs. That’s why any kind of engagement is valuable, even if it does not lead directly to diplomatic breakthroughs.

Two Giants of Democracy

2009-08-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

There was a distinct feeling of the passing of an era this past week with the death of former Philippine president Corazon Aquino. Meanwhile, former president Kim Dae Jung was reported to be under intensive care in a Seoul, South Korea hospital.

As of this writing, Kim seems to be holding on to life, but he has bronchial pneumonia, which is a pretty dangerous thing for a man of 85. Together with the younger Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, they constituted the troika of democratic opposition to dictatorial rule in Asia.

For most of her adult life Cory, as she was known to everyone, was, as she always called herself, a simple housewife and helpmate to her husband Benigno Aquino, mayor, governor, senator and symbol of opposition to the iron rule of Ferdinand Marcos.

That changed suddenly in 1983 when, on returning from exile in the United States, Aquino was assassinated on the tarmac of Manila’s international airport by agents of the Marcos regime. In 1986 Cory ran for president against Marcos. Both claimed victory and Cory soon ousted Marcos in the famous “People Power” revolt.

She assumed power by the simple expedient of taking the oath of office and behaving as if she were the duly elected president. The armed forces and the powerful Roman Catholic Church moved behind her, and soon Marcos was on a flight to political retirement in Hawaii.

For Kim achieving the presidency was the culmination of a lifelong struggle. After two unsuccessful attempts, he won his first seat in parliament in 1961, only to find the National Assembly building surrounded by tanks in the military coup that brought Park Chung Hee to power three days later. In 1971 he made the first of four bids for president — running against Park himself.

He engendered Park’s undying enmity by winning as much as 46 per cent of the vote. In that first presidential campaign he was hit by a car, perhaps deliberately, and suffered an injury that made him walk with a shuffle for the rest of his life.

In 1973 he was abducted by agents of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) in Japan and brought back to South Korea forcefully. His political rights were restored shortly only after Park’s assassination in 1979.A year later Kim was accused of treason after students and residents of the southwestern city of Kwangju rose in a bloody insurrection.

In all, Kim spent five years in prison, seven under house arrests and two years in exile in the United States. Returning to Korea in 1985, he and his supporters had Aquino’s assassination two years previously strongly in mind. A couple of U.S. congressmen accompanied him to discourage any “copy cat” killings.

In the 1997 election Kim Dae Jung proved he was not only courageous but could also be shrewd, practical, even ruthless when he had to be. His comeback, which marked the first peaceful transfer of power from a ruling to an opposition party in South Korea's history, was a masterpiece of political manipulation.

He made an alliance of convenience with the conservative Kim Jong Pil, the very man who had masterminded the coup that prevented him from taking his assembly seat more than 30 years before and the founder of the KCIA, the agency that had tried to kidnap him.

He leaked allegations that the sons of his main opponent, Lee Hoi Chang, had avoided military service. These revelations, damaging enough to Lee, encouraged the ambitious mayor of Inchon, Rhee In Je, to enter the race, thus splitting the conservative vote and allowing Kim to squeak into power with about 40 percent of the vote.

As president, Kim Dae Jung showed toughness in getting his way with the legislature and Korea's large business conglomerates, but he also steadfastly held to his vision of reconciliation with North Korea, known as his "sunshine policy." He was rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Peace for his summit meeting with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in 2000.

Some of the luster went off of that achievement when it was later revealed that he had arranged with several large business conglomerates to bribe the North with about $500 million in cash to hold the meeting in PyongyangThere was personal sadness two when his two sons were accused of corruption.

These days the sun does not shine so brightly on the sunshine policy. A cold wind continues to blow from Pyongyang. The election of conservative Lee Myung Bak as president (another peaceful change of power) reflected growing disillusion in South Korea. Still elements, such as the Kaesong industrial zone across the Demilitarized Zone, remain in place.

Cory’s term as president was marked by half a dozen coup attempts. In one instance she was falsely accused of hiding under her bed in the presidential palace. “We’re Sorry Mrs. President!,” ran the subsequent headline of an apology printed in the Philippine Enquirer.

Probably her greatest achievement as president was the writing of the new 1987 Constitution, which has withstood many challenges and the closing of the two big American military bases without breaking the alliance and the enduring friendship. Some were disappointed that she was not the miracle worker who could bring her country out of poverty by herself.

Philippine democracy has endured with some fits and starts. A low point was the faux people Power reprise in 2001, which ousted the democratically elected Joseph Estrada and replaced him with and the incumbent Gloria Arroyo, who has been dogged throughout her tenure by questions of legitimacy.

In the Philippines Cory was obviously boosted by the late archbishopof Manila Cardinal Jaime Sin and by the then commander of the paramilitary police, Fidel Ramos, who succeeded Cory as president and also helped cement the country’s democracy up with a successful term.

There are, of course, other Asian democrats of note, including Martin Lee of Hong Kong and former president Kim Young Sam, a longtime democracy activist in his own right, who became in 1993 Korea's first elected civilian president in decades. But Cory Aquino and Kim Dae Jung are in a class by themselves.

Koizumi's Feisty Daughters

2009-07-26T20:02:00.000-07:00

Four years ago they were called “assassins”, but now they are known as “Koizumi’s daughters”. They are three women elected to Japan’s Diet (parliament) on the coattails of Japan’s last popular prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, in the 2005 general election.

Back then the Japanese press labeled these women, and others on the ruling party ticket, as “assassins” since they were handpicked to replace and defeat veteran candidates of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) who had opposed the premier’s pet plan to privatize the postal system.

Now they are in a battle for their political lives in the face of what now appears to be an opposition party tsunami in the August 30 general election. Only this time they are led by an enormously unpopular premier and the only real issue is whether to give the LDP one more chance in governing or take a leap into the dark by putting an opposition party in power for the first time.

One thing is clear. T he three feisty Diet ladies – Kuniko Inoguchi, Satsuki Katayama and Yukari Sato - don’t plan to give up their seats without a fight. They plan to carry their campaigns to the Democratic Party of Japan (DJP) in their constituencies by squarely addressing issues and criticizing what they consider the weaknesses in the DJP platform.

Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolved parliament and called for an election at the end of August in the wake of the party’s embarrassing defeat in the July 12 election for the 127-seat Tokyo metropolitan legislature in which the DPJ added 20 seats new seats. It was an outcome that even LDP stalwarts admit was an election debacle.

Aso himself appeared before a meeting of his party’s parliamentarians and tearfully took the blame for the defeat. However, a short-lived move to replace him at the head of the ticket with somebody else - anybody else - failed even though polls now show that twice as many people prefer opposition leader, Yukio Hatoyama, as the next premier. The party will sink or swim with Aso.

It should be recalled that in 2005 Koizumi ran against his own party: “Change the LDP and change Japan” was his rallying cry. Since then the influence of “reformers” in the party has diminished greatly. A handful of “Koizumi’s children” have left the party to run as independents, but not the feisty three. “We’re the strongest reformers in the party; we must return,” says Inoguchi. Koizumi himself is not running for another term.

Meeting with the press at the foreign correspondents Club as a group, Inoguchi heaped praise on the former premier and touted his achievements. “We’re very disappointed that Koizumi is leaving politics,” she said. “He strengthened the hand of the politicians over bureaucrats.” Not one of the three even mentioned Aso’s name.

The candidates admit the governing party is battling against a very strong head wind. Public opinion polls are terrifying, the economy is in the pits, their party leader is unpopular. In a recent poll by Kyodo News Service, only 20 per cent of respondents supported the Aso government, 73 percent opposed it.

The LDP has a reputation of being Japan’s “Republican” party, but the three Diet ladies hardly sound like American-style conservatives. Said Katayama: “People want better social policies. We need a firm economic base so that we can expand these policies.”

Katoyama represents a constituency in the middle Japan which has a lot of automobile and motorcycle plants that have been hard-hit by the global economic recession, which would seem receptive to the opposition’s message of change. But she isn’t about to bow to the Democrats even on this.

“We’re a microcosm of the economy,” she said. But she is not prepared to cede the issue of unemployment to the Democrats. “Only we can do something about laid-off [temporary] workers. “The unions [which support the DJP] do nothing.”

Opinion polls indicate that the Japanese public is overwhelmingly focused on issues of social security, pensions, health care and job security. Foreign affairs, security (despite North Korea’s recent saber rattling) and constitutional reform barely show up in the polls.

The LDP began to go off the rails when the conservative wing, led by former premier Shinzo Abe, put most of its attention on rewriting the constitution to water down the pacifistic Article 9 while neglecting down home issues such as pensions. It paid a heavy price when the opposition seized control of the upper house in 2007 and still suffers from the perception that it ignores bread-and-butter issues.

The opposition DJP is almost giddy at the prospect of a huge electoral triumph at the end of August. Some are predicting that the party might win enough seats by itself to form a government without having to seek the support of minor parties. However, a little realism may be in order.

Koizumi’s greatest gift to his party was the huge bloc of seats it won in 2005. There are now 303 LDP members in the 480-seat House of Representatives, which determines the government. The alliance with the Komeito Party adds another 31 giving the coalition a secure two-thirds majority. The LDP could lose as many as 60 seats and still form a government.

Meanwhile, the Democrats currently hold 112 seats. In order to obtain a clear majority, it would have to more than double its representation in the Diet. No other major party in modern Japan has ever pulled off such a feat.

Nonetheless, wild swings are becoming the norm in Japanese politics. Koizumi’s landslide increased the LDP majority by more than 80 seats. A similar or even greater swing to the opposition this year seems probable, even if it doesn’t result in a clear majority.

A huge “floating” body of unattached voters means greater volatility in the election, and greater opportunity for the opposition. In the recent Kyodo News poll, 67 percent of the respondents said “no” to the question: “Is there a political party you usually support?

Asked what is the best thing that the Liberal Democratic Party has going for it in the coming election? Ms Katoyama said simply: ‘We still have forty days ahead”

No, No and Maybe

2009-07-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

For nearly 40 years the “Three Nos” regarding nuclear armaments has been a pillar of Japan’s foreign and defense policy. The Three Nos are, simply put, that Japan will never (1) possess, (2) manufacture nor (3) allow nuclear weapons to be brought into her territory.

The Three Nos were enunciated in 1971 by then prime minister Eisaku Sato and enshrined in a Diet (Japan’s parliament) resolution. This and his signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty were the reasons why Sato became the first Japanese awarded the Nobel Price for Peace in 1974

Every prime minister has reaffirmed the nonnuclear principles, but they are coming under considerable pressure because of the rise of a nuclear armed North Korea and China’s steadily modernizing armed forces, including building nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.

Last week Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DJP) indicated that his party might allow U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons to make port calls in Japan and pass through Japanese territorial waters without consulting Tokyo in advance.

Hatoyama said “Although Japan has maintained the three nonnuclear principles, I acknowledge that Japan has taken realistic response measures [in the past] regarding certain issues.” He was referring to a supposedly secret pact between Washington and Tokyo permitting nuclear weapons-laden ships to enter Japanese ports.

The Japanese press has been flogging this story heavily in recent weeks based on a former ranking foreign ministry administrative vice minister going on the record as stating that such a codicil to the 1960 security pact did exist. The government continues to deny its existence.

Nevertheless, it is was astonishing for the leader of a major political party, a man who looks increasingly likely to be Japan’s next prime minister, to speak so forthrightly about such a sensitive matter. This is so even if he did walk his comments back a little saying that “I did not say so” when asked if he intends to modify the three nonnuclear principles if his party takes over after the election scheduled for August 30.

“We cannot side step a reality we have to face up to. Once we assume power, we will fully discuss the issue with the U.S.” He said. Indeed, the two countries are not waiting for the new government to take over.

Last weekend, Kurt Campbell and Wallace Gregson visited Tokyo. They are respectively the new assistant secretaries for East Asian and Pacific Affairs for the state and defense departments in the Obama administration. They met with leaders of the government and opposition party.

The pair issued predictable denunciations of North Korea’s recent missile and nuclear bomb tests. “We’ve made it very clear that there will have to be consequences for the provocative steps that North Korea has taken,” said Campbell.

But the real purpose of the mission, besides reacquainting two new administration newcomers with Asian portfolios, was to discuss the nuclear umbrella, or as they prefer to call it “extended nuclear deterrence”. Campbell told the Nikkei newspaper in Japan that the two countries should hold regular discussions on America’s use of its nuclear deterrent to protect an Asian ally – a kind of nuclear umbrella forum.

There have been consultations and refinements of the “alliance” in the past, but it is fair to say that extended nuclear deterrence has not been on the agenda for a very long time, probably not since around 1970, when the issue of nuclear weapons on Okinawa was discussed in the context of its reversion to Japanese sovereignty in 1972.

As far as Japan and the United States are concerned, Northeast Asia has been a nuclear-free zone, ever since Okinawa reverted to Japan and came under the Three Nos and President George H.W, Bush ordered the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea and aboard naval warships.

Meanwhile, the strategic picture in the region has changed radically with the North Korean actions and the steady accumulation of Chinese capabilities. In the meantime, the nuclear umbrella has become something of an abstraction for most Japanese and Koreans, who see no evidence of its existence.

It gives conservative politicians in Japan a reason to play up Chinese/North Korean intentions while playing down U.S. capabilities and commitments while arguing for a more robust Japanese effort in its own self defense, including possibly going nuclear itself and abandoning the three nonnuclear principles.

So far, no prominent Japanese has gone quite that far, but there is plenty of talk about Japan acquiring a “first strike” ability against North Korean missile sites using conventional weapons such as cruise missiles, something not necessarily in U.S. interests and something that would certainly alarm South Korea.

One way to head that off would be to reintroduce some nuclear weapons back in the region either in South Korea or aboard US naval warships, such as Japan-based submarines equipped with nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missiles. Hatoyama seemed to be signaling to Washington that such a step would be okay with his government.

Such a move would obviously go against the craw of President Barack Obama, who would prefer to be seen as reducing nuclear stockpiles around the world, not re-introducing them were they have long been removed, but it may be necessary to maintain a semblance of deterrence in Northeast Asia.

Change Tokyo, Change Japan

2009-07-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

It is 6 a.m. in front of the railroad station in Musashi-Sakai, a western suburb of Tokyo, and Reiko Matsushita is already up and campaigning. She stands in front of the station entrance catching the commuters as they head for the trains to go to work.

For the next three hours, she will bow and repeat her name over and over again, while her campaign supporters hand out flyers to those who will take them. Most of the commuters walk past her, their heads held down, hurrying to catch their trains.

Matsushita, 38, is a first-term member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, the legislature of the capital, and is running for a second four-year term as a member of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DJP). Four years ago she defeated a longstanding member of the governing party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), for the seat, and she is fighting hard to retain it in a rematch.

Technically, the election to be decided on July 12 is a local election for the Tokyo legislature, but everyone knows that it is basically a warm-up match for the main event, a national and potentially historic general election that must be held by September when the current Diet’s (parliament) five-year term expires.

A recent poll indicated that 55 percent of the respondents in the Tokyo election will base their vote, not so much on the local issues but on their judgment of the national government and Prime Minister Taro Aso. The opposition hopes that a good showing in Tokyo will be the final push that allows it to displace the LDP in the first democratic change of government in modern Japanese history.

The Democrats have taken former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s winning slogan from the 2005 general election: “Change the LDP, change Japan” and turned it around. “Let’s change Tokyo and change Japan,” shouted DJP president Yukio Hatoyama at a downtown rally. With the stakes so high, both sides are pulling out the stops.

Seiji Maehara, a Diet member and vice-president of the DJP, certain to hold a major cabinet post if his party wins the next general election, joins Matsushita in front of the Musashi-Sakai railroad station to lend her support and urge the surging commuters to support his party in the Tokyo election.

Matsushita will spend the rest of the day roaming her district in a sound truck, repeating her name over and over on the loudspeaker, a grueling day of campaigning that will culminate in a rally in front of another railroad station, where she will be joined by another senior party leader, acting DJP president Naoto Kan.

His voice is raw from a full day of haranguing crowds of potential voters. It is 8 p.m. when he winds up, but he still has two more engagements at two more railroad stations. Kan, who holds a Tokyo Diet seat, has been assigned the task of assuring victory in the capital as a springboard to victory in the national election.

Kan was the only Tokyo DJP member to retain his Diet seat in the 2005 election debacle that saw the LDP capture 23 of Tokyo’s 25 single-member Diet seats, ousting Democrats. The party is hoping to regain 14-15 of those seats in the national election later this year, DJP leader Maehara said.

The LDP is working the political hustings heavily too. Prime Minister Aso put in an appearance in a rural distant corner of Tokyo before flying off to attend the G-8 Meeting in Italy. Tokyo’s governor, the famous nationalist Shintaro Ishihara, is also campaigning strenuously for his party the Liberal Democratic Party.

Ishihara’s job is not on the line in the election. Prefectural governors are directly elected in Japan, just like state governors in the U.S., and are not dependent on a majority in the legislature. Still a majority in the legislature is good to have, and Ishihara is fighting hard to keep it.

Currently, the LDP enjoys a 70-seat majority in alliance with another party in the 127-seat city assembly, while the DJP holds 34. The opposition is fielding 64 candidates, so if all were to win, a big if, it would give the DJP a one-vote majority. That may be a bridge too far, but polls show that the opposition party should increase its representation significantly.

Matsushita and her supporters hammer away at Ishihara for his support in moving the world-famous Tsukiji fish market from its traditional location in downtown Tokyo and his brainchild, the ShinGinko Tokyo (New Tokyo Bank), that has sucked up some JPY150 billion in public money.

The Democratic Party of Japan has been on a roll lately, having won a string of local victories, most recently the governor of Shizuoka prefecture south of Tokyo. The opposition party seems to have recovered fully from the political contributions scandal that forced their former leader Ichiro Ozawa to resign.

(Ozawa is one of the few prominent Japanese political figures who has not been seen campaigning in the Tokyo election, but then he is more focused on winning the party votes from rural, remote and distressed areas of Japan, places he has been visiting frequently).

After a brief uptick, Prime Minister Aso’s poll numbers have sunk again. The despair among LDP members, especially those who won marginal seats on Koizumi’s coattails in 2005, about their election prospects is palpable. Though it seems farfetched at this late date, there are still calls for Aso to resign or be replaced before the general election.

Some backbenchers have circulated a petition calling for another party presidential election before the general election to find a new leader. The petition is on hold during the Tokyo election, but could easily be revived if the party suffers a big defeat on July 12.

But for a party that has changed leaders three times since the last election, the idea of putting forward another face is not appealing, against what seems like a united opposition party sensing victory now within its grasp. But to retain the unpopular Aso is equally unpalatable. And time is rapidly running out.

No Longer a Laughing Matter

2009-07-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

When I worked for Asiaweek Magazine in Hong Kong back in the 1990s, we published a feature called the “50 Most Powerful People in Asia”. In the first edition we ranked Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej high on the list. He had earned that spot by defusing a potentially dangerous political stalemate after troops had fired on demonstrators in Bangkok.

When it came time to publish the second list the following year, we initially ranked the King much lower. There had evidently been no crisis to defuse in Thailand that year. Then we caught ourselves. We can’t demote the King!

If we kept the King at the same level as the previous year when he didn’t deserve it, we compromised the integrity of the list. If we moved him to a lower ranking we risked being accused of lese majeste (insulting the monarch), which might get our issue, or maybe even the entire publication, banned in Thailand. What to do?

Soon we hit upon a solution worthy of Solomon. We created a separate sidebar, called it “Asia’s Most Powerful Monarchs” and put the King of Thailand at the top. That was safe. No other monarch in Asia, indeed probably no other monarch the world, had as much prestige and subtle influence in his country’s affairs than King Bhumibol.

It made for an amusing story, something to pass along and chuckle about over a few drinks in the bar of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. But it might not be a good idea to do it around the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand these days. The club has been collectively accused of lese majeste, or at least the President Jonathan Head, Bangkok bureau chief of the BBC, and 12 other members of the FCCT board, including three Americans.

One Laksama Kornsilpa, a 57-year-old woman who works as a translator filed the complaint with the local police regarding a speech by Jakrabob Penkai. Like similar clubs all over Asia, the FCCT had invited Jakrabog, then a cabinet minister, to speak to the club. It later made a DVD of the speech to disseminate to members who had not been able to attend.

Laksama obtained a copy of the DVD and took offense at its contents, which was a rather rambling history of Thai kings over the past 700 year with some vague references to the “patronage system”. The speaker made no specific references to Thailand’s reigning monarch, his queen or the crown prince.

Never mind. In Thailand anyone can file a lese majeste complaint. The police are bound to follow up no matter how trivial or tangential the speech is to the monarch himself. The accuser saw the speech and the action by the FCCT as “acting in an organized fashion to undermine the credibility of the high institutions of Thailand.”

In making a direct assault on the foreign press Thailand seems to be going the way of Singapore in trying to punish outside publications. The Economist magazine’s Dec. 6-10, 2008, issue, for example, was banned for its frank reporting of the King. Probably no country, outside of China, spends more time and effort trawling the Internet to close down sites thought to be disrespectful.

The insidiousness of the threat posed by Thailand’s lese majeste laws comes less from any particular disrespect for the King himself. Indeed, much of the foreign reporting about King Bhumibol’s more than 60-year reign has been deservedly positive. The problem comes from the fact that various factions in Thailand long, grinding political struggle between supporters and opponents of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra use the law as a cudgel against opponents.

Say, for example, that the King gives a speech and describes the political situation in the country as a “mess,” as in fact he did so describe it a couple years back. So if you were to say that in your opinion it is not a mess, somebody can accuse you of lese majeste for contradicting and thus insulting the King.

Many prominent Thai politicians carry the added burden of defending multiple lese majeste accusations. Thai media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul, a prominent opponent of former premier and leader of numerous anti-Thaksin demonstrations, has more than 30 lese majeste charges hanging over him - not to mention a couple of criminal libel convictions.

Ironically, the King himself has spoken out against the abuse of lese majeste laws, saying in 2005 “that if you say the King cannot be criticized, that is to suggest that the King is not human.” But at 81 it may be that the King is too feeble to affect any changes. He has said very little, in public at least, about the recent political turmoil.

Not every lese majeste case involves freedom of speech. People can be accused of disrespect for failing to stand for the royal anthem that introduces movies. In 2007 a longtime Swiss resident of Chiang Mai named Oliver Jurer was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. His offense: defacing one of the countless portraits of the King with a can of spray paint.

King Bhumibol pardoned Jurer, as, in fact, he usually does for all foreigners and Thais convicted of lese majeste. But just the accusation means detention until a trail is convened, the public humiliation of being in prison garb and even shackles, the expense of lawyers, public approbation and finally expulsion from a country that the accused may have considered his home.

Even before the latest outrage, the world was beginning to take note of the abuse of lese majeste laws in Thailand and their effect on free speech. In March a delegation of prominent academics led by Noam Chomsky petitioned Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajiva to take steps to prevent future abuses.

The premier said he would look into the law and its application to ensure that it would not be abused by anyone. He said he would discuss the matter with police to ensure against frivolous or obviously politically-motivated abuses of the law, but nothing much came of it.

Perhaps the complaint against the FCCT adding to the extremely unfavorable international attention occasioned by such actions as the temporary closing of international airports in Bangkok that stranded thousands of businessmen and tourists last year, will bring global attention, and approbation, against this human rights abuse.

'Gimme the Damn Bomb!'

2009-06-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

In the movie Fat Man and Little Boy about the building of the atomic bomb, the late Paul Newman, playing Gen. Leslie Groves, administrator, of the Manhattan Project, vents frustration at the civilian pointy heads at Las Alamos who are challenging the rationale for the bomb in the spring of 1945.

“Just gimme the damn bomb!” he barks at Robert Oppenheimer, head of the team of scientists at the New Mexico ranch, who are designing the first workable bomb. It seems to me that this comment encapsulates at least two ideas that are germane to the problem of dealing with North Korea’s bid to become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state.

The first is that rationales for building such a weapon change over time. It should be remembered that the main motivation for the bomb, the reason why many of the scientists set aside their qualms about working on the world’s first weapon of mass destruction, was as a hedge against Nazi Germany getting one first.

By the beginning of 1945 it had become obvious that the Germany was not going to beat America to the bomb, indeed was on its last legs. Many people on the project began to question the need to proceed with its development. Their objections had certain logic to it, if the sole purpose was a hedge against German acquisition.

But by the time Germany surrendered in May the U.S. was tantalizingly close to having a working bomb and loath to give it up. That leads to the second proposition. It is very hard for any country that actually has a bomb or very close to having it to surrender it. Giving up a “program” that may or may not succeed is one thing but the bomb itself?
“Just gimme the damn bomb!”

The six-party talks, indeed negotiations stretching back to the Geneva Accords of 1994, have always been predicated on the proposition that North Korea’s nuclear program was basically a chip that could be bargained away for aid, diplomatic recognition, a peace treaty and integration into the international community, all things Pyongyang is believed to want.

The second testing of two small bombs, not to mention the parallel tests of multi-stage rockets, strongly suggests that, for whatever reason, North Korea’s underlying rationale for building a bomb has changed. What may have begun as a bargaining chip has become an end in itself. It may want all those good things, but it wants the bomb more.

I can envision my own movie where the North Korean generals bark at Kim Jong-il, something like this: “We’ve got the atomic bomb now, and you want to give it away? For an embassy? Are you crazy?” I don’t know whether North Korea’s generals speak to the Dear Leader in such tones. For that matter I don’t know if the Fat Man and Little Boy is precisely accurate as history, either. But I think it does speak to basic truths.
“Just gimme the damn bomb!”

If this is the case, is there any point to reconvene the six-party talks, assuming that Pyongyang agrees to join them? Is there anything meaningful to talk about? I would propose that they continue, but that nothing should be expected from them for a long time– simply mark time until events change, the new sanctions show some signs of working or the northern regime provides an opening.

The Obama administration has not yet formulated a strategy toward North Korea, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing now. I imagine that he came into office basically hoping to pursue the same bargaining strategy of his predecessors, but the unrelenting stream of invective backed by provocative actions from North Korea makes any kind of dialogue fruitless at this stage.

I’ve argued previously that the U.S. should consider reintroducing some nuclear weapons in South Korea or on aircraft carriers based in Japan that were withdrawn in the early 1990s in order to provide some tangible evidence that the “nuclear umbrella” that Obama endorsed in his recent meeting with South Korea’s President Lee Myung-ban really exists. Why not turn the tables on North Korea? Let them be the ones who want to negotiate a denuclearized Korean peninsula.

Kim Jong-il is said to be a big movie fan. Perhaps he is already contemplating a movie where he plays the role of Gorbachev to Obama’s Ronald Reagan, as the two sides meet in a summit to endorse a pact whereby Kim gives up his nuclear weapons, while Obama graciously agrees to withdraw U.S. weapons from the region – you know, the ones that aren’t there now.

Absurdist Cinema

2009-06-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

You have to wonder whether Hiroyuki Tanaka, better known as “Sabu”, was really the right director to bring Kakiji Kobayashi’s 1929 left-wing novel Kanikosen (Crab Canning Ship) back to the screen. The film version, to be released this month (June) is almost totally devoid of any serious political content. Sabu turns this proletarian novel into a black comedy - communism as camp.

Asked about this Sabu, responds in the best if-you-want-to-send-a-message-try-Western-Union- Hollywood style, telling a sneak preview audience that “first and foremost, movies have to be entertaining. I could have done a faithful adaptation, but it wouldn’t have spoken to the issues facing young people today,” he said.

Certainly, the new version of Kanikosen is entertaining, in parts, in a macabre kind of way. One of them is the scene where the canning factory crew tries to commit suicide en masse, which ends up as a comedy of errors. I haven’t been able to get my hands on the 1953 film version or an English translation of the novel, but I’d certainly bet that the scene sprung out of Sabu’s and his writer’s fertile imaginations.

So one could pose the question another way: Not whether Sabu is the best director for the material, but whether the story is the best material for Sabu. He is, after all, much better known for youthful chase movies and films starring punk rockers. Why would he even want to make a movie about a mutiny aboard a crab canning ship in the cold waters of the Sea of Okhotsk? The answer comes from a small inner voice that whispers: “because it was a best-seller, dummy.”

The original novel was suppressed and forgotten until a few years ago, when a few devoted fans began to push for the novel’s revival. In 2008 it turned into an improbable best-seller. By May the publisher, Shinchosha, had printed 200,000 copies; by the end of the year some 600,000 copies had made their way to the book stores. Several manga editions have been published and a documentary of novelist Kobayashi prepared and broadcast.

This phenomenon has been linked to the hard economic times and what many in the media see as a revival of the Japanese Communist Party. It might more accurately be seen an example of the Japanese media’s unsurpassable ability to promote virtually anything when it collectively decides to hone on to a topic.

The Japanese Communist Party has had some nice things to say about the new movie in its publications, although one has to wonder why. There is relatively little revolutionary content. True, the protagonist Asakawa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), wearing a strangely un-nautical full-length gray coat, goes around with a stick whacking workers from time to time, but little real sense oppression or exploitation comes through.

One assumes that the party would have been happier with propaganda value of the 1953 film version by director So Yamamura. This version draws heavily on the social realism manifested by the great Soviet directors such as Sergei Eisenstein’s famous story of the mutiny aboard the Battleship Potemkin.

The 1953 version was a product of Japanese cinema’s golden period of the 1950s. Although it won an award for cinematography, it has been much overshadowed by the other great films of the period such as Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, released that same year, and Akiro Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, released the following year.

But it is a long distance from the period of the late 1920s when the novel was written and even to the hard- scrabble years just after the war. This is an entirely new era, a time of anime, manga and video games. It may be that Sabu is pitch perfect in his understanding of the times and his audience, while being tone deaf to the material he is working with.

The young in Japan have been in a long and steady retreat from politics. Their activism peaked in the 1970s with demonstrations over the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and the opposition to the building of Narita Airport. The new Japanese proletariat is made up of the floating population of temporary workers known as freetas.

Yet, it hard to see how this movie would reawaken the political conscientiousness of the under-30s set as opposed to simply allowing them to enjoy its undeniable entertainment values. From a Marxist point of view the freetas are poor revolutionary material, too atomized and too wrapped up in their own troubles to develop proper class conscientiousness.

Although Sabu has ambitions to distribute Kanikosen internationally and he is a regular on the international film festival circuit, middle-aged gaijins like me are not exactly his target audience. Still, I would have preferred a more richly detailed period film set in the 1920s and 1930s.
This was a pregnant time for Japan, as the liberal spirit known as Taisho democracy was being snuffed out by the advance of militarism and fascism just as Kobayashi’s life was snuffed out in 1933 at the hands of the secret police. It is a period not well represented in Japanese film or any other media.

Such a film need not be just limited to the one novel. Kobayashi’s life and work provides much material, including his last novel, The Life of a Party Member, published after his death. It is set in a factory that has been ordered to switch to the production of gas masks to serve Japanese troops fighting on the mainland of China. Japanese cinema used to excel in such historical presentations, sometimes derisively referred to as “Samurai epics”. But it is not necessary that every samurai epic be about samurais.

Guantanamo Quandry

2009-06-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

If there is any prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who fits President Barack Obama’s definition of a detainee who cannot be effectively prosecuted but who is too dangerous to be let free, it is probably Hambali, also known as the “Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia.”

Scarcely known outside of Asia and among counterterrorism experts, the Indonesian-born jihadist was arrested in Thailand in 2003, held incommunicado for three years, possibly in Jordan, before being moved to the Cuban establishment in 2006 as one of 14 “high value” suspects transferred there.

On January 22 in one of his first acts as president Obama declared his intention to close Guantanamo by the end of this year. Most would be transferred to the mainland U.S. for trial, but Obama elaborated on this by explaining that there were some who might have to be detained indefinitely, even without trial.

Obama didn’t mention Hambali by name, but his case seems to embody all of the difficulties and contradictions of applying due process of law in what was once known as the “War on Terrorism.” Take the first part of the equation: Can Hambali be effectively prosecuted in the U.S.?

He is linked any number of despicable and violent crimes, ranging from the October, 2002, bombing of a tourist resort on the island of Bali, the bombings of the Australian Embassy and Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, the string of bombings of Christian churches in 2000 that killed 15 and injured a hundred.

But all of those crimes took place in Indonesia, involved Indonesians or other foreign casualties and did not strike directly at U.S. interests, making it harder to determine what American laws he broke. Perhaps something could be made of the fact that seven Americans were among the 202 that died in the Bali bombings or that Hambali lent material support to a terror group.

Take the other side of the equation, that he is undeniably an enemy of the U.S. by virtue of his reputedly close association with Osama bin Laden. Hambali is a long-time jihadist, a man who cut his teeth supporting the jihad against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. His time there even predates Osama bin Laden’s.

He is often described as Osama bin Laden’s main representative in Southeast Asia. Indeed, he once sat on Osama’s shura, or council, the only non-Arab on the council. He is supposed to have served as “operations officer” for the Jemaah Islamyia (JI), thought to be behind much of the terror and sectarian violence that has taken place in Indonesia.

So the obvious solution to the dilemma would be to extradite Hambali back to Indonesia where he could stand trial on various terrorism charges, but that might not be so easy.

In the early days of his captivity, Jakarta did seem keen to get their hands on him. The Indonesians were irritated, too, that the administration of George W. Bush refused to allow Indonesian authorities to interview Hambali in captivity, which is said to have hampered the prosecution of some of the Bali bombing suspects. Only recently has Obama relaxed that prohibition, allowing some members of Indonesia’s crack Detachment 88 anti-terrorism unit to interrogate Hambali in his Guantanamo cell.

As recently as last February, during a visit to Washington, Indonesian Vice President Josef Kalla, publically asked that Hambali be returned to Indonesia for trial. However, there is good reason to believe that Jakarta actually prefers that he remain in U.S. custody.

In February, soon after the closure announcement, two Indonesian officials reportedly flew to Washington to meet with counterparts in the State Department and FBI. They requested that the U.S. continue to detain Hambali, presumably on the mainland, after Guantanamo closes.

They fear that his return to Indonesia would turn him into an instant celebrity and “re-energize” the jihadist movement in the country, which has been weakened considerably by the government’s successful anti-terrorism measures in recent years. The U.S. said it had no intention of releasing Hambali to Indonesia or any other country.

One concern that Washington harbors is that the authorities would not aggressively prosecute or punish Hambali if he were to stand trial in Indonesia. Last November Jakarta executed three men by firing squad convicted of bombing the tourist spot in Bali. It was said to show considerable backbone considering the three men’s potential for martyrdom.

On the other hand, other Indonesians more indirectly connected with the bombings received much lighter sentences. Indeed, Jakarta has shown a reluctance to seriously punish with long sentences people who don’t actually make and plant the bombs.

The obvious example is Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the so-called “spiritual head” of JI, who openly calls for a Muslim caliphate across Southeast Asia and was convicted of advocating the overthrow of the government but not the bombings himself. He is now free, having served a light sentence, made lighter by traditional Independence Day remissions.

It is felt that Hambali might receive the same cautious treatment, in part because of his prominence and because of the difficulty of proving that he was directly connected with the various bombings. Being the “operations officer” of JI would not necessarily cut it as the jihadist organization is legal in Indonesia.

The one plot where Jakarta might get a conviction is the church bombings of 2000, said Indonesian counterterrorism expert Ken Conboy. “And he is not likely to get a very long sentence for that,” he added. Unlike neighboring Singapore or Malaysia, and to its credit, Indonesia does not have an Internal Security Act that provides for indefinite detention without trial.

Maybe Cambodia would be willing to take Hambali off Washington’s hands. The jihadist has already been convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 for plotting to bomb the British Embassy in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately, there is no extradition treaty between Cambodia and the United States.

America's North Korea Options

2009-05-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

It is often said in response to North Korea’s provocations, including its most recent testing of an atomic bomb, that the U.S. has no realistic military options. It is always assumed that that the only military option is to bomb the North’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and elsewhere.

Such action is rightly dismissed as unthinkable because of the threat of North Korean retaliation against Seoul, which, being in artillery range, not to mention missile range, is very exposed. Yet there are other military options that would not put Seoul in danger. To understand, roll back the clock.

The time is 1970. This writer is a young Air Force lieutenant assigned to the 347th Tactical Fighter Wing at Yokota Air Base Japan, west of Tokyo. The 347th is equipped with F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers. One of our squadrons is always deployed to Osan Air Base south of Seoul, South Korea, where it stands nuclear alert.

By nuclear alert I mean that the aircraft are sitting on the tarmac with their engines idling, a pilot in the cockpit and a thermonuclear weapon in the bomb bay ready to take off at a moment’s notice and drop that bomb on . . . .well, better left unsaid even at this date. Suffice it to say that the Cold War was at its height.

But the 347th wasn’t alone. Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, then under U.S. administration, was bristling with atomic weapons. U.S. Navy aircraft carriers assigned to the 7th Fleet routinely carried nuclear weapons into Japan home ports, Tokyo turning a blind eye despite its official policy not to allow nuclear weapons into the country.

Soon after I left the air force, the 347th was disbanded and not replaced. Yokota is still a big American base (made even bigger by closure of other bases in the Tokyo area), but is used now mostly as a stopover and transit point for Asia, a kind of military version of the civilian Narita International Airport.

Okinawa was returned to Japanese jurisdiction in 1972 and nuclear weapons were withdrawn in compliance with Japanese policy not to allow such weapons on its soil. President George H.W. Bush removed nuclear weapons from South Korea, and the carriers no longer routinely carry nuclear bombs. As far as the U.S. and its allies are concerned, Northeast Asia is a nuclear-free zone.

This is not to say there are no assets in the region. The U.S. Air Force bases fighter-bomber at Misawa in northern Japan and in Korea. The 7th Fleet still operates from ports in Japan. But there are (to my knowledge anyway) no nuclear weapons deployed anywhere in the region.

Japan and South Korea still come under the protection of the “nuclear umbrella”, which is America’s promise to defend the two countries, with its own nuclear arsenal if necessary. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Taro Aso reportedly reaffirmed the viability of the umbrella over the phone.

That’s all well and good, but the nuclear umbrella is becoming something of an abstraction to most Japanese and South Koreans. It is not just the question of whether or not America really would risk its own cities by coming to Japan’s aid. That’s an old story.

The problem is that there is there is no longer any tangible evidence of the nuclear umbrella in Northeast Asia, while there is plenty of tangible evidence of another nuclear equipped nation in the neighborhood bragging about its growing capabilities.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, Michael Schiffer, happened to be in Tokyo during the test to discuss what kind of advanced fighter planes to sell to Japan. He told the Nikkei newspaper: “We are ready talk with the Japanese government about all matters” This includes ways to strengthen the nuclear deterrence, he said. He did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, continued provocations from North Korea give conservatives in Japan ammunition to play up the North Korean threat while playing down U.S. capabilities, making it seem as if Japan has no choice but to look out for its own defense, including possibly acquiring nuclear weapons for itself.

Nobody doubts that Japan has sufficient nuclear materials on hand to build hundreds, maybe thousands of atomic bombs if it wanted to. In May, less than one week before the bomb test, two ships docked in Japan and unloaded 1.7 tons of plutonium from Europe. It was mixed with uranium to fuel civilian nuclear power plants.

So far during this episode, no prominent Japanese has called on Japan to acquire nuclear weapons, but there is plenty of discussion about Japan acquiring a “first strike” capability against North Korean missile launching sites with conventional weapons. It would require combining and intelligence-gathering orbiting satellite with cruise missiles. It is not just talk; it likely to become official policy

So one military option would be for the U.S. to reintroduce nuclear weapons at some of its bases in South Korea or place them back on navy fleet aircraft carriers, including those based at Japanese ports. There would be no need to broadcast the action. Japanese anti-nuclear groups can be counted on to get wind of the change, and their predictable protests at the arrival of nuclear-armed carriers at Sasebo or Yokosuka would do the broadcasting for us.

Interestingly, the day after the North Korean test, the Council on Foreign Relations released a 125-page report entitled: “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy” responding to Obama’s recent call for a nuclear-free world by urging the Obama administration to “reaffirm U.S. commitment to security assurances, including extended nuclear deterrence to allies”.

Reintroducing nuclear weapons into South Korea or Japan (on aircraft carriers), would go against the grain for President Barack Obama, who would rather been seen as helping to reduce the world’s inventory, not putting them back where they had been removed.

But it is one effective military response that would require no massive troop deployments, would not deplete already strained manpower in Iraq or Afghanistan or cost a fortune in dubious anti-missile development. It simply means moving some weapons from one place of storage in the U.S. to a new place. That’s assuming we still have them. We do, don’t we?

Who Needs a Peace Treaty?

2009-05-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

Japan and Russia have never signed a peace treaty formally ending the brief hostilities in the waning days of World War II. Russia benefitted from its entry into the war, obtaining the southern half of Sakhalin Island and the long chain of islands known as the Kurils.

That has not stopped the two countries acting the way normal, friendly countries act. Both countries exchange ambassadors, carry on normal trade and exchange visits. Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso met with Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev on Sakhalin Island last November to inaugurate a natural gas deal.

Vladimir Putin made two state visits to Japan during the eight years he served as Russia’s president, and, of course, he recently revisited Japan in his new incarnation as prime minister. It was a very business-like and productive two-day trip, resulting in the signing of four trade agreements, including landmark nuclear power agreement.

Since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Japanese-Russian relationship has undergone three distinct phases. At first there was a brief euphoria as Moscow eagerly anticipated substantial Japanese investment in the country, especially in Siberia and the Russian Far East.

When that did not materialize, the two countries tended to lose interest in each other and that trend continued as revenues from oil and natural gas made it wealthier in the 2000s.. Under ex-president Putin the Russians began to develop and exploit their own natural resources more effectively and didn’t need Japan any more.

But lately that the Russians are becoming worried about overdependence on natural resources and concerned about weak infrastructure and lagging technology, they have rediscovered Japan. They know that Tokyo is not just an economic powerhouse but a technology powerhouse which can help Russia transform itself into a true industrialized nation.

From Japan’s point of view, as Russia becomes richer from natural resources, it becomes an ever bigger market for Japanese goods, services and technology. The value of bilateral trade grew five-fold in the past five years, from about $6 billion in 2003 to $30 billion in 2008 Japan is now Russia’s its third largest trading partner, after Germany and China.

That change of heart is best exemplified by the landmark nuclear power Agreement that the two sides signed during Putin’s visit to Tokyo May 11-12. Japan did not need an agreement simply to exploit Russia’s uranium resources. Indeed, Japanese companies are already involved in developing uranium mines in Siberia.

Rather the agreement allows for more technical transfer, especially Toshiba’s expertise in constructing nuclear power plants enhanced through its acquisition of Westinghouse. Toshiba has already sold off part of Westinghouse to Kazakhstan to cement its relationships there. Will they be tempted to sell a part to Russia’s new nuclear consortium, Atomenergoprom too?

So if the economic relationship is going so swimmingly, why bother about signing a treaty to end a war that has been over for more than 60 years? The short answer is the Kurile Islands, or, as the Japanese call them, the Russian-occupied Northern Territories. Over the years Japan has dug in over the proposition that all four of the disputed islands must be returned to Japan; Russia agrees to return two..

One reason is that the Japanese media obsesses with the issue. Even before he left Moscow, Putin had to deny that there would be any breakthrough on the touchy issue during his short visit to Japan. And while Aso may have brought it up in a pro forma way, it was never in the cards that he would seriously discuss a compromise during this trip.

In the unique “tandem administration” that Putin shares with his one-time protégé, Putin’s portfolio involves nuts and bolts trade issues. Matters that concern sovereignty belong to the president. The next time that Aso will have to bring the matter up will be on the sidelines of the G-8 summit meeting in July.

There is a school of thought that the whole issue should be stashed firmly in the back of the shelf and left there. After all, it is not apparently hampering in any obvious way he growing trade relationship. Best to treat it as “something left over from history,” as the Chinese used to describe Hong Kong under the British.

But it should be recalled that the Chinese eventually insisted that the sovereignty of Hong Kong be settled. Prof. Shigeki Hakamada, a Russia expert at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, notes that over the years large numbers of Japanese continue express mistrust of Russia, which hampers full development of trade and other exchanges.

“It is fed by the Northern Territory issue,” he says.

That is no doubt true, although much of the mistrust may also stem from Russia’s opportunistic last-minute entry into the World War II, its delay in returning prisoners of war captured in Manchuria and in general antagonisms left over from the Cold War.

Tokyo insists that all four of the disputed islands must be returned before it will sign a peace treaty, while Moscow is willing to concede the two southern-most. Superficially, that seems like a fair compromise, except that the two southern islands, Shikotan and the Habomai, constitute less than 10 percent of the four islands’ total land mass.

Various other compromises have been proposed but not formally placed on the table. The most recent, called the “3.5” solution would grant Japan three islands and half of the larger of the four, Kunashiri. Another possible action would be to declare the islands officially Japanese territory but under Russian administration.

It remains to be seen if Prime Minister Aso will put any compromise proposals informally to the Russian president when they meet at the G-8 meeting, although, at best, they would be only preliminary options to begin serious negotiations leading to a summit and presumably grand treaty signing ceremony in Tokyo.

Perhaps, but I wouldn’t count on much coming it. Despite it commanding majority in the Diet, the Aso government is weak and may be replaced in a few months by the opposition. Right-wing nationalism remains strong – Aso was even criticized for going to Sakhalin Island for the ceremony marking the first shipments of natural gas to Japan.

Meanwhile, Russia is stymied by its own rising nationalism, a shaky economy and the unique “Siamese Twins” relationship of Medvedev and Putin. So a peace treaty is still illusive, but then with a $30 billion in two-way trade who needs a treaty?

The Agent of Change

2009-05-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

Ichiro Ozawa, who announced his resignation as leader of Japan’s main opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan (DJP), was always a strange figure to be an agent of change. He had no special charisma, was reputedly a poor speaker and not even well liked in his party and the public at large.

He espoused no particular radical views. Indeed, on most topics he was basically conservative. His book Blue Print for New Japan expresses mostly conventional conservative views about the future of Japan as a “normal nation”, which is usually nationalist code for jettisoning the country’s pacifistic constitution.

He was a protégé of ex-prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, Mister “money politics” himself”, who often personified what critics felt was wrong about Japanese politics, and it didn’t seem so out of character when last March his secretary, Takanori Okuda, was indicted for allegedly accepting illegal campaign contributions.

When Ozawa does speak, he often speaks in riddles. Earlier this year he casually suggested that Japan could depend solely on the U.S. Seventh fleet for protection, presumably eliminating the need for any other American bases. He never elaborated on this, and it gave the LDP a small opening to criticize him, until the scandal of Okuda’s arrest gave them a much bigger cudgel.

He does not seem to have been motivated by the pursuit of personal power – at least not in a conventional sense. As secretary-general of the governing party 20 years ago, it is almost inconceivable that he would not have taken a turn as an LDP prime minister, becoming yet another quickly forgotten leader, like Toshiki Kaifu.

But for more than 20 years Ozawa has had one fixed idea, one overriding goal, and that is to change the way politics works in Japan. By that he meant reducing the inordinate power vested in the civil service, a policy in which he finds wide spread support not only in his party but with the public at large.

Another ideal was to end Japan’s status as virtually the only one-party democracy in the developed world, the one democracy that has never done what India has done, what Taiwan has done, what South Korea has done - that is, to throw the rascals out. He wanted Japan to become a normal democracy where parties alternate in and out of power.

The irony is that to accomplish these goals, he used mostly behind-the-scenes parliamentary maneuvers. Ozawa was the consummate back-room boy. In 1993 he fomented a vote of no confidence in the government of former prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa that led to a very short non-LDP government..

What followed were several years of confusion as a dozen new parties rose or changed their names or platforms. The political opposition was like an unstable radioactive atom with a short half life throwing off members like so many free-flying electrons.

Finally, the opposition settled under the rubric of the Democratic Party of Japan in 1996. In the decade that followed it has turned itself into a Western-style opposition party, even to naming a shadow cabinet. It worked out policies and an organization toward that day when it would have a decent shot at taking over the reins of government.

That chance came from Ozawa’s great triumph came in July, 2007, when he helped the DJP to a major victory in the election for the House of Councilors, the upper house in Japan’s bicameral parliament. He has used this majority in that body to frustrate the last two LDP premiers, especially Yasuo Fukuda, who resigned last September.

That victory, plus the stumbling of Fukuda’ successor as prime minister, Taro Aso, encouraged the opposition to believe that it had a fair chance to repeat the success when en election is held for the more powerful House of Representatives, or lower house. An election must be held by autumn, when the Diet’s term expires.

That prospect, of course, dimmed considerably when news broke of the arrest of Ozawa’s secretary in March. Ozawa held on stubbornly in the face of consistent opinion polls that showed the public overwhelmingly opposed to his staying on as leader.

That decision was unpopular with the party’s leadership, which never came out in full-throated support of their embattled leader. But then Ozawa never was very popular, or very well trusted, among them, He was not one of the DJP’s original founders. He brought the tiny Liberal Party that he then headed over to the DJP only after merger talks with the LDP failed.

Now the party must choose a new leader and hope that it is not too late to undo the damage caused in the past two months (which have seen Aso’s popularity slowly improve). Yet most of the DJP party leaders look like pigmies alongside Ozawa, and many of them carry their own baggage.

The party has scheduled a vote on Saturday (May 16) to choose between two former party leaders, Katsuya Okada and Yukio Hatoyama. Perhaps it is superstition, but I would be reluctant to choose the man, Okada, who presided over the DPJ’s biggest election debacle in 2005. As for Hatoyama, one could be snarky and say he has at least one of the qualifications for leadership these days – he is another grandson of a former PM.

The opposition still has a major mountain to climb whenever the election, because of the LDP’s huge electoral margin. The governing party could lose as many as 60 seats in the 480-seat lower house and still have a majority to form a government. (Although it would no longer have the supermajority needed to override upper house votes.)

So, if the opposition does pull off a miracle and win the next general election, it won’t be because the Japanese turned to a messianic figure of “hope”. It won’t be because the public is especially attracted to the opposition’s program. No, if the opposition wins the next election, it will be because, in Confucian terms, the long-ruling LDP has lost the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule.