If You Think China Has a Problem with Japan…

On August 12, Genron NPO, a respectable Japanese advocacy thinktank, and the China Daily group released its annual report on its joint opinion poll on the attitudes of the two nations toward each other. 55.9% of the Chinese responders were unfavorably disposed toward Japan. Not good. But 72% of the Japanese responders felt the same way toward China. Worse. For the Chinese, it’s essentially about the past. Specifically, of the unfavorably disposed, 69.9% chose the war as the reason while 53.4% found that the Japanese didn’t have the correct understanding of the war of invasion. For the Japanese, it’s the here and now. 71.7% chose the Chinese government’s improper response to food safety problems and the like, 40.4% chose China’s selfishness in securing resources, energy and food, and 21.7% chose China’s military buildup.

Does either side make sense? Depends on what you mean by sense, and then only partly, but I’ll leave that question for another occasion. Many Western pundits like to say that Asia (which is actually sloppy shorthand for China and South Korea) will never fully accept Japan unless—you know the rest of the mantra. My point is that it works both ways. And you do want to know what the rest of the Asia nations think as well.


Incidentally, this is by no means a condemnation of China or its people. I suspect that the proportion of the Chinese people who do not trust its government’s response to food safety and other issues that negatively impact their daily lives is higher than 71.1%. China does tend to turn a blind eye to nuclear proliferation and human rights concerns when it comes to securing resources, but that must be understood in the context of a late market entry with 1.3 billion people to look after. And China has been careful to avoid border incidents around the Senkaku Islands and it has avoided commercial exploitation on the Japanese side on the median line in the East China Sea. China is essentially a status quo power. But China’s size means that its natural growth by itself changes the status quo. So what could be normal arm-flexing by the military, for instance, sets off alarms elsewhere. (Seriously, who cares if Singapore buys F35s?)

Damien Ma Interviews James Fallows

Damien Ma, a Eurasia Group analyst, interviews James Fallows on China Today. Fallows is one of the most thoughtful and graceful bloggers that I follow. (My lists are woefully out of date; I’ll get around to fixing that one of these days.) For those of you who live in the Tri-State area, Damien* is also quite a charmer, and unattached, if I remember correctly.

Incidentally, I agree with most if not all of the arguments being made there.

* Damien is also one of the regulars at Rucker Park, where he is known as DunkMaSter D, and The Ragin’ Asian. True story.

Nakasone, LDP Elders, etc., etc…

My dialogue with Mark the Techie continues:

Why do you like Nakasone? And what do you think of his son, Hirofumi?

The elder Nakasone had—still has—a clear vision of his objectives as a statesman and held to it as best he could throughout his political life. For him, the political game was secondary. He understood the need to set his priorities accordingly, as can be seen from his handling of the Yasukuni controversy. He matched this purposeful approach with an eloquence that is sorely missing otherwise from post-WW II politics in Japan. He also put his personal stamp on administrative reform. He was a worthy representative of the LDP at the high watermark of the 1955 regime. His son appears to be an amicable, inoffensive representative of the more conservative elements of the LDP, nothing more, nothing less. He’s the son of a Prime Minister, yet has spent all his political life in the Upper House; go figure. I’d love to have him as a neighbor though.

In your original post, you seem to discount the power of the faction heads. But in your first reply, you claim that many younger politicians obey their elders. Who are these elders that have control of the younger politicians?

I haven’t done a good job of explaining myself, have I? Let me take another crack at this theme.

I am sorely disappointed with the genteel fifty-somethings who have failed to step up in the post-Koizumi years and instead allowed their elders to play the political game with the Prime Minister’s chair and senior party posts. (Remember that the generally untested Abe essentially had the Prime Minister’s job dropped in his lap by Koizumi.) Don’t they understand that politics is a blood sport? Yoshimi Watanabe id leave the LDP, but his new movement (with Kenji Eda) is unlikely to emerge as significant focal point in any post-electoral search for realignment. Pockets of youthful dissidence do flare up as the party leadership lurches from one crisis to another, but ultimately come to naught as their elders preach unity, leaving the impression of aimlessness and disarray in the face of pending disaster. The junior varsity for the opposition has an excuse; Ozawa, Hatoyama, and Kan are, after all, the founding fathers of the DPJ and its predecessors. Besides, Okada and—even more significantly—Maehara have taken their turns.

Faction heads and their deputies are not totally powerless, insofar as parliamentarians continue to see value in their faction membership. But Yoshiro Mori appears to maintain substantial influence over his faction although it has been some years since he yielded formal leadership. Within the same faction and possibly beyond, Yoshinao Nakagawa has emerged as a focal point for diehard reformists, precipitating a bitter intra-faction schism.

By the way, I find it curious that you separate foreign policy from economic policy. Based on the success of Japan during the post war period, I'd say a successful economic policy is the most integral part of a successful foreign policy. After the Iraq war, and after nearly a decade of a botched reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, it seems funny for an ex-MITI bureaucrat to split foreign policy and economic policy like that.

If your point is that a strong domestic economy is essential to achieving ambitious foreign policy goals, I can’t agree with you more.

Globalization? Is that what it's called? Interesting. But for the West, I think another word is more applicable. I think it's called de-globalization. Think of Gordon Brown and his "British jobs for British workers" spiel. Or think of Sarkozy and his admonition against exporting jobs to eastern Europe. Or think of the Buy American provision. But most importantly, think of GE. Nearly three decades ago, Jack Welch unleashed his shareholder value ideology. Good for shareholders. Not good for the current account. About a week ago, Jeff Immelt said the U.S. had outsourced too much, and needed to have a stronger manufacturing base. Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?

The economic downturn has created a backlash. Let’s see what happens other than Buy American provisions in Obama’s economic package (which the other OECD member countries are opposing) that goes beyond rhetoric. For example, will Sarkozy propose limitations on the free movement of labor and capital within the EU? Suspend Poland’s membership?

I'm sure Japan's continued support for the IMF gives some relief to the U.S. and Europe, but I would note that since the crisis began, it seems like Japan has been most active through the institutions it controls - the ADB, JBIC, etc.
Japan was the first to extend a substantial amount of money to the IMF during the current crisis. JBIC is basically the lender of last resorts for Japanese exports and foreign investment. It’s going into action as part of the government-sponsored emergency financing efforts. Nothing unusual in that. I don’t know what we’re doing with regard to ADB right now, but I doubt there’s anything new there as well.

I don't know what happened in Australia for most of the 20th century and I don't really see why Australia's switch to the Asian Football Federation is particularly important. On the other hand, I would note that Kevin Rudd seems to be a big advocate for this Asia-Pacific thingy. I wonder why? Also, I believe his budget calls for buying lots of military equipment for defense against China. Presumably, he will buy this equipment from the U.S. In addition, Australia continues to pester Japan on whaling. Furthermore, it recently killed the Rio Tinto deal with Chinalco. Throughout that process, I heard many voices in Australia who expressed concern about Chinese investment. Frankly, his recent actions have made me wonder if Kevin Rudd's professed affection for China was more a stunt to attempt to panic Japan - a stunt that backfired because Japan itself wants to get closer to China.

In 1972 Gough Whitlam came to power and started the process that transformed Australia, which till then had drawn a neat racial parallel with the far more malignant regime in South Africa. Essentially, White Australia decided to become Asia(-Pacific) Australia. Australia’s switch to the Asian Football Federation is a cultural symbol of this transformation.

As for relations with China, remember that when Rudd came to power, China was still the new black. I don’t think it had anything to do with Japan, a mature market as far as Australia’s natural resources and agricultural industry were concerned. But it’s easy to get worked up over natural resources when they’re still in the ground. I think that’s silly—unlike factories, no one can dismantle a mine and cart it off out of your national jurisdiction—but that’s the way the world works. In any case, China national champions and state investment vehicles, unlike say Norwegian or Qatar sovereign wealth funds, are more likely to follow the dictates of non-commercial interests. Connect this to the not unrelated authoritarian nature of China’s political regime and more or less inchoate fears about rising Chinese dominance, and I can understand where the public outcry was coming from.

I don’t know what exactly triggered the perceived shift in Australia’s defense posture. Maybe the strategic implications of a growing Chinese blue-water navy pushed the Australia’s national security establishment past the tipping point. I happen to think that the threat is greatly overestimated, but I can see how things might look quite different from a Southeast Asia/South Pacific perspective. I’ll believe it when I see an Australian aircraft carrier.

The “research” whaling issue, if I understand it correctly, addressed a highly emotive concern of a particular Labor Party constituency. I believe that the Rudd administration has become considerably more subdued since the kangaroo slaughter controversy—total nonsense in my view, but I don’t have a vote on this.

I agree that the U.S. is becoming less white, though I think the financial crisis could alter that trend somewhat. You say this will have powerful cultural and social implications. What are they? What changes will result? I am very interested in hearing what you have to say on this issue.

Note that I wrote in the present tense. There’s a natural progression from blackface vaudeville routines to the Jack Benny Show to I Spy to Eddie Murphy. Then there’s the greatly expanded role of Hispanics in pop music. These are just a couple of examples of profound changes in U.S. popular culture. (And what high culture exists that was once not popular?) Social change: public acceptance of mixed race couples. Basically, cultural and social barriers of all sorts are coming down in a browning of America.

Since America is by far the greatest post-WW II exporter of cultural and social constructs, this change affects the rest of the world—a world where Al Qaeda uses rap video to recruit terrorists. In a thousand years, unless humanity fcuks up royally (there’s a not insignificant chance of that happening), they’ll all be subscribing to variations of a global culture using variations of a language vaguely resembling English—and it’ll be America’s fault.

This Chinese Protest against Overseas Media Accounts of the “Underage” Gymnast Rings False—in a Most Truthful Way

According to China blogger John Kennedy, “[f]amous Chinese sports writer and Bullog blogger Wang Xiaoshan has posted a dramatically-titled piece, ‘Fake news kills', in which he tries his best to knock down the various official Chinese sources being used to substantiate He [Kexing]'s underage claim, and makes an earnest (?) plea to overseas media to consider the harm done to those stuck in the crosshairs.”

The question mark is worth at least a hundred words, since Mr. Wang’s piece doesn’t really make sense, at least not as an attempt to refute the sources being cited in US media accounts on doubts about the eligibility of the Chinese gymnast. Mr. Wang. It does not produce any evidence to refute the Chinese media reports and All it does is claim that a) the Chinese media lie and b) He Kexing denied that she was underage. Then, near the end of the article, Mr. Wang suddenly introduces a totally unconnected anecdote about rampant cheating in China’s version of national college aptitude exams.

The true effect of Mr. Wang’s article, then, is an indictment of the rampant corruption in government (the education officialdom). I suspect that his indictment—probably true—of a civil society institution (the Chinese media) and his plea—a transparently ineffective one—towards the foreign media are ruses aimed at diverting the attention of official censors. Such camouflage is common in authoritarian regimes. I first noticed this in pre-1945 Japanese poetry. The Chinese intelligentsia of course has been practicing the art for thousands of years.

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Incidentally, I am now waiting for a certain gentleman to claim in a certain public forum that the foreign media have no idea what’s really going on here since they don’t know the Chinese language like he does and that this is no worse than what Japan is doing anyway. What are the odds on that happening do you—yes, I’m talking to you—think?

Open Season on the Beijing Olympics: A Morning-After Quickie

Thomas Boswell sees the choice of “Lopez Lomong, one of the ‘Lost Boys’ of Sudan who is a member of Team Darfur, to carry their colors” as “a far-from-subtle commentary on China's dismal record on human rights at home and abroad.”

Mr. Boswell sympathizes with the US athletes who made the choice, yet closes the article with the reserve and sense of balance that makes him a rarity among sports writers, if not all journalists:

In the months of prelude to these Games, America has, through its protesters, its feisty press and even its choice of flag bearer, presumed to judge China, or at least its government. And with cause, no doubt.

However, now that the Olympic flame has been lit and the smoggy Beijing sky streaked with joyous rockets, perhaps that emphasis can start to shift. As this night's spectacle reminds us, there's 5,000 years of culture here to learn and 1.3 billion people whose vast progress deserves respect.

Okay, maybe the ending is a little weak. But how many sportswriters or food critics can pull this off?

The Japanese media missed the political message on Darfur, but caught the more significant one, this time from the Chinese side, in the surprise choice of Li Ning, the Gold-medalist-turned-entrepreneur (think, Michael Jordan literally owning Nike) to light the Olympic fire at the opening ceremonies. Li Ning is one of 18 million Zhuangs, the largest minority ethnic group among the 1.3 billion Chinese. This reminds me of Jin Yong’s wuxia sagas, where so many of the heroes and their friends have non-Han backgrounds yet fight for China, sometimes against their own kinfolk. The Western media seems to have completely missed this one—so far.

The Japanese delegation sent their own message of Care-Bear love with their choice of Ai Fukuhara, the table tennis player, as flag bearer. Ms. Fukuhara is the overwhelmingly most popular Japanese athlete in China, partly because she is cute as a button, as your grandparents used to say, but also because she played two years in the top pro league in China and speaks Chinese very fluently.

But that’s public diplomacy. The real political exchange came in Prime Minister Fukuda’s meetings with President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Mr. Fukuda brought up the Chinese dumplings with both Chinese leaders, while he reserved the beatings that two Japanese journalists received at the hands of the Chinese security police in Xinjiang at the site of the terrorist attack that killed 16 policemen.

And that’s only the beginning. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen so much political coverage during any of the past Olympics. In today’s morning Yomiuri, there are approximately five full pages on and around the Olympics outside of the sports pages. The opening ceremonies take up a third of the front page featuring a large photo of the Japanese delegation—advertisements and the masthead take up half; the remainder is shared by Mr. Fukuda’s meetings with his Chinese counterparts and the battle between Georgian and Russian forces in South Ossetia. The national team takes up two-thirds of the penultimate page, where the best human interest stories (murders, etc.) usually wind up, ads taking up most of the remainder except for an Olympics-related airliner bomb threat in Japan—and a crappy cartoon. Otherwise, the Yomiuri carries stories that have at least some element of criticism; ethnic minorities (one headline reads “Tibet ‘We Can’t Welcome Olympics’ チベット「五輪歓迎できぬ」 ), political repression (“’Ceremony of Peace under a Dictatorship 独裁下の「平和の祭典」” —yes, that’s the real headline), R-E-S-P-E-C-T (“The Greatest Olympics Diplomacy in History 史上最大の五輪外交”—yes, bigger than… 1936… kidding), Security threats and food contamination (“Special Menus for Both Food and Security 食事も警備も特別メニュー”), authoritarian regime on the run (“Controls Eroding, Hu Regime Fearful ほころぶ統制、恐れる胡政権”), slagging Europe (“‘Gold Medal for Hypocrisy’ 「偽善の金メダル」”—to flip-flopping Sarkozy for going to the opening ceremonies). I could go on, but you get the idea.

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I may have more to say later, but only if the Nadeshiko Japan, hanging on by their cleats after barely tying their opening soccer match against unheralded New Zealand, kick Yanqui ass this afternoon.

The men’s soccer team just about bombed out before the opening ceremonies by losing to the U.S. side, so the big story there was Tadanari Lee, a forward who subbed in at 64 minutes and didn't score. His human interest angle? Mr. Lee is a third-generation Korean in Japan who became a Japanese citizen last year to hopefully play on the Japanese national teams. (He hadn’t enjoyed his experience when South Korea called him up for an U-19 training camp.) He professes genuine love for both nations, a story that Shinzo Abe would have loved, had he remained Prime Minister.

China Dumps Gold Medalists from Olympics “for Political Reasons”

Actually, China Dumps Gold Medalists from Olympics “for Political Reasons” is just the headline from the Daily Telegraph report. DT starts hedging immediately with the lead, where it inserts “allegedly”.

Read on, and you find that, aside from citing a China Daily article that purportedly alleged that “politics had played a part”, the article mentions only one case that remote suggests a non-athletic reason for exclusion, where a gold medalist diver was not called back to the national team after he had been thrown off in 2005 for being too liberal in accepting commercial endorsements. A public romance gone bad with another diver who did make her way back also appears to have been a factor in the decision. Team chemistry, anyone?

DT does quote Susan Bushnell, who knows more about Chinese sports than the entire DT staff apparently knows about China:

The situation is different from in the United States, where you simply have to finish in the top three in your discipline to qualify.
"Whenever you have athletes appointed by coaches you get accusations of politics and it has happened before in China."
However she said the motives for the cuts would be "to win more medals - I can't imagine that they would choose an inferior team because of politics".

But this, as well as plausible explanations by Chinese figures, are pushed to the end of the article.

I know, China bashing sells. But DT is showing a sheep’s head to sell dog meat. Isn’t that what “vernacular tabloids” do?

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Can anyone tell me what the China Daily actually said? I don’t trust some “foreign staff” with an agenda.

Sichuan Authorities off Message as Victims’ Families Demand Redress

The Beijing correspondent for Yomiuri reports on June 4 that more than a hundred parents and relatives of the students who were killed when a middle school collapsed during the Sichuan Earthquake convened in front of the local courthouse to file law suits against the school, but were stopped and pushed away by police, who told them to not to seek judicial relief (600,000 Yuan per victim), but to file petitions instead.

Such clashes or worse appear to be par for the course in China when locals complain about land seizures, industrial pollutions and the like, often leading to bloodshed and sometimes even deaths. The authorities can be brutal in suppressing grievances. However, the lawyer for the families apparently felt it safe to talk to a Yomiuri reporter, likely a Chinese national dispatched to or permanently stationed in Sichuan.

Two points: First, I want to see how this case unfolds. Despite the rampant corruption and brutality at the local level, the central government and specifically the Hu-Wen regime enjoy widespread support. I want to know how well the Beijing leadership ultimately fares in maintaining and possibly even enhancing the trust that the Chinese public credits it with. Second, I want to see if the new public communication rules endure beyond the Sichuan Earthquake and its consequences. The openness is reassuring to the outside world, but it must also be liberating for the Chinese who have been caught up in it. Does it raise the bar for the Chinese authorities for other incidents, good and bad? Has it altered the Chinese relationship between the authorities and civil society?

Some More Thoughts on China’s Stability

Sophie* makes the point in her comment to this post that it could happen to other urban centers such as Tokyo with devastating effect. Let me elaborate on my response there in this separate post, since the subject matter goes well beyond that particular post.

Sophie is right—the existence of many buildings that predate the progressive tightening of building codes, as well as irregularities exposed in the Great Kansai Earthquake and the Aneha architectural frauds, and, more broadly, uncertainties over the preparedness of the authorities give rise to potential for enormous loss and damage to life and property in the event. It is quite possible that this could lead to major political changes

But for the purposes of this blog, that is where the similarity between Japan and China, two states with large urban populations sprawled over tectonic danger zones, ends. In Japan, political change could range from the resignation of the Cabinet Ministers that have been found wanting to a wholesale change of the Cabinet including the Prime Minister, including a transfer of power to the opposition. However, these are at most changes in administrations, which do not significantly alter the constitutional regime that has been in place for the last six decades. This is because the rules and procedures for the transfer of political power in accordance with changes in the popular mandate have been accepted and at work for the last six decades.

Such is not the case for authoritarian China. The Chinese President may be selected by the National People’s Congress and the members of the National People’s Congress may be elected however indirectly by the Chinese electorate. But this entire political leadership is chosen for all practical purposes by the Communist Party, which for all practical purposes monopolizes political power whose link to the public’s mandate is pro forma and tenuous. This is fine when the President (and the Prime Minister) and partly by implication the Communist Party enjoy the favor of public opinion, as in the case of the current Hu-Wen administration. But if something goes seriously wrong and the leadership loses the trust of the Chinese public, changing the President is fraught with difficulties, since the leader of the administration is the leader of the political party, which is only nominally accountable to the electorate. And more drastic changes are constitutionally impossible, since no real opposition is allowed in the Congress, and the military is also under the control of the Communist Party.

This lack of accountability creates a hard but brittle form of political stability—a feature, actually, of all successful authoritarian regimes. The current Chinese administration, like all of its predecessors since 1978, is doing its best to satisfy the needs and wants of the Chinese people. In fact, its popularity, as well as that of the regime itself, lies in the phenomenal economic success that they have achieved and continue to achieve during this period. As a result, China, for all its social ills, currently enjoys an unforced stability that must be as the envy of most authoritarian regimes worldwide. But in keeping with its nature, the authorities will not hesitate to contain popular discontent by force commensurate with whatever gap between itself and whatever part of its constituency in question. That has been most visibly brought into focus in its response to the most recent Tibetan acts of dissent, where the forces of repression were evident in their full splendor—full splendor, that is, to the extent that the Chinese authorities allowed us to bear witness.

But ultimately, machineries of repression are human. Their collective will could be sapped by contagion of a deep and pervasive discontent among the general population. The need to augment repression to contain increasing unrest would only magnify the problem. A major exogenous event or set of events can create a spike in the extant disorder. A confluence of the two could occur that is serious enough to cause state power to snap, and the authoritarian regime to disintegrate.

In the case of China, a serious and prolonged downturn in the economy would undermine the very means by which the Communist regime maintains its hold on its constituency. Is that possible? The CEO of a major fund-of-funds that I had a chance to talk to yesterday believes that there is a not inconsequential chance for a serious and prolonged recession of global proportions as one of two possible scenarios for the next two or three years, and that China will be a significant part of this scenario. And the exogenous shock that escalates the disorder? A major earthquake directly hitting Beijing would certainly be a major event.

Any such scenarios would be highly speculative and individually unlikely. But the authoritarian nature of the Chinese regime will itself be a destabilizing factor at the extremes. The authorities there will surely use the experience of the Sichuan earthquake to prepare for the next big tremor. Hopefully, they will also take it as a stepping stone in its modulated shift towards a less authoritarian and, however speculative and distant, ultimately democratic regime. The victims deserve no less.

* I dimly recall that she had a website, but it’s not in her profile. If I’m not mistaken there, would she care to give us the link here?

For Chinese Authorities Sichuan Quake a Reminder of Even Bigger Political Risks

Siegfried Knittel writes to remind me that “[China] allow[s] only rescue teams from neighbour countries to work in the area.” I wasn’t aware of that, but he’s the professional journalist. Indeed the facts seem to be bearing this out so far, as China yesterday (May 15) decided to accept rescue and relief teams from Japan, Taiwan (not a separate country in the eyes of most member of the community of nations, but a significant neighbor nevertheless), and Russia.

Japan is widely believed to be the first to be accepted, and I agree with people who read political meaning into that. It’s certainly more effective public diplomacy than the two million-dollar (per year!) “gift” pandas.

But to go back, has Vietnam even offered? Is it “neighborly neighbors” only? And what about Australia, a most neighborly not-quite neighbor—whose initial offer had been politely declined, like all the others? An offer from the United States, and surely there must have been one, had not been accepted as of yesterday.

So there does seem to be political considerations in the process, though I’ll keep an open mind.

Instant alternative history here: Would it have helped if the teams had been accepted earlier? Perhaps. But as someone who was working in New York during 9.11, I can understand a decision by the Chinese authorities that the extra demands on their own resources from the reception, transportation, and coordination with the foreign teams with all their supplies outweighed the positives. Money and supplies on the other hand can be deposited or warehoused and disbursed over time as required. I’m sure that the national security angle was considered, given the presence of Tibetans and other ethnic minorities in the disaster area, but I’m accepting the technical reasons as the overriding concern unless I see evidence or explanations by experts to the contrary.

The real need appears have been more cranes, trucks, and other heavy equipment to clear out the wreckage and rescue trapped victims, as well as more access roads and airfields to move them in. These are things that the outside world could have done little about, even if they had been asked.

One last point: What would the situation have been if the earthquake had hit a really large urban center? To say that the urban skyline in China has changed dramatically since the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake would be a gross understatement. How quake-resistant/resilient are those high-rises and other new buildings that have been popping up like “bamboo shoots after the rain”? Would the PLA and security forces be enough to contain unrest in the event of a massive collapse, let alone deal with the rescue effort? Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are very popular, but the extent of public discontent falling on the authorities in the wake of the Sichuan Earthquake would be dwarfed by one that levels a similar percentage of buildings. The logistics would be far easier for the relief and rescue efforts, but that would be an enormous challenge too.

I think that once thing settle down, the Chinese authorities are going to do a serious evaluation of the response to this natural disaster and begin preparing for the next big one. It will, if it occurs, be an existential challenge for the Communist regime.

Another Meta-Report on Chinese Transparency, from CNN

If you’re interested in this side issue, you’ve probably read this. Like the NYT report, it misses the political implications of the heavy spin from the authorities domestic media. The normally pro-China Yomiuri is showing much better journalistic instincts here.

My guess is, Western journalists can’t read anything that’s printed in Chinese (whereas Japanese reporters can). You sense that in some of the reporting on Japan as well.

NYT Seconds My China-Bizarro China Assessment…oops?

The New York Times chimes in with A Rescue in China, Uncensored, a very favorable “news analysis” (NYT’s own words) on the Chinese government’s response to the earthquake and its public communications efforts, complete with a brief comparison with the Myanmar authorities.

I now have to rethink my own assessment a little, though. Today’s hardcopy Yomiuri carries an article that explains the heavy hand of the Chinese authorities behind the intensive domestic reporting. A near-translation of the passage carrying the salient facts follows:

On May 12, Li Zhangchun, fifth ranked member of the Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee [ed. more importantly, “Propaganda Chief”] chaired an emergency meeting and issued the guideline for reporting on the earthquake, namely: “Firmly maintain stability and solidarity and focus on positive reporting”. The following day, the government issued an emergency directive to the media, urging them to “guide (public opinion) in a positive direction”, communicate the Party and the government’s “considerateness” to the victims, and calm the public. According to a Chinese newspaper report, the major newspapers adopted a decision to emphasize the Party center and the government’s focus on the lives of the people, expeditious rescue operations, the military and police who do not shirk self-sacrifice, etc.

The Yomiuri’s own assessment is summed up by the article’s headline and subtitle: (headline) Stability Top Priority (subtitle) Chinese Government—Strict Control over Reporting.

Now we know why we’re getting so much footage and photos of a caring Prime Minister Wen from Shinhwa. Yes, all governments try to game the system, manipulate the press. You got to see a lot of President Bush after Hurricane Katrina (some of which he must have regretted). But in liberal democracies, the authorities can’t issue directives, and newspaper associations won’t oblige. The silver lining is that it’s being done openly, and we get to see it.

The foreign media still appear to be operating freely, though, and survivors are talking to them. The articles show growing despair and anger, and even some civil disobedience, including sporadic reports of locals assaulting and looting supply vehicles and fighting over water supplies. This contrasts strongly with Burma, where the BBC correspondent (native English speaker) must hide his identity to report. To the extent that information comes out (and it does), it’s an oversight. The Myanmar authorities’ indifference, incompetence and corruption conspire to produce evidence to refute their bland reassurances.

In sum, I think that NYT and I should have given more qualified descriptions of the situation in China.

China and Bizarro China

Beyond the initial shock over the enormity of the blow and the growing horror at the rapidly rising death toll, what’s striking about the disaster in China’s Sichuan Province is the openness of it all. The media are augmenting their own on-the-spot reporting with Xinhwa wires and video, including raw footage from people who just happened to be there with cameras when the earthquake struck. One day after the quake, the Chinese authorities in Beijing held at least one detailed briefing for the foreign press. And the tragic, ever-increasing numbers are tumbling out, in town-by-town detail. Not that it would have been easy to pull down the shutters—Chengdu, the Sichuan capitol, and its environs are a popular tourists’ destination; at least one American tourist interviewed live from the CNN studio, likely by cell phone—but the fact that they did not, could not, shows that they are aware of the fact that China is embedded in the global community and are behaving accordingly.

That’s a good thing, and it’s not just about the rest of the world. The Chinese public is watching, too, and speaking out. When the Chinese media aired footage of the Olympic torch being passed along by happy runners with nary a nod to the unfolding tragedy, there was serious public outrage. And the authorities responded, promising downsized fanfare, as well as a minute of silence before the run each day. They know that the source of governance in a contemporary society plugged into the global community, their own Heavenly Mandate, lies on the acquiescence, if not the will, of the public. They are trying to pull this off without enfranchising their citizens, not an easy task. They’re doing a pretty good job so far.

Of course, for the victims of the earthquake, the media rollout is the least of it. But the on-the-ground efforts seem pretty solid too. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, a geological engineer by trade, has flown in to take direct command—he was a crack mining engineer before turning to full-time politics—and is swiftly marshaling massive resources, including the People’s Liberation Army, for rescue, recovery and, no doubt, future rebuilding efforts. They are not papering over shortages, they appreciate our offers for help, but please keep the medics and nurses and other people on hold for now, we have our hands full managing our own, and you will believe that, because they have been up front with everything else.

So you have the feeling that if China held a free national election after the Beijing Olympics, the Communist Party could run the table with the Hu-Wen tag team…… could they spare one of them for us…… In that one election. It’s what comes after that one, as well as what to do with all those party hacks, which will hold them back.

The Myanmar government in Burma is a different animal. Unprepared, ill-equipped, but most incriminating of all, disinterested by all accounts, they will also accept money and goods but not people. And things are returning to normal, thank you. But unlike China, they need the military transport planes, doctors and nurses, and aid workers to coordinate the rescue and relief efforts, to mention the obvious deficiencies that leap to mind. We think they’re saying that because they’ll look bad in comparison. If that’s true, that’s the good news; at least they care about what the Burmese public thinks.

Perhaps they’re just following the natural instincts of dictatorships to hide everything. Most everything else they do confirms that suspicion. But if so, they are doing an awful job. The Western media are carrying more on-the-spot pictures and video than you will be able to see and watch in a full day’s viewing—not that you will be able to, unless you are supremely indifferent to human suffering. The Myanmar government can minimize the damage and the death toll (it has), it can tell us that things are under control (it has), but the shield is riddled with cracks and holes. Corruption and incompetence must be conspiring to be totalitarianism’s own enemy and the media’s best friend—not quite a silver lining, but that’s how we get to know. Any of this openness as the disaster unfolds must be purely accidental.

Myanmar is Bizarro China.

Why All Those Chinese Toms, Dicks and Harrys, and Other Thoughts about Names and Identity

I wrote the following off the top of my head, with no fact-checking. If you have any information or views regarding the matter, you are even more welcome than usual (if such a thing is possible) to share them here.

RD writes that the Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore routinely take on Western first names, and some mainland Chinese do it as well, while Koreans rarely do that. And it is also true that members of the Chinese diaspora have taken on local names in many places in Southeast Asia (Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia come to mind; Malaysia, less so, unless they convert to Islam) while usually maintaining their Chinese names as well, even after multiple generations. Do the Chinese blend in better than the Koreans?

However, the perceived difference between the Chinese and Koreans may only be a historical accident. The majority of pre-WW II Koreans who were compelled, politically or socially, to take on Japanese names after the occupation and annexation but stayed on (or in some cases moved into) Japan after WW II retained their Japanese names (though in custom only: I’m sure the Korean authorities would not issue passports under Japanese-sounding names) did not revert to their real names until many, many years after the war. In fact, a large number continue to use their Japanese names. We all do what we need to do in order to blend in, though the Chinese appear to do a good job of maintaining their Chinese identity*.

(sidebar: In contrast, I think that we Japanese tend to melt into the scenery after the first generation. It’s probably relevant here that Japanese surnames not of samurai origin are heavily geographical and/or topographical. Also informative, a Philippine diplomat once noted that Philippine and Japanese ex-pats and immigrants, unlike most other immigrant groups, do not form enduring clusters.)

Whence the Chinese custom of adopting English first names? I have no way of proving it, but I suspect that the Hong Kong people (Hong Kongians? Kongese? Kongites?) and Singaporeans began doing it under British rule, and it spread to the Taiwanese when they moved closer to the U.S. during the Cold War*.

I think that there's also a generational factor mixed in somewhere, probably in the first decade or so after WW II, when anti-Asian racism was still overtly present in Western society. You'll probably find that fewer Japanese businessmen adopt those Anglo nicknames (Tad, Bud, but never Miguel, never Juan) these days. So the generational factor may be a major reason that the custom is far less prevalent among the late-emerging mainland Chinese. (Chip-on-the-shoulder nationalism could be another, but I don’t think it is a major factor.)

* For what it’s worth, I’ve been told by NW, a young Taiwanese who studied in the US, that the Taiwanese usually choose their English names when they file for a passport though some do get them earlier.

…okay, back to work…

Fareed Zakaria Gets It Right on Tibet

Read it here. Making a show of boycotting the opening ceremonies is certainly counterproductive. Not to worry, though. The Australian Parliament is not going to pass a resolution on this one. Nor will the European Parliament for that matter. Unlike the case with liberal democracies, the Chinese government can hit back.

Speaking of governments, when did heads of state acquire the habit of attending Olympic ceremonies held in cities that they have nothing to do with? Don’t they have work to do elsewhere? More importantly, shouldn’t we give the Olympics back to the cities, like it used to be before Hitler figured out how to use it for a state propaganda stage (or so I’d to imagine)? After all, it’s the Olympic leadership itself that is claiming that their games have nothing to do with politics.

Note on the Poisoned Chinese Dumplings: Two Societies, Two Politics

The poisoned Chinese dumplings imported from China are already having a serious effect on Chinese food exports to Japan. According to a report in the hardcopy Yomiuri, fresh vegetables from China in the first three weeks of February are down 39.7% year-on-year from 34,329 tons to 27,704 tons. For third week alone, it was down 60.8%. January had seen a 10% fall, so this appears to be an accelerating trend. The Statistics are available here, but they're hellishly difficult to manipulate, so I didn't bother to check. Still, the effects are obvious if you go into any Japanese supermarket. I suspect that imports are now being limited for uses where Chinese origins can be concealed (highly processed products, fast food chains, etc.) Even there, Japanese businesses are beginning to limit such imports from China to their subsidiaries.

Initially, as the Japanese authorities went into action and contacted their Chinese counterparts, the Chinese side took a cautious, cooperative approach and even admitted to the likelihood that the pesticides were of Chinese origin. However, after a series of announcements from Japanese authorities that received wide attention and pointed to China as the probable source of contamination, Chinese authorities went into aggressive denial and claimed that the contamination must have occurred in Japan. This is instructive of how Chinese authorities handle these and other similar health and safety issues that keep cropping up and attracting unwanted attention.

It is said that the Chinese take losing face very seriously. Indeed, it is at least plausible to think that their authorities would have continued in a far more cooperative vein if their Japanese counterparts had been willing to work outside the glare of the Japanese media. Japan is, of course, an open society in a way that is qualitatively different (independence of the media, lack of censorship, independent court system, etc.) from China. Moreover, the recent epidemic of branding and labeling fraud by domestic businesses has put the food industry and the regulatory authorities in the spotlight. Thus, full and immediate disclosure has become a public communications must in Japan.

At the other end, the producer in question as a highly successful business must surely be very well-connected with the local authorities. This would mean that the food safety and health authorities in Beijing may have difficulties imposing their priorities on the producer under the best of circumstances, particularly when no domestic harm is being alleged.

Complicating all this for China, of course, is that Japan is the other party. History and China’s authoritarian social control priorities have nurtured a deep-seated resentment and suspicion in the minds of its citizens towards Japan. The conspiratorial mindset of an authoritarian society has compounded this underlying popular antagonism, making the Chinese mind fertile grounds where conflict arises to believe the worst of Japan or, failing that, wish the worst for it. Indeed, sporadic though the reports may be, the picture is clear: deep-seated hostilities among the masses have been unleashed yet again in response to Japanese accusations.


To sum up, the Chinese are acting as any self-respecting authoritarian regime that must nevertheless contend with local power structures and a national populace that harbors deeply anti-Japanese sentiments would.

The developments on the Japanese end are also instructive. After the initial, very public announcements putting the blame squarely on the Chinese side, the Japanese authorities, the Prime Minister in particular, are now playing it down, most likely in anticipation of a successful Hu Jintao visit "during the cherry blossoms season" (now apparently pushed back to May because of "scheduling issues"). The severely weakened Fukuda administration needs every bit of political capital it can harvest, and diplomatic summitry is an easy, if not always cheap, fix. Thus, it wants to avoid ill-will that might jeopardize this bilateral event, as well as Chinese presence at the multi-nation, environment side show at the Hokkaidō Summit in July, where it hopes to attract the heads of state or government from the other major emitters of greenhouse gases. Of the media, Sankei alone appears to be aggressively hitting at what it sees as continued Chinese stonewalling. The rest of the mainstream media are broadly pro-China, and their reporting appears to reflect this.

Finally, take note that this case bears watching in the context of this and other cases, where China visibly struggles to reconcile its relationship with the global economy, which increasingly demands a measure of openness, and the maintenance of its authoritarian regime, which rests on manipulative societal and political controls.

Something has got to give.

Media, Online Community, Governments Respond to the Poisoned Chinese Dumplings Incident

The Japanese media are having a field day with the pesticide-laced Chinese dumplings. No wonder; it’s a great story. Food-related malfeasance is always a big draw, and this one has an added fillip: unlike the 2007 string of false labeling cases, this one had casualties, albeit nonfatal. It’s also about imports, thus quickening the pulse of the politics of food security. And of course there’s the China angle, which enlivens the debate on any issue, given our near-obsession with our giant neighbor in ascendance.

Three of the four major dailies are, broadly speaking, pro-China. They are obviously not going to go out of their way to portray China in an unfavorable light. In fact, they show a Chinese government that is working hard to respond positively, a government struggling to maintain control over a rapidly growing but still quite poor nation of 1.3 billion people, a nation where consumer-safety so often takes a backseat to growth and profits issues, a nation so large that domestic developments often have significant regional and global ramifications.

Sankei, the most conservative of the four, is somewhat harsher on the Chinese. The extensive online coverage －increased substantially since it replaced Mainichi as the MSN mainstream media partner － portrays a reluctant, defensive Chinese government and a media that seeks to put as much of the blame as possible on the Japanese side, as well as a suspicious, even hostile, online public hurling accusations. Of course a visit to the Japanese mega-message board 2 Channeru shows that we can give as good, at least in part*. The pro-China, pro-coalition government Yomiuri gives us a report that covers both sides of this online shouting match. (Not that anyone can understand firsthand what the other side is saying.)

The Japanese government is reacting with considerable restraint. We are cooperating, it tells us at every juncture － our health and criminal bureaucracies from both sides are working with each other; the Chinese are coming to explain, we are going over to conduct a survey… If there is a conspiracy, it must be a conspiracy of the two governments, to calm the waters.

The reasons for this g-to-g collaboration are not hard to figure out. The Chinese leadership does not want to pick a fight with Japan, for Bad Japan, Bad is a domestic trope that is hard to suppress and easy to get out of hand. The last thing that it wants is yet another popular rallying point that could help the erosion of the political stability that President Hu and his party comrades desperately seek to maintain. There are commercial considerations as well. Food exports to Japan are an important part of their economic push. Every scare, whether it’s bird flu, or carcinogenic eels, or poisoned dumplings carries a reputation risk that increasingly goes beyond that particular market segment. That is bad for local economies, bad for political stability.

On the Japanese side, the Fukuda administration also has good reasons to do its best to seal off the contaminated area, to show that things are under control with the minimum fuss. Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, is likely to visit Japan “when the cherry flowers blossom”, which would put the event proximate to the March 31/April 1 turn of the Japanese fiscal year, when the gasoline tax surcharge happens to be expiring this time around**. The liberal, China-friendly Prime Minister would like nothing better than to stage a successful summit, if only to boost his public standing at what promises to be a crucial juncture in the Diet proceedings. Getting the dumplings incident under control is a must, lest it become an unwanted distraction in its quest for the Holy Grail: a defensible deal on the East China Sea gas fields***.

* The Chinese appear to be more prone to outlandish conspiracy theories, even while pure rage and scorn rule on both sides, Chinese and Japanese. Awareness of pervasive manipulation by an authoritarian regime is fertile soil for seeds of conspiracy, real and imagined. Hostility rooted in recent history － real, imagined, and re-imagined － is the fertilizer.

** Not to mention the desirability of passing the budget and budget-related legislative bills before the new fiscal year begins. For what it’s worth, note that the pro-China, DPJ leadership is not going to use this issue other than to castigate the Japanese government for lax enforcement.

*** It is important to remember that Japan has commercial interests at stake as well. Japanese trading companies, retailers, and agribusinesses are increasingly reliant on low-cost input from China. They have made substantial investments of their time and money to bring China into their product chains. This must have entered into the calculations of the Japanese government in forming its response. However, such considerations must have been secondary at best. For the Japanese government, stability means first and foremost getting the situation under control. A closed, authoritarian regime and an open, majority-rule regime have different priorities.

If Miss Tibet Has Problems with the Chinese Authorities, Imagine What the DPJ Has to Go Through

CNN says in this news report that Miss Tibet took herself out of a beauty contest in Malaysia because the Chinese authorities put pressure on its organizers to use the name Tibet-China (like the good people of the Republic of China). Good thing for the guys who run Miss World that this year’s contest, held in China, was over and done with. But imagine the embarrassment for China next year, when the U.S. Congress puts pressure on the corporations that run Miss World and Miss Universe. The Bush administration will be of no help to China, because it will have to lean on a Democratic Congress in an election year. That is, if Miss Tibet shows up again.

According to this Sankei article, Ichirō Ozawa should be able to feel Miss Tibet’s pain, because the DPJ had to cancel a 28 November study group meeting on the plight of the Uighur in China to facilitate Mr. Ozawa’s upcoming trip to Beijing. Sankei itself was thrown out of China during the Cultural Revolutions in the 1960s when it refused to lick Mao Zedong’s… well, I hope for the sake of correspondents from a couple of other newspapers at the time that rumors about Mr. Mao’s aversion to showers were only a myth. So, although it hasn’t found the smoking gun, it has good reason to suspect China of leaning on the DPJ to deep-six the Uighur meeting.

China is one of the last empires left standing; democracy is a luxury it can ill afford in dealing with minorities.

Is It Time to Consider the Effect of Peace on the Korean Peninsula on Japanese Policy on National Security?

The Chinese authorities were the first to complain when ballistic missile defense (BMD) came up as a possible option for the Japanese Self-Defense Force in the early nineties in the form of the US theater missile defense.

The National Defense Program Outline in and after FY 2005 (sorry, I can't find a translation) gives the reason for its introduction as follows:

" The thinking on the response to and the institutional arrangements of the Self-Defense Forces for the new threats [including the progress of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, and the activities of international terrorist organizations, etc.] and the wide variety of situations [that influence peace and safety] is as follows:

a) Response to ballistic missiles: Against ballistic missile attacks, [we] shall deal effectively by establishing the necessary institutional arrangementｓ including the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system. Concerning the threat of nuclear weapons against our nation, [we] shall deal appropriately by such undertakings, together with the nuclear deterrence powers of the United States.

…"

It is not clear what is meant by the "wide variety of situations that influence peace and safety", but it does not explicitly exclude the rapid, continuous build-up of Chinese military capacities that the 2005- Outline lays out as follows:

"China, which has a major influence on security in this region, has pushed the modernization of its nuclear and missile military powers and naval and air power, and is also attempting to expand the areas of activity on the oceans; and it is necessary to continue to pay attention to such developments."

However, if the Chinese authorities still have serious qualms as the Japanese Ballistic Missile Defense System prepares to go into operation, the media are not paying notice.

Perhaps they have been assuaged by Japanese assurances like this:

"In relation to the right of collective self-defense, the purpose of the BMD systems that the GOJ will introduce this time is to exclusively defend Japan, and it will be operated based on Japan's decision on its own initiative and will not be used for the defense of third countries. From this point of view, no issue of the right of collective self-defense comes up." (Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary, "On the Introduction of Ballistic Missile Defense Systems and Other Measures " on December 19, 2003)

In other words, in the case of a military showdown over Taiwan, Japan will not dispatch those AEGIS ships equipped with SM3 missiles to shoot down Chinese ballistic missiles launched against Taiwan. (Or the US.)

On the Japanese side, at the beginning, the defense and foreign policy establishment appears to have been somewhat ambivalent, presumably over the financial costs and technical feasibility of the program. There may also have been some reluctance to antagonize China, with whom Japan had been careful to maintain good relations even after the 1989 Tienanmen Incident. However, the Nodong (1993) test in the Japan Sea and, more significantly, the Tepodong (1998) shot over Japanese air space into the Pacific Ocean appears to have galvanized domestic support. On other words, it was North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs that jointly tipped the scales in the BMD's favor. At a minimum, the introduction of the BMD would have taken a more tortuous road to fruition without Kim Jong Il's help.

Now, through the Six-Party Talks, North Korea seems to be seriously seeking a new equilibrium on the Korean Peninsula. I still think that by far the most likely better-case scenario for the foreseeable future is North Korea disabling its three facilities but holding onto its current nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles system at their current levels, enough to allow China and South Korea to keep sustaining the current North Korean regime without incurring US disfavor, but well short of normalization of the US-DPRK relations. Still, there is enough movement in the Six-Party Talks to make it worth considering: What will Japan's defense posture be like without a nuclear threat from North Korea? More specifically, what will become of the Japanese BMD System once China becomes the sole concern of direct military threats to the homeland?

Talk about an Axis of Evil…

with one to spare…

America heart Taiwan heart Nicaragua heart Iran.

One Reason Why Were Not Complaining about Chinese Products

I wondered why the Chinese products safety issue was not making much noise here. It turns out that it's the Chinese who are doing the complaining..

According to a Yomiuri report, on September 5, Japanese METI Minister Akira Amari and Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai held a bilateral meeting in Sydney, Australia, on the eve of the annual APEC Summit, where Minister Bo requested that Japan ease regulations on pesticide residues and additives in agricultural products.

A spate of food scares in 2002 over mainly excessive amounts of pesticide residues on Chinese spinach led to tighter inspections, regulations and in 2003 legislation that went into effect last year. According to the article, Chinese authorities have been seeking a rollback of these measures to no avail. METI Minister Amari pushed back in light of the most recent developments, demanding stricter measures and better disclosure.

This does not explain the lack of media attention to made-in-China toys and textiles, but it does address the most immediate concern over our nearest supply of fresh foods. Read on if you want more background..

So now I know at least part of the story. My excuse for my total ignorance? I was out of the country at the time.